{"id":284,"date":"2020-01-05T09:42:00","date_gmt":"2020-01-05T17:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/?p=284"},"modified":"2026-06-18T18:52:00","modified_gmt":"2026-06-19T01:52:00","slug":"goal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/?p=284","title":{"rendered":"Goal!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

For the rest of this church year we look at the goals of faith.  What\u2019s it for? There are both individual spiritual goals (what my faith does for me), which is where we will start, and there are broader religious goals (what my faith tradition hopes for all people), which we will get to in spring.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Happy New Year everyone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Has it ever felt more like we need a new year?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            But let\u2019s admit two things.  Or at least I will, your experience might be different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            I admit, the old year wasn\u2019t all bad.  In fact, for me personally, it was a pretty good year.  The small things that affect my life alone were all pretty good.  I had the fun, and the love, and the friends, and the community, and a good job, and all that, that for most of us counts as a good life.  Not too bad.  It would be ungrateful not to notice how good I had it, once again, last year.  And it\u2019s probably not good spiritually for any of us to dismiss an entire year with a harsh \u201cgood riddance\u201d when our few years of life are such a precious commodity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            And second we should all admit, as we step into the new year, that much of the old year is still with us.  Not a lot has changed, honestly, between last week and today.  What made us miserable last week is still causing misery today.  We can\u2019t get away from the past that easily.  We have to work our way out of our problems, not merely escape from them.  We have to do the work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            And so there is work to do this year.  Obstacles already arranged before us.  The calendar is new, but a lot of the landscape is already filled in.  Furniture in a darkened room we have to walk around to get where we\u2019re going.  A mine car on a track that\u2019s just going to keep going where it\u2019s going unless we expend some purposeful effort.  That\u2019s how the new year looks to me.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            More than ever the reading from Dag Hammarskjold, Michael gave us as our Opening Words this morning sounds right to me.  A reading for this particular new year:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am being driven forward into an unknown land.
The pass grows steeper the air colder and sharper\u00a0
a wind from my unknown goal stirs the strings of expectation.
Still the question shall I ever get there?
There where life resounds a clear pure note in the silence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Dag Hammarskjold was the UN Secretary General from 1953 to 1961.  He died in a plane crash in Zambia while on official business, nearing the end of his second term as the UN head.  The Opening Words come from a kind of spiritual diary he kept throughout his life:  meditations and poetry on sacrifice and service and the purpose of life.  The diary was published two years after his death under the title \u201cMarkings.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In the Opening Words, Hammarskjold describes the spiritual feeling of moving through life.\u00a0\u00a0He says he is \u201cbeing driven forward into an unknown land.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Entering this new year feels a little like this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            The way is hard and getting harder.  The circumstances forbidding.  He says, \u201cThe pass grows steeper the air colder and sharper.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0And yet there is a destination at the end of this path worth the struggle. Hammarskjold says he is moving toward an unknown land.\u00a0\u00a0He says he feels \u201ca wind from my unknown goal.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            But he also says something about \u201cthere\u201d that implies he does have a sense of the goal he\u2019s walking toward.  \u201cThere where life resounds a clear pure note in the silence.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            The goal is \u201cunknown\u201d because the future is always unknown.  He knows where he\u2019s going, he just hasn\u2019t been there yet.  He calls it \u201cmy unknown goal.\u201d  It\u2019s his goal.  It just isn\u2019t known to him yet, because it\u2019s still an unrealized goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            And despite its hardship and mystery, Hammarskjold\u2019s trip is hopeful.  He says, that though the goal is distant, \u201ca wind from my unknown goal stirs the strings of expectation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            So he\u2019s excited.  He\u2019s eager.  He knows where he\u2019s going even without knowing exactly what he will find when he gets there.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The name of Hammarskjold\u2019s book, by the way, \u201cMarkings” is the English translation of the Swedish word for the signs posted on mountain trails that help mountain climbers find their way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            So the trip will be difficult, steep and cold, but there are signposts along the way.  Follow the pass, follow the markings, we will get there, together.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            We spent the last several months talking about the doing part of religion.  What are the actions that we take to explore and deepen our faith inwardly, and to express our faith outwardly?  Those actions, called Spiritual Practices, are the doing part of religion.  What do you do?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            This morning, and through the rest of this church year, I want to turn to a different foundational issue of religion:  what\u2019s it for?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            We\u2019ve talked about what<\/em> we do.  Now I want to talk about why<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Why are we religious?  