Opening Lecture, Monday, July 4, Independence Day

Reading: I Am America, Frank Hall

I am America —
Take me away and you've removed a dream
You've taken hope away —
A vision and a promise.

I am not the country.
The country is carefully curled up in me.

I am America, the dream that gave birth to a nation,
To become a country among the nations of the world.
America: big, bold, tall, sturdy, and compassionate.

I'm coming of age — a dream taking shape
Creating a land of opportunity, equality and justice for all.

I was born in a revolutionary struggle in '76,
My ancestors came over on the Mayflower.
They had a vision and a dream in Jamestown and Massachusetts Bay, a
vision that brought them to battlefields in Lexington and Concord with
painful birth contractions measured by Minutemen marching to Bunker
Hill, determined to be self-sufficient, independent.

I arrived full of hope, full of determination.

I am America — I mark well the birth in a log cabin
In Kentucky on February 12, 1809.
They tried to kill me at Gettysburg.
They killed my son in the Ford theater.
They killed another in Dallas,
Another in Memphis, but they haven't killed me,
They haven't killed the dream.

I rise up out of the ashes again and again,
I am tenacious, they can't throw me off,
They can't shake me loose, I can hold on!
My dream digs deep into the soul of the nation —
I embody dreams. They won't go away.
They are persistent.

I am America: I occupy the land, I spread myself out
Gazing up at the stars, outward at the future, the dream.

My head is in the Arctic, my feet in the Pacific Islands.
I bulge with mountains and stretch with long prairies,
The rocky Maine coast is at one shoulder,
The peaceful Pacific rolls onto the other.
Minerals, forests, and a bountiful harvest provide an Abundance that
makes me a prize among the nations.

I am America, a vision and a hope of democracy.
I share power with the people.
I share wealth and the abundance with the people.

I am America, a country-in-the-making.
I am not perfect. I have my faults,
I've had my failures.
The vision has sometimes seemed to slip away,
The dream turned soar with greed, prejudice and hatred.
But I awake and shake off the dark night of the soul.
I promise much and I keep my promises in my own time.
I'll deliver yet. Hang around. You'll see.

There are great cities in my heart, working,
Circulating the life blood from shore to shore,
North to south.
The marrow of my bones comes from the indigenous peoples — from hundreds
of tribes of Native Americans; and from African peoples, and people from
England, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Russia — from Scandinavia, South
America — from the Semitic peoples — Jews, Palestinians and from people of
the rising sun — Orientals from China, Japan, Korea... from India... from every
corner of the globe.

Always hope was in the hearts of those who arrived at my shores — as the early travelers had hope
for religious and political freedom, for economic opportunity.

I am America. I am alive and well. I am substantial.
I've died a thousand deaths, but my soul survives,
Incarnated over and over again
From Washington to Lincoln to Jefferson;
Reinterpreted by Emerson, Thoreau and Lincoln;
Sung in the lusty songs of Whitman;

Sweetly sung again in the songs of Sandburg and Frost.
Then exemplified by Rosa Parks who sat still,
Articulated by the dream of Martin Luther King.

I am America: I've been betrayed by some;
Misunderstood, cheated and violated by others.

I am America, a youth among the older nations
I stand tall and proud in the assembly of nations
Strong, determined to correct the flaws,
The mistakes my statesmen made in my youth
Determined to keep the dream alive,
To bring it to full fruition.

I am America, I've traveled the long journey,
I'm marching the freedom march, the road is long.
I can change, adapt, reverse myself, modify and reform.
I am alterable.

The central vision that creates me remains permanent,
Immutable, basic.

I don't need help from those who try to protect me from criticism — these
friends are more difficult than those who have announced their open
hostility — I can resist the attacks of those who are hostile;
the others eat away at my core, the friends who have lost faith, or
didn't understand me to begin with.

But I am strong. Put me to the test. I am resilient.
I can withstand the shock.

I am America, the dream-in-the-making
I travel the long journey,
I arrive again and again;
I take up residence in the hearts of dreamers
and lovers of freedom, lovers of peace and democracy,
lovers of life...
of humanity!

I am America. I’ll deliver yet. Hang around, you’ll see.”

Lecture: “Through the Fire of Thought”

Twenty two years ago I traveled with a group of Lutheran clergy to Central America after listening to a lecture about our government’s involvement in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Honduras—it seemed we were on the wrong side in each of the violent conflicts there.

At a small, poor village in Nicaragua we listened to a Roman Catholic nun who had been working as a volunteer teacher there for thirty years. We were sitting outside on crude wooden benches—I was eager to hear about the literacy work the Liberation Theology folks had been doing there. She began by saying, simply and directly, “Now I’m going to tell you my story, and maybe you’ll see yourself in it.”

I have the notes I took that day but I don’t need a notebook to remember her opening line; I realized the deep truth in it: “Now I’ll tell you my story, and perhaps you’ll see yourself in it.”

Last summer I participated in a series of lectures on topics related to ethics. My topic was, Humor as a Moral Imperative.

I suggested that a well-developed sense of humor is a serious ethical responsibility. We clergy are expected to help folks to navigate some of the rough waters and provide some hope, some courage—life’s not easy; humor helps.

Humor helps the spirit, but there’s considerable evidence that humor has an ameliorative effect on the body as well as the mind…the spirit.

Humor--in all it’s variety--is essential to our survival, individually and collectively.

Before the week at Chautauqua had ended I was asked if I would consider doing a week-long series on a topic—or series of topics--of my choosing.

This assignment has been very much on my mind since I drove out the gate last July; I’ve been working on these lectures—trying to balance the seriousness with which I’ve taken this assignment with the humor I said was such an important ingredient to our lives, and therefore to these lectures. Ah, yes, the balance!

In July of 1838 Ralph Waldo Emerson was asked to address the graduating class of seminarians at Harvard Divinity School. He was invited to give that talk at precisely the time he had decided to leave parish ministry to take up the lecture circuit. It was a pivotal time for him.

He was leaving a profession to which he previously believed he had a calling. It was a serious decision, like a divorce.

He was 35 years old. He had been minister of Second Unitarian Church in Boston for just a few years, and he left, ostensibly over a disagreement with the Board of Trustees about the words to the communion service.

Of course there was a lot more to it than his refusal to say those words and to service communion. The deeper truth is that he was involved in a deep struggle of the spirit—his own spirit.

His first marriage had ended after only 16 months with the death of his beloved Ellen. A year later he resigned from Second Church, but continued to do pulpit supply, narrowing his ministry to fit his strengths—he was not a good parish minister, by his own admission.

Four years after Ellen’s death he married Lydia, who was to be his partner for the rest of his life.

In 1838, when he delivered the address to the Harvard Divinity School Graduates, he was 35 years old. He got the letter of invitation from the class of ’38 a few days after writing to his mother that he had decided to leave ministry altogether.

In a letter to his mother he wrote, “Henceforth perhaps I shall live by lecturing which promises to be good bread. I have relinquished my ecclesiastic charge at E. Lexington & shall not preach more except from the Lyceum.”

Unitarian Historian Conrad Wright says, (Emerson’s) “…decision was not an easy one for him to make. It involved the abandonment of the clerical tradition he had inherited; more painful, it amounted to an admission that the profession of the ministry made demands on him that he was unwilling or unable to meet. But he could not handle the situation in such a frank and undisguised form. Instead, hesought to justify himself by arguing that the church was tottering to its fall, almost all life extinct. In short, the blame for his failure as a minister lay not with himself but the institutions of organized religion, which he declared could no longer command respect.”

Professor Wright points to the ‘cluster of events’ surrounding the Divinity School Address:

Emerson wrote the letter to his mother March 14, 1838; four days later, on the 18th after attending church in Concord, he wrote in his journal: “I ought to sit and think, and then write a discourse to the American Clergy, showing them the ugliness and unprofitableness of theology and churches at this day…” Three days later, on March 21, he got a letter from a committee of the senior class of the Harvard Divinity School, inviting him ‘to deliver before them, in the Divinity Chapel, on Sunday evening the 15th of July next, the customary discourse, on occasion of their entering upon the active Christian ministry.’

Little did they know how ready he was to deliver that lecture!

A few days later, on March 25, Emerson climbed into the pulpit in East Lexington for the last time—at least in the capacity of clergyman. Two days later he wrote to the committee, accepting their invitation.

Among the important and somewhat brash things he had to say on that warm July evening was this:

“I once heard a preacher who sorely tempted me to say, I would go to church no more. Men go, thought I, where they are wont to go, else no soul entered the temple in the afternoon. A snow storm was falling around us. The snow storm was real; the preacher merely spectral, and the ey felt the sad contrast in looking at him, and then out of the window behind him, into the beautiful meteor of the snow. He had lived in vain. He had no one word intimating that he had laughed or wept, was married or in love, had been commended or cheated, or chagrined. If he had ever lived and acted, we were none the wiser for it. the capital secret of his profession, namely, to convert life into truth, he had not learned. Not one fact in all his experience, had he yet imported into his doctrine. This man had ploughed, and planted, and talked, and bought, and sold; he had read books; he had eaten and drunken; his head aches; his heart throbs; he smiles and suffers; yet was there not a surmise, a hint, in all the discourse, that he had ever lived at all. Not a line did he draw out of real history. The true preacher can be known by this, that he deals out to the people his life--life passed through the fire of thought. But of the bad preacher, it could not be told from his sermon, what age of the world he fell in; whether he had a father or a child; whether he was a freeholder or a pauper; whether he was a citizen or a countryman; or any other fact of his biography. It seemed strange the people should come to church. It seemed as if their houses were very unentertaining, that they should prefer this thoughtless clamor. It shows there is a commanding attraction in the moral sentiment, that can lend a faint tint of light to dullness and ignorance, coming in its name and place. The good hearer is sure he has been touched sometimes; is sure there is somehwat to be reached, and some word that can reach it.”

Then Emerson said something I’d like you to listen to very carefully. He said, “I am not ignorant that when we preach unworthily, it is not always quite in vain. There is a good ear, in some men, that draws supplies to virtue out of very indifferent nutriment. There is poetic truth concealed in all the common-places of prayer and of sermons, and though foolishly spoken, they may be wisely heard…”

I’ve titled this week’s lecture series, “Through the Fire of Thought.” My task is to offer some thoughts worthy of your listening; your task is to listen with that ‘good ear,’ so that you can draw supplies to virtue out of whatever nourishment may come during our time together.

(Isn’t that a great line—that ‘there is a good ear…that draws supplies to virtue out of very indifferent nutriment.’

I took up the task of ministry 35 years ago in the very church where Emerson concluded his—at Follen Community Church in Lexington, Massachusetts. I was hired as an assistant to the minister during my first year of seminary at Boston University School of Theology; my family and I moved into the parsonage, since the senior minister, Herb Adams, was living in Cambridge while working on his doctorate at Harvard.

A few months after I arrived, following one of my early sermons, I was approached by Sandborn Brown, who was then Dean of Students at M.I.T. He approached me in the line where I was greeting folks following the service and asked if he could speak to me; he waited in the foyer, across from me, and when everyone had gone through he came and said, “I just want to tell you that when you lifted your head from the sermon this morning and told us about your grandmother I was very touched.” He pointed to his heart. Then he said, “That’s what I come for…this (pointing to his heart, again) not this (pointing to his head.) I get this all week long.”

That moment stands out for me as pivotal. It was confrontational, like Emerson’s rather brash statement to those students. I realized in that moment that my sermon preparation up to that point had been, to a great extent, an effort to prove myself…to prove that I was worthy; to show that I was an intelligent, rational, reasonable man; well informed and well-prepared.

There’s a fine line between dealing out your life to the people—passed through the fire of thought—and ego-tripping.

It’s an ongoing challenge; it’s as challenging for me today as it was thirty five years ago, a thousand sermons later… hundreds of funeral and memorial services later…hundreds of wedding ceremonies, and child dedications and coming of age ceremonies later…thousands of counseling sessions later.

The challenge in ministry is much like the basic challenges of being a person—it’s about striking a balance between talking about myself, about my own life experiences, and listening to you.

(It’s necessary for the speaker to listen to an audience—and, in fact, you are playing a significant role in this process right now! We don’t talk much about the influence of an audience on speaker; it’s greater than we usually acknowledge.)

Emerson said that the ‘office of the true preacher is to deal out his life to the people.’ (He didn’t have to de-genderize—there were no women in ministry then.)

But there’s a lot more to ministry than preaching, as important as that aspect it. It takes years to fire those thoughts in the kiln of all the deaths, divorces, disagreements and daily routine…the counseling, the committee meetings and concerns with current events.

