It is a human tragedy, and we gather to bear witness to the sorrows and sufferings that humans are prone to and inflict on each other. Whereas we Unitarian Universalists affirm the inherent worth and dignity of every human being, at times like these we are reminded that inherent worth does not automatically translate to worthwhile action in the world. What is potentially worthwhile may not become actual. Two wolves exist within every heart; one is for good, another is for evil, and life is a journey of making choices about which one of the wolves we feed.

Human tragedy gathers us here together this evening. And we gather in solidarity with our brother and sister Unitarian Universalists across the land, right at this very moment, all across the land, for this tragedy has struck close to home. Some of us have friends at the church in Knoxville-we see them regularly at various national and district events and gatherings, including most recently at the Southeast Unitarian Universalist Summer Institute (or SUUSI).

There is this-and then there is the knowledge that violence profaned and sullied one of our worship services, shattered sanctuary space and time. This in itself is so deeply disturbing. Reverence is so very fragile. Peace is so very fragile.

Finally, you may have heard some of the most recent reports about the suspect Jim Adkisson's context and motives. The Associated Press reports that he recently received a letter from the state of Tennessee telling him that the food stamps he had been receiving would be reduced or eliminated. Jim Adkisson, already prone to violence in solving his problems-his ex-wife had put out a restraining order on him-was frustrated about being out of work, not being able to get a job. Which he blamed on liberal values and social policies. This is what he did. So he brought all this resentment and all this blame, and he decided he'd take it out on a Unitarian Universalist congregation with a liberal track record-which is so ironic, since last I heard, it's liberal values and social policies at their best that fight against economic injustice and try to help people like Jim.

It's a human tragedy, and we bear witness. Whether or not we know people from the Knoxville church, our grief and sadness and anger overflow. It is so hard to comprehend senseless violence on this scale, or the monumental misunderstanding that underlies it.

At times like this, you might find yourself wanting to know as many details about what happened as possible; you may find yourself glued to the TV or to the internet. Others of you may want to get as much distance away from this as you can. People respond to tragedies like this in different ways, and all of these ways of coping are normal.

Please treat yourself and others with care and compassion. It's also true that a moment like this can trigger memories of times when tragedy visited us and left us feeling out of control in our own lives. The personal impact of a tragedy like this can't be underestimated. Please treat yourself and others with care and compassion.

Dr. Nadine Kaslow, from the Emory School of Medicine, says that one of the best things that can happen in a messy time like this is to take things step by step. She says, "One of the things you can do is let people talk, let them share their stories, let them talk about what they want, but also sometimes, they're going to want to be distracted, and that's okay too. Appreciate that everybody has a different way of responding."

In a moment, this is exactly what we'll be turning to. After a time of prayer, Rev. Keller will lead us in a time of sharing, in which we can share our thoughts and our feelings and so begin the work of healing.

But before we get there, though, I need to mention that we gather here this evening not just to bear witness to a human tragedy. We also gather to bear witness to the human spirit at its best, which mourns and rejects violence, which comprehends the violence that it is always capable of and yet chooses the better way of peace, works for peace and justice.

The human spirit at its best, represented by our coming together as Unitarian Universalists, undaunted by the events of yesterday, courageously standing up for our liberal faith and works though they be misunderstood, though they put us in places of risk....

The human spirit at its best, which, with Gandhi, says that "When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall-think of it, always."

The human spirit at its best, which was so fully demonstrated in the example of one of the Knoxville church members, Greg McKendry, who sacrificed himself so that others might live. Greg McKendry, said a fellow church member, "stood in front of the gunman and took the blast to protect the rest of us." Another church member made this comment: He "was a very large gentleman, one of those people you might describe as a refrigerator with a head. He looked like a football player. He stood up and put himself in between the shooter and the congregation."

This is the human spirit at its best-and we gather today to witness this as well. Not to forget it, even as we are faced with the evil that people can do. There are two wolves in my heart and in yours; one is for good, another is for evil, and life is a journey of making choices about which one of the wolves we feed.

Today, we bear witness to the sorrows and the joys of that journey.

Sermons We Will Never Preach - Part 2
Dr. Tony Stringer

Rev. David Rankin was not a man that was easy to intimidate.  Before becoming a UU minister, he was a professional boxer. Professional boxing, I hear, is excellent preparation for our ministry.  Rev. Rankin had faced down the toughest, meanest, orneriest pugilistic opponents to win 192 of his 200 professional fights.  Which means, he was nearly ready for his first church board meeting.  But despite having stared fear in the face at least 200 times, this is what Rev. Rankin had to say about his first time facing a congregation from the pulpit.  “My head was pounding, my knees were knocking, my stomach was churning.  [I just wanted it to be over.  But,] it was still the night before!”  Preaching terrified him.  I understand that fear.  I often share in that fear. 

What is it about all of you that is so scary?  You appear innocent enough.  But I know better.  I know what can happen if I stand up here and get too Christian on you.  You’re go nuclear. 

And look at this pulpit.  It appears youthful and modern, the kind of pulpit you would find in an up and coming congregation, one bursting with new energy, ideas, and vigor.  But this pulpit is not truly youthful, rather it is a crossroads of history.  Remember those who have stood in this pulpit, and in the pulpit that preceded it in our Southern ancestral church. 

Rev. Rankin, whom I’ve already spoken of, was one of them.  George Leonard Chaney was another.  Chaney stood in this historical pulpit.  Chaney----a pioneer of Unitarianism in the South, one of the founders of the first library in Atlanta that would lend books to black people and to women, and one of the founders of the Artisans Institute of Atlanta, an institution that grew to become what we now know as Georgia Tech University-------Rev. George Chaney stood in this historical pulpit.  
 