What do we hope we will get out of this?  There\u2019s a significant sacrifice involved of time, and mental energy, not to mention the Stewardship Campaign coming up next month.  Although I did just mention that, didn\u2019t I?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            But why?  What\u2019s it for?  What\u2019s the goal?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before you start a journey, it\u2019s good to know where you\u2019re going.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Talking about goals seems like a good way to start a new year.  Where are you going this year.? To what end?  Where do you want to be by year\u2019s end?  Who do you want to be a year from now?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tomorrow, January 6, is the Christian holiday of Epiphany.  It celebrates several events in Jesus\u2019 life:  his Dedication at the Temple as an infant when he formally receives his name, his Baptism as an adult which starts him on his life\u2019s work, and the Transfiguration when a few of Jesus\u2019 followers see him revealed as a prophet equal to Moses and Elijah and a voice from the sky calls him \u201cson.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All of those stories are about claiming your identity.  Not who you should be.  Not who others think you are.  Maybe not the person you have been until now.  But stepping into the role of being the person you were born to be.  Maybe this is the year you could begin to be who you are.  That\u2019s a good goal for a new year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And maybe the church could help.  Why do you come to church?  What do you want from your spiritual community?  Why are putting in the effort to commit to a spiritual practice?  What do you hope to achieve?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last week, our church\u2019s Racial Justice Team asked me to join their monthly meeting.  They wanted to talk with me about how our church could be more intentional in living out the line from our mission statement that names one of this church\u2019s goals as, \u201cTo lead by creating a multi-cultural, anti-racist, anti-oppressive congregation and denomination.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They wanted to ask me what I could do to help.  They had some suggestions like I could preach a sermon, or we could invite guest speakers to preach on specific topics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I told them that before I could help them strategize effectively that I needed to be more clear about the goal.\u00a0\u00a0Where is this journey going?\u00a0\u00a0How will we know when we got there?\u00a0\u00a0What is the clear note we will hear? What is the wind that draws us forward?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here are a few of the responses from the Racial Justice Team, from my notes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A goal of learning to \u201cde-center whiteness\u201d in our congregation, making room for stories of people of color.  Not carrying around the false picture in our head that the generic UUCLB member has a white face and a white experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal of creating a loving community where, with love, we can \u201ccall-in\u201d people who have stepped out of our covenant, and also, non-defensively reflect on our own behavior when we fall short of our ideals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal of reminding ourselves of the long history of attention this congregation has paid to the issue of racial justice.  Newer folks in the congregation might not be aware.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A goal of \u201cdoing, not just saying\u201d our anti-racist values.  Of addressing the dissonance between how we perceive ourselves and how we actually act.  The goal of a church where we are always talking about ways we can be more \u201cmulti-cultural, anti-racist and anti-oppressive\u201d where ideas of how to engage more deeply in this work are \u201calways coming up.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hearing those goals I realized that the Team was describing a cultural change in the church.  That\u2019s not the kind of goal that\u2019s met through an interim minister preaching an occasional pointed sermon about race, not inviting a guest preacher.  Instead we discussed strategies that might provoke cultural change, owned by every member of the congregation.  Strategies of inviting many members of the congregation to give testimonials during worship sharing their stories about how they\u2019ve approached anti-racist work, successes, mis-steps, learnings.  We talked about ways we might make people of color more visible in our congregation.  We talked about a pervasive shift in liturgical language, where anti-racist ideas and goals are constantly present in worship, in responses, and prayers, and in the sermon, even when the sermon isn\u2019t about race issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You might see some of that coming up in the next few weeks.  But we\u2019re still working on how we will do this work.  The conversation will continue.  But we felt even today it was appropriate for me to lay out something like what I just did.  An invitation for the new year from me and the Racial Justice Team  \u201cHere\u2019s what we\u2019re trying to do\u2026\u201d  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019re going to move through this pass.  The goal is Beloved Community.  We\u2019re going to look for the signposts.  We\u2019re going to climb and we\u2019re going to slip.  It\u2019s a journey.  Eventually we\u2019ll get to that place where a clear pure note resounds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So we\u2019re going to be talking about religious goals for the next several months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Particular goals.  And more universal goals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m going to start with several personal goals, that is, religious goals that an individual might be seeking for themselves.  What do I want my religion to do for me?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then, after Easter we will switch to communal goals, that is, goals that various religions have for all of humanity, or all existence.  What does my faith hope for all people?