My friend and colleague Jack Mendelsohn offers a simple truism: ‘good ministers and good congregations create one another.’ I’ve been fortunate to serve three congregations who have helped me to pass my life ‘through the fire of thought.’ I’ve been the beneficiary of a lot of good ears.

Thomas Friedman wrote an op ed when George Bush was about to go to Europe this winter which he titled Read My Ears. He was contrasting what the earlier president Bush had said: ‘read my lips.’ He said that the president’s task was to convey to our European allies that he is listening to them, that he hears their concerns and criticism.

Friedman wrote, with just a little tongue in cheek:

“Having spent the last 10 days traveling to Britain, France, Germany and Switzerland, I have one small suggestion for President Bush. I suggest that when he comes to Europe to mend fences next month he give only one speech. It should be at his first stop in Brussels and it should consist of basically three words: "Read my ears."

“Let me put this as bluntly as I can: There is nothing that the Europeans want to hear from George Bush, there is nothing that they will listen to from George Bush that will change their minds about him or the Iraq war or U.S. foreign policy. Mr. Bush is more widely and deeply disliked in Europe than any U.S. president in history. Some people here must have a good thing to say about him, but I haven't met them yet.

“In such an environment, the only thing that Mr. Bush could do to change people's minds about him would be to travel across Europe and not say a single word - but just listen. If he did that, Mr. Bush would bowl the Europeans over. He would absolutely disarm and flummox people here - and improve his own image markedly. All it would take for him would be just a few words: "Read my ears. I have come to Europe to listen, not to speak. I will give my Europe speech when I come home - after I've heard what you have to say."

Naturally I thought of Emerson’s allusion to the ‘good ear that can draw supplies to virtue out of very indifferent nutriment.’

Emerson never did talk about the bad ear—the one, for example, he used to listen to the Reverend Barzillai Frost; the ear we all use to find the flaw, to criticize too quickly.

Now let me deal out another piece of my life, which I’ve passed through the fire of thought:

Several years ago I was on a wilderness trip in Montana with a men’s group. We were on horseback—the pack mules carried all our stuff—the tents and food and so forth. The horses carried us.

One day the outfitter, Tom, invited any of us who wanted an adventure to climb a mountain with the horses. A few of the guys decided to stay at the camp and do some fly fishing and as the rest of us were on the horses headed for the trail head John called over to me, “Get what you came for.”

I knew what he meant, but it was a good reminder to be fully present to this experience. His reminder stayed with me and I remember thinking that my father would have loved to have been able to experience something like this, but he never got to do it. So, I thought to myself as we began the day-long trek, I was doing it for him.

It was a memorable day, full of little adventures and surprises. We reached the peek at about noon and had our lunch sitting on rocks above the tree line and the weather suddenly changed—the wind whipped up, the clouds moved in, and on that August day it started to snow up there. We decided to move back down the mountain but before we did Watts Wacker asked me to say Chief Yellow Lark’s prayer. So, with the wind whipping around I said:

“O Great Spirit whose voice I hear in the winds, hear me. I come before you one of your many children, I am small and weak, I need your strength and wisdom. Let me walk in beauty and let my eyes ever behold the red and purple sunset. Make my hands respect the things you have made, and my ears sharp to hear your voice. Make me wise so that I may understand the things you have taught my people, the lesson you have hidden in every leaf and rock. I seek strength not to be greater than my brother but to fight my greatest enemy, myself. Make me ever ready to come to you with clean hands and straight eyes so that when life fades as a fading sunset my spirit may come to you without shame.”

The Journey, by Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice --
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do --
determined to save
the only life you could save.

i am running into a new year, Lucille Clifton

i am running into a new year
and the old years blow back
like a wind
that I catch in my hair
like strong fingers like
all my old promises and
it will be hard to let go
of what I said to myself
about myself
when I was sixteen and
twenty-six and thirty-six
even forty-six but
i am running into a new year
and I beg what I love and
i leave to forgive me

I was pleased to be present when Lucille Clifton was here at Chautauqua—she offered some powerful pieces. Summer is a time of transition. It has the taste of a new year. We’re always ‘running into a new year,’ holding on to old stuff with those ‘strong fingers,’ so we can’t let go; looking back to old promises and old ideas: ‘it will be hard to let go of what I said to myself when I was forty-six and fifty-six…but I am running into a new year and I beg what I love and I leave to forgive me.’ May this time together today help us to let go of whatever might be holding us back from being who we want to be and who we hope to become in whatever time remains.

Lecture 2, July 5, 2005

The Anatomy of a Religious Liberal

I’m a religious liberal. That’s not a confession. It’s not an apology. They’ve tried to turn the word liberal inside out, to equate it with moral depravity—you know who they are. They are the mind managers; the language manipulators.

Let’s do a little dissection—let’s look at the parts and see what makes us tick--those of us who call self-identify as religious liberals.

I use the word liberal as an adjective to describe an approach to religion—an approach to religion that does not rely on outside authority for my personal belief system. I use the word liberal to suggest that the ultimate source of authority is vested in the individual as opposed to an outside authority.

I use the word liberal as a way of distancing myself from words like dogma, orthodox, rigid, authoritarian.

So let me say what I mean as directly as possible: what I mean by calling myself a religious liberal is first and foremost an affirmation of that aspect of life we call the religious or spiritual, having nothing to do with denominationalism; having nothing to do with religiosity— the practice of one’s particular religion, as important and relevant as those things are.

I use the word liberal to distance myself from fundamentalisms of every stripe—from the brand of religion espoused by some Christians, some Jews, some Muslims, some Hindus and others who claim to have a corner on the religious market, who claim to speak for God who has somehow invested them with His authority; those who accuse anyone who doesn’t assent to their beliefs as a heretic or an infidel, and who are destined to spend eternity roasting in the fires of hell…and so forth.

Liberal religion is an approach to religion practiced by some Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus and others; religious liberals, by definition, do not claim to have a corner on the religious market—a monopoly.

It has been said that a liberal is someone who thinks they might be wrong.

Just as there are religious fundamentalists in all the major faiths, just as there religious liberals; there are fanatics in all the major faiths, just as there are moderate Christians, Jews, Muslims and Hindus. The moderates warmly embrace their own religious heritage without denying the same rights to others.

I’m not a moderate—though I’m sometimes tempted; I do respect and appreciate the moderates; I even identify with them. But I’m a hopeless case—an unrepentant religious liberal; I stand outside the boundary circumscribed by any and all religious groups. For that reason I put myself in the category of religious liberal.

Last month a moderate Christian, who happens to be a political conservative, penned a piece that was printed in the op-ed page of the New York Times. John C. Danforth is an Episcopal minister and former Republican senator from Missouri.

Onward, Moderate Christian Soldiers, John C. Danforth, June 17, 2005.

“It would be an oversimplification to say that America's culture wars are now between people of faith and nonbelievers. People of faith are not of one mind, whether on specific issues like stem cell research and government intervention in the case of Terri Schiavo, or the more general issue of how religion relates to politics.

‘In recent years, conservative Christians have presented themselves as representing the one authentic Christian perspective on politics. With due respect for our conservative friends, equally devout Christians come to very different conclusions.

‘It is important for those of us who are sometimes called moderates to make the case that we, too, have strongly held Christian convictions, that we speak from the depths of our beliefs, and that our approach to politics is at least as faithful as that of those who are more conservative. Our difference concerns the extent to which government should, or even can, translate religious beliefs into the laws of the state.

‘People of faith have the right, and perhaps the obligation, to bring their values to bear in politics. Many conservative Christians approach politics with a certainty that they know God's truth, and that they can advance the kingdom of God through governmental action. So they have developed a political agenda that they believe advances God's kingdom, one that includes efforts to "put God back" into the public square and to pass a constitutional amendment intended to protect marriage from the perceived threat of homosexuality.

‘Moderate Christians are less certain about when and how our beliefs can be translated into statutory form, not because of a lack of faith in God but because of a healthy acknowledgement of the limitations of human beings. Like conservative Christians, we attend church, read the Bible and say our prayers.

“It would be an oversimplification to say that America's culture wars are now between people of faith and nonbelievers. People of faith are not of one mind, whether on specific issues like stem cell research and government intervention in the case of Terri Schiavo, or the more general issue of how religion relates to politics.

‘In recent years, conservative Christians have presented themselves as representing the one authentic Christian perspective on politics. With due respect for our conservative friends, equally devout Christians come to very different conclusions.

‘It is important for those of us who are sometimes called moderates to make the case that we, too, have strongly held Christian convictions, that we speak from the depths of our beliefs, and that our approach to politics is at least as faithful as that of those who are more conservative. Our difference concerns the extent to which government should, or even can, translate religious beliefs into the laws of the state.

‘People of faith have the right, and perhaps the obligation, to bring their values to bear in politics. Many conservative Christians approach politics with a certainty that they know God's truth, and that they can advance the kingdom of God through governmental action. So they have developed a political agenda that they believe advances God's kingdom, one that includes efforts to "put God back" into the public square and to pass a constitutional amendment intended to protect marriage from the perceived threat of homosexuality.

‘Moderate Christians are less certain about when and how our beliefs can be translated into statutory form, not because of a lack of faith in God but because of a healthy acknowledgement of the limitations of human beings. Like conservative Christians, we attend church, read the Bible and say our prayers.

‘But for us, the only absolute standard of behavior is the commandment to love our neighbors as ourselves. Repeatedly in the Gospels, we find that the Love Commandment takes precedence when it conflicts with laws. We struggle to follow that commandment as we face the realities of everyday living, and we do not agree that our responsibility to live as Christians can be codified by legislators.

‘When, on television, we see a person in a persistent vegetative state, one who will never recover, we believe that allowing the natural and merciful end to her ordeal is more loving than imposing government power to keep her hooked up to a feeding tube.

‘When we see an opportunity to save our neighbors' lives through stem cell research, we believe that it is our duty to pursue that research, and to oppose legislation that would impede us from doing so.

‘We think that efforts to haul references of God into the public square, into schools and courthouses, are far more apt to divide Americans than to advance faith.

‘Following a Lord who reached out in compassion to all human beings, we oppose amending the Constitution in a way that would humiliate homosexuals.

‘For us, living the Love Commandment may be at odds with efforts to encapsulate Christianity in a political agenda. We strongly support the separation of church and state, both because that principle is essential to holding together a diverse country, and because the policies of the state always fall short of the demands of faith. Aware that even our most passionate ventures into politics are efforts to carry the treasure of religion in the earthen vessel of government, we proceed in a spirit of humility lacking in our conservative colleagues.

‘In the decade since I left the Senate, American politics has been characterized by two phenomena: the increased activism of the Christian right, especially in the Republican Party, and the collapse of bipartisan collegiality. I do not think it is a stretch to suggest a relationship between the two. To assert that I am on God's side and you are not, that I know God's will and you do not, and that I will use the power of government to advance my understanding of God's kingdom is certain to produce hostility.

‘By contrast, moderate Christians see ourselves, literally, as moderators. Far from claiming to possess God's truth, we claim only to be imperfect seekers of the truth. We reject the notion that religion should present a series of wedge issues useful at election time for energizing a political base. We believe it is God's work to practice humility, to wear tolerance on our sleeves, to reach out to those with whom we disagree, and to overcome the meanness we see in today's politics.

‘For us, religion should be inclusive, and it should seek to bridge the differences that separate people. We do not exclude from worship those whose opinions differ from ours. Following a Lord who sat at the table with tax collectors and sinners, we welcome to the Lord's table allwho would come. Following a Lord who cited love of God and love of neighbor as encompassing all the commandments, we reject a political agenda that displaces that love. Christians who hold these convictions ought to add their clear voice of moderation to the debate on religion in politics.”

Thank God for the moderate voices within Christianity, Judaism, Islam…the moderate voices who warmly embrace a particular religious heritage without wishing to impose it on me and on you.

In his book The Way of Man, Martin Buber, the well-known Jewish theologian who has informed and inspired many of us in the liberal religious camp, tells a story he calls Here Where One Stands. It’s a story about about Rabbi Bunam, who used to tell young men who came to him for the first time the story of Rabbi Eizik, son of Rabbi Yekel of Cracow.

“After many years of great poverty, which had never shaken his faith in God, he dreamed someone bade him look for a treasure in Prague, under the bridge which leads to the king’s palace. When the dream recurred a third time, Rabbi Eizik prepared for the journey and set out for Prague.

“But the bridge was guarded day and night and he did not dare to start digging. Nevertheless he went to the bridge every morning and kept walking around it until evening. Finally the captain of the guards, who had been watching him, asked in a kindly way whether he was looking for something or waiting for somebody. Rabbi Eizik told him of the dream which had brought him here from a faraway country.