Clinton Lee Scott stood in this historical pulpit.  Scott----a minister with the nerve to challenge the Ku Klux Klan, the nerve to challenge the American Legion, and most amazingly of all, the nerve to challenge Southern Methodists-----Rev. Clinton Scott stood in this historical pulpit. 

Glenn Canfield stood in this pulpit.  Canfield----a minister with the vision to propel this congregation to integrate back in 1952, before the Supreme Court had declared school segregation unconstitutional-------Rev. Glenn Canfield stood in this pulpit.  And there were others whose names are more familiar to you.  Great men, accomplished women, have stood in this pulpit. 

I always ask myself, who am I to follow these great men and accomplished women?  Who am I to preach to you?  Even as an occasional substitute?  Hence, my anxiety.  And also the reason there are sermons I will never have the nerve to preach.  That is, at least not while I can still see you.

[Lights down]

That’s much better. 

“God-----is not a four letter word.”  That is the sermon that I will never preach.  I would preach this sermon, if I had the nerve, as a dues-paying, card-carrying, reason-loving, scientifically-minded, humanist and naturalist.  God is not a four letter word, I would preach, and should not be banished from the discourse of our congregations. 

That is essentially the message UUA President Rev. Bill Sinkford shared with our faith movement towards the beginning of his presidency.  And by sharing what he thought was a modest proposal for our consideration, he ignited a controversy that has yet to fully abate.  God should be a part of our lexicon, a part of our language of reverence and hope.  God is not a four letter word and should not be banished from our pulpits and our congregations. 

I confess I reacted with a mixture of skepticism and alarm when I read Rev. Sinkford’s call to reclaim the language of religious reverence, as it was a language I had grown unaccustomed to hearing, let alone speaking.  Sinkford’s call to us to reclaim the language of reverence, to reclaim words like “God,” made me wonder what was happening to my religion.  It made me wonder  whether this rational religion, it had taken me so long to find, would one day no longer be mine.  I don’t think I was ready for reverent language, having left it behind along with the Christianity of my youth.

God should not be banished from our discourse, the argument goes, because Unitarians are religious people, and whether we like it or not, we are engaged in a religious dialogue with the rest of the world.  Engaged in such a dialogue even when we are silent.  When much of the country, indeed when much of the world, talks “God-talk,” our hesitancy to utter the “G-word,” our tendency to stumble over that one syllable, speaks volumes about our irrelevancy in the country’s, and in the world’s, religious life.

If you doubt our irrelevancy, consider the findings of the U.S. Landscape Survey published in February of this year by The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.  In that survey, only 600,000 people in the U.S. identified themselves as Unitarian Universalist.  Compare that to the over 47 million self-identified Catholics, 2 million Episcopalians, 6.8 million Lutherans, 3 million Mormons, 10 million Methodists, 13 million Southern Baptists, and so on.  Only 600,000 self-identified UUs.  In other words, of every thousand people living in the United States, only 3 are Unitarian.  This is less than even the 800,000 who reported that they belonged to a liberal faith tradition other than UUism.  And the really bad thing about this puny number is the fact that it actually overestimates our size.  In reality, only about a fifth of this 600,000 are currently active in our congregations.  It’s kind of pathetic.

If we dig a bit deeper, part of the reason there are so few of us becomes evident.  Ninety-two percent of Americans, that is, 9 of every 10 Americans, believe in God.  Nine of every 10 UUs not only don’t believe in God, there is a good chance that 9 of every 10 UUs object to the word “God” even being used in a sermon or a prayer.  I have come to realize that, that is a shame, because it closes off an important part of the religious conversation with the 9 of every 10 Americans who are not Unitarian. 

This is even more of a shame when we consider what many of the God-believing Americans actually think about God.  True enough, 60% are certain that God is a person with whom they have a direct relationship.  But a healthy 25% see God as an abstract, impersonal force, and, a somewhat overlapping but still respectable, 20% really haven’t made up their minds about what they think regarding God.  We aught to have a language for talking to these people.  A language in which God is not a four letter word to be whispered with embarrassment.  Because if that is truly how we feel about the word, then we insult them from the moment we say hello.

God is not a four-letter word, I would preach, if we allow for necessary growth in God’s meaning in the modern world.  Nor should we stop with just allowing such growth, we should demand it.  As lovers of reason and science, we should insist upon a more sophisticated concept of God.  As religious people, God is as much ours as it is anyone else’s and we should not permit the dumbing-down of the concept. 

We should challenge ideas about God that we know to be specious.  We should not permit God to be defined as a particular human being of a particular religious persuasion.  We should not permit God to be a partisan in a political cause or a militaristic venture.  We should not permit God to be a father or a mother in a mythical sky.  We should not let God be a creator of a universe that requires no act of creation.  We should not let God become judge, jury, executioner, or savior-----not in this life, nor in an afterlife that has little probability of existing.  We should not let God be defined in a manner that betrays ignorance, backwardness, or chauvinism.  God is not a four-letter word, it is our word, or at least it can be if we define it on our own terms. 

Being a Unitarian minister or theologian in the historical cradle of 1800s Boston meant applying reason to scripture.  Our Unitarian forebears saw themselves not so much as dissenters from Christian tradition, but rather as illuminators of that tradition.  By applying reason to scripture they sought to illuminate the essential truth that lay within its pages, to distinguish message from myth, fact from fancy.  And though we have gone far, far beyond Christian scripture, our theological task remains the same.  That task being to use whatever candle glow we possess to give the world greater religious clarity, to deploy whatever measure of reason we possess to advance human understanding of what is divine.

