The Evolution of God

THE EVOLUTION OF GOD

Rev. Kit Ketcham, Nov. 10, 2013

         It was a beautiful afternoon in fall on a Rocky Mountain  hillside, where I sat enjoying the blue skies and warm sun with friends who had gathered at the home of a fellow member of Jefferson Unitarian Church, my church home there in Golden, Colorado.

         I’d recently entered seminary and was beginning the school year excitedly engaged in studies of pastoral care, Old Testament, and Church History, surrounded by students from all different Christian backgrounds with a variety of doctrines and dogmas.

         I felt a little like an outsider at seminary; I was one of only a handful of Unitarian Universalist students, there at Iliff School of Theology in Denver, a very liberal Methodist seminary.  But I was loving my studies, feeling my brain stretch and my own theology grow clearer, as I compared it to the theology of my more traditional classmates.

         Next to me in a lawn chair, was an older gentleman named Jakob, who was interested in what I was studying at Iliff, and during our conversation, he mentioned that he was a pretty staunch atheist.  I’d known Jakob for many years and I knew this about him, so it occurred to me to ask him “what do you believe in, Jakob?”  He paused a moment and then…

         “Nature,” he said.  “Nature.  That’s what I believe in---the laws of nature, the way the universe works, the plants, the animals, the laws which govern life and how everything connects to everything else.  I don’t believe in God.  I believe in Nature.”

          In my grad school-induced arrogance, I almost said to him, “but Jakob, it’s just that your God is Nature”.  Luckily, I had retained enough of my mother’s teachings about respecting one’s elders to keep my mouth shut and just listen; consequently I went home that evening pondering Jakob’s words and marveling at their implications.  It was another step in my own evolution of an understanding of the power beyond human power, which some call God.

         Several years ago, I entered a 12 step program to find peace of mind after a number of experiences with alcoholic friends.

         In a 12 step program, one is asked to find a Higher Power and use its strength to change one’s behavior.  I’d outgrown my “old white guy on a throne” concept of God and when they told me that my Higher Power only had to be something stronger than myself, I thought of my hours of hiking up steep trails in the Rockies, defying and yet using gravity to get stronger every step of the way, and I decided to use Gravity as my Higher Power.  There seemed to be a connection there.

         When I had my conversation with Jakob, I was ready to grow again and his concept of Nature as Higher Power was very appealing to me.  In fact, I’d already realized that gravity was only a piece of my higher power, that the entire universe seemed to be an infinite power that included much, much more, most of it mysterious and only partially understood by science.

         In my former congregations we’ve talked about “the driving force, the creative force in the universe, which many call God”.   With you here today, I’d like to consider how human understanding of that power beyond human power, that which drives the universe, creates the universe, has evolved over the millennia of recorded human history.  

         It’s interesting to me that human history reveals, both in the larger sense and in the more personal sense, a concept of “God” that has generally evolved from a figure of parental-type authority to loving presence to independence from a fixed image.

         In the earliest reaches of human history, the power beyond human power, or God or Goddess, was revealed in weather, in seasons, in drought and flood; it was a force to be appeased, bargained with, sacrified to.  Whether that force was seen to be male or female, it mostly was a rule-maker, a boundary keeper, a teacher.  I can imagine mythical and metaphorical Mother Earth and Father Sky giving instructions:  “Now, children, wind and rain and snow can kill you; so make shelter, and, by the way, use fire when you discover it as a gift of weather. 

         “It will be hot for a period of time; it will then cool down; it will get much colder for a period of time (of course I’m excluding the tropical zone); then it will warm up again and the cycle will repeat endlessly.  Each season will bring certain kinds of weather, mostly unpredictable; learn to cope.”

         Humans tried to influence the weather, the seasons, the drought and the flood, using prayer, sacrifice, bargaining with the seen or unseen Gods and Goddesses.  Some of it seemed to work; when it didn’t, it was assumed that the deities were displeased or busy elsewhere or had a different plan.

         Across the globe, human beings were generally polytheistic, ascribing power to the sun and moon, earth, stars, trees and animals, considering them the beings which controlled their lives, sent the weather, governed the seasons, controlled fertility, birth and death, and were only partly predictable.  Female deities were common and Mother Earth was seen by many to be the primary Deity.

         So reverence for a God or Goddess figure was initially, and logically, attached to nature.  Not so different from my friend Jakob’s perspective, though Jakob, as a scientist himself, had a lot more academic knowledge to call upon to make that judgment.

         Interestingly, ancient peoples often argued with their gods and goddesses, threatening to withhold sacrifice and obedience if the deities didn’t shape up.  And intriguing rituals accompanied some of these interchanges.   Robert Wright, in his book  “The Evolution of God”, recounts a ritualistic “interchange” between a Siberian native man and the wind, in which buttocks are bared to the breeze and incantations shouted at the wind, in an effort to stop the wind’s incessant and damaging blast. 