“The captain laughed: “And so to please the dream, you poor fellow wore out your shoes to come here! As for having faith in dreams, if I had had it, I should have had to get going when a dream once told me to go to Cracow and dig for treasure under the stove in the room of a Jew — Eizik, son of Yekel, that was the name! Eizik, son of Yekel! I can just imagine what it would be like, how I should have to try every house over there, where one half of the Jews are named Eizik and the other Yekel!” And he laughed again.

“Rabbi Eizik bowed, travelled home, dug up the treasure from under the stove, and built the House of Prayer which is called “Reb Eizik Reb Yekel’s Shul.”

“Take this story to heart,” Rabbi Bunam used to add, “and make what it says your own: There is something you cannot find anywhere in the world, not even at the zaddik’s, and there is, nevertheless, a place where you can find it.”

The spiritual treasure is right here, where you stand; but you have to do your own digging.

The story talks about recurring dreams: Joseph Campbell says, “A dream is a private myth; a myth is a public dream.”

A religious liberal affirms the value of mythology. As a religious liberal I read all the stories as marvelous myths; if you look closely and carefully at a myth you see yourself; you also see that we’re all in the same boat, we humans. We struggle to make sense of this life we’ve been given.

As a religious liberal I’m amazed that so many people seem to take the mythologies in the Hebrew literature, the New Testament, and the Koran as being literal truth. It stretches my credulity.

My professor of Old Testament at Boston University School of Theology, Harrel Beck, said that “The Old Testament is one long warning against the dangers of idolatry.”

I’ve been passing that assertion through the ‘fire of thought’ since hearing it more than 35 years ago.

Buber’s parable of Rabbi Eizik affirms the inner life, and says, “Pay attention to what’s going on down there…that’s where the treasure is.”

It doesn’t deny the value of telling stories, but it suggests that all the stories, all the mythologies, are, in the final analysis, about the inner workings of the mind; they are about us.

In Buber’s story Rabbi Eizik had to leave home—he had to wear out some shoe leather, to ‘make the effort.’ To leave home is a metaphor for the willingness to change your mind—to look at things from the other guy’s point of view; to consider alternatives.

Rabbi Eizik got a ‘hint’ from the friendly palace guard, who didn’t realize the deeper significance of what he was telling Rabbi Eizik. He helped Rabbi Eizik to realize that the treasure about which he dreamed was under his own stove, in his own home, which is to say, ‘here where one stands.’

(You never know how something you say might have a lasting effect on another person.)

One point in Buber’s little story is that we need one another. We don’t always know the influence we have on one another. But something happens in the process of speaking and listening with one another—there’s a synergistic quality to our interactions…a stimulation…or a challenge.

The spiritual treasure isn’t something you dig up and discover, all at once. The spiritual treasure is discovered little by little, and over and over, in the process of living. It’s an accumulation of your own personal experience, but filtered from the depths.

To leave home is to take an adventure. The modern Greek Constantine Cavafy wrote about Odysseus’s journey back home to Ithaca—it was a favorite of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis—she asked that it be read at her funeral.

“When you set out for Ithaka
pray that your road’s a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops, angry Poseidon -
don't be afraid of them:
you'll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare sensation
touches your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops, wild Poseidon -
you won't encounter them
unless you bring them along inside of you,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Pray your road’s a long one.
May there be many a summer morning when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbours you're seeing for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfumes of every kind -
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and go on learning from those who know.

Keep Ithaka always in mind.
Arriving there is what you're destined for.
But don't hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you're old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you've gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you wouldn't have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.
And if you find her poor, Ithaka won't have fooled you.
Wise as you have become, so full of experience,
you'll have understood by then what an Ithaka means.”

The journey to Ithaca is an inward journey—it’s a journey home. But arriving there isn’t the point—it’s about life as the great adventure, ‘full of discovery.’

The Laistrygonians, Cyclops, wild Poseidon—the scary mythological creatures—are carried inside and they have to be encountered. The Chinese have a term for it: we have to ‘shake hands with the dragon.’

The spiritual treasure isn’t something you dig up and discover, all at once, like the treasure under Rabbi Eizik’s stove. We have these little epiphanies, and some seem so big that it feels like a re-birth—what some call the born again experience.

For the religious liberal the search never ends—there is no final answer, once and for all. What’s required is a willingness to keep searching, and, if you’re fortunate, to weave together an unending string of those little or big epiphanies…born again and again.

Spiritual truths are discovered little by little, and over and over, in the process of living. A single meal cannot provide nourishment for the body for the rest of your life—neither can a single insight, belief or experience. A well-nourished spiritual life needs to be fed. Cummings’ poem feeds me; all the old mythologies feed me; stories like Buber’s feed the spiritual hunger.

Watching someone else eat a meal does not satisfy my hunger; but it might whet my appetite.

This, I think, is the essence of liberal religion, and it stands in contrast to the more traditional, or orthodox notion: that your religion is a set of beliefs which are carved in stone, and come from some outside or higher authority—a Bible, or Koran; a priest, minister or rabbi; an imam, or guru, or some imagined Buddha.

Any and all of those sources may stimulate your thinking, may provide the provocation you need at that moment. But they are like fingers pointing to the moon.

Liberal religion says, “Don’t confuse the finger pointing to the moon with the moon.” That’s like seeing a road sign that points to a place and sitting up on the sign post believing you’ve arrived!

An essential ingredient to liberal religion, as I understand it today, is captured poetically by Whitman in the following lines from his signature poem, Song of Myself:

“Have you reckon’d a thousand acres much? Have you reckon’d the earth much? Have you practiced so long to learn to read, and have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems? Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems, You shall possess the good of the earth and sun…You shall no longer take things at second or third hand. You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me, but you shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.”

Liberal religion acknowledges that the source of all poems—the source of all the religions of the world, have come from the depths of the human experience…one might say that they have come from what we call ‘inspiration.’

The deepest truths—the buried treasure—do no come easily or automatically. This, I think, is one of the great misunderstandings of liberal religion: that it’s easy.

For the religious liberal, the Bible is a collection of poetry, mythology, history and legend, written over the course of many hundreds of years, drawn from many cultures, is a book written by people like you and me.

For the religious liberal it becomes sacred literature to the extent that we’re able to understand the myths—to see the stories as ways of revealing us to ourselves.

My friend and colleague Forrest Church defines religion as “our human response to the dual reality of being alive and having to die.”

While I appreciate Forrest’s definition I prefer to define religion by looking at its literal meaning. The world religion is rooted in the Latin verb legare, which means to bind, or to connect.

To me religion is the accumulation of the experiences that have helped me to realize and to affirm my connection to others. We call that realization and affirmation by various names: love, friendship, bonding, support, encouragement, respect, appreciation, sympathy and compassion, to name a few.

Religion is the accumulation of the experiences that have helped me to realize and to affirm my connection to the natural world—my relationship with animals—with animals in the wild and with pets; my relationship with the ocean, the moon and stars and planets, the forest and rivers, the wind and rain, the snow.

Whitman titled his book of poetry Leaves of Grass, emphasizing that relationship between nature and spirituality.

Religion is the accumulation of the experiences that help me to feel reconnected to an ever-evolving, ever-changing self.

Forrest’s definition describes the underlying reason for the invention of most of the religions of the world—the need to deal with mortality. Most religions place a heavy emphasis on death, offering a front-row seat to some imagined after life--a ticket for true believers.

Cynicism sinks in when the front-row seats are reserved for the biggest financial contributors. That, indeed, is what drove Martin Luther’s Reformation. He was a religious liberal because he didn’t believe you could buy your way out of hell and into heaven with indulgences—you remember what indulgences were—they were contributions made to the church in order to pay off the gods to reduce the sentence, the time some loved one was presumably roasting.

I am a religious liberal because I believe that all the religions of the world are right and true, but none is entirely right, nor does any religion have a corner on the market of truth.

I am a religious liberal because I believe that religious literature is poetry—not literal truth, and certainly not history, as if God intervened in time, created the world in six days, and parted the Red Sea, and so forth. As poetry, those stories help us to feel God’s active presence in the world right now as the ongoing creative energy we call love.

I’m a religious liberal because I read the story of Noah and realize that this is the ark. We’re on it, now, floating on the sea of time, and we have to be responsible mariners—environmentalists, taking care of the earth; and we have to be responsible economists, finding equitable ways of distributing the food, all of which comes from the earth and the sea; finding creative ways of helping people to find meaningful work, and so forth.

I am a religious liberal because my sacred literature is an ever-growing collection of poems and stories that speak to my heart, and when a poem or story speaks to my heart it’s as though God is speaking directly to me…because when I read such a poem or story I realize I’m not alone…I can feel my connection with other souls who were born into this world the same as I was, and who struggle to find meaning, the same as I do.

The true word of God is no different than truth that comes through in any form—the truths of science, for example. God’s work is being done by scientists who are trying to learn how stem cells can be used to cure some devastating diseases. It’s so ironic that other apparently well-meaning people are trying to prevent progress in the name of God.

I am a religious liberal because I believe we each have to ‘seek the truth.’ It’s not delivered to us with the morning paper—that’s for sure; it’s not miraculously passed on to us by Bibles or Bishops or Chautauqua lectures.

As a religious liberal I say that the big question isn’t whether there’s life after death, but whether there’s life after birth: what kind of life are you putting together?.

As a religious liberal I say we have a responsibility to help one another along the way—not to convert others to our beliefs or our way of thinking—our opinions. But to be there for them, to listen, to create a caring atmosphere characterized by mutual respect rather than agreement about the Bible or what Jesus really meant.

As a religious liberal I generally avoid putting a name on God-- on that which is in truth beyond my capacity to understand, rationally or intellectually. I like the opening lines of the Tao Te Ching: “The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao; the name that can be named is not the eternal name.”

Do you see the paradox in this statement?

On the one hand, it sounds like Lao Tze, it’s supposed author, is agnostic, saying that we can’t know. On the other hand, however, he’s clearly suggesting that there is something beyond what we can name; but not beyond what we can know or realize.

The Buddhist says, “Those who know, don’t say. Those who say, don’t know.”

Jesus said, “Beware of practicing your piety before men…like the hypocrites who want to be seen in the temple.”

As a religious liberal I can call myself a Buddhist, without any need to practice someone else’s form of Buddhism; I can find meaning in the Jewish stories and the Jewish holidays and holy days; I can find meaning in the Christian stories and the Christian holidays and holy days; I can claim a sacred status to the poems that speak to me, that reach into the depths of my being and provide nourishment, or healing, or encouragement.

In a deeper sense, I become a religious liberal to the extent that I am liberated, so that I can take the best of the Christianity that nourished me as a child, and with a breath of comfort, blow the rest away. I can let go of the old anger or resentment I felt when I was told that I was not a ‘good Christian’ if I didn’t believe in the Apostle’s Creed—that Jesus was literally born of a virgin and descended into hell and sits at the right hand of the Father. It took me a long time to rid myself of the anger. In truth it took years before I was even aware that the anger was ‘down there where the spirit meets the bone.’

As a religious liberal I can take little gems I discover in Judaism and recite precious poems I find in Islam, like Rumi’s poem:

“Out beyond ideas of wrong doing and right doing, there’s a field, I’ll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass the world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the phrase each other doesn’t make any sense.”

As a religious liberal I know I might be wrong, but I give myself permission to be wrong. I have seen enough of those who are absolutely certain that they are right, to say nothing of being certain that I’m wrong.

I can change my mind, which is why I like to quote Emerson’s famous line about consistency: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and divines and philosophers. With consistency a great mind simply has nothing to do.”

Not long ago, the very idea of reading the Bible for yourself was considered heretical. By translating the Bible into the vernacular, Martin Luther launched the Reformation. He was a religious liberal. Like Whitman, he was saying that you need not take things at second or third hand…but you should look at all sides--read it--and filter it from yourself.

Notice he didn’t say ‘filter it for yourself.’ He said that you shall look at all sides and filter it ‘from’ yourself; just as those who wrote the poems, the Bible, the Koran and all the sacred books ‘filtered the stories from themselves.’

I know this doesn’t set well with those who want their religion delivered pre-packaged, ready for consumption.

I long ago gave up the notion that as a liberal religious clergyperson that I could be acceptable to all people.

Religious fundamentalists who believe that the Bible is the word of God in a literal and supernatural way have told me time and again that I’m going to wind up in hell. On more than one occasion this prediction has sounded more like a wish; my only concern is that one of them might want to hasten the day; that trick has already been done!