When she was in elementary school, my Unitarian daughter, Ayanna, only came home once with a note of reprimand from her school principal.  I still remember the proud defiance with which Ayanna thrust the note into my hands.  She’d already taken the liberty of reading it and was proud of what it said.  Signed by her school principal, the note read simply, “While I admire Ayanna’s free and independent mind, please ask your daughter to stop torturing the Christians.”  It seemed my daughter took great pleasure in upsetting her more traditionally religious peers by declaring, loudly, that God didn’t exist.

My daughter, you see, was in a developmental stage when it was more important to shock her peers with her religious skepticism, when it was more important to pick a fight over religion, than it was for her to engage her peers in a deeper religious conversation.  My daughter, happily, has matured beyond this stage in her faith development and so too, I say, should the rest of us.  With so few Unitarians in the world, and as I believe, with the world so badly needing Unitarian voices, it is time for us to be open to deeper conversation.

In such a conversation God will not be a four-letter word.  God will not send a shiver down your spine when uttered from this pulpit.  God will be other than it has been.  You will not need me to explain what I mean by God.  I may need to explain it to others outside these walls, but in this sanctuary, you will know and will need no translation and no apology.  You will know because you and I are Unitarians and share a deeper, richer, subtler appreciation of the ineffable mystery at the core of living.  Not necessarily an identical appreciation, but still a shared appreciation in that it allows for sophistication and nuance. 

An ineffable mystery at the core of living, imperfectly captured in words, but still necessarily captured in that one word that resonates throughout the greater religious dialogue of which we are a part.  I don’t know what God is truly, but I believe we should talk about it.  Not in the ancient ways, but in new ways.  I don’t know what God is truly, but I do know it is not a four letter word.  Even though I was among those who initially recoiled from Sinkford’s language of reverence proposal, I have come to believe that there is value in our reclaiming some religious language.  I have come to believe that rather than avoiding the “G-word,” rather than whispering it when no one can hear, we aught to be about the business of redefining it for that 40% of Americans who are closer to us than they realize. 

God is not a four letter word.  It aught to be our word.  But I’m not Rev. Bill Sinkford.  I’m just Tony, and this is a sermon that I’ll never preach.  At least not while I can still see you. 

[Lights Up]

Benediction

Let us honor the prophets among us.  Our Boston prophets of yesterday and today-----Channing, Parker, Antoinette Blackwell, Bill Sinkford, and others.  Our Southern prophets-----Chaney, Scott, Frost, Anthony David, Marti Keller, and others.  May they speak their truths in safety.  May we listen in tolerance.  And may we all grow in spirit.  Amen. 

And he was incredibly cynical about it. 

Maybe you experienced the same sort of adolescent cynicism as my student:

“No one really means what they say. Society is a shell game. Alas, only I know this hard truth, but I am strong enough to bear it. If you get it too, well, you still don’t get it as much as me. And now it’s time to listen to some moody music.”
Seeing this level of cynicism from such a promising young guy, well, frankly, it ticked me off.  So I assigned him a paper.  I told him he had to tell me about the history of cynicism.

The first thing he found out was this:

“Cynicism” started with ancient Greek, “capital-C” Cynics, the so-called “stray dog philosophers” of the ancient world. These are the guys who would make their homes in trash cans in the mall food court, neglect all forms of personal hygiene (and not just product, mind you), and verbally assault passersby about the horrible fakeness of their workaday lives.
They believed effective ways to reach people with their message were to expel bodily fluids on people who argued with them, to leave scatological commentary in the middle of the public theater, and to make obscene gestures at nice folks who had never hurt anyone.  

Naturally, these performance artists were all the rage.

The greatest of all the capital-C Cynics was Diogenes.  This is a man who wandered through the market square, squinting in broad daylight, holding a lantern to find his way.  When asked what he was up to, he said he was looking for an honest man.  
Diogenes was so disgusted with the fakeness of society that he lived in a second-hand bathtub.  His only possession was a wooden bowl, until he saw a slave boy drinking water from his cupped hands.  Diogenes smashed his bowl.

Even Alexander the Great was fascinated by Diogenes.  The story goes that Diogenes was philosophizing to record crowds at an off-year version of the Olympics when Alexander caught sight of him.  Alexander, conqueror of the known world and student of Aristotle, requested a private audience.  You can imagine what Diogenes thought of that.
In one version of the story, Alexander eventually found him sunbathing in a field.  When he approached, Diogenes told Alexander off.  He said, “Get! Out! Of my! Sunlight!”

In another version, Alexander found him sifting through human bones in a graveyard.  Diogenes told him he was looking for Alexander’s dad’s bones, but couldn’t tell them apart from the bones of slaves.
Alexander was impressed. He said that if he wasn’t Alexander, he’d want to be Diogenes.

And those were the old school, capital-C Cynics.  

The bad thing about old school Cynicism is that it doesn’t taste good with a side order of friends—much less, with a mortgage. Enter Stoicism, a Diet Cynicism that has all the great taste of the regular but is far less filling—and maybe a little less bitter.  You could be an independently wealthy Stoic. You could even be the Emperor of Rome.
Stoicism was a “grin and bear it” philosophy.  “Of course, it all comes to naught.  Of course, it’s all fake.” say the Stoics.  “But don’t let it get to you.  Try to be reasonable about it all.”  

To be a Stoic, you just set aside some time each day to think about how awful everything is.  Then, when everything associated with the good life disappears---and it will disappear sooner or later, due to death or tragedy—then maybe you won’t miss it.  

I think I’d miss it though.

