No Signal
Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
October 2, 2022
The Rev. Craig M. Nowak
It was a most distressing experience.
I had made good time, but now as I approached the city, the traffic was heavier than expected and soon slowed to crawl. As the minutes ticked away and I, along with all the other cars around me, inched forward, my only source of solace was that my GPS all but guaranteed I at least wouldn’t get lost. Then I entered the tunnel.
Within the blink of an eye directions to Logan International Airport disappeared from my screen and were replaced with the two of the most dreaded words to any modern driver, “No Signal”.
Nonetheless, after a few choice words muttered under my breath and some combination of instinct and luck, I eventually made it to the airport. Happily I didn’t miss my flight, but as I look back at it, this seemingly ordinary event has me thinking about life and the things we rely on to find our way through life, particularly when we deem a situation or decision to involve or have moral implications.
Some would scoff at the very idea of wondering about such a thing. I’m thinking now of a man I visited in the emergency room many, many years ago when I was the chaplain on call at a small regional hospital. It was a matter of practice just to check in with any patients in the ER who were conscious to see if they wanted to talk. Usually I had some idea of why a person was there before I offered to talk. And so it was with this gentleman. But after I greeted him and introduced myself as the chaplain, he promptly raised his hand in which he grasped tightly between his thumb and index finger, a small book as if to make sure I could see it, and confidently asserted, “I’m fine. I have everything I need right here.” “Okay, great.”. I said. “Let your nurse know if you change your mind.” He didn’t and I never saw him again.
The book he was holding, you may already have guessed, was a religious text, although I don’t remember if it was a Bible or something else. Of course, few would be surprised that a person, especially someone so seemingly devout, would turn to religious texts or teachings to guide them in a difficult time or situation. And in fact, it is not unusual, at least in the United States, to even hear politicians and other secular leaders appeal to religious convictions or teachings from time to time when explaining or attempting to justify their actions or condemn those of another. Even the unchurched will cite some version of the golden rule or the like every now and then as a basis for taking or judging action. Of course religious texts and teachings have also been turned to as moral justification for abhorrent practices and actions like slavery, war, and the persecution of those deemed “other” in any given age. It is no wonder religion is viewed as woefully inadequate, if not altogether unfavorably by many.
However, religious texts and teachings are far from the only sources people rely upon as a sort of moral GPS. Indeed, the world is awash in secular philosophies, theories, and opinions that people turn to to keep them from going adrift in the often tumultuous sea of life.
Capitalism which promises salvation through consumption is one that is especially influential in American culture, offering various justifications for individual and corporate decisions and behavior that stands in direct opposition to certain other frequently looked to religious values, especially those concerning love of neighbor and care for society’s most vulnerable, not to mention care for the planet. On the other hand it is also credited with improving the quality of life of innumerable people. Similar claims are made of various other social and political philosophies from socialism to nationalism, democracy to dictatorship.
Naturally, scientific ideas and discoveries, like Evolution, also inform or are built into many a moral GPS leading to surprisingly varied positions, from confirmation of the dominion of humanity over all other life to an imperative to protect various species from extinction.
Add to this the frequently appealed to notion of common sense or conventional wisdom, some of which can be surprisingly uncommon or unwise depending on the culture, and we find ourselves with a moral GPS whose individual components can be hard to sort out. In a sense that’s true of the GPS in my car. I don’t know all the things that go into creating it and I don’t really worry about that. Most of the time it gets me where I need to go. And many, probably most, more or less feel the same about their moral GPS. We don’t know all that goes into it, but it seems to work well enough for most of us.
But does it really?
By age 18, I was at a breaking point. Until then I had lived according to a moral GPS which had more or less seemed to work well enough. Initially, I had relied on it to tell right from wrong, then as a tool of denial as I faced the creeping awareness that I didn’t share my male peers interest in the opposite sex. The reasoning went something like this, “I’m know I’m a good person and I know good people aren’t gay, therefore I can’t be gay.” Well, reason, especially reason as flawed as that, is no match for teenage hormones. Neither, as I discovered, was prayer. I was on a collision course and at 19 I crashed. I emerged from the emotional and spiritual wreckage with two important insights.
First, what I was using as a moral GPS was actually a cheap substitute. For it had nothing to do with morality, but instead, moralism. Often conflated, morality and moralism are in fact vastly different. As the spiritual teacher and author of Care of the Soul, Thomas Moore observes, “Moralism is a defense against morality, its opposite. Morality means acting in ways that are sensitive to the needs of the other and of the world that is in our care. Moralism is the assumption that you know what is the right behavior for everyone and that it can be itemized in a list of right and wrong that everyone should follow.” He adds, In tone, moralism is usually negative and unyielding and has little room for thoughtfulness and kindness. The moral person appreciates the complexity of human life and emotion, and factors this into any judgment about what is the best thing to do --- not moral relativism, but moral subtlety.”
