UUnited
Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
September 27, 2020
by Rev. Craig M. Nowak
Everyone it seems carries a memory of a situation they wished they’d handled differently than they did. Not necessarily something that rises to the level of an unbearable regret, but one in which, if given the chance, you’d respond to with those perfect words you thought of five minutes after the ones you actually spoke or the action, now with the benefit of hindsight, was clearly the better option. One such moment in my memory occurred during an interview with the Ministerial Fellowship Committee (MFC). That’s the committee charged with evaluating your preparedness for ministry and clearing or blocking your path to ordination as a Unitarian Universalist (UU) minister.
During the interview one of the committee members commented that in reading through my materials she observed that I had spoken more than once of having personally experienced salvation through Unitarian Universalism. She then asked me, “What would you say Unitarian Universalism offers someone like me who doesn’t believe I need to be saved?”
Now I don’t remember exactly how I answered, but I’m sure of two things.
One; I offered a fairly lame, if not safe, answer.
And two; My answer would be different today.
To begin with, I would have some questions of my own before I could truly answer hers.
Questions like,
“What does salvation mean to you?”
“What did you think I meant by salvation?”
“Why do you think you don’t need to be saved?”
“How do you know?”
To be sure, salvation is not a concept that comes up very often among contemporary Unitarian Universalists. The very idea seems antiquated, maybe even insulting. After all we’re the faith that rejects things like original sin, the total depravity of humankind, and eternal damnation. Heck, a lot of us even reject the idea of God. What relevance then, does salvation related to any of these hold for us today?
Salvation? Salvation from what?
Indeed, if deliverance from original sin or eternal hellfire is how the woman from my MFC interview understood salvation, then I can understand why she would assert she was not in need of salvation. And I would agree. I don’t know anyone who needs salvation from those. But that is only one way of understanding salvation.
Had I asked, “What does salvation mean to you?” in my interview, I might not have gotten an immediate answer. In fact, I would hope not to. For it is not a small question to which one is likely to have a stock answer. Unless, that is, one’s understanding is rooted in and limited solely to doctrinal assertions. Which, to me would indicate, ironically, that one was in fact in need of salvation, at the very least, from whatever bonds by which the doctrine of a faith to which one does not belong is allowed to limit how one defines experiences within the faith to which one does belong. In other words, why would a 21st century Unitarian Universalist limit their understanding of salvation to an orthodox Christian view?
Which brings us to the next question I would have asked had I been more confident than cautious in my MFC interview, “What did you think I meant by salvation?”
I can tell you it had nothing to do with what I had been taught about salvation within Roman Catholicism, the faith in which I was raised. For one, I had written about being a gay man and finding a religious home within Unitarian Universalism. To this day Roman Catholicism considers homosexuality to be “objectively disordered” and asserts homosexuals are, “called to chastity.” Now, I don’t deny the Roman Catholic Church’s prerogative in fashioning their own doctrinal beliefs and teachings, but I knew whatever benefit I had derived from that faith could no longer justify the cost those doctrines and teachings were exacting from my emotional, physical and spiritual wellbeing.
Still, my break with the Catholic Church was not unceremonious. I just kind of drifted away. It is easy to do. The secular world offers many substitute religions eager for devotees: the American dream, workism, political affiliation, social causes (progressive and conservative alike), physical fitness, sports, materialism, minimalism…and on and on.
For a while I chose social activism as my secular religion. I joined organizations, wrote letters, made phone calls, signed petitions. I soon found myself and my spirits buoyed when things went well but despondent and angry when they didn’t. And while secular religions all have their own rituals and rites of passage and promise community and transcendence, they are poor substitutes for religion in that they invest that which is fleeting and fickle, like social identity, material accomplishment, and certain, specific political, financial, social outcomes, with ultimate value and meaning. When those things don’t come or change over the passage of time, disillusionment and despair often follow.
Disillusionment with activism as religion awakened me to something I had experienced many times before but never quite knew what it was or how to respond. It was, as Forrest Church describes it in our reading this morning, a “call stirring deep within you, the call of life itself” and, for some, “the call of God.” Not to be confused, by the way, with a call to ordained ministry.
Soon after, I visited and began attending a Unitarian Universalist Church regularly. And there I experienced a sense of welcome and acceptance that forms the basis of many people’s stories about becoming a Unitarian Universalist. But it is not this experience, as some might expect, that I equate with salvation.
History teaches us Unitarian Universalism was founded when two distinct denominations, the American Unitarian Association and the Universalist Church of America merged to form the UUA in 1961. But the merger resulted in more than an institutional union, it united them theologically in a way they hadn't been before. In “Cathedral of the World”, Forrest Church offers a poetic articulation of this theological union based on the concept of one light (drawn from Unitarianism) and many windows (drawn from Universalism).