Maybe my problem is that I think about these things too much. I’m reminded here of the guy who wrote about his problem to Tom and Ray, the Click and Clack brothers at Car Talk. His name is Gregory Paul Engel; he wrote:

“I've listened to your show for a while now. I must say, I was a lot like you guys. Carefree. Blabbed a lot. This was before my life took a tragic turn. A turn which, I sense, both of you are on the verge of taking. There is no help for me, unfortunately. But perhaps my story will help prevent you from falling into the abyss that I have been thrown.

“It started out innocently enough. I began to think at parties now and then to loosen up. Inevitably though, one thought led to another, and soon I was more than just a social thinker.

“I began to think alone -"to relax," I told myself - but I knew it wasn't true. Thinking became more and more important to me, and finally I was thinking all the time.

“I began to think on the job. I knew that thinking and employment don't mix, but I couldn't stop myself.

“I began to avoid friends at lunch time so I could read Thoreau and Kafka. I would return to the office dizzied and confused, asking, "What is it exactly we are doing here?"

“Things weren't going so great at home either. One evening I had turned off the TV and asked my wife about the meaning of life. She spent that night at her mother's.

“I soon had a reputation as a heavy thinker. One day the boss called me in. He said, "Greg, I like you, and it hurts me to say this, but your thinking has become a real problem. If you don't stop thinking on the job, you'll have to find another job." This gave me a lot to think about.

“I came home early after my conversation with the boss. "Honey," I confessed, "I've been thinking..." "I know you've been thinking," she said, "and I want a divorce!" "But Honey, surely it's not that serious." "It is serious," she said, lower lip aquiver. "You think as much as college professors, and college professors don't make any money, so if you keep on thinking we won't have any money!"

"That's a faulty syllogism," I said impatiently, and she began to cry. I'd had enough. "I'm going to the library," I snarled as I stomped out the door.

“I headed for the library, in the mood for some Nietzsche, with NPR on the radio. I roared into the parking lot and ran up to the big glass doors...they didn't open. The library was closed.

“To this day, I believe that a Higher Power was looking out for me that night.

“As I sank to the ground clawing at the unfeeling glass, whimpering for Zarathustra, a poster caught my eye. "Friend, is heavy thinking ruining your life?" it asked. You probably recognize that line. It comes from the standard Thinker's Anonymous poster. Which is why I am what I am today: a recovering thinker. I never miss a TA meeting. At each meeting we watch a noneducational video; last week it was "Porky's." Then we share experiences about how we avoided thinking since the last meeting.

“I still have my job, and things are a lot better at home. Life just seemed...easier, somehow, as soon as I stopped thinking.

“An integral part of my recovery has been your show. I regret, however, that your show has occasionally caused me to have a thought. Sometimes even two. I have found myself wanting to ask my car mechanic...to ask him...questions! Yes, questions. A sure sign to the presence of a deep process of thinking. I still have work to do on my thinking problem. I regret that unless you turn from the direction you’re headed by answering callers questions in meaningful ways, I will be forced to discontinue my participation in your, until recently, completely mediocre show.

“I hope I have helped. Good luck, Gregory Engel”

I’ll close with a few more lines from Whitman:

“Listen, I’ll be honest with you. I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough new prizes,
These are the days that must happen to you:
You shall not heap up what is call'd riches,
You shall scatter with lavish hand all that you earn or achieve,
those who remain behind you…
Allons! after the great Companions, and to belong to them!
They too are on the road -- they are the swift and majestic men -- they are the greatest women,
Allons! to that which is endless as it was beginningless,
To undergo much, tramps of days, rests of nights…
To see nothing anywhere but what you may reach it and pass it,
To conceive no time, however distant, but what you may reach it and pass it,
To look up or down no road but it stretches and waits for you, however long but it stretches and waits for you..
To know the universe itself as a road, as many roads, as roads for traveling souls…

Now understand me well -- it is provided in the essence of things that from any fruition of success, no matter what, shall come forth something to make a greater struggle necessary.”

Lecture 3, Wednesday, July 5, 2005

“The Evolution of God”

The attack on America came as a complete surprise-though in retrospect we might have expected it. The planes, flown by pilots prepared to commit suicide by flying their planes into their unsuspecting targets, came in two horrendously destructive waves hitting the first target at 7:53 a.m. and the second at 8:55. By 10 a.m. it was over. The date lives in infamy--December 7, 1941.

The attack on Pearl Harbor set into motion a chain of events we call WWII ending with the defeat of the attackers after the dropping of two atomic bombs. The United States emerged as a super-nuclear power, and a super target.

Sixty years later the planes came again, flown by pilots prepared to commit suicide by flying the hijacked planes into their unsuspecting targets. They came to New York in two horrendously destructive waves hitting the first target at 8:46 and the second at 9:03.

Two other planes were in the air, one would hit the Pentagon and the other would be taken down in a field in Pennsylvania.

The events of September 11 appear to have set off a chain of events, but in some ways September 11 is part of the ongoing, evolving (if you will) unfolding human history in which you and I are intimately involved.

The casualties of 9/11 include the loss of religious faith. Many people reported a loss of their earlier belief in God. The powerful documentary film, Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero is a moving memorial to that loss—a loss of innocence which occurs with the confrontation with evil. "Where was God?" they asked.

What about you? What's your notion of God? Where did your idea of God come from? Has it changed since September 11, or some personal tragedy? What's your understanding of the God depicted in the Bible?

Most of us move through various stages of belief—from the early childhood idea of God as a superman-like father figure who lives in the sky; childhood, after all, is the age of credulity. In his famous letter to the Corinthians Paul said, “When I was a child I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became an adult I gave up childish ways.”

During my first year of seminary (I was twenty-nine, having spent seven years as a high school teacher) I took a course in the Philosophy of Religion with Professor Peter Bertocci at Boston University. It was a large lecture course with a couple of hundred students. At the end of the first day of class Professor Bertocci said, “I’d be interested in your idea of God; this is not required, not for credit, but I’d like to hear what you think of God.”

Two of us wrote something and gave it to him at the next class. A couple of days later he said that he had read what had been submitted and he returned the short paper—mine was four pages. One of the first things I said in that little paper is that I didn’t believe in God. Professor Bertocci wrote in the margin, “Which one?”

I engaged him in a conversation and he said, “Okay, tell me about the God you don’t believe in.” I said, “You know, the bearded old man in the sky—if you say the right words you get ‘in,’ and if you don’t, you’re ‘out.’”

He only half-smiled and said, “Is that as far as it goes?”

From that awkward beginning we developed a friendship I continue to value. During our first encounter he invited me to his office, which was a couple of blocks away. As we walked up Commonwealth Avenue—it was a beautiful September day—he stopped walking, turned to me and said, “What do you think of the mind-body problem?”

“The mind is a function of the brain,” I said. “When the brain dies, the mind ceases…”

He nodded his head, slowly and began to walk again, then he said, “I used to believe that, too.”

We got to his office and he took a book from the shelf and handed it to me—The Individual and His Religion, by Gordon Allport.

In the preface Allport thanks people who influenced him and said: “Professor Peter Bertocci of Boston University was a vital source of encouragement and in a friendly way endeavored to repair my inexpertness in dealing with certain philosophical and theological issues.”

I cherish the book, not so much for what it says about the emerging field of ‘the psychology of religion,’ (which was my major area of study in Seminary) but because that book holds a prominent place as a symbol—it’s an icon, representing the value of what Allport, referring to the influence of Bertocci, called ‘a vital source of encouragement.’

Dr. Allport chose his words carefully. He used the word ‘vital’ to describe the encouragement he got from Dr. Bertocci. The word vital is rooted in the Latin word for ‘life,’ vita, from which we get words like survive and revive.

Now I'd like to invite you to look again at the Biblical God, the God described and worshiped by Jews, Christians and Muslims, referred to as the Abrahamic religions. What does that Biblical God look like to you?

Just as our own personal notion of God moves through what we might call ‘stages of evolution,’ so does the notion of God in Genesis and Exodus ‘evolve.’

The Biblical story begins with these words in the opening lines of the book of Genesis:

"In the beginning God Created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters. And God said 'Let there be light; and there was light. And God saw that it was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light day and the darkness he called night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day."

(This is why the Jewish day begins at sundown: 'and there was evening,' comes first. Shabbat begins on what we call 'Friday night,' but for Jews sundown on Friday is the beginning of Saturday, the Sabbath.)

The God who is introduced to us in the first chapter of Genesis creates everything with a word. He simply says what he wants. "And God said, 'Let there be light; and there was light."

In the New Testament, which is essentially a retelling of the Hebrew Bible, the fourth Gospel, the Gospel of John, opens with that famous line: “In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God… all things were made through him…in him was life.”

A summary of the creation story in Genesis says, “And God made the two great lights, the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night; he made the stars also.' And God said, 'Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures.' And God said, 'Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle.' So God created man in his own image."

After each day's work God looks at what he accomplished that day, as any creator would. He assesses his work and the story says, "And God saw that it was good." He does that for the first five days, but on the sixth day, after he creates humans, it doesn't say 'and God saw that it was good.' He told them to ‘be fruitful and multiply and have dominion’ over the rest of creation.

The rabbis suggest that God’s pronouncement that 'it was good' after each of the first five day's work means 'it is finished.' Or 'it’s done; complete.' But after he created 'man' he didn't say 'it is good,' because man wasn’t done—not yet 'finished.'

Chapter two of Genesis reviews what God did in chapter one, the first six days. God rested on the seventh day and hallowed that day 'because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation.' He's tired. He needs rest. That's an interesting characterization of God; a very human character--he gets tired.

The Sabbath, then, is a time to stop trying to alter the universe, to be in it, to look around, and to appreciate this amazing creation of which we are an evolving part.

An interesting thing happens in the second chapter of Genesis. This is what it says, " ...and there was no man to till the ground. Then God formed man of dust and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being."

God had created man in his own image in Chapter one, but Chapter two says 'there was no man to till the ground.' How could that be?

The second creation story has God take some of the dust he created in chapter one and form the dust into a man. Then He breathes into the dust and ‘man became a living soul.’

Then God plants a fascinating garden in Eden. He brings the man into the garden and tells him to take care of it. Then God says to the man, 'You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die."

Later in the day--presumably the eighth day--the story says, "Then God said, 'It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him." That's when God brings the birds and beasts to the man to 'see what he would call them.'

The man, not yet named, gives names to every living creature. "But for the man there was not found a helper fit for him." That's when God puts the man to sleep and takes a rib and forms a woman, whom the man names Eve. Genesis says: "And the man and his wife were both naked and they were not ashamed."

Shame comes only after the loss of innocence, after they ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Notice: Eve wasn't around when God told the man not to eat the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Right away the serpent arrives: "Now the serpent was more subtle than any other wild creature that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, 'Did God say, 'You shall not eat of any tree of the garden?' And the woman said to the serpent, 'We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden; but God said, 'You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.'"

Genesis begins with a Creator who makes things simply by saying the word, and, bango, it's done!

Spoken language precedes written language. The child’s earliest attempt at language is a mimicking of the sounds he hears—a kind of babbling linguists refer to as parasyntactic. For most of us, the word God is like this: at first we’re simply repeating what we’ve heard; but I’m jumping ahead of the story.

By the third chapter of Genesis, God changes significantly. This all-powerful God created the sun and the moon with a word, He created all the plants, fish and animals with a single word, then he creates humans, he tells them what to do but they don't do what he told them. He expected them to obey. Obviously he was an inexperienced parent--he had not idea about all those stages a child must go through, especially adolescence!

In the third chapter of Genesis the portrait of God begins to change, or to evolve. We begin with an anthropomorphic, all-powerful God, and very quickly his power is limited.

The humans he created disobeyed. Why did they disobey? The story says they disobeyed because they were tempted.

Didn’t this omniscient Creator know they would be filled with temptation? He put the forbidden tree--the tree of the knowledge of good and evil--smack in the middle of the garden. In fact, it's the only tree he points to: 'see this tree with the nice big red apples? Don't touch it!' If you touch this tree you will die.'

Now let me say at this point that this is a wonderful, powerful piece of mythology; it's a creative way of describing the reality of our existence. That's what makes it a Truth story, as opposed to a true story. It's not about what happened. It's about what is happening. That's good mythology.

My purpose in telling it again is to try to get you to notice how the portrait of God changes, how God evolves in the Biblical story in Genesis, and continues to evolve in Exodus when he finally uses the written word on the stone tablets, carving out the commandments.