The second insight that emerged was prayer doesn’t work if that to which you pray is a deity made in your own image, that is, your ego. Which is why in our first reading this morning Unitarian Universalist minister Sean Parker Dennison, when responding to the question of to whom a gathering of UU’s is to pray, Dennison replies, “I don’t care if it’s God or Nature, or Human Community, or The Universe. I don’t care what name you give it. Just so long as you pray to Anyone but you.” A response reflecting an awareness that a prayer to one’s ego will only serve to further comfort the comfortable and afflict the afflicted in their judgement of self and others.
It would seem we’ve arrived at two divergent paths forward. Moore could be taken to suggest our moral GPS should be built in house, by us, respectful but not unduly deferential to the rigid dictates of others, past and present. Dennison, in seeming contrast, appears to suggest we look to anyone but ourselves to pray to and presumably in building our moral GPS. But then Moore also offers this, “I have never met a person who hasn't had some moralism in them [him]. It's convenient and always serves the self or ego. It isn't generous or understanding. In fact, it's usually sadistic and is connected to a deep desire to punish. It's more of that raw material of the psyche in need of refinement. Yet, eventually, with work, it could become morality.”
Far from presenting us with two divergent paths, Moore and Parker, point us in the same direction, toward spiritual maturity.
“Maturity”, the poet philosopher David Whyte reminds us, “is the ability to live fully and equally in multiple contexts…” In contrast, “immaturity”, he notes, “is shown by making false choices: living only in the past, or only in the present, or only in the future, even, living only two out of the three.” Echoing both Moore’s call toward refinement and Parker’s admonition to step outside the defensive walls of ego, Whyte describes maturity as, “an elemental frontier” rather than “a static, arrived platform, where life is viewed from a calm, untouched oasis of wisdom.” Indeed when it comes to morality, spiritual maturity is characterized by a willingness to enter life’s tunnels where there is “no signal” and endure the absence of moralism, of seemingly reliable directions, in silence for as long as it takes for morality to be heard.
I remember talking to a woman when I was intern minister in Concord who was, to my mind, enduring a period of “no signal.” It was one night after a series workshop I was facilitating at the time on immigration following a trip to the US/Mexico border. She pulled me aside and in an almost confessional manner, told me she felt out of place in the group. When I asked why, she said she wasn’t where the others in the group were in relation to the issue.
You see, it was her observation that everyone else seemed immediately aligned with the moral concerns I raised and potential responses I put forward. She explained, “I care very deeply about this and the people who are suffering, but I still have a lot of questions, I feel like I’m not where I should be on this.” I assured her she belonged in the group and, encouraging her to sit patiently with her questions, that she was right where she needed to be. For wherever she eventually found herself on the issue, she will have arrived at it more honestly than if she just went along simply because everyone else had.
Indeed, in that hometown of Emerson, here was a woman living, whether she was aware or not, the spirit of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s approach to refining one’s psyche to construct a more reliable moral GPS.
“What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think.”, wrote Emerson in his essay, “Self-Reliance”. “This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness.”, he says, adding, “It is the harder because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it….It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”
And just when we’re inclined to dismiss Emerson’s words as advocating yet another form of individualistic prayer to the ego, he notes, “To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars.”
There, “Standing on the bare ground”, writes Emerson, — 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.”
Or as David Whyte might say, “courageously inhabiting the past the present and the future all at once.”
Much to the dismay of the rigid moralist among and within us, the world in which we live is neither black and white nor static and never has been. To cling to such a world is to cling to an illusion where the only certainty is unnecessary suffering.
Indeed it is, as Thomas Moore writes, “A defensive approach to morality.” Subtle morality, on the other hand, transcends our fear of reflecting on and questioning inherited moral principles and the certainty we hunger for.
To find ourselves unexpectedly with “no signal”, left to navigate a busy highway without the GPS we’ve come to rely on while running late to catch a flight is cause for concern, but to find ourselves similarly thrown off course by life or better still, to purposely venture beyond the range of our inherited moral GPS is cause for celebration. For it presents to us an opportunity to engage and appreciate our complexity as human beings from which, in the words of Thomas Moore, “morality can deepen and drop its simplicity, becoming at the same time more demanding and flexible.”
Indeed the stretches we travel through life with “no signal” have the potential to get us beyond where we were going… to where we need to be.
May it be so.