So the lineage of cynicism goes on down to the 20th Century Existentialists, who modeled their lives on the original Cynics— by braving the hardships of tenured professorships and diets of nothing but coffee and cigarettes. (They were pretty brave!)
When Jean-Paul Sartre, probably the leading existentialist of the 20th century, was faced with Nazi occupation of France, he embraced his angst and ennui and dread by not joining the Resistance so he could write naughty things about Hitler in underground newspapers.  (That showed the Nazis!)  After the war, he was one of a large group of French intellectuals who advocated for communism and turned a blind eye to Stalin’s purges.  

The idea behind existentialism was that life has no inherent meaning, that the only meaning life has is what we give it ourselves, through sheer force of will.  Life is marked by anxiety about death, a feeling we are “thrown” into an absurd universe.  The hard reality, say the existentialists, is that being reasonable about it all never works in the end.  They made the Stoics look positively upbeat in comparison.

We just read a responsive reading from Ecclesiastes, from the Jewish Scriptures.  The character who calls himself “the Preacher” in the book of Ecclesiastes starts from a similar place as the existentialists.  Tradition holds that “the Preacher” was actually Solomon, giving this agnostic treatise a weight that’s surprising giving its conclusion.  

<And I just want to point out that Ecclesiastes is the agnostic book of the Bible.  Really, it's agnostic.  There are four verses total that mention God, and scholars agree that these were tacked on after the fact because the book's agnosticism made people uncomfortable.  Don't believe what the fundamentalists say about the Bible—they don't really read it literally, and many of their views about the Bible are patently un-biblical.  The Bible has all sorts of views about God in it.>

But back to the Preacher.  Here’s what the Preacher tells us about himself.  He was well off and didn’t have to worry about money.  He had in turns explored all the world’s wisdom and knowledge, devoted himself to a life of debauched pleasure, and devoted himself completely to his career.

And reflecting at the end of his life, he starts off his book with this:
Utter futility!—says the Preacher—
Utter futility!  All is futile!
What real value is there for a man
In all the gains he makes beneath the sun?
Sounds a lot like a cynic, doesn’t he?  Translators have never figured out what to do with that first word.  “Utter futility,” one puts it.  The King James has it as “vanity.”  Others have tried “absurdity.”  
The Preacher had tried it all, and found it all wanting.  He had become, in a word, a reluctant cynic.  

Maybe you’ve tasted reluctant cynicism too.  After adolescent cynicism, and after adolescent idealism, the real world takes over. We get workaday jobs to pay the rent, yet we still long for something authentic, something more real than real life.
We can come to feel that putting together real ideals with the real world can’t be done.

We can call it “fake authenticity“: anyone who tries to not be a poser is a poser already. No amount of clothes bought at the thrift store or made out of organic cotton will make us “real”. There is no amount of miles we can put on our Volvos and Priuses that will make us real. There is no farmer’s market or hole-in-the-ground dive bar that will make us really real. We try to do our part. We try to reach back to some pure core that was once there, or reach out in hopes of discovering it for the first time. But in the end, it can all feel like it ends up as trying to make our lives meaningful by shopping for vintage t-shirts and folk art.

What should I do in a closed off world like that? Set up camp in a trash can in the mall food court and start making obscene gestures at soccer moms, like Diogenes? Quit my job and move into a shelter, just to make a point? No, that’s too hard to explain to my in-laws at Thanksgiving. What’s worse, there’d be no way to charge my iPhone.

I have tried hard-core cynicism in my own small ways, and I have found it too demanding. I have tried to live without cynicism and found true authenticity just out of reach—and found partial authenticity grating.
I have tried and failed. I have become a reluctant cynic, a resigned cynic.

I’m not sure how long I’ve been a reluctant cynic, but it’s been a while. I’d like to do more, but it’s not like my small little piece will make a difference. I can see how many other people are doing their small little pieces. And if often looks to me like they’re losing. What’s worse is when they’ve been losing for a while. The worst make fools of themselves, and their causes, while they’re at it. No thank you.
Reluctant cynicism isn’t something we seek out; it seeks us out. When it finds us, we don’t take to the streets or see the light. We shrug our shoulders. We say, “Oh… huh…” and sigh. And then we let the dog out one last time before we lock up the house for the night.
 
I didn’t want to be a reluctant cynic, and I don’t want to be one now. It isn’t working. I have watched myself giving up my ideals. Anticipating more disappointments, I even learned to fear my ideals.  They accuse me.

But there is another flavor of cynicism, a unique flavor, a rich and compelling and frightening flavor.  I’m speaking of course of Jesus.

Liberal biblical historians for over two centuries now have been trying to find the quote-unquote “Historical Jesus.”  The four Gospels plainly don’t match up when it comes to the details of Jesus’ life.  They all have unique stories about him, and even when they tell the same stories, they tell them differently or even contradict each other about details small and large.  So who was the “real” Jesus behind all the stories?
There are countless theories.  Some paint him as an apocalyptic prophet announcing the end of the world.  For others he was a traveling wonder worker who fell afoul of the authorities for being at the wrong place at the wrong time.  Some scholars see him as a radical political reformer who was executed because he was a threat to the Roman Empire.

At least one biblical historian has called Jesus a “capital-C” Cynic.  He notes that Jesus’ base of operations was Galilee, a different province from the Jewish heartland of Judea.  Galilee was much more Gentile.  It had theaters and other markers of Greco-Roman culture that would have caused riots if the Romans had tried to build them in Jerusalem.  It was a melting pot province, and it might have seen some traveling Cynics now and then.

But it was more than that.  Like the Cynics, Jesus was homeless by choice.  He had, as he put it, “no place to lay his head.”  He told his followers that if they hesitated to turn their backs on their families and follow him on the road, they were no followers of his.  
And then there were all the things he said.  He mocked his opponents for being like whiny children:  “We played wedding but you didn’t dance.  We played funeral but you didn’t cry.”