The evolution of God in the Bible stories is a like the changing, evolving concept of God each of us must go through. ‘When I was a child I spoke like a child, I thought like a child…’

After September 11 we heard people say, "America lost its innocence that day." On the first Sunday after September 11, during our service, I asked if anyone wanted to say anything, taking the portable microphone down the aisle. A ten-year old girl took the mike and asked, "Why do they hate us?"

It was clear to this ten-year old that there are people out there in the world who hate America. Her question cut to the heart of the matter, and it indicated, first of all, her own loss of innocence.

I responded that it is an important question that we all need to take a closer look at.

The evolution of God in the Bible is, of course, the story of human evolution, which began with the loss of innocence in the famous Garden. The paradox is that the knowledge of good and evil is what distinguishes us as humans; one could say it’s what makes us human.

Before Adam and Eve ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the story says, 'they were naked and they were not ashamed.'

Innocence was lost that day.

For many, their previous religious faith came tumbling down with the towers; their sense of security went up in flames with the pentagon, the ultimate symbol of military power.

Then there was the notion that the terrorists were on a religious mission: they believed that they were doing the will of God, and the God in whom they put their faith was this one--this God whose portrait is painted in Genesis.

For many, this was a double whammy: first, their God allowed this to happen; then to add insult to injury, the perpetrators believed that God--this same God whose picture is painted in Genesis--was going to carry them into heaven, a paradise where virgins were waiting for them and would welcome them as conquering heroes rather than the horrible criminals we know them to be.

Let's return to the story: The serpent convinces Eve to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which she does. Then she convinces Adam to eat. They don't die, as God told them they would, but an amazing thing happens: they are ashamed of their nakedness, and they hide from God, and cover their genitals.

The story says that God is walking in the Garden of Eden, and the man and woman hear his footsteps and they hide from him.

Here is a decidedly anthropomorphic God--he's walking in his garden. They can hear his footsteps. God says, "Where are you?"

How could it be that this omniscient, omnipotent God doesn't know where they are? Hello! "Oh, God, it's chapter three, do you know where your children are?"

Just a few days ago this God could create everything with a word. He got an idea for world, he says the word, and bango, everything is created.

What a difference a week has made. By the second week he's not able to get his children to obey. This story must have been written by the parent of a teenager!

God, the all-powerful creator and absolute ruler, loses it. He goes into a rage. He doesn't stop to think about it. He doesn't consider the consequences. He overreacts. He punishes the man and woman by evicting them from Paradise; he tells the man to find a job.

Genesis puts it this way: "...in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life...in the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken, you are dust, and to dust you shall return." Death is a punishment.

There's no mention of the word 'sin' in the Genesis story. The first human decision is an act of disobedience. They are punished for using the free will their creator gave to them by being evicted from the Garden—they’re now, and from now on, they’re on their own. Condemned to freedom; this is the beginning of human history.

But let's get back to the story of the evolution of God in the Bible:

God realizes that he goofed--the humans he created are wicked. Cain, the first naturally-born human, kills his brother, Abel, the second naturally-born human.

By the seventh chapter of Genesis God decides to destroy his earthly creation and start over. But he doesn't do it with a word, he does it with forty days and nights of rain. Enter natural disasters, which insurance companies call ‘acts of God,’ to distinguish them from man-made disasters.

God looks around and finds a good man, Noah, whom he calls 'a righteous man in his generation.' In other words, Noah was a relatively good person—compared with the average person at the time.

God tells Noah to build an ark. Noah doesn't question God. He doesn't ask ‘why should I build such a big boat when I’m miles away from the water?’ He simply obeys. God likes that.

Then God says, “Take with you seven pairs of all clean animals, the male and his mate; and a pair of the animals that are not clean, the male and his mate." The clean animals are for food for Noah and his family to eat.

At the end of the great flood Noah offers burnt offerings to God. God smells the cooking flesh and is pleased, just as he had been pleased with Abel’s flesh offering. He smells the burning flesh and God does an amazing thing: he repents!

God promises Noah that he will never go to such drastic and destructive lengths again. He puts a rainbow in the sky as a reminder of his promise. He ties a string around his celestial finger so he will be reminded of his promise. Isn't that interesting? God doesn't trust his own memory!

The text in Genesis has God say, in part, "I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall (I)...destroy the earth."

We're looking at the evolution of the concept of God as described in Genesis as a way of taking another look at our own ideas about God, no matter what we think or believe.

God establishes a covenant with Noah--a partnership with humans. The idea of making a covenant is a major step in the Biblical evolution of God.

Erich Fromm, in his wonderful book 'You Shall Be As Gods,' says, "The idea of the covenant constitutes one of the most decisive steps in the religious development of Judaism, a step which prepares the way to the concept of the complete freedom of man, even freedom from God."

So God decides to give up the job of absolute ruler; the idea of covenant creates a partnership between God and humankind. A covenant is a sacred agreement; a partnership; a commitment. The idea of making a covenant, an agreement between people, is the source of human dignity, integrity. “His word is his bond.”

God promises to have respect for all life. There are no Jewish people on the planet, yet. There are no Christian or Muslim or Hindu people on the planet, yet.

It’s important to note that the first covenant God makes in this mythological explanation of Life applies to all of humankind, indeed to all life on the planet. This kind of universalism is built into our American declaration of independence: ‘all are created equal.’

The later covenants between God and humans become the source of divisiveness, separating the chosen or the saved from the others…the damned.

But this covenant was made with all of humanity, indeed all of the natural world. Albert Schweitzer said that his religion could be summarized in the phrase 'reverence for life.'

Later in Genesis God makes another covenant, this time with Abram, telling him he will make a great nation of him and his descendents. Abram's name is changed to Abraham.

In the 12th chapter of Genesis God says to Abram, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who curses you I will curse."

Shortly after this promise is made to Abraham God tells Abraham that that he 's going to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. God confides in Abraham? How does his partner respond?

Abraham protests, challenging God. He says, "Wilt thou indeed destroy the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there are fifty righteous men within the city; wilt thou then destroy the place and not spare it for the fifty. Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?"

God says he won't do it, if fifty righteous men are found. Abraham haggles with God: 'suppose five of the fifty are found to be lacking." God agrees. Then he goes to forty and thirty and twenty, and God agrees not to destroy the great city if even ten righteous ones are found. This is where the idea of the minyan comes from: in Orthodox Judaism there must be at least ten men in order to have a religious service, ten being a number that constitutes a social entity, a community.

The first chapters of Genesis paint a picture of God as creator and absolute ruler over Creation. If he's not pleased or satisfied with His Creation He can destroy what He has created, and he does.

Notice the difference between Noah and Abraham. Noah does what he's told. Abraham protests, he argues with God, he demands justice from God. God has ceased to be the absolute ruler. Man is free to challenge God by referring to God's own promises--the covenant.

God referred to Noah as a just man in his generation. But Abraham marks the beginning of a new generation, moving from blind obedience to God, to a partner who challenges God and demands justice.

The stage of the evolution of God in the Bible comes in the book of Exodus, when Moses encounters God at the burning bush. Though there are still elements of the old anthropomorphic God who 'speaks,' and 'dwells on the mountain,' a radically new notion of God emerges. When Moses asks God to tell his name he says, "I AM WHO I AM."

That's a strange name. I AM (or Eheyeh) is the first person of the imperfect tense of the Hebrew verb 'to be.' It means, "I will be what I will be." This strange name suggests that God not complete, but a process. This makes God a verb, not a noun.

The Biblical portrays a God who is evolving.

I was interested to learn about the animated film, The Prince of Egypt through an interview with Nick Fletcher, the supervising editor. He talked about the process of making a decision about the voice that would come from the burning bush. He said, 'The challenge with that voice was to try to evolve it into something that had not been heard before. We did a lot of research into the voices that had been used for past Hollywood movies as well as for radio shows, and we were trying to create something that had never been previously heard not only from a casting standpoint but from a voice manipulation standpoint as well.'

‘The solution was to use the voice of actor (who was the voice of Moses) Val Kilmer, to suggest the kind of voice we hear inside our own heads in our everyday lives--as opposed to the larger than life tones with which the Creator has been endowed in prior celluloid incarnations.’

In the book of Exodus, the burning bush God does not have a name, and this is extremely important. My seminary professor, Harrell Beck said, "The Old Testament is one long warning against the dangers of idolatry."

Fromm says, "This God who manifests himself in history cannot be represented by any kind of image, neither by an image of sound--that is, a name--nor by an image of stone or wood. This prohibition of any kind of representation of God is clearly expressed in the Ten Commandments, which forbid man to bow down before any 'graven image, nor any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth." (Ex. 20:4)

This commandment against making a graven image, against idolatry, is 'one of the most fundamental principles of Jewish theology.' Observing Jews will not pronounce the name God nor write it. They will write G-d, as a way of referring to that which is nameless, the sacred, the holy.

Talking to God (as) in prayer is encouraged, but talking about God is not; it becomes argumentative.

Failure to observe this restriction results in people saying that they know what God wants, what God is thinking, who God likes better and best, who God wants destroyed, and so forth. You see where this leads. It leads to the insanity of a man killing a doctor in the name of God at an abortion clinic. It leads to the atrocity of September 11.

So the concept of God in the Bible moves through an evolutionary process beginning with God who creates with a word, moving to the angry God of Adam and Eve, the jealous God of Cain and Abel, the destructive God of the flood, then a God who forms partnerships with Noah and Abraham, culminating in the nameless God of Moses.

The all-powerful creator God of the first chapter of Genesis becomes a self-limiting God who forms partnerships with the people he has created..

God and man become co-creators, continuing the work begun in the first chapters of Genesis. It's as if God says, "I can't do it alone. I need you."

There are some who suggest that the God of Exodus, who intervenes in history to free the Israelites from bondage in Egypt, promotes passivity. "God will come again and fix things for us, we just have to wait.”

But the story suggests that God chose Abraham as a partner; he chose Moses as a partner, suggesting, again, that he couldn't do it alone.

God can send the plagues to force the Egyptians to let his people go, but he couldn't liberate the people--he couldn't make a decree that would make people free in the deeper sense. Democracies evolve, but that’s another topic.

Humans have a deep ambivalence about freedom, which prompted Erich Fromm to write a book he titled Escape From Freedom, and prompted Sartre to say, "We' re condemned to freedom." This is illustrated when the Israelites complain to Moses about not knowing where their next meal was coming from and they said, "At least in Egypt we had security, we had something to eat and drink."

What makes the Bible Holy, or Sacred, is that it tells the truth about humans, it reveals deeper Truths about what it means to be born, to grow up, to struggle and to die.

The Biblical God is a very human-like God, as contrasted with the god of the Greeks. The Greeks painted a portrait of god as unchanging, eternal, not involved in human affairs. The Greeks couldn't comprehend a God who has a relationship to humans, who needs to form a partnership with humans. Their god was perfection itself, completely self-sufficient, with nothing to do but think.

And what did the god of the Greeks think about? He thought about himself, thinking. God, living high atop Mt. Olympus, is 'thought on thought on himself.' The God in Greek mythology is completely and absolutely separate from humans.

The Biblical God, the God of Jews, Christians and Muslims, is vulnerable to man, which is why he seeks relationship.

God provides the Ten Commandments not to have power and control over humans, but to provide a way for humans to control themselves and thus to become liberated.

It's interesting to notice that God forms relationships with particular individuals: Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah, Abraham, Moses. Intimacy requires particularity. God cannot have a close, working relationship with humanity, per se.

After the temple was destroyed and the people could no longer come to worship simply by offering burnt offerings on the altar and witnessing rituals, the practicing Jew did his (sic) religion by the way he lived his life. Everything he does takes on a religious quality-the dietary laws: what he eats, how the food is prepared and animals slaughtered, how he's married and to whom, the circumcision, what he wears, how and when he prays, and so forth.

It's interesting to note, however, that each practicing Jew is expected to read and interpret the meanings of the Bible stories for himself.

Last summer I heard Rabbi David Hartman say, from this platform, "The Bible is God's first edition. It's not final. It' s evolving."

He said, "We should read the Torah as if God delivered it to us today, like this morning's newspaper. Receive it as if you are seeing it for the first time, and see how it fits into your life today, see the truths as they relate to all your experience to this date."

In other words, it needs to be continually re-interpreted; meanings evolve. God is an evolving concept in the Bible because the concept of God evolves for each and every person.

Moses asked, "Who should I say sent me?" The voice from the burning bush said, "EHEYEH asher EHEYEH," I am that I am, or I will be what I will be.”

