I like to say that Unitarian Universalism is a “reality-based” religion. I mean both that we honor science and are skeptical of supernaturalism, and also that we wish to build our faith from the truth, even if it’s a hard truth. The American Thanksgiving holiday is a good example of how we work to correct stories of our past, and find both initial pain and ultimately liberation in the process.
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We’re coming to the close of a long meditation on the spiritual question of identity, “Who am I?” as an individual. And “Who are we?” as the kind of animal called human, and also, “Who are we?” as a congregation. You will need to have an answer to that question when you start to look for a new settled minister. Minister candidates will want to know who you are. You will need to know who you are so you can choose the minister who will be a good fit.
So, we will spend a few more Sundays on the identity question. And then after Christmas we will turn to the second of the three spiritual questions we are considering this year: the question of meaning, “why does it matter?” In the spring we will get to the third question, the question of purpose, “what should we do?”
We’ve looked at identity in several ways so far: our personal biography, the work we do, the relationship roles that define us in families and communities, our historical identity. And in the last few weeks we’ve looked at identity through the marker of some of the core values we hold: democracy, freedom, reason, and tolerance.
Today I want to add an additional value I see as central to our faith and a key to our identity as a religious community.
I mean the value of truth. The truth is important here, even difficult truths.
As Stephen Kendrick wrote in the words of our meditation, “We are here to face the truth, about ourselves, about this faith we love, and the ways it presently serves others and the world, as well as to open ourselves to ways it can better, and more joyfully, reflect our potential and core values.”
Our value of truth leads us to a principle of trying to ground our faith in reality. Unitarian Universalists strive to ask ourselves, “Is that true?” What’s the evidence for that? Is that really what the Bible says? What else does it say? Is the Bible truly the kind of document that you claim it to be? Is that what the statistics actually tell us? Let’s look. Is that what he really said? Let’s ask. Do we actually know that, or is that just something you read on Twitter?
I like to use the phrase that Unitarian Universalism strives to be a reality-based religion. We strive to ground ourselves in the real world. We build up our faith from what is real. We strengthen our faith by incorporating deeper wisdom. Our faith changes as new knowledge about the world is revealed. We change our minds when the facts change. And when our faith begins to falter we find it again by returning to the real world around us.
Consider for instance, the traditional Thanksgiving story of Puritans landing peacefully in New England. Religious freedom seekers. Welcomed by generous native peoples who help them survive a harsh winter. And the next year, celebrating a bountiful harvest together.
We know now that is only part of the story. Not entirely true even as it is, it also leaves out the greater part of the truth. The cruelty and violence of the settlers perpetrated against the native peoples. The near genocide of the native populations and the forced removal of the survivors. The betrayal and deception. Laws and religion used to justify injustice.
We know now why some descendants of the native peoples of the area mark the American Thanksgiving holiday as a day of mourning.
That too is part of the story. And as a story it also has its own imperfect relationship to the truth, reality always being more complicated and subtle than any story can capture.
But telling the fuller, more complicated story gets us closer to the real world where we want to be as a reality-based religion. And though our happy Thanksgiving story about welcome and generosity has been shaded now by a larger story of darker human reality, because our feet are now more firmly planted in the real, we are able to respond in ways that are healthier, for our own spirits, and more healing and helpful for the world we share.
It is a good thing. But being reality-based isn’t always the easy thing. Knowing the truth of reality asks something of us. To go deeper, at least. And sometimes to go to deeply uncomfortable places. Some people would rather not go there. They want a spirituality of light and air and angels and blessing only. Unitarian Universalism asks us to follow wherever the truth leads.
Faith, for me, must be connected to the real world. The real world of flesh and blood, and human societies, and the natural world. To be useful, spirituality needs to be firmly attached to the ground. “What are you actually talking about?” I want to ask. How does this connect to the real lives of real people? How is this going to make any real person’s life better or ease their suffering?
If there’s a fable, or a myth, or an esoteric wisdom that serves to get you to that place of creating lives of health and joy for yourself and others and the world we share, then I’m all for it. But for that, either because our faith starts at the real world, or ends there, spirituality must be connected to reality.
One answer to the question of identity, who are we? Is that Unitarian Universalism is a reality-based religion.