He called the Pharisees, competing Jewish reformers, fakers:
"Everything the Pharisees do is done for others to see: They make their phylacteries wide and the tassels on their garments long; they love the place of honor at banquets and the most important seats in the synagogues; they love to be greeted in the marketplaces and to have men call them 'Rabbi.'”

He repeatedly called them “hypocrites.”  In our day, “hypocrites” are people who don’t live up to their ideals, which makes it little more than a synonym for “human beings.”  But in Jesus’ world, “hypocrite” meant an actor, someone who puts on a huge theatrical mask and pretends to be someone they are not, in front of everyone.  That the theater was considered a Gentile abomination gave his accusation all the more sting.  He was calling his opponents inauthentic posers.  

But if Jesus was a Cynic, he was also more than a Cynic.  He broke and mocked all the rules, but he also taught his followers how to play by them.  “Wise as serpents and gentle as doves,” our partner church in Transylvania would remind us.
Remember what he said to the lawyers and scholars—that’s how one scholar translates “scribes and Pharisees”— when they asked him to tell everyone his take on the occupying Roman Empire.  He said, “Give to Rome what belongs to Rome, and to God what belongs to God.”  Different rules for different games.

When asked why he let his followers gather grain on the Sabbath—which is technically work and not allowed—he replied that the Sabbath was made for humanity, not humanity for the Sabbath.  The letter of the law versus the spirit of the law, a motif that shines throughout all the Jewish prophets.  

But we know that Jesus did more than mock and castigate.  

He said things like:
“Blessed are those who grieve, for they will be comforted.”
“Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.”  
“And, blessed are the poor, for they will receive the Kingdom of God.”

The Kingdom of God.  It’s probably the key concept in Jesus’ teachings.  Martin Luther King, Jr. translates it as “Blessed Community.”  Blessed Community is among you, Jesus says.  Blessed Community is within you, he says.  
Most of his parables are about Blessed Community.  
“Blessed Community is like yeast, which a person took and worked into fifty pounds of dough, until all of it was leavened.”

It’s almost as though Blessed Community is contagious.

A blogger paraphrased the parable like this:
“Blessed Community is like a latent computer virus that infects a mainframe and spreads throughout the entire [network], slowly hijacking every machine from the inside out.”

It’s a unique translation.

Even if it’s all fake, Jesus seems to be saying, even if the deck is stacked against us no matter what we do, Blessed Community happens anyway.  

Blessed Community breaks through.

Even the Preacher in Ecclesiastes could be on board with that.  In the middle of his cynical tract, he writes the beautiful poem we read today.  
“…there’s a time to be born AND a time to die…”
“…a time to weep AND a time to laugh…”
And Jesus might not have liked this one judging by his mockery of the scholars and lawyers of his day, but
“…a time to mourn AND a time to dance.”

Reluctant cynicism is a stop-gap solution, a last ditch effort to avoid despair. Or it’s at least a whistling in the dark. If I confront the shadow, maybe I’ll lose. But if I don’t confront the shadow, maybe there isn’t a shadow. But I’ll know I’m just pretending, just faking it.  I can’t win. 

Maybe I should just give up on it all.

Maybe I should give up though—give up on my cynicism. But I’m not sure I know exactly how. I suspect it involves something of a leap of faith.
The problem with leaps of faith is that I don’t know what’s on the other side, or even that I’ll get there. I’m afraid what I’ll find isn’t hope, but despair.

But I’m tempted. The prospect of giving up on cynicism, however daunting, is promising. I’ve always wanted to embrace my values head on. I believe in them, after all, and they’ve steered me right in the past.

And I’ve seen in my life that Grace does happen, that Love does happen, that Blessed Community does happen.  Sometimes when I least expect it.  

But, still, the fear lingers.

I guess I’ll just have to take that leap of faith out of cynicism. And see if Blessed Community is on the other side.

You that give new life to this planet,
you that transcend logic, come. I am only
an arrow. Fill your bow with me and let fly.

These are words we heard just a moment ago, by the 13th century Sufi teacher and poet Rumi. When he died in 1273, representatives from religions around the world came to the funeral: Muslims, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, and Hindus. When questioned about this, people replied, "He deepens us wherever we are." And that is our privilege this morning. To be deepened where we are-as Unitarian Universalists-by a spiritual tradition that emerged out of Islam almost eleven hundred years ago, to become its mystical core. In this, I am joined by my colleague the Rev. Marti Keller, who will follow my homily with one of her own.

May particular focus will be on two outstanding themes in Sufism: passion and protest. Consider this to be a very brief introduction to some of the basics of Sufism....

Beginning with passion. Doesn't Rumi's poem just vibrate with this? "Fill your bow with me and let fly," says Rumi to the God of his heart; "You that give new life to this planet, you that transcend logic, come." Feeling here is heightened; feeling here is intense and rich; and this is Sufism's characteristic style of spirituality, very different from anything in religion that is exclusively rational, perpetually sober, suspicious towards flights of heart and imagination. This does not mean that reason is unwelcome, but that it must always be in service to the method that works to transform human alienation and isolation into a sense of genuine connection and union with Life.

What is this method? For Sufis, it is love. A willingness to be shattered so as to become more whole, through love. It is said that a seeker once went to ask a sage for guidance on the Sufi way. The sage counseled, "If you have never trodden the path of Sufism, go away and fall in love; then come back and see us" (Jami). Love is the method, because, above all, for a Sufi, God is love, love is all there is, so connection with God must operate according to the laws of the heart. "There is no way into presence," says Rumi, "except through a love exchange." If, then, if it is our hope to know the Sacred in life intimately and first hand, an approach that won't work is dissecting it with logic. Demanding up front guarantees won't work, either. Such approaches don't help in our human relationships, so why should they work in our relationship with the Divine? For friendship with all that is Holy to begin and to flourish into love, you take two steps forward. You trust. That's what you do. Take two steps forward, and that's when God the Friend runs to you. This is what Sufis say.