This theological concept is crucial to my understanding of salvation. For one of the things Unitarian Universalism has given me that simply renouncing my Roman Catholic faith didn’t and a secular religion couldn’t, is an alternative, viable religious and spiritual context through which to process what Sarah York calls, “fragments of holiness, glimpses of eternity, brief moments of insight”, the ways by which the call of life beckons us. A call which necessarily engages big questions about life and death, meaning and purpose, and our relationship and responsibilities toward self, others and the world in which we live. And requires a much greater respect for and tolerance of mystery than we humans are used to extending in the 21st century.
Salvation for me begins with release from the bonds of both orthodox AND secular religion. To have access to and the freedom to explore, “the cathedral of the world.” To ,“contemplate the mystery and contemplate with awe.” To observe, marvel at and, at times, weep over the efforts of generations, their triumphs and follies, in the hope of learning a little more about what it means to be human and much more than what defenders of doctrine or marketers of lifestyles willingly offer.
Treading upon the shards of past ambitions and visions scattered about the cathedral floor, we stand to gain renewed appreciation for the fullness of time and infuse our current age with a deeper and much needed sense of humility and humanity.
As we explore, Forrest Church implores us to pay special note to the windows of the cathedral, those innumerable, multicolored lenses through which the one Light, the common source of all, however you may conceptualize it, be it God, Goddess, Life, the Universe, etc., shines. Each, “telling a story (not THE story) about the creation of the world, the meaning of history, the purpose of life, the nature of humankind, the mystery of death.” Stories from which wisdom not history, data or facts is to be drawn, lest we become absolutists who, Dr. Church notes, “claim that the Light shines through their window only.” and even, “go so far as to beseech their followers to throw stones through other people’s windows.”
Crucially, Dr. Church reminds us we not only behold the Light, but bear and shine it outwardly as well. He writes, “The Cathedral is constructed out of star stuff, and so are we. We are that part (that known part) of the creation that contemplates itself, part of the poem that we ponder.” Thus, we are called into dialogue, into relationship with the mystery of our existence that, as Dr. Church observes, “we may discover insights that will invest our days with meaning and our lives with purpose.”
So what does this mean practically speaking in a world where we are beset by continual social and political strife, personal and collective misfortune?
In his book, “Never Far From Home”, Carl Scovel, a longtime UU minister, now retired but hardly inactive, recalls a time he heard Robert Frost share this poem at Lincoln Town Hall,
Lord, If You’ll forgive all the little jokes I’ve played on thee
I’ll forgive the great big one You played on me.
Scovel notes everyone laughed and that Frost responded, “People always laugh when I read that poem, and I wonder what they think was the great big joke God played on them.”
Life is filled with situations, experiences and events that can feel like a bad joke. A devastating diagnosis. A failed business venture. An abusive relationship. Being gay in a heterosexist society or a person of color in a white supremacist culture. A global pandemic. The death of an iconic Supreme Court justice just before an election. The list is endless.
Reason may counsel the mind not to take any of these “bad jokes” personally, but to the heart, reason’s counsel offers little solace. After all, I understand the “bad jokes” it sometimes feels like life, fate, God, whom or whatever plays on us are not personal, or the willful act of an old man in the sky, but that doesn’t mean they don’t affect us in very personal ways. If you fall and break your leg, it still hurts whether you tripped or someone pushed you.
When I talk about finding salvation through Unitarian Universalism, I don’t mean I’ve arrived at or that this faith is an endpoint where the pain that comes with life can’t touch me, but rather, it presents a way to forge through and beyond life’s “bad jokes.” That is what I believe the union of Unitarian and Universalist theologies as one light, many windows offers to me, to you, to the world.
Indeed, exploring the cathedral of the world through the lens of one light, many windows, we are made privy to what Carl Scovel calls, “another kind of joke” whose punchline is hope, courage, resilience, faith, and love. In the midst of life’s bad jokes, the tables are turned, and with sight and spirits raised, we are, in the words of Carl Scovel,“healed, helped and taken through the next hour, week, year”…and perhaps beyond…. not once, but over and over again.
Who doesn’t need that form of salvation?
If the woman from my MFC interview still insists she doesn’t, then more power to her. But I hope she’d forgive my skepticism.
As for me, I can make no such claim. I need salvation every day. And free to explore the cathedral of the world as a Unitarian Universalist, I can experience it, at least for a moment, each day.
What about you?