         Lest any of you be tempted to try this, it probably worked about as well as our own hopes and prayers when a wind storm is predicted!  Mother Nature, whether by indigenous or modern standards, is notoriously hard to influence.   Me, I just pray that I can cope, if the power goes out.  And that some kind family will take me in once again.

         Eventually, polytheism began to lose ground to monotheism, to a powerful, all-purpose Deity who was jealous of other Gods and told his  followers (for by now God was a He) to follow his commandments or he’d get mad.  If they were good, he’d bless them, give them land of their own, harken to their prayers.  Early scriptures bear this out but the willful Israelites were unwilling to give up their old gods and goddesses completely and frequently invoked the One God’s wrath, causing Him to threaten and punish those He called His Chosen People.

         The Abrahamic religions---Judaism, Islam, and Christianity----are descendents of that God-form, having themselves evolved out of the experience and the necessities of human living in early times.

         But monotheism has had its own set of problems.  The God of Abraham was a top-down, moralistic, parental authority upon whom followers were to be utterly dependent.  This God was male in form and in language, which has encouraged followers to assume that God intended that human males be dominant and females be submissive.

        Patriarchy was the starting place for a triumvirate of Abrahamic religions that eventually dominated the early Western world.  God’s attributes were measured by human attributes, making assumptions about God’s opinions, God’s preferences, and God’s marching orders. 

        This God was rather cruel and autocratic much of the time.  This God kicked native peoples out of their lands so that the Chosen Ones could live there.  This God sent an avenging angel to kill firstborn Egyptian children, among other plagues, to allow His People to escape into the desert, even though they weren’t happy once they got there.

        The history of God as portrayed in the Hebrew scriptures is that of a strict and punishing male parent.  Scholars like Karen Armstrong and others have posited that when God created humankind, he (like all parents) found himself with unanticipated problems on his hands.  The Hebrew legends around the creation of humankind portray God’s children as independent thinkers whose curiosity landed them in trouble and eventually got them kicked out of Eden.

        This God got so upset with human behavior that he decided to drown all but a few and start over.  Hence the legend of Noah and the ark, with its male and female starter species.

  

         When Jesus began his ministry centuries after the Israelites established a monotheistic tradition, he had been raised and educated in the Jewish tradition of a God who demanded that certain purities be maintained, that certain customs were required of devout Jews, and that God was a Father figure.  Indeed, Jesus called his God “Father” and, in times of greatest crisis, even called God “Abba” or Daddy.

         Christianity modified the portrait of God to include a male parent’s loving side and brought a female near-deity into the family constellation.  Mary, the mother of Jesus, became a figure women Christians could identify with and even venerate.  But as the concept of the Trinity evolved, the idea that God was Three in One---Father, Son and Holy Spirit---in that scenario, Mary was merely the mother, albeit the mother of a God figure.  Mary was a mortal, after all, and had only been the recipient of God’s grace, not a God figure herself.

         We need to remember that monotheism, the idea that God is One, was at stake.  Even the doctrine of the Trinity, the idea that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were identical to each other and were simply different functions of the One God, was a stretch for many, including our ancient Unitarian ancestors.

         Acceptance of the idea of the One God was pretty much universal in the world influenced by the Abrahamic religions for centuries after Jesus’ ministry.   There were skeptics, to be sure, particularly around the concept of the Trinity, but belief in God was unquestioned by most.  Heretics were punished, sometimes cruelly as in the case of our own religious ancestor, the young Spanish doctor Michael Servetus who was burned at the stake for his denial of the Trinity and Jesus as God. 

          But as understandings of the natural world grew and science became an influential resource to human beings, particularly to those with access to education, a period of time known as The Enlightenment in the eighteenth century brought huge wide-spread change and conflict about religious ideas and the very concept of Creation and the nature of the universe.

        No longer did every facet of human living depend on belief in God.  The earth revolved around the sun, not the sun around the earth.  Discoveries about any number of everyday things, such as plants and seasons and the movement of the stars in the sky, created new questions in human minds.

        Before this time, belief in God was taken for granted.  Not to believe meant abandoning any coherent world picture.  This was unthinkable to most humans in that time in history.

        But emboldened by new ideas and knowledge, thinkers of many stripes took courage and began to wonder:  what is the real authority of the church and why does the church demand human obedience?  Those who traveled observed other religious practices and saw that there was a larger world than the one which accepted the idea of One God with three manifestations; there were nontheistic religions such as Buddhism and Confucianism and there were polytheistic religions as well.

        Three different conceptions of God, through the lenses of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity, called into question the idea of One God.  Each of these Gods had such different characteristics----how could they be the same God?  And yet again, humankind’s shaping of the idea of God was illuminated.  No longer was it so clear that God had created humans in his image; perhaps humans had created the God that they wanted to create.