Love is the method. Passion. Not only because God is love, but also because God is our source, God is home. For this reason, love can take the form of intense longing; it can carry with it a restlessness and a poignancy that nothing in the world can still and can heal-except for the spiritual journey, the return home. Says Rumi, "Listen to the story told by the reed, of being separated. Since I was cut from the reed bed, I have made this crying sound. Anyone separated from someone he loves understands what I say, anyone pulled from a source longs to go back." If you have ever felt a crying sound rise out of your heart, if you have ever felt separated from Peace, then you know what Rumi is talking about. As lovers we pine for what is lost; and it is the restlessness of this love that moves us into the search for home.

Passion is one of the outstanding themes of Sufism. And this takes us to the second outstanding theme, which is protest. "But we have been more like the man," says Rumi, "Who sits on his donkey / And asks the donkey where to go." It's preposterous to a Sufi, who knows that if anything ought to set the direction of where to go spiritually, it is our heart's longing! Yet there are times when love is forgotten, in religion and in the larger culture, when externals take center stage. Religion devolves into a mere matter of legalities, or words, or mechanical actions; or it becomes exclusivistic, presuming there to be only one way to salvation and enlightenment. As for culture-it falls into recognizing and legitimating only narrow ways of knowing the universe, and in this way it cuts itself off from its deepest values, its highest hopes. And so people get stuck. They find themselves overwhelmed by the cruelties of life. They go in directions that don't take them home. At one point Rumi says,

Lovers find secret places
inside this violent world
where they make transactions
with beauty.

Reason says, Nonsense.
I have walked and measured the walls here.
There are no places like that.

Love says, There are.

This is what Rumi says. But, what happens when Love speaks, Love counters Reason, and we can't hear it, since the culture we live in and the religion we follow both dismiss the mystical voice of Love? How will we then find the secret places where we can make transactions with beauty-and in this way be refreshed, and revived?

This was the case in the 9th century, for Islam. Roughly two hundred years after the Koran had been written and the Islamic era had begun with the Prophet Muhammad's flight from Mecca to the city of Medina, the religion had become so successful in restoring order and focus to society that two movements emerged. One was within Islam itself: the religion's energy started to shift towards greater conservatism and a focus on enhancing organization and identity. The other movement was within Islamic philosophy, which emphasized the autonomy of reason, as well as the primacy of reason against all other methods of knowing.

For Muslims who in time would become known as Sufis, this was a disaster. On one hand was the rise of Islamic orthodox theology which rejected the value of spiritual freedom; and then, on the other hand, there was a growing cultural disregard for passion and love as the method of connecting with Truth. Both are tantamount to asking the donkey where to go. The emphasis is wrong. And thus some of Sufism's characteristic slogans: "love the pitcher less and the water more"; "We have taken the heart out of the Koran, and have left the skin to the dogs to fight over." The protest here is a protest against externals, and a protest for individual integrity and inner depth. "A donkey with a load of holy books is still a donkey." The very word, "Sufi," means "wool," which touches on the story of how early Sufis donned coarse woolen garments to protest the silks and satins of sultans and caliphs. Rich on the outside, but on the inside, so poor.

Sufism is passion and protest in religion, protest against any trend that elevates the letter above the spirit. Mysticism comes from a Greek word meaning "to close the eyes," and that's what Sufis do, so as to open the heart. It's also what Transcendentalism does, in our home tradition of Unitarian Universalism; and in fact there are all sorts of ways in which the two resonate and rhyme with each other. Fascinating ways. Sufism has Rumi, and Transcendentalism has Emerson. "Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight," says Emerson, "I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear. [...] Standing on the bare ground, - my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, - all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God." This is Emerson, and the passion evident in this and everything else he wrote and said is rooted in a longing to return to this larger reality-being part and particle of God.

As for Rumi:

You that give new life to this planet,
you that transcend logic, come. I am only
an arrow. Fill your bow with me and let fly.

Because of this love for you
my bowl has fallen from the roof.
Put down a ladder and collect the pieces, please.

People ask, But which roof is your roof?
I answer, Wherever the soul came from and wherever it goes at night, my roof
is in that direction.

From wherever spring arrives to heal the ground,
from wherever searching rises in a human being.

The looking itself is a trace
of what we are looking for.

Amen.

This is what comes to mind when I think about intimacy with loved ones-the beauty and grace of the dance. But this also comes to mind: a poem by Sharon Olds called, "I Go Back to May 1937," where she says:

"I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges, I see my father strolling out under the ochre sandstone arch, the red tiles glinting like bent plates of blood behind his head, I see my mother with a few light books at her hip standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks, the wrought-iron gate still open behind her, its sword-tips aglow in the May air, they are about to graduate, they are about to get married, they are kids, they are dumb, all they know is they are innocent, they would never hurt anybody. I want to go up to them and say Stop, don't do it-she's the wrong woman, he's the wrong man, you are going to do things you cannot imagine you would ever do, you are going to do bad things to children, you are going to suffer in ways you have not heard of, you are going to want to die. I want to go up to them there in the late May sunlight and say it, her hungry pretty face turning to me, her pitiful beautiful untouched body, his arrogant handsome face turning to me, his pitiful beautiful untouched body, but I don't do it. I want to live. I take them up like the male and female paper dolls and bang them together at the hips, like chips of flint, as if to strike sparks from them, I say Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it."

