The earth’s abundance is the glory of Autumn. Materialism advertises its delights, tempting us with more, more, more, but never satisfying our desire. Spiritual health recognizes not only the limits of the planet to give, but our own limits to receive with equanimity.
This year in worship, we’re looking at the foundational issues of spirituality.
As I plan to retire in June next year, and I thought for my last year of preaching I would take a walk through the basic questions and concerns of spirituality, and after 30 years of thinking about these issues offer some personal conclusions.
There are no right or wrong answers to the spiritual questions, there is simply the test of whether your beliefs are useful for you in constructing the life of health and joy for yourself, for each other and the world we share that is the goal of spirituality.
The doctrine of our church is only to love one another, not to ask you to memorize a catechism. We have no creed. Unitarian Universalist worship is designed to inspire your own thinking about the big questions of identity, meaning, and purpose, to invite you to come to your own answers, and to encourage fruitful diversity among our beliefs.
But while it’s good practice for a Unitarian Universalist congregation to welcome a multiplicity of beliefs, for a healthy spiritual life, you need to know what you believe. So I offer this year of worship as a model for what I hope you will get to someday, if not today: a set of personal answers to the foundational spiritual questions. I’ll share my answers, when I have them. But more than answers, I offer you the framework of this year of questions and concerns, which you can fill in with your own conclusions.
We started, in September, which is the beginning of the Unitarian Universalist liturgical year, with several theological issues.
We looked at the issue of identity, and the tension between ourselves as individuals and ourselves defined through relationships with others.
We looked at the issue of freedom and whether the future is open or closed, and if open, are there any boundaries to what we may choose to do.
We looked at human nature and the limits of our power, intelligence, and morality, and what that implies for our salvation.
We looked at the issue of sin.
We looked at our connection to the past and our responsibilities to our ancestors.
We looked at our future, and whether our personal identity might continue after we die.
All of those sermons, by the way, are available to read on my personal website: rhmcd.com, and recordings of the worship services are available on the church website: uustudiocity.org.
Today, and for the next several weeks, I want to turn from the part of theology concerned with beliefs, to the part of theology concerned with values.
Faith consists of three aspects: beliefs, values, and actions.
A complete faith includes your beliefs about the world, both the parts you can study scientifically, and those parts that are only available to explore through intuition, reason, and logic, like beliefs about the existence and nature of God, or the meaning of life.
Many people would say that faith is only beliefs, and furthermore only metaphysical beliefs. But our beliefs are everything that we hold to be true about reality, facts we think we know objectively, and hunches we intuit subjectively. And beliefs are only the first part of faith.
Think for a minute if a person told you that they believe Jesus is the son of God. Well, that’s fine, but it doesn’t really tell you very much. You would be waiting for the “so what?”
So what does your belief about Jesus tell you about what’s important in the world? Does that belief tell you to care about the things that Jesus cared about in his teachings? His welcome of the outcasts of society, his rejection of material wealth, his desire for justice for the oppressed, and mercy for those who succumb to the normal frailties of human nature?
Don’t just tell me what you believe, tell me what you care about. What are your religious values?
And then, don’t just tell me what you value, show me, by acting in the world in ways that testify to those values. What you actually do in your life tells me much more about your faith than simply describing your beliefs to me, or claiming to hold values that you deny in the way you live, or work, or vote.
So, a complete faith is beliefs, plus values, plus actions. As we journey through spiritual foundations this year, we will look at all three.
Today, with Thanksgiving approaching, I wanted to look at the value of self-restraint. The value of stopping when we’ve had our fill. The spiritual practice of saying, “enough.”
The Thanksgiving meal is a good place to practice this value. We’ve all felt the temptation to over-indulge at a well-laden table, and maybe given in to the temptation in ways that we suffer for the following day, but I mean self-restraint far beyond what we choose to eat or drink at a single meal.
Self-restraint is the value of recognizing limits, the earth’s limits to provide, and our limits to consume.
In the fall, at Harvest time, we celebrate the bounty of the earth. The cornucopia spills out with endless vegetables, fruits, grains. The mouth of the cornucopia stretches wide to release its tumbling gifts. And the narrow curl at the top of the cornucopia gives the impression that this abundance is endless. The gifts that sustain us emerge as if by magic, from nothing, an infinite source of giving that can never be exhausted. All for the taking, ceaselessly
But there is a natural limit, as we know. As we sang in our opening hymn, this abundance can only be sustained if we protect the ecological systems that allow the earth to reproduce what we consume from the ingredients of soil and water and sunlight.
Beauty adds to bounty’s measure
giving freely for our pleasure
sights and sounds and scents to treasure.
But earth’s garden will not flourish
if in greed we spoil and ravish
that which we should prize and cherish.
Forests and underground aquifers take centuries to redevelop. Others of earth’s resources: minerals and ores, oil in the ground, take eons to be regenerated, and are in terms of humanity’s span, effectively finite. When we consume the last of these, they are gone forever.
That limit alone should be enough for us to consider the need, eventually to say “stop.” To say, “enough.” But even if the ability of the universe to give was infinite, our ability to consume healthily has its own limit. Endlessly adding, acquiring, consuming, is spiritually sick. It’s a sin. The sin of gluttony. The spiritual virtue of self-restraint is respecting even in an abundant universe our finite ability to healthily consume: knowing when to stop ourselves not because there’s nothing left, but to say “enough” because nothing more would do us any good.
My husband Jim is the cook in our family. That he cooks for me is a blessing for which I am infinitely grateful, especially because I eat more than him. We both love good food; I just eat more of it. Blame it on metabolism.
So when he makes a meal for the two of us, he serves up a big plate of food for me, and a smaller plate for himself. He knows that I’ll want more than he will.