         So---that’s a quickie rundown on the history of the concept of God up to about now.   It’s not exhaustive, it’s a little irreverent, and my knowledge is far from complete, but what I’ve tried to do so far is establish that as human understandings of the universe have progressed, humans have increased their questioning of the reality of God or Gods or Goddess.

        Part of it is due to our increased scientific understandings and discoveries.  Part of it is due to the relaxed insistence on belief in a Deity.  Part of it is due to our own mystical spiritual experiences which may lead us along non-traditional paths.

        I’ve collected some quotes from scholars and theologians about their own concepts of the power beyond human power.

        For example, Albert Einstein said this:   “It was the experience of mystery, even if mixed with fear, that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty. It is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude. In this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man. I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the type of which we are conscious in ourselves. Enough for me, the mystery of the eternity of life and the inkling of the marvelous structure of reality, together with the single-hearted endeavor to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the reason that manifests itself in nature.”

        James Luther Adams, a renowned pacifist and Unitarian theologian, said and I am paraphrasing and pulling together a couple of related ideas: 

 “God is the power that holds the world together.  We are called by God to participate in holding the world together and we are seduced to return to the task of putting the world back together again and again.  God is the force in the Universe that calls us to love.”

        In the 60’s, a theologian, John T. Elson, the religion editor of Time Magazine, wrote an article entitled “Is God Dead?” which illuminated the shifting sands of theology and belief as religion tried to accommodate scientific discoveries.  The article stripped bare the fact that there are multiple concepts of God and that the traditional “old man in the sky” was woefully out of sync with science.  Therefore, was it possible, even likely, that God as we knew God was actually dead.

        Elson wrote:  “Secularization, science, urbanization---all have made it comparatively easy for the modern man (and woman) to ask where God is and hard for the man (and woman) of faith to give a convincing answer, even to him or her self.”

        Henry Nelson Weiman, another Unitarian theologian and philosopher, offered this definition of God:  “God is an event, a Creative Event, an event of Creative Interchange.  God is Creativity.  God is trustworthy, reliable, and sustaining.  God is that which can transform and save humans in ways in which we cannot transform ourselves, provided that we understand and fulfill the requisite conditions.”

        Feminist theologians have illuminated the feminine face of the power beyond human power.  They cite the earliest evidence of deity worship as being the worship of Mother Earth, for female powers of reproduction, of community, and nurture, and many religious people today honor and revere the feminine attributes of the Goddess, rather than a male figure of God.

         Atheist writers who have become popular in recent years have primarily stated their rejection of the traditional view of God as an anthropomorphic figure, omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent.  I have not heard much from them about other concepts of God or Goddess and wonder if they too are out of sync with new ideas of God.

        Yet quantum physics has revealed an entirely new possibility about the power beyond human power.  As the Large Hadron Collider lurches toward its grand experiment of recreating a smaller version of the Big Bang, the event which appears to have set the universe in motion,  it is possible that science may unveil the deepest roots of the universe yet explored, if they find the elusive Higgs boson, the subatomic particle dubbed “the God Particle”.

        And will they find God?  Well, probably not the God most people assume is the Ruler of the Cosmos. 

        So where are we?  Here’s what I think.

        I’ve noticed that the power beyond human power, which some call God or Goddess, can be viewed through many lenses.  Even as a parent or guardian can be called a mother or a father or a chauffeur or a cook or a teacher or a cruel tyrant or any number of other names, so can God and Goddess.

        There is the lens of religion: God as  a personal servant and ruler.  There’s the lens of physics:  God as energy.  Of psychology: God as  emotional need.  Of biology:  God as creator, God as mere brain chemistry.  Of evolution:  God as an orderly, purposeful system.  Of Love:  God as human connection and nurture.  Of parent:  God as protector, caretaker.  Of child:  God as rule-maker, guidance giver. 

        Of art:  God as designer, creator of beauty.  Of indigenous person:  God as nature and ancestral wisdom.  Of poetry:  God as metaphor and simile.  Of fear:  God as the punisher.  Of ethics:  God as source of the moral order.  Of the abstract:  God as ground of being, Ultimate Reality.  Of the concrete:  God as old white guy in the sky.

        I’ve probably missed your favorite lens and you can tell me later what yours might be or if you disagree.  But I think it all comes back to the recognition that there are so many ways to think of the power beyond human power, so many ways we have found to use that power both for secular and spiritual and religious meaning, so many names and faces for God, that it is useless to argue about whose version is right.