This poem from Sharon Olds comes to mind as well. The grim possibility that soul mates can become cell mates, and at times our relationship dance is NOT unfolding a pattern of mutual respect, is NOT unfolding a pattern of mutual acceptance, is NOT unfolding a pattern of trust, is NOT unfolding a pattern of taking joy in the other. The dance is not graceful, but it is one in which people bang against each other, and sparks fly. I saw it first hand in the relationship my parents had, and I have known moments of it personally-no relationship, however strong, however true, can escape adversity and difficulty. It's just as psychotherapist John Welwood once said: intimate relationships bring us "face to face with our gods and demons." They surely can, and do.

This morning I want to focus on something that is essential to any relationship with long-term potential: the dance of mutual enjoyment. There are of course other essentials we could look at, but another time. For now, the focus is on taking delight in our spouse or partner: the way they think and speak, their looks, their quirks, the way they walk.... Doing things together, from special things to ordinary things like cleaning dishes, or shopping, or just hanging out. Enjoying the other's enjoyment of something, even if you don't happen to be particularly interested yourself. Finding relief and reassurance in each other's company when life throws a curve ball. My focus today is on how this capacity for mutual enjoyment plays out over time, and how we can recover it, if and when it goes away.

And we begin with the insight that for most people, mutual enjoyment comes easiest during the honeymoon phase of the relationship. Neither a brilliant nor surprising insight, I know, but it is interesting to take a deeper look at why this might be so. Part of it has to do with how, in this earliest phase of love relationships, the body is flooded with an endorphin called phenoethalymine, or PEA, which contributes to that romantic "falling in love" feeling which is so delicious and makes the dance so spontaneously free and easy. And then there is this. Psychological dynamics like idealization and projection. We can overestimate the things that attracts us to and intrigue us about our partner, such as the ways in which they are very different from us. The differences at this stage are all intriguing and exciting; and we anchor this judgment by projecting meanings and intentions upon them that come from us and are not necessarily faithful to what's really going on with our partner. So we choose not to notice the times when our partner steps on our toes. Some people can make this choice even in the face of genuine verbal and physical abuse, which can start up even in the honeymoon phase-but because it is the honeymoon, with all that that involves, it gets explained away. The honeymoon is preserved. You feel fun, alive, complete, connected, sexy, and it is all so spontaneous, automatic, effortless....

How long does the honeymoon phase last? Six months? A year? Two years? It's different for different couples. But what is the same is the fact that adversity at some point happens to all. And so, a relationship originally built around excitement and romance settles down, for that is what it is expected to do; and so it turns its attention and energy towards establishing and maintaining a household and paying the bills. It's got to happen to some degree, of course. But this refocusing of the relationship can go overboard so easily, fueled in part by the astonishingly false yet powerful assumption that the energy and intensity of courtship ought to be able to sustain the relationship for the rest of its days. And so couples can get lost in the daily grind. It can get so bad, that eventually, when one thinks about one's partner, one no longer thinks "pleasure" or even the possibility of pleasure. What comes to mind instead is stress, and work, and kids, and bills, and chores, and fatigue. If you are a gay couple, then to this list add all the special pressures of living in a world which makes it hard for you just to be a regular couple: how too many people are making what happens in your bedroom their personal business, when, at the same time, there's not enough attention on all the practical social and economic inequities that disrupt the rest of your life. All these pressures: That's what one's partner can come to represent, in a relationship that has given itself over to the daily grind.

This is one kind of adversity that couples face. People too weary to dance. Another kind of adversity has to do with the inevitable loss of innocence in relationships. I'm talking about disillusionment which, in part, has to do with the natural decline (once people have been together for a while) in the production of the phenoethalymine endorphine. PEA production starts to decline, and, ironically, because we think all along it's been the other person who's been given us the good feelings (and not our own bodies), we can blame them and start saying, He's not such a good dancer after all! What happened to her? This is one kind of disillusionment, and here is another: when our idealizations and projections are exposed for what they are. Even ordinary issues can give rise to significant disagreements that open our eyes. A child is born, for example, and all of a sudden conflicting and contrary attitudes about how to raise that child come to light. Studies show that 2/3 of all couples experience relationship crisis after the birth of their first child. We find ourselves saying to each other, "I had no idea you thought that way... I had no idea that that was important for you..." It's just as a wise person once said: "Sometimes you have to get to know someone really well to realize you're really strangers." Thus the adversity: partners feeling duped by the other, partners feeling like some "bait-and-switch" has just taken place; partners too busy feeling resentment, too busy quarreling, to dance.

So many kinds of adversity that couples can face, which knock them out of the honeymoon. Here's the last kind I'll mention: when one or both partners in the relationship have a hard time receiving pleasure and just can't enjoy. Sometimes the block is depression-one's body chemistry is out of balance, and you feel robbed of passion and energy and optimism, and you just can't dance. Then there is the kind of attitude that says, "having fun together is frivolous," that says, "fun time has to wait until after the job is finished." This too can block enjoyment, for in truth, the job is never finished, there is always something else to be done... And then there is this block to enjoyment: anxiety, as in, for example, the anxiety about getting older. Age adds to the hips, adds on wrinkles, diminishes physical stamina, causes a person to start losing hair or to grow it in weird places; and if we can't love ourselves as we are-if we cling to media images of the ideal woman and man, and judge ourselves in comparison to them-then we just won't ever feel comfortable in our own skin.

Faced with all these kinds of adversity, and more, the honeymoon phase in relationships ends. The dance that used to be so spontaneous and effortless and free falters, breaks down, stops altogether-or, as in Sharon Olds' poem, people are banging against each other, and the sparks are flying.