As I was writing this sermon over the last week I received an email: clearly a spam email, the type I would normally simply delete as soon as I recognized it. But this email so clearly demonstrated the theme of my sermon I saved it to share with you.
The email was from “apocalpypse @ the magic energy.shop”
And the subject line was “They have plans to destroy humanity”
Well, I wanted to read that. Here’s the text of the email:
“They want to reduce the population of us “useless eaters” from 7.753 billion down to only 500 million!” Yup that’s right.
I know it might sound a bit out there… But a brave woman named Jackie Jones discovered a classified document with instructions for humanity to rebuild itself after an apocalypse. And if the last couple of years haven’t made you suspicious… This will shock you…
See, Jackie discovered the reason why Adam lived to 930 years old, Seth to the age of 912, And Methuselah for 969 years
Most importantly, she discovered why humans nowadays can’t live that long anymore.
A few powerful greedy “Elites” changed something called the Tree of Life…
They don’t want us to live long lives filled with abundance and miracles. They did everything to keep us separated and stop us from manifesting our greatest dreams with ease and grace. They know that when we learn how to tap into the power of the TRUE Tree of Life… Abundance happens automatically and we can manifest whatever we want in life.
But they DON’T want that to happen or they lose control over us.
There is a LOT more to this.
FAR more than I can put into this message.
And the powerful truth my friend Jackie uncovered will absolutely blow your mind…
Have a look for yourself before it’s too late..”
There’s a link there which I did not click on. Then there’s this P.S.
“P.S. Unfortunately, the evil “Elite” who altered the Tree of Life are incredibly powerful.
My friend Jackie keeps getting phone threats. So I have no idea how much longer she can keep her website running. Check it out here before these evil jerks take it down.”
I love that these incredibly powerful elites, capable of changing something called the tree of life, keeping life-changing knowledge secret, controlling all humanity, are incapable of shutting down a website managed by a woman named Jackie Jones. Poor, brave, Jackie. She’s the only force standing between us and an apocalypse planned to wipe out 7 billion people! She’s getting phone threats, people!
I feel bad for anyone who clicks a link and spends money on something useless. I feel bad for people so ready to see the world as a place of secret conspiracies plotting against us. So eager for a little excitement in their lives that the idea of an apocalypse gives them the energetic thrill they were missing. So eager for mystery that they’re willing to believe that people in the Old Testament might really have lived for more than 900 years, and that if they only ate the right special herb, or swallowed the right supplement, and sent the right amount of money to the right people, they could live that long, too.
My faith knows that nothing helpful for living in the real world can come from a place not connected to the real world. If you want health, and joy, in this world and security from the actual dangers of this world, and excitement and wonder in your life that will actually satisfy and sustain you in this life, it must come from reality, from the truth, not from “my friend Jackie Jones.”
Two of my best friends are both psychologists. They’re married to each other. I learned from them a simple tool for regulating our emotions if we’re starting to feel anxious or stressed.
The technique, when you’re feeling depressed or fearful is to stop whatever you’re doing, take a break from whatever situation you’re in and simply look around. And as you look you simply name what you’re actually seeing.
Imagine you’re at the supermarket and you start to feel anxiety coming up. Maybe you don’t know why. Maybe you’re re-feeling a stressful interaction you had earlier that day, or maybe you’re starting to dread a conversation you know you’re going to have to have later that day.
Your anxiety starts to disconnect you from the here and now. You’re no longer fully in the supermarket. You’re starting to drift away. You’re in your head. You’re in your thoughts. You feel dizzy. Your throat gets tight.
So the technique is to stop. Simply look around the supermarket and say what you see:
Red apple. Carton of milk. Woman in a plaid coat. A bouquet of flowers.
Just name what you see. Make a list. Be specific. Be methodical. Tub of cream cheese. A greeting card. Mylar balloons. Grey tile. Glass door. Remember to breathe. Look. Name.
I’ve used this technique for myself when I get nervous. And I’ve offered this technique as a way to calm someone I’m trying to help. If I feel a conversation starting to go to a difficult place. Emotions are starting to rise. Simply ground yourself. Where are you right now? Carpet. Chair. White window blinds. Blue vase.