        A member of my Whidbey congregation, Ken Merrell, once spoke about a discovery he had made in his religious journey:  that when we encounter different language and ideas from our own, rather than dismissing them as useless or offensive, we might try translating those words and ideas into our own language and worldview, to see if we and those who are different from us have any common ground.  And I would reiterate Ken’s wisdom:  we all have different ideas about what the idea of God means.  Let’s share those ideas, rather than reject each other because we don’t speak the same language.

        The Evolution of God is a journey of countless millennia, from prehistory to the present.  The Evolution of our personal understandings of the concept of God has taken our whole lifetimes and continues to offer opportunities to change our minds.   Whether we are theists, nontheists, atheists or agnostics, we can learn from each other and respect each other’s language and experiences, both here and in the larger community.  As Ken has said, the key is to translate!  You too can be religiously bi-lingual!

         Let’s pause for a time of silent reflection and prayer.

BENEDICTION:  Our worship service, our time of shaping worth together, is ended, but our service to the world begins again as we leave this place.  Let us go in peace, remembering that all humankind shares a reliance on the faithfulness of that power beyond human power, which we call by many names.  May we respect one another’s language and thoughts, listening carefully that we might learn from one another.  And may we offer to our children, our grandchildren, friends and family the opportunity to think large about what it means to have faith in these troubled times.  Amen, Shalom, Salaam, and Blessed Be.

A Call to Service

A CALL TO SERVICE

Rev. Kit Ketcham

Pacific UU Fellowship, Oct. 20, 2013

         When I moved to the North Coast a little over a year ago, I was tired.  Retirement was the right answer for me in June of 2012.  I’d loved my Whidbey Island congregation, but now I just wanted to go to church on Sunday, maybe bring refreshments occasionally, greet people as they came in the door, pay my pledge, the same kinds of things that any good church member does to support the faith community and increase the sense of belonging.

         I considered checking out some of the other congregations on the coast, but a little experimentation and looking at websites helped me see that I really am a Unitarian Universalist at heart.  Even a nice liberal bunch of Methodists or Episcopalians or Congregationalists probably wasn’t going to cut it for me.

         So I never visited anywhere else.  I was happy to sit in these pews on Sunday morning, listen to whoever was the speaker, take part in interactive services, and generally just be a member.  Joining immediately was the right thing for me to do, as I’ve always belonged to whatever congregation I was serving or attending.  To just visit didn’t feel right; until I joined, I didn’t feel connected.  Guess I’ve been sort of a Church Lady all my life.

         But as I observed to Kathy Matthews, the UCC pastor, over coffee downstairs one day after I’d agreed to provide you all with some pastoral services, ……“a call to serve just doesn’t go away”.  It doesn’t matter if you’re a minister or a teacher or an engineer or an artist or a parent or a musician or any other field to which we feel drawn by our own passion and talents.  Most of us need to be useful all our lives, it seems.

         I’m betting that many people in this room this morning have felt a call to service, a call that was hard to ignore.  It could be a call to be the best parent you can be or an organic gardener, or a spouse or a choir director or a painter or photographer.  We can experience a call to a great number of life-changing activities, whether vocationally or as a hobby. 

         I’d like to tell you about my experience of being called to the ministry and then ask you about your sense of call, as individuals and as a community.  (pause)

         In 1992, we had a new minister at Jefferson Unitarian Church in Colorado and I angled to be on the Committee on Ministry, mostly so I could get to work with this new guy who was charismatic and full of new ideas for our sluggish congregation.

         In September, at our Homecoming service of the new church year, I was asked to give a short homily about our theme, which was “Dreams dreamed; Dreams come true”. I guess they thought all my experience as a teacher and lunchroom supervisor gave me special expertise in speaking to a bunch of churchgoers.

         So I got up in the pulpit that Sunday morning long ago, spoke to the group about the dreams we had dreamed as a congregation, the sorrows we’d endured, the changes we’d made, and the ways we had grown. I got some laughs, even saw a tear or two, and sat down much relieved and feeling like I’d gotten through my assigned role adequately.

         As I took my seat in the front row of the choir section, our minister, the Rev. Robert Latham, got up in the pulpit, turned to where I was sitting, and said to me, in front of everyone there, “Kit, you missed your calling. You ought to be a minister.”

         I swear to you it was like the proverbial two by four between the ears of the balky mule; I was stunned. For the whole rest of the service, I couldn’t think of anything else. Of course I ought to be a minister! I had been practicing for that role all my life without realizing it----working with people who needed compassion, learning about the injustices and oppression so many people in our world experience, becoming an enthusiastic, if limited, musician, honing my public speaking and my counseling skills. I could do it! I could be a minister!

         It took me awhile to get there. It wasn’t until 1995 and a powerful reminder of my call while I was attending General Assembly in Spokane, having recently retired from my counseling job and having become free to go back to school to follow the inner urge to serve in this new and even  more challenging work, the work of ministry.

         And here I am, unable to say “no” to that call, even after retirement.