It says 'God is,' but his being is not yet completed, like that of a thing. (Fromm) God is a living process, a becoming. Fromm says, "A free translation is, 'My name is Nameless," and he adds, "Only idols have names, because they are things."

You and I will determine what God will be or 'become.'

When asked about God, Buckminster Fuller commented, "I believe in God, but I spell it Nature."

I share that intuitive sense of a deep, eternal connection to Nature—to the Cosmic Life Force, even though I acknowledge that I have no idea what eternity really means. I can't conceive of endlessness.

For me, God is not a being, but the process of being and becoming; not a noun, but a verb.

Buddhism best expresses my idea of religion. Sometimes I call myself a Buddhist, but I do not identify with those who say they are 'practicing Buddhism.' I see Buddhism as a paradoxical religion similar to the nameless God that spoke to Moses out of the burning bush. The paradox of Buddhism, for me, is that it puts the responsibility for one's theology or spirituality in one's own lap.

I practice Buddhism by practicing being me, and moving into a new, changing, evolving self. I do not feel the need to have my beliefs validated by others. This is why I have a deep and abiding appreciation for the Unitarian Universalist approach: it encourages me to spiritual growth, and that growth must have something to with ethical work.

When I try to say to explain my beliefs I realize that the words fall so far short of the mark that I often wish I could take them back in mid-sentence, and almost always with I could try to explain myself again.

I have an affinity for mysticism while embracing a down-to-earth, practical and rational humanism. Now what about you? What do you think about God? Where have you been on your own evolutionary journey so far? I'd be interested to hear from you.

Reading: Adam’s Complaint, by Nicholas Biel

On the third day I was dust, ordinary common dust
like you see on a country road in a dry spell,
nothing expected of me,
me expecting nothing neither.
On the sixth day he comes along and blows.
"In my own image too", he says,
like he was doing me a favor.

Sometimes I think if he'd waited a million years
by then I'd been tired maybe being dust
but after only two, three days,
what can you expect? I wasn't used to being dust
and he goes and makes me into Man.

He could see right away from the expression on my face
I didn't like it so he's going to butter me up.
He puts me in this garden only I don't butter.

He brings me all the animals I should give them names--
What do I know of names? "Call it something," he says,
"anything you want," so I make names up--lion, tiger,
elephant, giraffe--crazy but that's what he wants.

I'm naming animals since 5 AM, in the evening I'm tired
I go to bed early, in the morning I wake up,
there she is sitting by a pool of water admiring herself.

"Hello, Adam," she says, "I'm your mate, I'm Eve."
"Pleased to meet you," I tell her and we shake hands.

Actually I'm not pleased---from time immemorial nothing,
now rush, rush, rush; two days ago I'm dust, yesterday
all day I'm naming animals, today I got a mate already.

Also I didn't like the way she looked at me
or at herself in the water.

Well, you know what happened, I don't have to tell you,
there were all those fruit trees---she took a bite,
I took a bite, the snake took a bite and quick like a flash---
out of the garden.

Now I'm not complaining; After all, it's his garden,
he don't want nobody eating his apples, that's his business.

What irritates me is the nerve of the guy.

I didn't ask him to make me even dust;
he could have left me nothing like I was before--
and such a fuss for one lousy little apple
not even ripe (there wasn't much time from Creation,
it was still Spring), I didn't ask for Cain, for Abel,
I didn't ask for nothing, but anything goes wrong,
who's to blame?....Sodom, Gomorrah, Babel, Ararat...
me or my kids catch it,....fire, flood, pillar of salt.
"Be patient," Eve said, "a little understanding. Look,
he made it was his idea, it breaks down, so he'll fix it."

But I told him one day. "You're in too much of a hurry.
In six days you make everything there is,
you expect it to run smoothly? Something's always
going to happen. If you'd a thought first,
conceived a plan, consulted a specialist,
you wouldn't have so much trouble all the time."

But you can't tell him nothing. He knows it all.

Like I say, he means well but he's a meddler and he's careless.
He could have made that woman so she wouldn't bite no apple.

All right, all right, so what's done is done,
but all the same, he should have known better,
or at least he could have blown on other dust.

Closing Reading: From ‘Disorder in the American Courts’

The following is taken from transcripts by court reports in a collection by the above title:

ATTORNEY: What is your date of birth?
WITNESS: July 18th.
ATTORNEY: What year?
WITNESS: Every year.

ATTORNEY: What gear were you in at the moment of the impact?
WITNESS: Gucci sweats and Reeboks.

ATTORNEY: This myasthenia gravis, does it affect your memory at all?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: And in what ways does it affect your memory?
WITNESS: I forget.
ATTORNEY: You forget? Can you give us an example of something you forgot?

ATTORNEY: How old is your son, the one living with you?
WITNESS: Thirty-eight or thirty-five, I can''t remember which.
ATTORNEY: How long has he lived with you?
WITNESS: Forty-five years.

ATTORNEY: What was the first thing your husband said to you that morning?
WITNESS: He said, "Where am I, Cathy?"
ATTORNEY: And why did that upset you?
WITNESS: My name is Susan.

ATTORNEY: Do you know if your daughter has ever been involved in voodoo?
WITNESS: We both do.
ATTORNEY: Voodoo?
WITNESS: We do.
ATTORNEY: You do?
WITNESS: Yes, voodoo.

ATTORNEY: Now doctor, isn't it true that when a person dies in his sleep, he doesn't know about it until the next morning?
WITNESS: Did you actually pass the bar exam?

ATTORNEY: The youngest son, the twenty-year-old, how old is he?
WITNESS: Uh, he''s twenty-one.

ATTORNEY: Were you present when your picture was taken?
WITNESS: Would you repeat the question?

ATTORNEY: So the date of conception (of the baby) was August 8th?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: And what were you doing at that time?
WITNESS: Uh …

ATTORNEY: She had three children, right?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: How many were boys?
WITNESS: None.
ATTORNEY: Were there any girls?

ATTORNEY: How was your first marriage terminated?
WITNESS: By death.
ATTORNEY: And by whose death was it terminated?

ATTORNEY: Can you describe the individual?
WITNESS: He was about medium height and had a beard.
ATTORNEY: Was this a male or a female?

ATTORNEY: Is your appearance here this morning pursuant to a deposition notice which I sent to your attorney?
WITNESS: No, this is how I dress when I go to work.

ATTORNEY: Doctor, how many of your autopsies have you performed on dead people?
WITNESS: All my autopsies are performed on dead people.

ATTORNEY: ALL your responses MUST be oral, OK? What school did you go to?
WITNESS: Oral.

ATTORNEY: Do you recall the time that you examined the body?
WITNESS: The autopsy started around 8:30 p.m.
ATTORNEY: And Mr. Denton was dead at the time?
WITNESS: No, he was sitting on the table wondering why I was doing an autopsy on him!

ATTORNEY: Are you qualified to give a urine sample?
WITNESS: Huh?

ATTORNEY: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: Did you check for blood pressure?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY Did you check for breathing?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: How can you be so sure, Doctor?
WITNESS: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.
ATTORNEY: But could the patient have still been alive, nevertheless?
WITNESS: Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law.

ATTORNEY: Are you sexually active?
WITNESS: No, I just lie there.

Lecture 4
“Struggle of the Two Natures in Man”

Opening Reading: e e cummings

rain or hail
sam done
the best he kin
till they digged his hole

sam was a man

stout as a bridge
rugged as a bear
slickern a weasel
how be you

(sun or snow)

gone into what
like all them kings
you read about
and on him sings

a whippoorrwill;

heart was big
as the world aint square
with room for the devil
and his angels too

yes,sir

what may be better
or what may be worse
and what may be clover
clover clover

(nobody’ll know)

sam was a man
grinned his grin
done his chores
laid him down

Sleep well

Victor Hugo said, “I sense two men in myself.”

Is this what Cummings was saying about his man Sam, a good man, with a big heart, and “…room for the devil and his angels, too…what may be better or what may be worse… nobody’ll know…”

Last fall I visited a friend who had recently moved to Manhattan and he told me that he was immersing himself in a City he had loved from a distance for years.

He has a tiny apartment, that he adores, was just a couple of blocks from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. (Location, location!) He was clearly a man in love—in love with the big Apple. He looked at that orchard and said, with relish, “Let’s just walk through the Met so I can show you some of the favorite things I’ve discovered.”

One of the first pieces we visited was a powerful sculpture called The Struggle of the Two Natures of Man by George Gray Barnard. Barnard spent two years on this piece, giving form and substance to that line from Victor Hugo’s poem: “I sense two men in myself.”

My friend is a Congregationalist minister with whom I’ve been in dialogue for over 20 years. I cherish his friendship; we know one another very well—he knew I’d appreciate this marvelous sculpture that symbolized a major part of our twenty-year dialogue about the nature of man; about our potential for good and evil and everything in between.

We stood there in silence—a comfortable silence; a respectful silence, appreciating and absorbing and beauty of Barnard’s work as well as the statement it makes.

The sculpture has two identical men—the two aspects of each of us—who are struggling with one another—wrestling. One is standing, the other is lying down. He appears to be defeated, but he’s still holding on to the other’s leg. The one who appears to be dominating over the other is clearly being held, trapped, by the other.

The one who is dominating at the moment could clearly be pulled down at any time, switching places.

We don’t know which is which, but we know that the sculpture is a statement about the two natures within each of us.

What are the two natures we humans possess? Is it simply good and evil—the creative and destructive potential within each of us, represented by the Hindu gods: Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva?

Brahma is the creator; Vishnu is the preserver; and Shiva is the destroyer. The Hindu myth says that Brahma grew in a lotus out of the navel of the sleeping Vishnu.

You can’t tell by looking at Barnard’s sculpture which one is the angel and which one is the devil. Lincoln referred to ‘the angels of our better nature.” Calvin said we’re all sinners in the hands of an angry god. Billy Graham says that we’re all sinners but Jesus loves you anyway.

What was Barnard saying with that marvelous sculpture?

As we stood there together I was remembered a line from Henry David Thoreau—similar to Victor Hugo’s line “I sense two men in myself.” Thoreau said “The savage in man is never completely eradicated.”

While Thoreau’s comment is pulpit-like, Victor Hugo’s remark is more self-revealing—more like a man talking to his therapist.

What are those ‘two natures’ we sense within ourselves?

It seems too simplistic to say that it’s good and evil; the creative and destructive aspects of the human.

Remember that line in Chief Yellow Lark’s prayer: “I seek strength, not to be greater than my brother, but to be able to fight my greatest enemy, myself.”

Our base (basic) nature struggles to survive, at all costs, under all conditions. The savage can be seen as vicious, merciless, brutal.

The word savage is rooted in the Latin silvaticus: of the woods brutal—from which we get the word sylvan; in Roman mythology Sylvanus is the god of the woods.

(The Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde syndrome touches on the question about the ‘two natures,’ but in the extreme that’s about sanity v. insanity and all the places in between. The recent case of the B.T.K. serial killer in Wichita, Kansas, is another infamous case in point.)

We tend to think in terms of positive and negative aspects of the personality. Can we talk about that aspect of us which has the instinct to survive—the will to withstand extremely difficult circumstances—without putting a negative spin on it? Isn’t that one of the two natures of man?

I have a friend who survived the tsunami; he was swept into the streets and he got in touch with that survival instinct, and he talked about those moments when it was, as he put it, ‘every man for himself.’ He wrote about the experience:

“Two days ago, I was in an internet cafe in Phuket, Thailand when the two tidal waves hit the beach a block away. Three seconds after I hit the send button of the letter I was writing I heard a loud roar. I looked out the window and water was rushing down the street. "Good God," I thought. "What is going on?" However, everything happened very quickly and suddenly the water was rushing against the door of the internet room where I was alone. I realized I had to get out fast, but I couldn't open the door because the flood of water had pushed a big desk against the door. I was trapped and the room was rapidly filling up with water. I looked around and realized I couldn't get out and the water was now up to my waist.

”Just then, there was a loud roar and a second tidal wave came racing up the street; it was the most terrifying noise I ever heard…worse than "incoming." in Vietnam. I thought, "Well, that's it." However, the second wave hit the desk and immediately lifted it out onto the street. That allowed me to open the door and jump into the rushing water. Across the street there was a cafe with a cement verandah. I swam and struggled through the flood of filthy water, filled with chairs, cars, debris etc. and climbed onto the cement porch. However, the water was still rising. Fortunately, there was a tree next to the porch, so I climbed up the tree. People were screaming and crying. Many were drowned because they couldn't swim. The entire town of Phuket was wiped out. Eight people were killed 50 yards from my hotel, which fortunately is on a high hill. My motor scooter was swept away. Then, I had to decide whether to stay in the tree or head for higher ground. Some police came by in the street on a boat and said another big wave was on the way. They took out an old man and a lady in the boat. I wanted to go with them, but of course, I couldn't do that. I thought of what it must have been likeon the Titanic.