Amen and Blessed Be
Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
October 2, 2022
The Rev. Craig M. Nowak
It was a most distressing experience.
I had made good time, but now as I approached the city, the traffic was heavier than expected and soon slowed to crawl. As the minutes ticked away and I, along with all the other cars around me, inched forward, my only source of solace was that my GPS all but guaranteed I at least wouldn’t get lost. Then I entered the tunnel.
Within the blink of an eye directions to Logan International Airport disappeared from my screen and were replaced with the two of the most dreaded words to any modern driver, “No Signal”.
Nonetheless, after a few choice words muttered under my breath and some combination of instinct and luck, I eventually made it to the airport. Happily I didn’t miss my flight, but as I look back at it, this seemingly ordinary event has me thinking about life and the things we rely on to find our way through life, particularly when we deem a situation or decision to involve or have moral implications.
Some would scoff at the very idea of wondering about such a thing. I’m thinking now of a man I visited in the emergency room many, many years ago when I was the chaplain on call at a small regional hospital. It was a matter of practice just to check in with any patients in the ER who were conscious to see if they wanted to talk. Usually I had some idea of why a person was there before I offered to talk. And so it was with this gentleman. But after I greeted him and introduced myself as the chaplain, he promptly raised his hand in which he grasped tightly between his thumb and index finger, a small book as if to make sure I could see it, and confidently asserted, “I’m fine. I have everything I need right here.” “Okay, great.”. I said. “Let your nurse know if you change your mind.” He didn’t and I never saw him again.
The book he was holding, you may already have guessed, was a religious text, although I don’t remember if it was a Bible or something else. Of course, few would be surprised that a person, especially someone so seemingly devout, would turn to religious texts or teachings to guide them in a difficult time or situation. And in fact, it is not unusual, at least in the United States, to even hear politicians and other secular leaders appeal to religious convictions or teachings from time to time when explaining or attempting to justify their actions or condemn those of another. Even the unchurched will cite some version of the golden rule or the like every now and then as a basis for taking or judging action. Of course religious texts and teachings have also been turned to as moral justification for abhorrent practices and actions like slavery, war, and the persecution of those deemed “other” in any given age. It is no wonder religion is viewed as woefully inadequate, if not altogether unfavorably by many.
However, religious texts and teachings are far from the only sources people rely upon as a sort of moral GPS. Indeed, the world is awash in secular philosophies, theories, and opinions that people turn to to keep them from going adrift in the often tumultuous sea of life.
Capitalism which promises salvation through consumption is one that is especially influential in American culture, offering various justifications for individual and corporate decisions and behavior that stands in direct opposition to certain other frequently looked to religious values, especially those concerning love of neighbor and care for society’s most vulnerable, not to mention care for the planet. On the other hand it is also credited with improving the quality of life of innumerable people. Similar claims are made of various other social and political philosophies from socialism to nationalism, democracy to dictatorship.
Naturally, scientific ideas and discoveries, like Evolution, also inform or are built into many a moral GPS leading to surprisingly varied positions, from confirmation of the dominion of humanity over all other life to an imperative to protect various species from extinction.
Add to this the frequently appealed to notion of common sense or conventional wisdom, some of which can be surprisingly uncommon or unwise depending on the culture, and we find ourselves with a moral GPS whose individual components can be hard to sort out. In a sense that’s true of the GPS in my car. I don’t know all the things that go into creating it and I don’t really worry about that. Most of the time it gets me where I need to go. And many, probably most, more or less feel the same about their moral GPS. We don’t know all that goes into it, but it seems to work well enough for most of us.
But does it really?
By age 18, I was at a breaking point. Until then I had lived according to a moral GPS which had more or less seemed to work well enough. Initially, I had relied on it to tell right from wrong, then as a tool of denial as I faced the creeping awareness that I didn’t share my male peers interest in the opposite sex. The reasoning went something like this, “I’m know I’m a good person and I know good people aren’t gay, therefore I can’t be gay.” Well, reason, especially reason as flawed as that, is no match for teenage hormones. Neither, as I discovered, was prayer. I was on a collision course and at 19 I crashed. I emerged from the emotional and spiritual wreckage with two important insights.
First, what I was using as a moral GPS was actually a cheap substitute. For it had nothing to do with morality, but instead, moralism. Often conflated, morality and moralism are in fact vastly different. As the spiritual teacher and author of Care of the Soul, Thomas Moore observes, “Moralism is a defense against morality, its opposite. Morality means acting in ways that are sensitive to the needs of the other and of the world that is in our care. Moralism is the assumption that you know what is the right behavior for everyone and that it can be itemized in a list of right and wrong that everyone should follow.” He adds, In tone, moralism is usually negative and unyielding and has little room for thoughtfulness and kindness. The moral person appreciates the complexity of human life and emotion, and factors this into any judgment about what is the best thing to do --- not moral relativism, but moral subtlety.”