         What is a “Call”? what does it mean to be called to a particular life work, something larger than yourself, paid or unpaid? What has been your experience of being called? Who were the people who helped you discover it? Were there encouragers? Discouragers? How has your sense of being called changed over the years? Have you been changed by that call to service?

         I’d be interested in knowing: have you felt a call to some life’s work? (raise hands) It doesn’t have to be a paying career; it could be something more basic than a job. Our life’s work doesn’t have to have a paycheck attached.

         As I talked with Erin (worship leader) this past week about our service theme, we were surprised and delighted to find that we had significant similarities in our paths.        

  

       We had both enjoyed learning Spanish in high school and both of us majored in Spanish in college, but whereas I learned my Spanish in the classroom of old school translating and writing, rather than conversation, she had the opportunity to spend time in speaking Spanish with others. 

         This led her into work as a teacher, particularly with students for whom English was a second language.  Over the years, her opportunities to grow in this field have increased and she finds herself more deeply drawn into this way of improving others’ lives, as well as being true to her deep yearnings to provide a good life for Diego.

         The rewards of finding our life’s work are many----the satisfaction of getting started in it, rising to the challenge, the stimulation of a new path that becomes more exciting as one progresses along that path.

         Is there anyone here who would be willing to say more about their  own experience of feeling called to a life’s work?  Was your experience a sudden revelation, like mine was, or is it on-going, as Erin’s has been?  (cong resp)

         Thank you for your sharing.  I think that a sense of call to some work that changes the world around us for the better---or changes ourselves for the better---that sense of call is a deeply human, and, I think, a very spiritual, motivation.  It may have nothing at all to do with religious thought and everything to do with a need to (as Jim Henson, founder of the Muppets, once said) a need to leave the world a better place that he found it.

         It took me many years to get ready to answer the call that had grown in me since childhood, as a young person drawn to volunteering in my Dad’s church, as a welfare worker in Washington state, as a Baptist missionary in Denver, then as a teacher and counselor to junior high students.  When I finally did recognize that call, my whole life made sense.

          Here’s the thing about a call to a life’s work, whether that’s music or art or teaching or law or ministry or raising happy children or being a good spouse, whether we spend our whole lives at it or come to it later in life----answering the call to a higher purpose gives our lives significance in the face of the insignificance conferred by the universe.

         A call is bound up with a sense of needing our lives to have meaning, significance. It may come to us very early in life, perhaps through the example of a parent or a teacher or coach or other leader.

         It can be sidetracked, permanently or temporarily, by abuse or loss, but it can also be an opportunity for the “called” person to respond to that abuse or loss by doing something to find meaning in an awful experience.

         A sense of call among members of a group like ours, the Pacific UU Fellowship, also contributes to the strength of our Beloved Community, both as members live out their own individual call and as they offer their passion and desire to serve through the congregation’s programs and the projects they support.

            Mary Oliver, the poet, offers this beautiful work entitled “The Summer Day” to ask an important question.

Who made the world? 

Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

         What are we doing with our one wild and precious life?  How are we serving the world?  How are we using the minutes and the hours and the days that we have been granted by life?  Have we said no to a call because it wasn’t convenient?  Have we delayed answering a call because we were afraid?  Or have we stepped joyously, though perhaps with fear and trembling, through the door that will open more of life’s possibilities to us?

         And to expand that idea into the Call impelling a Unitarian Universalist congregation, even a small one like PUUF, I’d like to ask “what is the driving force that impels the Pacific UU Fellowship?  What are we doing with our one wild and precious life as a congregation?  What is our mission on this coastline?

         Is it just to serve our own needs?  Provide a place to go on Sunday morning?  A place to spend time with friends?  Or is there more we should be doing?

         I’d like to challenge us this morning to think about what we are doing here.  As Unitarian Universalists, we have a strong commitment to social action of many sorts.  As individuals, most of us are supporting various local social action causes.  But is there something we could do as a congregation, even as farflung as we are? 

         I’ll be asking this question over and over again during this year and I’ll be interested in hearing your thoughts.  I’d like to see us sponsor some effort to make the world a better place, to make our coastline a more just and compassionate place.  I know there are others among us who would like the same thing.  Let’s see what we can come up with!

         In closing, I’d like to share one more thing about my own sense of call.

         The morning after I felt that second two-by-four of the call to ministry, while attending the Spokane General Assembly in 1995, I woke up with an old Sunday School song in my mind, a song which I have adopted as the theme song of my ministry.

         I’ve printed the words to this song in the order of service and I imagine that some of you sang it yourselves in another time and place.  I’d like to sing it to you and invite you to join in if you remember it.  And I want you to think of it as the promises I make as a minister---to you as a congregation and to those I encounter in my everyday life.

