The spiritual sense of “right” begins with intuiting a standard beyond our personal preference and then working to conform our lives to that standard.  For some the standard exists in God, or a sacred text.  For Unitarian Universalists the standard more often exists in a personal intuition about the best and highest for ourselves.

            When I was in seminary, I had to read and study the Bible.  Old and new testaments.  I went to a Methodist seminary, so for most of the students a sure knowledge of the Bible was going to be more relevant to their ministry that it was going to be for me.  But I still valued studying the Bible because the Bible is a foundation of our culture.  

If the Bible doesn’t mean much to me, spiritually, it sure means a lot to a lot of people.  The Bible is referred to, quoted, invoked, constantly in our social and political lives.  Stories from the Bible show up in the paintings I enjoy looking at, and the Opera I enjoy.  I feel that knowledge of the Bible, and what it really says, rather than what someone has told you it says, is an important part of a well-rounded education, and I was glad to have the chance, at seminary, to study the Bible, with Professors who approached the book from an academic not religious, scholarly, not faith, perspective.

            I found my Old Testament class to be particularly fascinating.

            We looked at the history of the tribes of Abraham and his descendants and compared what archaeologists know about the history with the different way it’s told in the Bible.  We asked the questions, Who wrote this?  When did they write it? and Why?

            We looked at the two different creation accounts, the stories of Abraham and Sarah, Noah and the ark, Jacob wrestling with the angel, Joseph and his brothers, Moses and the Exodus, and the pages and pages of laws in Leviticus and Deuteronomy.

            And here is what I learned about all of those laws.

            I had thought that the Hebrew people who developed these laws, were doing the best they could to make healthy, safe, lives for individuals and their community.  So something like the commandment not to eat pork might arise from people noticing that people who eat pork sometimes get sick afterward, and so it’s probably best that we don’t eat it.

            That kind of model might explain some of the laws, but there are hundreds of laws in the text, and they don’t all have that kind of direct connection between consequences like getting trichinosis and actions like eating undercooked pork.

            As I read through the laws I began to notice (I was encouraged to notice this by my teachers, this isn’t an original idea) that nearly all the laws concern themselves with making distinctions between the various things of the world, and then making sure that each different thing is kept to its own appropriate place.  It’s “kosher” when something expresses its true identity and stays where it belongs.  It’s not “kosher” when things get mixed up with other things, when a creature’s nature seems confused within itself, or when something proper for one place strays into a different place.

            For instance, in the first account of creation, the “Let there be light” story, God carefully lays out the world into three realms:  the sky, the earth, and the sea.  And then God carefully fills each realm with appropriate creatures:  birds that fly in the sky; plants on land with animals that walk on the land; and finally fish that swim in the sea.

            So what’s not kosher about shellfish, for instance, is that shellfish live in the sea, but they don’t swim.  They act like land animals attached to or walking around on the ocean floor.  They’ve mixed two kinds of being in one animal.  They’re in the wrong place.

            Wearing garments made of two different fibers, or planting a field with two kinds of crops, has this same mixed-up quality.  God created the world as a perfectly ordered place.  It’s wrong to mix things up.

            The same goes with the many commandments about men and women.  Each of the sexes have their own proper place and proper role.  Men shouldn’t act like women.  Women shouldn’t do the things that are reserved for men.

            Further laws have to do with the Hebrew people as a comunity trying to define themselves as a separate people distinct from the other tribes around them.  The laws about circumcision for instance, or laws about what to wear, or the way to wear their hair, are all about keeping people from getting mixed up with other people and in places they don’t belong. I believe the law about not eating pork is actually related to this goal of making distinctions and keeping different things separate: “They” eat pork, in that other tribe, over there. “We” do not.

            We are talking in worship, this season, from the winter solstice to the Spring Equinox coming up later this month, about the personal goals of a spiritual life.  The “why do you do it?” question of belonging to a spiritual community like this church and following a spiritual practice.

            We’re looking at the personal goals first:  the goals that an individual hopes to achieve for themselves through their spiritual work.  After the Equinox, and then for the rest of the church year, we will look at the social goals of religion, which is what we hope for all people and the world we share, inspired by our religious principles for people beyond our religion.

            For personal spiritual goals, so far, we’ve looked at wisdom, courage, joy, personal power, and, last Sunday, peace.

            Today I want to look at the spiritual goal of order.  A sense of right-ness about the world, or righteousness within ourselves.  That sense that there’s a place for everything and everything in its place.  The satisfaction of knowing that our personal world is properly ordered, doing what you’re supposed to do, where you’re supposed to be, the right person, at the right place, at the right time.

            It’s the sense that there is a perfect ideal out there, and that it is our goal, through spiritual practice, to discern that perfect order, and then to fit ourselves into it, to organize our lives, both internally, and in the places where we spend our lives, so that our lives match that perfect ideal.  To keep, “turning, turning, ‘till we come ‘round right.”  “And when we find ourselves in the place just right, ‘twill be in the valley of love and delight.”