Amen and Blessed Be
Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
September 27, 2020
by Rev. Craig M. Nowak
Everyone it seems carries a memory of a situation they wished they’d handled differently than they did. Not necessarily something that rises to the level of an unbearable regret, but one in which, if given the chance, you’d respond to with those perfect words you thought of five minutes after the ones you actually spoke or the action, now with the benefit of hindsight, was clearly the better option. One such moment in my memory occurred during an interview with the Ministerial Fellowship Committee (MFC). That’s the committee charged with evaluating your preparedness for ministry and clearing or blocking your path to ordination as a Unitarian Universalist (UU) minister.
During the interview one of the committee members commented that in reading through my materials she observed that I had spoken more than once of having personally experienced salvation through Unitarian Universalism. She then asked me, “What would you say Unitarian Universalism offers someone like me who doesn’t believe I need to be saved?”
Now I don’t remember exactly how I answered, but I’m sure of two things.
One; I offered a fairly lame, if not safe, answer.
And two; My answer would be different today.
To begin with, I would have some questions of my own before I could truly answer hers.
Questions like,
“What does salvation mean to you?”
“What did you think I meant by salvation?”
“Why do you think you don’t need to be saved?”
“How do you know?”
To be sure, salvation is not a concept that comes up very often among contemporary Unitarian Universalists. The very idea seems antiquated, maybe even insulting. After all we’re the faith that rejects things like original sin, the total depravity of humankind, and eternal damnation. Heck, a lot of us even reject the idea of God. What relevance then, does salvation related to any of these hold for us today?
Salvation? Salvation from what?
Indeed, if deliverance from original sin or eternal hellfire is how the woman from my MFC interview understood salvation, then I can understand why she would assert she was not in need of salvation. And I would agree. I don’t know anyone who needs salvation from those. But that is only one way of understanding salvation.
Had I asked, “What does salvation mean to you?” in my interview, I might not have gotten an immediate answer. In fact, I would hope not to. For it is not a small question to which one is likely to have a stock answer. Unless, that is, one’s understanding is rooted in and limited solely to doctrinal assertions. Which, to me would indicate, ironically, that one was in fact in need of salvation, at the very least, from whatever bonds by which the doctrine of a faith to which one does not belong is allowed to limit how one defines experiences within the faith to which one does belong. In other words, why would a 21st century Unitarian Universalist limit their understanding of salvation to an orthodox Christian view?
Which brings us to the next question I would have asked had I been more confident than cautious in my MFC interview, “What did you think I meant by salvation?”
I can tell you it had nothing to do with what I had been taught about salvation within Roman Catholicism, the faith in which I was raised. For one, I had written about being a gay man and finding a religious home within Unitarian Universalism. To this day Roman Catholicism considers homosexuality to be “objectively disordered” and asserts homosexuals are, “called to chastity.” Now, I don’t deny the Roman Catholic Church’s prerogative in fashioning their own doctrinal beliefs and teachings, but I knew whatever benefit I had derived from that faith could no longer justify the cost those doctrines and teachings were exacting from my emotional, physical and spiritual wellbeing.
Still, my break with the Catholic Church was not unceremonious. I just kind of drifted away. It is easy to do. The secular world offers many substitute religions eager for devotees: the American dream, workism, political affiliation, social causes (progressive and conservative alike), physical fitness, sports, materialism, minimalism…and on and on.
For a while I chose social activism as my secular religion. I joined organizations, wrote letters, made phone calls, signed petitions. I soon found myself and my spirits buoyed when things went well but despondent and angry when they didn’t. And while secular religions all have their own rituals and rites of passage and promise community and transcendence, they are poor substitutes for religion in that they invest that which is fleeting and fickle, like social identity, material accomplishment, and certain, specific political, financial, social outcomes, with ultimate value and meaning. When those things don’t come or change over the passage of time, disillusionment and despair often follow.
Disillusionment with activism as religion awakened me to something I had experienced many times before but never quite knew what it was or how to respond. It was, as Forrest Church describes it in our reading this morning, a “call stirring deep within you, the call of life itself” and, for some, “the call of God.” Not to be confused, by the way, with a call to ordained ministry.
Soon after, I visited and began attending a Unitarian Universalist Church regularly. And there I experienced a sense of welcome and acceptance that forms the basis of many people’s stories about becoming a Unitarian Universalist. But it is not this experience, as some might expect, that I equate with salvation.
History teaches us Unitarian Universalism was founded when two distinct denominations, the American Unitarian Association and the Universalist Church of America merged to form the UUA in 1961. But the merger resulted in more than an institutional union, it united them theologically in a way they hadn't been before. In “Cathedral of the World”, Forrest Church offers a poetic articulation of this theological union based on the concept of one light (drawn from Unitarianism) and many windows (drawn from Universalism).