         Its words are kind of old-fashioned, but they are not particularly religious; I would call them words describing a life of integrity, the life of integrity that a Call to Service requires.

         Sing with me, if you will.  We’ll do this a cappella, I think.

I would be true, for there are those who trust me;

I would be pure, for there are those who care;

I would be strong, for there is much to suffer;

I would be brave for there is much to dare (2x).

I would be friend of all, the foe, the friendless,

I would be giving, and forget the gift.

I would be humble for I know my weakness,

I would look up and laugh and love and lift (2x).

         These words have stuck with me for many decades, not just during my years of ministry but as guideposts for living a life of integrity.  I haven’t always been true or pure or strong or brave.  I haven’t always lived up to my duties as a loving, giving, humble friend.  But I’ve always tried to look up and laugh and love and lift.

         Let’s pause for a time of silent reflection and prayer.

         Our closing hymn is #298, Wake Now My Senses.

EXTINGUISHING THE CHALICE (Erin)

BENEDICTION

         Robert Latham, who called me into ministry those many years ago, also imparted this wisdom at one point with a stanza from Robert Frost’s epic poem “Two Tramps in Mudtime”, describing a woodchopper’s reluctance to give over his work with the woodpile to two strangers.

“But yield who will to their separation,

My object in living is to unite

My avocation and my vocation

As my two eyes make one in sight.

Only where love and need are one,

And the work is play for mortal stakes,

Is the deed ever really done

For heaven and the future´s sakes."

         Let us go in peace, remembering that we all may be called to do the hard work of making the world a better place.  May we do it with love and joy and integrity.  Amen, Shalom, Salaam, and Blessed Be.

CLOSING CIRCLE

Beginning Anew

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I'm excited about tomorrow's Water Ceremony/Homecoming Service, for it was at this time of the year, 21 years ago, that I felt the call to ministry, during a Homecoming service at Jefferson Unitarian Church in Colorado.  Here's the ceremony and the homily.

“BEGINNING ANEW”

Sept. 8, 2013

Rev. Kit Ketcham

INTRODUCTION TO THE WATER CEREMONY

         Today, all across Unitarian Universalism, congregations like ours---from large urban churches to tiny groups meeting in members’ homes---choose to begin their new church year together by performing a Water Ceremony.

         This ceremony was first introduced at a UU worship service in the 1980’s as a way to celebrate the Ingathering, the Homecoming, of members and friends after a summer of vacation activities and other changes in people’s schedules which can make it hard to get to Sunday services.  This  time of sharing is, I think, unique to Unitarian Universalist congregations.

         Before we begin, I’d like to explain how we are going to do our water ceremony this year, because we’ll be doing it a little differently than we have in the past.  For those of you who are visiting, we are delighted to see you and welcome you into this experience.  You are invited to take full part in this ceremony.

         When you found your seat, you also found a 3x5 card on that seat.  Right now, before we begin, I ask you to think about what your bit of water means as you pour it into our common vessel.  Does it represent an important insight or experience?  Does it commemorate a beloved person who may have died?  Does it express a joy that has come to you? 

         Whatever that meaning might be, I ask you to write it down on the card and then, during the procession of the waters, to bring your water and your card to the altar table where the waters will be gathered. 

         Please pour your water into the vase and place the card with your words on it in the basket by the vase; then return to your seat.  We’ll process in rows, as tidily as possible, but as it may get kind of busy up here, I just ask that you watch out for others’ feet and hands and take turns as best you can!  And if you forgot to bring water, there is a carafe of water here on the altar that you can use to represent your watery experience.

         Just before the homily, Cameron and I will read the cards aloud without names attached, so that we all can hear the insights and experiences that your water represents.  In this way, we symbolically pool the life experiences of all of us gathered here today and enrich our community with those experiences.

         After our service, I plan  to take the waters of this community home with me, boil the heck out of, purify it with my water purifier, and store it until we need it again.  We may use it in a child dedication ceremony later this year, we may bless the memory of a member who has died, we may bless some other important event during the year.  And I will bring a portion of this water back next fall, so that this year’s insights and experiences are melded with future insights and experiences, all for the spiritual growth of this beloved community.

         So now, let’s take a few minutes to finish writing our water thoughts on the card and then we’ll begin, starting with the front rows.  I’ll ask Cameron to help guide that process.

PROCESSION OF THE WATERS

LITANY OF MEANING (Kit/Cameron)

BEGINNING ANEW

            Over the past year, as I’ve gotten to know you all better, both as a member of the congregation and as your minister in residence, I’ve felt welcomed and appreciated.  I’ve appreciated you all in return, as I’ve seen you reach out to new folks, rally around when folks are struggling, eagerly show up for coffee or pizza or a cool drink at one of the new happy hours or coffee klatches.