“I decided I did not want to stay and take a chance on another wave, so I plunged into the water again, and made my way down the street until finally I reached dry ground. Then I walked back to the hotel, which had been evacuated and all the guests sent to another hotel on a nearby hill. Now, I'm back in the first hotel, which has no water or electricity, but at least it’s safe. The entire beach and all the property are gone. Cars upturned everywhere. I've been through some close ones but this one tops them all.”

One of the two natures we sense within ourselves has something to do with surviving. That’s the same mechanism or instinct that can get out of control, leading to insatiable greed and lust for power, and so forth, which become self-destructive—at least destructive of that thing we call the human spirit, or the soul.

His initial response to being hit by the wave that moved the desk was to survive. But when he felt relatively safe and the police came to the rescue with a small boat, he didn’t get in—he made reference to the Titanic, which has been a study in the ‘two natures of man’ for nearly a century. (1912)

Some time ago I listened with a group of colleagues to a woman who had survived the holocaust. She told us her story, and someone made a comment about her heroism. She said, very sternly, “Please do not call me a hero. I’m a survivor.” Then she said, “There were times when I stole bread—I did whatever I had to do to survive—I’m neither proud nor ashamed, but I’m certainly not a hero.”

The savage is never completely eradicated. There’s a basic survival mechanism that’s built in—it’s not about good and evil; it’s morally neutral, in a way. On the other hand, there’s a heroic quality—the willingness to sacrifice one’s life for the sake of another—not just a loved one, but even a stranger.

In the famous story of Jonah, the reluctant prophet, the captain of the ship on which Jonah was fleeing his mission to Nineveh finds out that the storm is Jonah’s fault. Jonah tells the captain to throw him overboard so the sea would calm and the ship would be saved.

But the captain refuses, at first, saying, “Look, you’re a human being for god’s sake, we can’t just throw you overboard.” (Or words to that effect.)

Maybe the two natures of man are the sacrificial nature on the one extreme, and insatiable greed on the other; selflessness and selfishness; basic survival mechanisms, and the survival mechanisms ‘out of control,’ or taken to the extreme.

Those with whom our nation is at war seem to have no trouble enlisting men and women, young and old, who are willing to strap a bomb on themselves and be sacrificed for their cause. To us they are crazed terrorists; to others they’re heroes.

We all wonder how we would respond in an extreme situation, like the Titanic or the tsunami—we hope that our higher nature would prevail and we wouldn’t take someone else’s place in the lifeboat.

There’s something about the human experience that wants to be tested—challenged, put to the test.

Sometimes we purposely challenge ourselves. The mountain climber doesn’t climb the mountain simply ‘because it’s there’ as they like to say; there are lots of people who see the mountain and don’t climb.

There’s a riveting story about one such climber of the most challenging mountains, Aaron Ralston, who was hiking alone in a canyon in Utah a couple of years ago when a boulder broke loose and fell into the crevice he was navigating and the boulder pinned his right arm. He was trapped.

After five days in that untenable trapped position, after consuming his supply of water and food, he used a pocketknife to amputate his own right arm and free himself.

The food and water had been consumed, but not his zest for living. He had more mountains to climb.

After severing his right arm below the elbow, he used his left arm to apply a tourniquet, then, with one arm, he proceeded to rappel to the bottom of Blue John Canyon. Then he hiked alone for hours until he found other hikers who helped him, and a helicopter came to the rescue.

There’s an intimate relationship between the idea of a survivor and our notion of hero. Survivors become folk heroes.

The story of Aaron Ralston has a myth-like dimension, like the Titan, Prometheus, who stole fire from the gods and was punished by Zeus by being chained to a rock on a mountain, and he had his liver eaten by an Eagle. At night his liver grew back--he survived to live another day, and go through the ordeal once again.

Sometimes life feels like an ordeal to be endured. Job is the prime example.

Aaron Ralston’s story has a mythical dimension—the word Promethean fits; he was defiant in the face of overwhelming odds.

Survival stories capture our imagination because we’re all in the process of surviving, day to day. Most of us won’t be faced with the magnitude of Ralston’s challenging episode; but we’re all capable of imagining ourselves in some kind of situation that requires more from us than we’ve ever yet had to give.

Survivor shows on television have become surprisingly popular. They’re mislabeled ‘reality shows. They attract huge audiences. Why is that?

I’ve only bumped into them switching channels; I’m not attracted, but I’m interested in their popularity. They seem so contrived. You must have seen the ads for them, showing a group of people living on an island in competitive situations, eating and bugs and worms, eliminating one member, week by week, using what looks like a cut-throat, dog-eat-dog process of elimination.

Another kind of survivor show is about women who want to marry a rich young bachelor; one by one they are eliminated until the lucky woman wins the man. (Be careful what you ask for!) Then there are the shows about handsome young bachelors who want to marry the beautiful rich young woman, with only one survivor to tie the knot. I guess it’s the human version of the alpha wolf who rules over the pack.

Another survivor show is American Idol, very popular with teenagers, where young singers struggle to be the last contestant standing, after the television audience votes for their favorite, week after week, to determine the ultimate survivor, the new American Idol.

I’ll mention only one more--the show about a densely populated jungle-like island--the island of Manhattan, ruled over by a rich king with a big red lion-like mane; young wanna-be apprentices tremble at his feet as he growls and carries on, terrorizing job applicants, like some stone-age monster. Then he says the thing the islanders fear more than anything else: You’re fired! The king of the jungle destroys all hope.

I’ve never actually watched the Donald Trump show, so maybe I shouldn’t judge. I only know it’s about jungle-like survival; it’s about the two natures of man.

It reminds me of a favorite New Yorker cartoon I saw man years ago and wish I had saved. The cartoon shows a picture of a mother saying good-bye to her adolescent son; they’re standing together in the jungle, he’s dressed in a Tarzan-like outfit. The caption says, “Be careful, son, it’s like a city out there.”

There’s something that attracts us to survivor stories because we so easily identify with people who are struggling to survive--to move through the ordeal of living, and to savor the joy of loving.

The theme of survival runs through the mythology in the Bible. After the Genesis creation myth everything that follows is about survival. The story says, ‘on the seventh day he rested.’ Then came the eighth day—the one we’re living.

On the eighth day, Adam and Eve are evicted from paradise. They are condemned to death, preceded by an existence that amounts to mere survival under punishing conditions of poverty and depravation.

Then there’s the story of their children, Cain and Abel. Cain, the person in the Biblical myth who was born in a natural way, kills the second person, his brother Abel. The story of Cain and Abel is the first survivor story. Abel was eliminated, violently. As a punishment, God condemns Cain to live, putting a mark on him as a sign to everyone else that he should not be put to death. He has to live! He has to spend his life wandering the earth, an outcast, shunned.

Then there’s the Noah story: Noah and his family survived while all the rest of the people of the earth perished in the flood. Daniel survives the lion den. Jesus, the story says, survived the crucifixion—the stone was rolled away and he ascended to heaven. The underlying theme of Biblical mythology is survival!

There is a heroic quality to every person’s life, including yours and mine. Mythology speaks to us because it tells stories with which we can identify, stories in which we find ourselves and feel ourselves. There’s something liberating about those feelings—that’s why mythological stories were written and passed down from generation to generation.

But there’s an important difference between the hero and the survivor.

We have our own stories of survival: we survive the deaths of loved ones; we survive divorces and diseases and bad decisions; we survive the loss of jobs, the loss of friends; we survive the loss of youth, the loss of stamina and mobility. We survive the depression that results from such losses, and we might have to survive a clinical depression, as described by William Styron in his very moving account of the deep depression into which he had been plunged, Darkness Visible.

Lecture 5

The Hero in American Culture: The Legacy of Christopher Reeve

Opening Words: “So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable. If we can conquer outer space we can conquer inner space, too.”

These sentiments from Christopher Reeve explain the title of his second book, Nothing is Impossible.

But more importantly, they summarize a life by which we were inspired—an inspiration that helped to give us the courage to live our own lives by witnessing, close-up, the way he lived his own life, especially following the tragic accident that paralyzed him.

In an ironic twist his paralysis forced an intense focus on work will continue as a legacy—the paralysis foundation; research arm, and helping quadriplegics live a better life.

His legacy, both the memory of a life well-lived, including the adversity, as well as the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation, lives on.

His influence helps each of us, I think, by encouraging us to live our own lives in this real down-to-earth world with dignity, courage and the determination to do our little something to make the day better for our having been here.

Several years ago, just before our eleven o’clock Sunday service, one of the ushers came to my office and said, “Christopher Reeve just pulled up to the handicap ramp.”

I had no idea he was coming to church—that was his first visit, so I went out to greet him and the ushers moved some chairs down in the front row to make a space for him to maneuver his chair.

During the next few years Chris and I would become good friends.

I was shocked on that Monday morning last October when I got a call from Chris’s wife, Dana, telling me that he had died; I had just spoken to him a few days before and we were arranging a visit to work out the details for a interview he’d agreed to with the UU World.

We were all shocked, saddened and at least a little more surprised than we should have been.

After all, he had lived for nearly ten years with a major spinal cord injury—two years beyond what was normally expected.

But we expected more because Chris did not seem to fit into any of the normal categories—the actuarial charts were designed for mere mortals.

Christopher Reeve had become a mythic hero figure.

First, he was Superman: he leaped tall buildings with a single bound, he was faster than a speeding bullet; he saved Lois Lane and, single-handed, he rescued a doomed world from destruction. What a hero!

The mythic hero in religion and mythology is extraordinary--an inspiration for ordinary living. The mythic hero figure speaks directly to the heart, not the earth-bound rational mind that holds us down. The mythic hero touches something in us that is generally beyond our capacity to explain or describe; it’s a universal something, deep within.

The mythic hero figure brings hope and courage to the day-to-day, down-to-earth life that we mere mortals are living.

The hero is usually introduced in his or her ordinary world, then moving to the extraordinary—the special world that’s new and alien to the hero.

The hero is presented with a problem or challenge—an adventure ensues. The hero is reluctant, at first; but the hero is encouraged by some wise old man or woman—a mentor.

One of the great ironies is that the Superman character Chris played--the ultimate hero--was eventually overshadowed by the mortal man, the man who suffered a paralyzing spinal cord injury and became a real-life hero; an inspiration.

We knew that the Superman character couldn’t really fly, but something in us feels too tied to the ground, too limited. Something in us wishes we could fly.Dream analysts like Carl Jung have a lot to say about those flying dreams. (Have you had a flying dream, lately?)

We knew that the on-screen Superman character was not really invulnerable to the bullets that bounced off of him, but something in us feels so vulnerable to the bombs and bullets, to the diseases (like the flu) that we love the mythological character who is invulnerable—the hero. We wish we weren’t so vulnerable.

In one of the most ironic twists of fate Christopher Reeve sustained an injury on Memorial Day weekend in 1995, during an equestrian competition, while approaching a rather routine jump. Chris was thrown to the ground and broke his spinal cord very high up, completely paralyzing him. He was kept alive by a ventilator that did his breathing for him.

When he regained consciousness a few days after the injury he was told that he had a 50/50 chance to survive the surgery to re-attach his head to his spinal column. He was told that he would never walk again.

His initial response drove him into the depths—he had to go there, on his own. He called into question the very idea of continuing to live under those conditions. Before he could use his voice again, he mouthed words to Dana: “Maybe we should just let me go.”

We’re reminded of the Biblical character, Job, who endured so many losses until he finally said he wanted to die—and his wife agreed. “Why don’t you just curse God and die,” she said to him.

Chris had to enter those depths and to look into the heart of that ultimate question, the one posed by Hamlet:

To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune;
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing, end them: to die, to sleep
No more: and by a sleep, to say we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to: ‘Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep…”

Albert Camu put it this way: “There is only one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest—whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories—comes afterwards. These are games. One must first answer. And if it is true, as Nietzsche claims, that a philosopher, to deserve our respect, must preach by example, you can appreciate the importance of that reply, for it will precede the definitive act. These are facts the heart can feel; yet they call for careful study before they become clear to the intellect.”

As soon as he regained consciousness Chris confronted this basic philosophical problem head-on: to be, or not to be.

Unlike Job’s wife, Chris’s wife, Dana, listened, she let him know that she heard what he was saying—how he was feeling, and she asked him to give it just two years. If, at the end of that time, he chose to end it, she would support his decision.