This theological concept is crucial to my understanding of salvation. For one of the things Unitarian Universalism has given me that simply renouncing my Roman Catholic faith didn’t and a secular religion couldn’t, is an alternative, viable religious and spiritual context through which to process what Sarah York calls, “fragments of holiness, glimpses of eternity, brief moments of insight”, the ways by which the call of life beckons us. A call which necessarily engages big questions about life and death, meaning and purpose, and our relationship and responsibilities toward self, others and the world in which we live. And requires a much greater respect for and tolerance of mystery than we humans are used to extending in the 21st century.
Salvation for me begins with release from the bonds of both orthodox AND secular religion. To have access to and the freedom to explore, “the cathedral of the world.” To ,“contemplate the mystery and contemplate with awe.” To observe, marvel at and, at times, weep over the efforts of generations, their triumphs and follies, in the hope of learning a little more about what it means to be human and much more than what defenders of doctrine or marketers of lifestyles willingly offer.
Treading upon the shards of past ambitions and visions scattered about the cathedral floor, we stand to gain renewed appreciation for the fullness of time and infuse our current age with a deeper and much needed sense of humility and humanity.
As we explore, Forrest Church implores us to pay special note to the windows of the cathedral, those innumerable, multicolored lenses through which the one Light, the common source of all, however you may conceptualize it, be it God, Goddess, Life, the Universe, etc., shines. Each, “telling a story (not THE story) about the creation of the world, the meaning of history, the purpose of life, the nature of humankind, the mystery of death.” Stories from which wisdom not history, data or facts is to be drawn, lest we become absolutists who, Dr. Church notes, “claim that the Light shines through their window only.” and even, “go so far as to beseech their followers to throw stones through other people’s windows.”
Crucially, Dr. Church reminds us we not only behold the Light, but bear and shine it outwardly as well. He writes, “The Cathedral is constructed out of star stuff, and so are we. We are that part (that known part) of the creation that contemplates itself, part of the poem that we ponder.” Thus, we are called into dialogue, into relationship with the mystery of our existence that, as Dr. Church observes, “we may discover insights that will invest our days with meaning and our lives with purpose.”
So what does this mean practically speaking in a world where we are beset by continual social and political strife, personal and collective misfortune?
In his book, “Never Far From Home”, Carl Scovel, a longtime UU minister, now retired but hardly inactive, recalls a time he heard Robert Frost share this poem at Lincoln Town Hall,
Lord, If You’ll forgive all the little jokes I’ve played on thee
I’ll forgive the great big one You played on me.
Scovel notes everyone laughed and that Frost responded, “People always laugh when I read that poem, and I wonder what they think was the great big joke God played on them.”
Life is filled with situations, experiences and events that can feel like a bad joke. A devastating diagnosis. A failed business venture. An abusive relationship. Being gay in a heterosexist society or a person of color in a white supremacist culture. A global pandemic. The death of an iconic Supreme Court justice just before an election. The list is endless.
Reason may counsel the mind not to take any of these “bad jokes” personally, but to the heart, reason’s counsel offers little solace. After all, I understand the “bad jokes” it sometimes feels like life, fate, God, whom or whatever plays on us are not personal, or the willful act of an old man in the sky, but that doesn’t mean they don’t affect us in very personal ways. If you fall and break your leg, it still hurts whether you tripped or someone pushed you.
When I talk about finding salvation through Unitarian Universalism, I don’t mean I’ve arrived at or that this faith is an endpoint where the pain that comes with life can’t touch me, but rather, it presents a way to forge through and beyond life’s “bad jokes.” That is what I believe the union of Unitarian and Universalist theologies as one light, many windows offers to me, to you, to the world.
Indeed, exploring the cathedral of the world through the lens of one light, many windows, we are made privy to what Carl Scovel calls, “another kind of joke” whose punchline is hope, courage, resilience, faith, and love. In the midst of life’s bad jokes, the tables are turned, and with sight and spirits raised, we are, in the words of Carl Scovel,“healed, helped and taken through the next hour, week, year”…and perhaps beyond…. not once, but over and over again.
Who doesn’t need that form of salvation?
If the woman from my MFC interview still insists she doesn’t, then more power to her. But I hope she’d forgive my skepticism.
As for me, I can make no such claim. I need salvation every day. And free to explore the cathedral of the world as a Unitarian Universalist, I can experience it, at least for a moment, each day.
What about you?
Amen and Blessed Be