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019ll start with personal goals next week.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For today, I want to end with a short reflection on the nature of goals themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thinking about goals I started thinking about sports and games, where goals are very important.  What\u2019s the goal of this game? We ask.  How do you know when you\u2019ve won?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some games have very specific goals.  For a jigsaw puzzle the goal is to complete the puzzle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some sports have goals that are actually called goals.  There are goalies and goalkeepers.  To score a point in soccer you have to get the ball into the goal.  And then the crowd screams, \u201cGoal!\u201d  In American football, everybody yells, \u201cTouchdown!\u201d but it\u2019s still a goal.  And there are field goals and goal posts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Goals in many team sports are very clear and discrete.  The game ends when the time runs out.  Who got the most goals?  There\u2019s a winner and a loser.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The highest score wins but notice that it doesn\u2019t usually matter what the score actually is, just that it be higher than the other team.  And it doesn\u2019t matter how much<\/em> higher; winning by a point is the same as winning by a hundred points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a footrace or a horserace, the winner is the one who first crosses the finish line.  But the winner is still the winner even if, in the next race, all the other horses come in faster.  And the slowest runner is still the loser, even if that runner\u2019s time would have been a world record 10 years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A lot of individual sports are more about judges’ scores and personal bests, rather than objective goals like putting a basket through a hoop the most times in 4, 12 minute periods (I had to look that up).\u00a0\u00a0What\u2019s the goal?\u00a0\u00a0Well, sometimes, the goal is just do better than last time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Consider games like most arcade games.  These games have goals like kill aliens, and keep killing aliens, until eventually the aliens kill you.  These games always end in failure.  Keep stacking the bricks and every time you completely fill a line the line disappears but there\u2019s always more bricks coming.  You don\u2019t \u201cwin\u201d these games.  The goal is to keep playing as long as you can.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That sense of incompleteness makes video games addictive so you keep playing, watching advertisements, or putting more quarters in the machine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Completion brings a sense of satisfaction.\u00a0\u00a0“Look what I did!” you exclaim as you put the final piece into the jigsaw.\u00a0\u00a0But where there is no final end, one has to think where the sense of satisfaction comes in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like sports, some life goals are very discrete.  I\u2019m going to marry the prince.  I\u2019m going to be elected President.  I\u2019m going to retire by age 55.  You know exactly what you want.  You achieve your goal or you don\u2019t.  You know when you\u2019re done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other goals are more open-ended, more like personal best goals.\u00a0\u00a0I\u2019m going to write better sermons.\u00a0\u00a0I\u2019m going to call my mother more often.\u00a0\u00a0I\u2019m going to host more dinner parties this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For these kinds of goals, the \u201cgoal\u201d is not to come to the end and earn a prize, the goal is to have an experience throughout the game.  It has to be fun stacking those video game bricks because that\u2019s really all the game is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So people say things like, \u201cIt\u2019s not the destination, it\u2019s the journey.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And I agree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even a game like basketball that has a clear ending and a winner or loser needs to be fun to watch or play throughout the game or otherwise why do it? For some games the question isn\u2019t, \u201cDid we win?\u201d but \u201cAre we having fun?\u201d  Not, \u201cAre we done?\u201d but, \u201cHow are we doing?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Winning isn\u2019t everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But winning is something.  The game wouldn\u2019t make any sense if there wasn\u2019t some way to measure success.  It\u2019s the destination, the end, the goal (fastest time, most points, fewest strokes in golf) that define the game.  The goal sets the rules.  The destination directs the journey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If I gave you a jumbled deck of cards and told you to put them in order by suits and numbers that would sound like work and you\u2019d get bored pretty fast.  But if I gave you a jumbled deck of cards and told you to put them in order but only by following a specific set of rules, then suddenly it\u2019s a game called Solitaire and people will spend hours playing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So we need to enjoy the journey, because that\u2019s called living our life.  But we need goals to order our lives, to give our lives a direction, a purpose.  We need to be clear about that goal, and to keep the goal before us, to guide our days:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Forward through the ages, in unbroken line,\u00a0
Wider grows the vision, realm of love and light;\u00a0
for it we must labor, till our faith is sight.\u00a0\u00a0
Bound by God’s far purpose in one living whole,\u00a0
move we on together to the shining goal.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the rest of this church year we look at the goals of faith.  What\u2019s it for? There are both… Read more Goal!<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons","category-writing"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=284"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5045,"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284\/revisions\/5045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}