But then, when we eat, I will eat ever particle of food on the plate, while Jim will often leave food uneaten. He’ll give me two slices of toast for breakfast and I’ll eat them both. He gives himself one, and eats only half of it. He’ll give me a bigger portion of scrambled eggs. I’ll eat all of mine, chasing around every last morsel with my fork. While he’ll leave remnants of his that will either be scraped into the trash, or more likely, I’ll eat off of his plate.
I grew up with an appetite and also an ethic that says it’s important to eat everything that’s served to you. We don’t waste food in our house. You get a gold star for joining the clean plate club. But sometimes that means I end up eating more that I actually need to, sometimes even more than I want to.
Jim has the ability to stop when he wants to stop, even if there’s more on the plate. He has the ability to know himself, to know his desires and his health and his needs, and say, “enough” when he’s had enough. When more is available but not beneficial to his health and joy, he says, “enough.”
This is the spiritual virtue of temperance, the virtue that balances the sin of gluttony. The virtue of self-restraint. Knowing our limits to consume and acquire before the endless call of more, more, more, begins to do us spiritual harm.
I recently learned an old English proverb that I used as the title for my sermon today, “Enough is as good as a feast.”
It first appears in writing in the 15th century, in Thomas Malory’s le Morte d’Arthur, his collection of tales about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. But like those tales, the proverb was probably centuries old before Malory wrote it down.
Of anything that you might want, there is a certain portion that is good for you. A certain portion fulfills the purpose of giving nourishment, or pleasure, or entertainment, or beauty, or wisdom, or excitement, or whatever else it is that you’re seeking in the direction of health and joy. But then, once you’ve had that portion, any more is useless. The rest of the feast is irrelevant when you’ve already had enough. For some things, more than you need may actually be bad for you, turning pleasure to pain, but even if more would increase the pleasure, more than enough damages the spirit.
The deadly sin of gluttony makes us think of over-indulgence in food and drink, but the spiritual wrong of gluttony applies to all things.
How many cars do you need? How many houses do you need? How many designer bags? How many paintings in how many climate-controlled warehouses? How many yachts and airplanes, and how many trips on them? How many millions in the bank? How many billions in the bank?
But I don’t want you to think of gluttony just as a rich person’s vice and let yourself off the hook. The question, no matter how much you have available to spend, is how do you know when you’ve had enough?
Elon Musk is worth something above 300 billion dollars. That would be enough for me. But it doesn’t seem to be enough for him.
I live pretty modestly by American standards. But even for me I have more than most people in the world. I could probably say I have enough, but still I wouldn’t say no to having a little more. And I’m sure there are millions of people with less than I have, who would say that they have enough, which means they would say I have too much.
What is enough?
One house, but how many bedrooms? Is one cat enough, or is three enough, or five? How many friends are enough? How many books are enough, not just to own but to read? Have I learned enough in my lifetime? Have I listened to enough music? Is ninety years enough for a human life, or one hundred, or one hundred and twenty?
How much discussion is enough before the community makes a decision? How much tolerance is enough before you need to enforce a boundary? How many hours should you work before you say enough for the day or for the week? How many years’ work is enough and how much savings is enough before you retire?
One dollar more or less after you already have three billion of them isn’t going to make any appreciable difference in your lifestyle. But what is enough? Where should we stop? By any measure Elon Musk has crossed that line. But maybe you have, too. Maybe I have.
I can’t answer “what is enough?” for you.
But here are two helpful pieces of guidance I can give you that both come from the prayer that Jesus taught. In the version of the prayer by Lala Winkley I read after our Joys and Sorrows this morning she says, “Give us today enough for our needs”. In the version from Matthew the line is, “Give us today our daily bread.”
Enough is personal. I can’t define it for you. Enough depends on your goals, your purpose, your personality, your biology. The number of evenings I spend at the opera is more than enough for most people, while the number of football games I need to watch to be enough for me is exactly zero. Jesus doesn’t define enough the same for everyone any more than I can. The measure is our needs, our daily bread. That’s two slices of toast for me. It’s a half a slice for Jim.
Comparing ourselves with others is dangerous. Most people are quite happy with their house and car, until someone builds a bigger house down the street with a fancier car in the driveway, and suddenly our house and car are no longer enough. Comparison leads to feelings of pride and shame. Don’t compare. Know yourself. Know your own needs.
And the second helpful limit in Jesus’ prayer is the phrase, “Give us today” the bread we need today.
Temperance is having what we need now, then stopping, trusting that when we need more, more will be available. The glutton takes more than they need now because they’re ruled by fear there won’t be enough later. And thus, amid the actual abundance of the earth they make themselves spiritually sick with too much now, and then too much again tomorrow, and too much still the day after that, until 3 becomes 300, and three million becomes three hundred billion.
The glutton isn’t enjoying abundance. He’s terrified of scarcity. Nothing is ever enough to fill the hole in their soul.
And this brings me back to Thanksgiving, our national holiday of gratitude. Scarcity compels us to see what we don’t have. Gratitude invites us to see what we do have. Look around the table on Thursday, or wherever you gather. Friends and family, or alone. And do come join us at church at 2pm Thursday if you’d like to be with others. Perhaps your table is spread with a traditional feast, or something simpler, a lot or not so much. Give thanks for what is there, without comparing. Give thanks for what you have that day without worry for the next.
In the words of Jacob Trapp, “Simply to be, and to let things be as they speak wordlessly from the mystery of what they are. Simply to say a silent yes to the hillside flowers, to the trees we walk under. To pass from one person to another a morsel of bread, an answering yes, this is the simplest, the quietest, of sacraments.”
And when we see clearly all that we truly have, to be truly thankful for the gift, then we will take only what we need, and we will call it enough.