The second insight that emerged was prayer doesn’t work if that to which you pray is a deity made in your own image, that is, your ego. Which is why in our first reading this morning Unitarian Universalist minister Sean Parker Dennison, when responding to the question of to whom a gathering of UU’s is to pray, Dennison replies, “I don’t care if it’s God or Nature, or Human Community, or The Universe. I don’t care what name you give it. Just so long as you pray to Anyone but you.” A response reflecting an awareness that a prayer to one’s ego will only serve to further comfort the comfortable and afflict the afflicted in their judgement of self and others.
It would seem we’ve arrived at two divergent paths forward. Moore could be taken to suggest our moral GPS should be built in house, by us, respectful but not unduly deferential to the rigid dictates of others, past and present. Dennison, in seeming contrast, appears to suggest we look to anyone but ourselves to pray to and presumably in building our moral GPS. But then Moore also offers this, “I have never met a person who hasn't had some moralism in them [him]. It's convenient and always serves the self or ego. It isn't generous or understanding. In fact, it's usually sadistic and is connected to a deep desire to punish. It's more of that raw material of the psyche in need of refinement. Yet, eventually, with work, it could become morality.”
Far from presenting us with two divergent paths, Moore and Parker, point us in the same direction, toward spiritual maturity.
“Maturity”, the poet philosopher David Whyte reminds us, “is the ability to live fully and equally in multiple contexts…” In contrast, “immaturity”, he notes, “is shown by making false choices: living only in the past, or only in the present, or only in the future, even, living only two out of the three.” Echoing both Moore’s call toward refinement and Parker’s admonition to step outside the defensive walls of ego, Whyte describes maturity as, “an elemental frontier” rather than “a static, arrived platform, where life is viewed from a calm, untouched oasis of wisdom.” Indeed when it comes to morality, spiritual maturity is characterized by a willingness to enter life’s tunnels where there is “no signal” and endure the absence of moralism, of seemingly reliable directions, in silence for as long as it takes for morality to be heard.
I remember talking to a woman when I was intern minister in Concord who was, to my mind, enduring a period of “no signal.” It was one night after a series workshop I was facilitating at the time on immigration following a trip to the US/Mexico border. She pulled me aside and in an almost confessional manner, told me she felt out of place in the group. When I asked why, she said she wasn’t where the others in the group were in relation to the issue.
You see, it was her observation that everyone else seemed immediately aligned with the moral concerns I raised and potential responses I put forward. She explained, “I care very deeply about this and the people who are suffering, but I still have a lot of questions, I feel like I’m not where I should be on this.” I assured her she belonged in the group and, encouraging her to sit patiently with her questions, that she was right where she needed to be. For wherever she eventually found herself on the issue, she will have arrived at it more honestly than if she just went along simply because everyone else had.
Indeed, in that hometown of Emerson, here was a woman living, whether she was aware or not, the spirit of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s approach to refining one’s psyche to construct a more reliable moral GPS.
“What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think.”, wrote Emerson in his essay, “Self-Reliance”. “This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness.”, he says, adding, “It is the harder because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it….It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”
And just when we’re inclined to dismiss Emerson’s words as advocating yet another form of individualistic prayer to the ego, he notes, “To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars.”
There, “Standing on the bare ground”, writes Emerson, — 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.”
Or as David Whyte might say, “courageously inhabiting the past the present and the future all at once.”
Much to the dismay of the rigid moralist among and within us, the world in which we live is neither black and white nor static and never has been. To cling to such a world is to cling to an illusion where the only certainty is unnecessary suffering.
Indeed it is, as Thomas Moore writes, “A defensive approach to morality.” Subtle morality, on the other hand, transcends our fear of reflecting on and questioning inherited moral principles and the certainty we hunger for.
To find ourselves unexpectedly with “no signal”, left to navigate a busy highway without the GPS we’ve come to rely on while running late to catch a flight is cause for concern, but to find ourselves similarly thrown off course by life or better still, to purposely venture beyond the range of our inherited moral GPS is cause for celebration. For it presents to us an opportunity to engage and appreciate our complexity as human beings from which, in the words of Thomas Moore, “morality can deepen and drop its simplicity, becoming at the same time more demanding and flexible.”
Indeed the stretches we travel through life with “no signal” have the potential to get us beyond where we were going… to where we need to be.
May it be so.
Amen and Blessed Be