At this point, some couples call it quits, only to look for different dance partners. Sometimes this is as it should be. Other couples stay together, but they resign themselves to constant fighting, or to a life of simply keeping up appearances and going through the motions, faking it for the good of the kids, faking it out of fear for what others might say, faking it so as to fool the IRS. Still others do this: they take their resentments and rage out on others who are completely innocent. They scapegoat. I'm talking in particular about people who want to strengthen heterosexual marriage today by tearing down the committed love relationships of gays and lesbians. Now someone help me understand how this sort of thing can ever be constructive in the long haul. Last I checked, committed love relationships of any kind-no matter what sort of plumbing is involved-make the world a better place. The world needs all the committed love relationships it can get. How can stifling love ever be a positive thing?

My point is this: adversity is going to happen. The honeymoon is going to end. But must this mean the end of our relationships, or never-ending bickering, or endless going through the motions and faking it? Must soul mates becoming cell mates?

Henry David Thoreau once said: "If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost. That is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them." And I love it. It's good news for everyone, whatever the particular circumstances. News that we CAN survive the end of the honeymoon. News that we CAN learn how to strengthen or even recover a capacity to enjoy our partner or spouse, even if the dance right now is not so good. News that, even if our relationship is over and done, we CAN dance again.

There's good news here. And it's all about foundations. Foundational dance practices, that keep the dance alive and vibrant.

Start with this one: simple awareness. Just knowing that the honeymoon is going to end, and that this is absolutely normal, is tremendously comforting. Understanding the role of the phenoethalymine endorphine, and how, when production of it slows down, we can mistakenly think that something is wrong, and our partner is to blame. Awareness helps us to avoid this mistake. Awareness poises us. Awareness prepares us to be thinking, from the very beginning, of how we can sustain enjoyment in the relationship over the long haul, and build a weekly discipline for this into the schedule. Never taking this for granted. Knowing that effort and planning here are key.

Simple awareness is foundational to keeping the dance alive and vibrant. Jungian psychotherapist Robert Johnson illustrates this in an intriguing way as it applies to the shadow assumptions and agendas that we bring into our relationships, which stay hidden during the honeymoon phase and come out only later. He says, "I recently heard about a couple who had the good sense to call upon the shadow in a wedding ceremony. The night before their marriage, they held a ritual where they made their ‘shadow vows.' The groom said, ‘I will give you an identity and make the world see you as an extension of myself.' The bride replied, ‘I will be compliant and sweet, but underneath I will have the real control. If anything goes wrong, I will take your money and your house.'" Robert Johnson goes on to say that "They then drank champagne and laughed heartily at their foibles, knowing that in the course of the marriage, these shadow figures would inevitably come out. They were ahead of the game because they had recognized the shadow and unmasked it."

Awareness is about being ahead of the game, meeting it face-on with clarity and courage. That's the first foundational dance step, and now here is the next: communication. Especially a willingness to rediscover the power of this when there hasn't been much genuine communication in a while.

Say that right now, you and your partner are too weary these days to dance. Your relationship is overwhelmed by the daily grind. You look at your partner, and all you can see are responsibilities, duties, bills, chores, and stress. This morning, I'm inviting you to talk to each other about this. Talk about what's going on. Now, don't open up the dialogue with an attack or accusations or complaints-don't say, "You're no fun anymore" or "Our life is a total bore." Open things up in a more constructive way. Ask, "Do you ever wonder where the fun has gone?" or "Does it scare you like it scares me that we don't enjoy ourselves like we used to?" It's about establishing common ground where no one is the enemy, no one is the victim. You are both in this together. The dance needs you both.

Then, move the focus of your conversation. Remember the good times you used to share in the past, from big thrills to simple moments of contentment. Don't get lost in sentimentality, though, for this is not the point. The point is for you to be as specific and concrete as you can about what made the times so good, so you can use this information to help you move forward into the present and future. Use it to spark brainstorming about activities that would work for you now, in the present and future. Perhaps each of you might brainstorm a list, separately, and then share them, and THEN make some plans. Decide on something mutually agreeable that is also very doable. A weekly date night at the movies. Something like that. But do it. Follow through. Reminds me of a Family Circus cartoon with just two panels. In the first panel, Mom and Dad are inside watching a very learned gentleman on television speak on the fundamentals of having fun. The next panel shows the kids outside having fun. We have just got to get out there and do it. Make a commitment to make more room for enjoyment in our lives. Don't allow the daily grind to keep on grinding us up....

Finally, there is this foundational move that can help keep the relationship dance alive and vibrant. And there's a sense in which it is the most important one of all. For if we in our own separate lives are in a rut and having a hard time enjoying anything, then how can we expect to bring or receive enjoyment in our relationships? And so the final foundational move: vitalizing ourselves. Physiologically, it means taking care of our physical health. Exercise and eating right. If you think you might be suffering from depression, see your doctor. It's not about character, it's not about willpower, it's about biochemistry. Get help.

Other ways of vitalizing ourselves include expanding personal horizons. If you are at home all day with the kids, or if you at the job all the time, or at a job you don't like, create opportunities to be exposed to something different. Perhaps a decline of enjoyment in your relationship is a disguised call that you are ready to reinvent yourself, ready to rediscover a passion and a purpose that will bring you back to life... So be open for a change. Make the time for solitude. Make the time for silliness. "Only away from the serious and significant can we relax enough to reveal our less dignified, less admirable, less impressive selves. It's where we share these things that we keep on falling in love with each other again and again."

The relationship dance. A wise person once said, "Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterwards." My hope is that we can discover and rediscover a vision of love relationships rooted in compassion, and aspiring to grace. Despite all the adversity, learning and relearning how to move to the same rhythm, now side-by-side, now face-to-face, quick quick slow, quick quick slow. The dance our relationships can be and become again.