         I’ve also noticed that there is a yearning among us for a bit more of a sense of community.  That yearning has shown up in some of the comments folks have made to me over the past few months.  It’s shown up in the strong attendance at the Astoria happy hour, in the smiles on the faces of the Washington contingent over coffee and lemon bars at the Olde Towne coffee shop in Ilwaco, in the remarks made by some of those who attended our Memories of Michael time last Sunday.

         You’ve been hungry for a minister and…..I’ve been hungry too, because once you’re called to the ministry, you can’t just drop it.  I had to find a place to serve.  So together, we are starting a new phase in the life of the Pacific UU Fellowship.  I am excited about it and I hope you are too.

         I’d like to tell you a story which comes from the Sufi tradition.  You may know already that Sufism is the mystical branch of Islam.  This is a story about a stream and a desert.  We know about streams around here; we may not be so familiar with deserts, but this story, I hope, will illustrate an important point.

         High on a far off mountain, a little stream flowed out of a hidden source. As the water flowed down the mountain, it passed through all kinds of places, rocky ravines, quiet meadows, past beaver dams and through lakes and ponds.
         Sometimes the little stream leaped and danced and bubbled as it raced down a canyon or sometimes it drifted lazily through a forest meadow or even disappeared underground for a short distance. It had never encountered an obstacle that it couldn't surmount, either by leaping over it or going under it or around it or wearing away the rock that captured it.
         But one day it reached the edge of a vast desert. "Hey, no problem," said the little stream to itself. "I've never been stopped by any obstacle before. No desert is going to stop me now!"
         So the stream flung itself at the desert. And its waters disappeared, absorbed by the sand. It threw itself at the hot desert sand again and again. And every time, its waters disappeared.
         "This can't be," said the stream. "If the wind can cross the desert, certainly I, a stream, can cross it too!" And it continued to fling itself at the hot sand. And every time, its waters disappeared.        
         "But it is my destiny to cross the desert," cried the stream, in despair. And as it rested dejectedly at the edge of the desert, getting its strength back, and wondering what to do next, it heard a small, still, whispery voice. And this is what the stream heard the desert say.
         "You can't cross the desert using your old ways," said the desert. "I am not like a boulder or a tree or a rocky ledge. It is no use hurling yourself at the desert like that. You will never cross the sand this way; you will simply disappear or turn into marshland."
         "But how I can get across?" cried the stream. "I don't know any new ways; I only know the old ways. The wind can get across the desert. Why can't I?"
         "The wind is your new way," said the desert. "You must let the wind carry you across the hot sands."
         "How can that be?" asked the stream. "How can the wind carry me?"
         "You must let yourself be absorbed into the wind," said the desert. "The wind will catch you up in that way and carry you across the desert."
         "No!" cried the stream. "I am a stream with a nature and an identity all my own. I don't want to lose myself by being absorbed into the wind."
         "But that's what the wind does," said the desert. "The wind will catch you up and carry you across the desert and set you down again very lightly so you can become a stream again. Trust me and trust the wind."
         "But I might not be the same stream on the other side of the desert, if I've been absorbed by the wind and carried a long way. I won't be myself if I let the wind carry me and set me down again in a new place."
         The desert understood the stream's fear but it also understood the mystery.
         "You're right," said the desert. "But you won't be the same stream, no matter what. If you stay here, you will turn into a marshland and that's not a stream either. If you let the wind carry you across the desert, the real you, the real heart of you, the essence of everything you truly are, will arise again on the other side to flow in a new course, to be a river that you can't even imagine from where you are standing now."
         "How can this happen?" asked the stream, mystified by this new idea.
         "The wind has always done this," said the desert. "It takes up the water and carries it over the desert and then lets it fall again. The water falls as rain and it becomes a river, joined by waters from all over the world which have crossed the deserts to come together."
         "But can't I just stay the same?" asked the stream.
         "You cannot in any way remain the same," whispered the desert. "Movement is your very nature. It will never cease until your true destination has been reached."
         As the stream considered this, it began to remember where it had come from and it had a memory deep in its heart of a wind that could be trusted and a horizon that was always out of reach but always a new beginning.
         So the stream took a deep breath and surrendered itself to the power of the wind and the wind took the vapor of the stream in strong and loving arms and took it high above the desert, far beyond the horizon, and let it fall again softly in a new place.
         And the stream began to understand who it really was and what it meant to be a stream. And over the years, it allowed the wind to take it again and again until at last it found itself in the ocean, from which all life comes and to which all life returns.
(Story adapted many times from the original.)
 

         Why might I tell you this story, on this first day of our year together?  It’s because our working together to create what Martin Luther King Jr. has called the Beloved Community will mean some changes---some comfortable, some experimental, some that may require some adjustment.

         But as the desert said to the stream, “you cannot in any way remain the same…”  We all will change during our time together as minister and congregation.  Like the stream which trusts the wind to carry it, we trust the good intentions and the positive relationships within the fellowship to carry us  beyond where we have been.