The technique gives your mind something to do, so you interrupt the swirling cascade of anxious thoughts. But most helpful, is that the technique moves your mind out of the realm of stories and interpretations and imagination, and connects you back to what’s real. What’s really in front of you?
Red apple. Yellow banana.
That story replaying in your head of what happened earlier in the day, or earlier in your life, isn’t real. It’s a story filtered through your imperfect memory and your unconscious bias. At best it’s only part of the story. And even as you were experiencing the event that you’re now remembering, your mind was making assumptions, and interpreting words and gestures, so that even then you weren’t experiencing the situation directly. The story wasn’t ever real, and it certainly isn’t the reality that’s happening in this moment. This moment is where you should be. Not lost in some story. And your worry about what may or may not happen later when you get home isn’t this moment’s reality either, and isn’t serving your present health. Our mind’s stories, troubling memories, guesses, and theories, and possibilities, pull us away from the real world of here and now. So look here. Say what you see. Connect yourself back to the real.
To hold tightly to the truth, and hold tightly to the principle of being a reality-based religion, is helpful both for our own spiritual and mental health, (and helpful to avoid email scams), it’s also helpful in our social and political life, and in the life of a community like our church, as well.
At the end of the day, what we want in our church, and in our city, and in our nation, is policies and practices that help real people with the real issues they face that create real suffering in real lives.
When we find ourselves moving to abstractions, theories, and ideologies, we can be tempted to get our policies perfect while neglecting people. We assume that if the ideology is right, that automatically it will be helpful. Or that if people’s lives aren’t getting better it must be their own ignorance and stubbornness, not a problem with our perfect theory.
“How do we get them to understand and believe my beautiful story?” we ask, rather than listening to what they clearly are saying for themselves. “Why do they insist on voting in ways that are against their own best interest?” Or, as we used to say, “What’s the matter with Kansas?” When what we ought to be saying is, why am I more attached to the beautiful theory in my head, than I am attached to the real people living in the real world, who are making the best decisions they can make for themselves in their real lives?
Yes, we should be helping people living under illusions connect to reality. No doubt. All people will be better served by being more closely connected to the truth. But we should be careful not to assume it is only other people who suffer from illusions.
“Who is actually being helped?” we should be asking, not, “Have I got my theory right?” Whose life is actually being made better? Whose suffering is being relieved? Not what’s the best story, the cleanest theory, the accepted ideology, the proper language. Not, what story can I tell that assigns blame to the people I have already decided are worthy of blame, but, what is the truth, about others and myself?
Ask, “What is really real, right now, in real life, in the real world?”
Red apple. Carton of milk. Woman in a plaid coat.
Our call to worship this morning came from the words of the poet Stephen Mitchell based on Psalm number one. He writes: “Blessed are the man and the woman who … no longer nourish illusions. But they delight in the way things are and keep their hearts open, day and night.”
Connecting with the way things actually are, is the way to spiritual health and joy. “Happy are those” says the Psalm.
It’s a picture of the world that says that reality is good, wholesome, life-giving, nurturing, calming and soothing. It’s when we start down the path of illusion, that we get into trouble.
It’s not that the truth isn’t sometimes troubling, consider the truth of the first Thanksgiving. “The way is often hard, the path is never clear, and the stakes are very high.” But there is no path to health and joy that doesn’t begin with reality however hard the ground.
Instead, says the Psalm, consider the trees. How they live. Not by stories, and interpretations, and worries and fantasies, but planted in the ground. Literally grounded in what really is.
Planted by streams of water, yielding their fruit in its season. Their leaves do not wither. In all that they do, they prosper.
Tree. River. Green leaves.
Why are our spirits refreshed when we walk in nature?
Perhaps because we are so delighted by what is really in front of us that we forget for a time to tell our stories of depression, anxiety, and fear.
Sunlight. Bird song. Wildflower. Colored rock.
Perhaps because the real is more beautiful than any theory. A real day is happier than any story. This actual moment is more true than any memory of the past or guess of the future.
This is the world, friends. And you are in it.
May our faith be grounded so. May our lives be grounded so. May we reach for the truth as best we may, strive to know it better, and let the truth set our spirits free.