She said, “You’re still you, and I love you.” He said that those words became a pivotal moment for him. He wrote a book titled, Still Me, in which he talked about the feelings that came out of those depths, and the remarkable transition that he experienced.

The great irony is that it was only after the accident that he acquired the status of a living, human hero, in the sense that he became an inspiration for living.

That’s what a true hero is: an inspiration; a spiritual guide, if you will; a motivation—a call to action.

Chris’s arms and legs were no longer working, but his mind was working overtime. He gained a new kind of consciousness. “I have never been disabled in my dreams,” he said.

So Chris moved from the extraordinary world of the movie star celebrity playing the ultimate hero character, to an ordinary man in a wheel chair.

He was presented with a problem, a challenge. He was reluctant, at first, telling Dana, “Maybe we should just let me go.”

He was encouraged by a wise, loving wife who convinced him to ‘give it a year.’

So Chris entered his new, special, challenging world. This is the hero’s journey. He indicated his commitment to the journey by saying, “I will walk again.”

He encountered tests and helpers, and he encountered (as all heroes must) obstacles and enemies.

One day I took Bill Sinkford to Chris’s house to meet him and talk about Chris doing the interview for UUWorld. We got talking about stem-cell research and Bill said something like, “Well, I have nothing against the Christian right,” and Chris said, “Well I do!” Then he launched into a spontaneous and powerful sermon about why he was a Unitarian—how I wish I had a tape recorder playing for those few minutes.

Chris talked about Bill Frist and the others who were working against stem-cell research. Heroes must encounter obstacles and enemies. They must face the possibility of death, and they have to ‘seize the sword,’ take up the cause.

Joseph Campbell says, “Sometimes the ‘sword’ is knowledge and experience that leads to greater understanding and a reconciliation with hostile forces.”

Chris was careful about his public statements about the religious right—he had been invited to the Oval Office on several occasions, and he didn’t want to put that in jeopardy.

The hero in literature is resurrected, or transformed by his experience—taken out of his ordinary life into a new life, an adventure that changes him forever. He returns to the ordinary world with some kind of treasure that will benefit the world. Chris believed that stem cells hold that potential.

The hero figure gains a new kind of consciousness that takes him out of the confines of a very limited self. The individual self is transcended and a new kind of consciousness emerges which causes him to spend the rest of his life working to help people with all kinds of disabilities.

Senator Tom Harkin summarized it nicely in his eulogy on Friday afternoon at Chris’s remarkable memorial service. Harkin said that Chris turned his wheel chair into a bully pulpit—a pulpit on wheels.

I smiled to myself, thinking about the pulpit I occupy in Westport—the only other pulpit I know of that’s on wheels! The pulpit at the Unitarian Church in Westport was donated by Norman Cousins, in memory of Albert Schweitzer. Like Chris Reeve, Norman Cousins demonstrated the same kind of determination to live in the face of a debilitating illness.

“…a philosopher, to deserve our respect, must preach by example.” Do you know a better example than Chris Reeve?

We use the word hero very loosely in our culture. Sometimes it’s even used by politicians for personal gain, calling someone you sent into the line of fire a hero because he was killed doing what you told him to do. The word hero is used instead of the more appropriate word: victim.

The word ‘hero’ is sometimes used by clergy to promote their particular brand of religion. The word ‘hero’ is used by those who want to encourage young men and women to go to war—everyone who dies in war is called a hero by those who sent them to die.

The word hero was used to describe the victims of 9/11.

We sometimes confuse celebrities with heroes. The celebrity is a famous person whose persona is created in movies or sports and so forth.

Chris Reeve carried the celebrity, movie-star persona with a smile; but he became deadly serious about his task as a quadriplegic; deadly serious about the need to open the doors for scientists to find a cure for spinal cord injuries, to find cures for diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, and Alzheimer’s disease, and lots of other deadly diseases the cure for which millions of people are waiting for us to discover.

Chris saw the possibilities of stem-cell research, but in a more general sense he saw the possibilities in our ability to get over the idea that it’s not possible; he saw the possibilities of science, which simply means our ability to think things through, to figure things out, and not to be prevented from thinking by those with limited vision, those who can be blinded by a kind of idolatry that imposes some worn-out notions about what God wants and in a strange theological twist prevents us from becoming what we’re capable of becoming!

That’s why Chris titled his second book, Nothing is Impossible.

Dana let Chris know that she heard what he was saying in his initial response to paralysis. She did not deny the depths of his pain—that would only isolate him all the more, frustrate him all the more. She promised that she would help him to let go of this world—to ‘shuffle off this mortal coil,’ if he would just give two years to the transition process his paralysis required.

He agreed, and in a lot less than two years he made that transition—which turned out to be a transformation of heroic proportions, beyond the myth to the man—the real, down-to-earth mortal man. That’s when Chris became a real hero.

Joseph Campbell, who wrote about the myths we live by, who understood the depth of the concept of hero, said, “The hero is a man of self-achieved submission.”

(Note: A footnote to the word hero in my American Heritage Dictionary says: ‘Many writers now consider hero, long restricted to men in the sense of ‘a person noted for courageous action,’ to be a gender-neutral term. It is used to refer to admired women as well as men in respected publications. The word heroine is still useful, however, in referring to the principal female character of a fictional work’.)

(It’s also interesting to note that in Greek mythology the priestess of Aphrodite is a woman named Hero.)

In mythology the hero figure first survives a crisis by which he or she moves to a higher spiritual plane and willingly takes up the new work that is required of him or her.

There is a heroic quality to each of our lives; we must survive the various crises, the changes and challenges that confront us. Chris reminded us, by his living, that heroism is a built-in fact of life for every one of us. A myth, remember, is a truth story: a good myth is about you and me—it’s the truth about living life.

The first step in the journey of the hero is to withdraw, to detach from the ordinary day-to-day life. We all have to do it—it’s the inner journey, the inner life—it’s about that thing we loosely call our religious life, or our spiritual life.

Take the well-known legend of the Buddha: he leaves the sheltered life in his father’s castle, where he was protected from even seeing illness, poverty, old age and death.

The journey of the Buddha is meant to be the universal story of a every one of us, using as a hero figure the young prince who adventures boldly out of his father’s castle—he leaves the safety of the known.

Siddhartha sees a beggar for the first time—he learns about poverty. He sees a man who is ill and another who is bent over with old age and another who has died along the road—he learns about illness and death.

He’s knocked off his feet; he wants to understand what it all means; he eventually withdraws by sitting under the Bo tree for forty days until he receives enlightenment—a new kind of consciousness--he breaks through the limits of his former, day-to-day mindset. He sees something deeper. He gets it!

This is pure mythology. It describes the inward journey we all take when we leave the old comfort zone; limited consciousness.

The hero motif can be found in all the mythologies. It’s the story of Adam and Eve being evicted from the Garden—the paradise they lost. It’s the story of Noah weathering the forty-day storm.

It’s the story of Moses who was raised in the Pharaoh’s home, protected from the realities of slave labor—he was even protected from his own Hebrew identity, raised as an Egyptian. Then the crisis occurs and he has to withdraw from Egypt, only to return after his encounter with the burning bush.

It’s the story of Jesus who withdrew into the desert for forty days.

It’s your story, when you ‘get it.’ It’s my story, when I ‘get it,’ and certainly it’s the story of Christopher Reeve who faced a terrifying crisis that transformed his life, forcing him to rise above the limitations of his injury by attaining the self-achieved submission to which Campbell referred.

Submission is a word with some spiritual connotations, too. It has to do with the humility that exalts: who humbles himself will be exalted. It can sound like giving up, especially to those of us who put such emphasis on self-reliance. But there needs to be a balance, and submission can be a word that conveys a kind of heroic acceptance of what is, rather than wishing things weren’t really the way they truly are.

Chris said, “I will walk again!”

It’s tempting to say that he failed to live up to that prediction. But it wasn’t really a prediction about some future event—it was, I came to realize, a statement about the attitude he acquired when he emerged from the depths into which he had been plunged by his paralysis.

“I will walk again,” is an indication of an attitude we all need to have--a positive attitude we have to have when we’re thrown from whatever horse we’ve been riding—a determination to face the adversities life delivers.

Again, Shakespeare said it: “Sweet are the uses of adversity!” (As You Like It)

Never was there a sweeter use of an adversity than the one we witnessed in Christopher Reeve.

The horse-riding accident resulted in a radical transfer of emphasis from the external world, the world in which Chris Reeve had such success by the world’s standards, into the internal world. His very survival depended on it, and so does yours, and so does mine.

At his memorial service Robert Kennedy, Jr. said that Chris was not a religious man, in the traditional sense, but he was the ‘most spiritual man I’ve ever known.’

That was the place where I met Christopher Reeve: the deep spiritual place, the internal world, and in another strange twist it was there that Chris Reeve ministered to me more than I could possibly minister to him; but I realize that it’s always a two-way street. We traveled a portion of it together, and for that journey I will be forever grateful.

I heard many a sermon from his pulpit on wheels—sermons that inspired me to continue my own work, my own life, in my own way; sermons he gave to people I took to meet him in his home, and sermons I learned about that he gave in the oval office and in the Senate chambers, and in the halls of Congress.

I marveled at the way Chris adjusted, maintaining his role as father and husband; expanding and deepening his role as friend and mentor.

Chris came to the Unitarian Church to find support for the inner journey—his own journey.

I was taken by surprise when I first saw him in the courtyard as he operated his wheelchair with his mouth. My first response was to simply introduce myself, to welcome him as I hope to be able to do with any new person, and then to give him whatever room he needs.

After he and Dana had been attending for a while, it became clear that it was time for a visit in his home.

I’ll never forget the first time he and I sat together for more than two hours; it didn’t take long for me to forget that he was in a wheel chair; he was one of the brightest, best-informed, alert, sensitive and caring men I’ve ever met.

He smiled quickly, easily and frequently.

He told me about his life and asked me about mine—the external part; and he talked with me about his internal life, and asked me about mine.

He told me that he had flown a plane, solo, across the Atlantic, twice. He told me about his sailing days.

At the first memorial service at his home, in the yard he loved to look at through his office window, I recited the John Masefield poem:

Sea-Fever, John Masefield

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky, and all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by, and the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking, and a gray mist on the sea's face and a gray dawn breaking.

I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied; and all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying, and the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

I must go down to the seas again to the vagrant gypsy life. To the gull's way and the whale's way where the wind's like a whetted knife; and all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover, and quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over.”

When I brought Dave and Pam Driscoll, who bid on the ‘tea with Chris and Dana’ at a fund-raiser for our ABC (A Better Chance) house, he talked at length about films on which he was working, including The Brooke Ellison story, which he completed just days before he died; and he talked about his first attempt at an animated film about baseball. We spent 2 ½ hours with him that day.

When a friend of one of our members suffered a serious spinal cord injury in an accident on route 95, I asked Chris to call the young man, which he did, but only after learning some details that would help him to make what he referred to as ‘a support call.’ He made many of those calls.

In some very real and effective ways, Chris took on the role of a combination of a minister and therapist. He was good at it because it came so naturally to him. His bully pulpit on wheels was also a pastoral-ministry chair.

Chris was only 52 years old when he died on October 10; but he lived a rich, full life, influencing so many.

He was an inspiration…a real life hero.

I was honored to participate in his remarkable, inspirational life, and to conduct two memorial services, one at his home with close family and friends, and the other at Julliard. The Julliard memorial was the most powerful service I’ve witnessed, or am likely to ever see again.

Speakers included his twelve-year old son Will, and his wife, Dana; his older son, Matthew—whose memorial film was shown; and his daughter Alexandra, who is a student at Yale.

Some of his nurses and care takers spoke; Tom Harkins thanked Chris for helping him keep his seat in the U. S. Senate; other friends spoke: Robert Kennedy; Glenn Close; Meryl Streep and his dear friend Robin Williams; the caste from The Lion King sang Circle of Life.

Robin Williams concluded his moving tribute with a poem from E. E. Cummings:

Buffalo Bill's
defunct

who used to
ride a watersmooth-silver
stallion
and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat
Jesus

he was a handsome man
and what I want to know is

how do you like your blueeyed boy

Mister Death

For my closing words I used Carl Sandburg’s perfect little poem, Stars, Songs and Faces:

Gather the stars if you wish it so
Gather the songs and keep them
Gather the faces of women (and men).
Gather for keeping years and years.

And then…
Loosen your hands, let go and say good-by.
Let the stars and songs go.
Let the faces and years go.
Loosen your hands and say good-by

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