         We have much love between us to build upon, as we create Beloved Community here in our area.  Many congregations include in each service a reminder of that love and commitment, an oral calling of ourselves to be our best together.

         Many of them use these words, which I find deeply meaningful and hope that you will too:

         “Love is the spirit of this congregation and service is its practice.  This is our great covenant, to dwell together in peace, to seek the truth in love, and to help one another.”

         We will explore gradually the unwritten covenant that brings us together as we create a community that is peaceful, loving, and reaching out to help each other as well as the larger community.  Where will the winds of love carry us?

         Let’s pause for a time of silent reflection and prayer.

HYMN #1064, “Blue Boat Home”

BENEDICTION/EXTINGUISHING

         As Cameron extinguishes our chalice, I close with these words:

         Our worship service, our time of shaping worth together, is ended, but our service to the world begins again as we leave this place.  Let us go in peace, remembering to trust the winds of change, for they have brought us together.  May we welcome always the challenges of our new life and approach them in our common human spirit of love and commitment.  Amen, Shalom, Salaam, and Blessed Be.

Eight Weeks of Optical Misery

This week marks the eighth week of a saga that began on June 17 when I first noticed a telltale shadow beginning to creep into the periphery of my right eye.  Because I'd experienced something similar several years ago while living on Whidbey, I knew I needed to act immediately and scored an appointment with my local ophthalmologist for the next day.

Dr. McC took one look and then another and another and confirmed my fears.  Yep, the retina in this eye was beginning to detach.  Luckily, we had caught it early.  Her nurse called the Casey Eye Institute in Portland and I began to make arrangements for transportation.  Luckily, my friend John could provide that service and we headed for Portland immediately.

Once we were there, my problem was diagnosed as a retinal tear, something that could wait until the next day, so we went home again, I reserved a room for us at the Portland Holiday Inn Express, where we'd stayed last February when John needed eye surgery and I did the driving.

June 19, the surgery was performed, skillfully, compassionately, and quickly, and after an early followup appointment at Casey the next morning, we headed home.  Things seemed to be healing nicely and I felt little pain during the whole process.  But on the morning of the third-week followup appointment, I noticed a slight shadow at the edge of my vision.  I asked the doc about it when I got into her office and she diagnosed yet another tear, in the same area.  I would need a second surgery the next day.

Luckily, my sister and her husband were enroute to spend a few days with me, at that very moment!  Cell phones are a marvelous thing!  I called her and told her what was going on, told her I'd need them to provide transportation for me the next two days, back and forth to Portland for a second surgery.

My sister Jean and her husband Pat are wonderful people.  They have been helpful to me in a myriad of ways over the years and this was no exception, but it sure put the kibosh on the plans we'd made for our time together.  We made two round trips to Portland (160 miles apiece) in two days, leaving early in the morning to avoid inbound traffic.

We managed to find quiet things to do during their stay and had a good time together, but I was in pain much of the time, popping ibuprofen and napping.  And I was beginning to find my normal good humor sadly lacking.  I was worried about whether my retina would go kablooey again, just when we are on our September Scandinavian cruise.  How would I manage then?  At least Jean would be with me, but it might mean leaving the cruise, having the surgery in another country, and having to delay flying home until the retina was fully healed.

But I was healing up, feeling better and less worried, and then, and then, at the third-week post-op followup visit for my second surgery, the doc noticed that another section of retina was starting to flop.  I had noticed an anomaly myself but didn't want to acknowledge it.  We scheduled the third surgery for the next day and dear John had the lovely opportunity to provide the transportation, which he did, willingly, making him (in my book) a candidate for sainthood.

A third surgery on the same site is not a piece of cake for the patient.  I don't know what it's like for the surgeon (whom I like and trust), but when you are cutting and sewing previously treated tissue for the third time, I am inclined to believe the tissue is going to complain more loudly than it did the first two times.  And that has been my experience.

At least this surgery should be the final word on the topic.  They have installed and stitched in a scleral buckle, a silicon strap which stabilizes the retina, keeps it from flopping around (and thereby tearing again).  They assure me that this is The Fix that will fix it permanently.  I can only hope.

My optimism gland is about drained of that particular hormone.  This morning (as I prepare for my one-week post-op followup) I am imagining what else could possibly go wrong.  I don't think I could stand to do this again.

And yet, there came a point yesterday when I realized that I am almost through this period of optical misery, that there is an end in sight, that I have managed it so far, have managed to carry on something of an enjoyable life despite these difficulties, and have even been able to reach out to others in our tiny congregation.  I've received a lot of support from friends and family, the pain has not been unendurable, and that if I had to do it again, I would, for the gift of sight is priceless.

Even if it hurts.