            I’m thinking of a quote from the movie Mommie Dearest, where Faye Dunaway playing Joan Crawford, rents a new apartment and she’s unhappy that one of the exterior walls doesn’t have a window and blocks the view.  She doesn’t care that there are very good structural reason why you can’t have a window in that wall.  And she says, “Tear down that [bleep] of a bearing wall and put a window where a window ought to be.”

            It’s that sense of “ought” that I’m talking about this morning.  Right and wrong.  Knowing one’s moral duty.  Living by a code of conduct that comes from a source beyond yourself.  Taking direction, rather than doing whatever you will.

            It’s like those people who know exactly which fork to use for which course at a fancy dinner.  Or the people who know all the rules of grammar and tell you when you’ve broken one.  People who have a sense for themselves that I’m supposed to do this, because it’s the right thing to do.

            It’s not that they simply have a refined aesthetic sense when they say something like, “I put that vase on that table in exactly that spot, because it looks better there than two inches to the left.”  It’s that they feel the world is infused with a moral quality, and that vase has to be on that table, in that spot, not because it looks pretty, but because it looks right.

            I’m making this spiritual goal sound like it only applies to obsessives, but actually we all seek this goal of order and right-ness and perfection, to some degree.

            We ask:  What’s the right thing to do?   What’s the right thing to say?  What’s the right form of government for a human society?  What’s the right thing for me to do?  I worry.  I wonder.  What’s the right way for me to behave?  What’s the right me for me to be? 

            The feeling is that there is a standard of being, and a code of conduct, greater than our personal preferences, and that it’s our job to match ourselves to that abstract model.  We don’t want to be out of place.  We don’t want to be a lobster shuffling on the bottom of the sea.  The universe is constructed a certain way, there’s a plan, and we’re part of that.  The more closely we can fit ourselves into the order of existence, the more satisfied, comfortable, healthy and happy we will be.

            In some religions, and in authoritarian governments, this view of the world tries to push every individual into the same box.  One size fits all.  Everyone on the same path.  As Unitarian Universalists (and in the highly individualistic culture of the United States generally) we reject voices that tell us there is one model for men and women, one set of beliefs we all must share, one path we all must walk.  We celebrate diversity.  In this church, each person is helped to be true to their own internal nature, rather than urged to conform to an abstract nature outside themselves.

            But we aren’t completely disassociated from this sense of there being a standard of moral right and wrong beyond ourselves.  I’m sure you do this all the time.

            A few days ago I was driving downtown on a one-way street and a bicycle came down the street toward me.  I stopped.  I glared at the bicyclist.  I wasn’t thinking merely, “that’s dangerous.” I felt, “that’s wrong.” Wrong in the moral sense.  Going the wrong way on a one-way street is violating the social order.  And that’s wrong.

            Mostly, as liberal people, we’re able to respect that different cultures have different values and different ways of being in the world.  Mostly that’s OK.  But we also are able to critique some cultural practices because we intuit some higher value being violated, a value greater than a particular culture.  Female genital mutilation is wrong, we know, not just a different cultural expression.  Slavery is wrong.  Sex with children is wrong.  There are things even in our own culture that we consider wrong according to a higher moral standard even though they are permitted.  The death penalty is wrong in that way, for me.  Workplace discrimination against LGBTQ persons is wrong, although it’s currently permitted in 29 states.

            So I do think, even in Unitarian Universalism, that we seek a kind of moral order, a right-ness, or righteousness, in our lives, and in the world.  That’s why we have religious education for our children, and read the seven principles, and attend social justice forums.  We want to find the right thing to do, and the right way to be in ourselves and be in the world.  And that wanting makes order or “right-ness” a spiritual goal.

            But there are two differences in the way we pursue this goal in a Unitarian Universalist faith, compared to other religions.

            First, we believe that the most relevant standard of being and doing for an individual is found within themselves, rather than in a unitary ideal for all people.  We trust that you know best what is right for you.  We affirm that the goal is to be the best you, you can be, not to try and mimic a universal standard.  We want each person to express their own self, not for all of us to conform to a single standard.  There is still a standard.  How many times have you fallen short of the standard you have for yourself and made a promise to do better next time?  We know when we are being the best person we can be, and we know when we miss the mark.  It’s just that the primary standard we measure ourselves against is discovered within us, not outside us, in the pages of the Bible or what-have-you.

            And second, we believe that the notion of “right” is always understood within a context of time and place.  Right is not eternal, changeless, static, like laws written in a book.  The universe flows from one state to another, constantly.  What is right now, will not be right at a different time.  What is right for one person, is not right for another, and your standard of right conduct could even be harmful to another person.  

            Our spiritual lives urge us toward the right path.  But my path may not be your path.  What’s right for me, is not always right for you.  And right for here is seldom right for there.  And right for today, is sometimes plain wrong for tomorrow.

            The church is a place where we learn to be who we are, to proclaim ourselves proudly, and where we are encouraged to become the best version of ourselves we can be.  The church teaches us universal moral standards gleaned from many sources:  world religions, philosophy, and our own tradition, as well as discusses how those standards are met or missed in the actual practices of our culture.  And this church urges us all to more fully express those highest and best principles in our lives, in our congregation and in the community beyond.