Reason wonder and renewal of the spirit

Easter, as we know has its origins in a pagan vernal equinox fertility rituals and celebrations.  It has since been subsumed and dressed up in sheep’s clothing by the Christians, and using many of the same symbols, has emerged as the celebrated day of the physical resurrection of Jesus.  But the universal message of Easter is the re-greening of the earth, the return of light which was promised at the winter and the resurgence of new plant, animal and human life.  We know what is happening.  It is no longer a mystery to us.  We understand the rogation of the earth and the cycles which follow it, and yet, even though I understand so much more than my pagan ancestors did, I still find it miraculous.

“If you think about it”, said a friend of mine one day, “the UU church is really about reason and wonder”.Of course he’s right   I just hadn’t put it into those exact words, but it is one of the recurrent themes in my own  [personal] theology, and therefore present my sermons, but in the larger view, it is a way of looking at life that fully embraces our differing religious and spiritual ideologies.

We Unitarian Universalists do not take much if anything on hearsay. As a denomination we have been often called the religious child of the enlightenment…the age of reason…the age in our western human history when thinking people began to question the religious canon which governed every aspect of our known world from the creation of the world to the precise shape and location of heaven and all of the full and terrible dimensions and categories of hell.  Many of the people who dared question the religious establishment of Rome were promptly burned at the stake for their outspoken of forts, but ultimately, discoveries in science, theories of evolution, the discovery and explanation of gravity, exploration of our universe and beyond left any number of people in a place where the religious magic of their childhood simply did not work any longer but left us with nothing to replace it.

This has been referred to by some as “the God-shaped hole” in our lives. Now I don’t think for a minute that all of us sitting here are longing for the God we learned about in our childhood; but I do believe there is a place in many of us which longs for the miracles, the mystery, the comfort and safety of our childhood’s myths and stories.  In the cold grey light of our adult rational, reasonable and intellectual selves, we have grown to distrust those things which we can not prove or measure or chart or clock, and in that I believe we have lost something very precious.  I believe we still long, for the experience of transcendence of being lifted out of ourselves, for that resurrection of the spirit which has lain so long in the grip of too much reason and perhaps not enough faith and imagination. I believe reason and wonder can co-exist

If I didn’t I have no business being here.

Jeanne’s story of her visit to Trinity Church does exactly this for me.  She combines reason and her sense of wonder when she speaks of the order of the architecture, the stained glass windows, the music and the little children. Then, within the very tangible context of what she could see and touch in a historical building in the city of Boston, she takes us to the place beyond her surroundings to where this experience took her.  She does this with her words and shares her experience. Thank you again, Jeanne.

Earlier this year, I was called to write a story about religious and spiritual transcendence for the UU&ME children’s magazine.  We were trying to come up with a collection of vignettes for the magazine which would describe wondrous experiences for about or with children in words they could understand and relate to. Not an easy assignment. Most of us found ourselves turning to nature or music, the two that most readily came to mind.  It was so much more difficult than we might have imagined because we were being too analytical…too reasonable….too Unitarian Universalist. But, when we stopped trying to write the perfect magazine and stay within our allotted four pages and 2000 words, and began to talk about our own times of being lifted up,of being taken out of ourselves,of those mysteries of our own experience which defied rational explanation,did we get close to what we wanted to write about, but even in that moment of rational clarity, we knew most words would be inadequate, but at least we knew where we were going….sort of. 

Even our hard-core secular humanist had a story she could tell of a time when she was so moved by working with a group of children in a moment when everybody “got it” and they all moved together in one incredible impulse.  She felt she wasn’t even in her own body….but rather connected to everyone and everything around her. She didn’t need to attach a deity to this experience….just lived in it…and it changed her life.  In that moment, she knew there was something greater than herself that she didn’t need to name or label or analyze or quantify.  It just was.

So my dear friends, parishioners, visitors, seekers, skeptics and believers, questioners and questioned, on this lovely new first day of the rest of our lives, this eighth day of another predictable miracle of spring,  I wish and I pray for all of us, that we open ourselves to those ordinary daily miracles of our living. 

May we join together in the spirit of reflection and prayer.

A universal prayer for Easter

Blessed spirit of all creation within us and beyond our knowing,

Be with us.

Open our hearts and minds to the miracles of our every day:

To the beauty of those around us,

To the gift of hope within us

and to the wonders of those inner gifts

which we have yet to know or understand.

May we learn to see beyond the pages of a date book,

Or the numbers on a yardstick,

Or the headlines flashing tragedy around a troubled world.

May we find the ancient truth of life within us;

rising like the phoenix from the ashes;

or a crocus through the snow.

On this ancient vernal festal day,

Old as human living

New as every morning

may we find what we are missing

in the rush of getting nowhere,

in the chaos of lives.

Help us push away the awful stones

of doubt and resignation

of spiritual stagnation

and never having time.

Help us push away the deadly stones:

of fear and anger                              

hate and hurt

the deadly stones of ignorance.

And in the blessed light of morning,

May we come to understand:                      

There is something greater than our knowing

That Love can fill a heart to overflowing

And that God has many names.     

This we can not give or take or give away.

Breath of hope in all creation,

Resurrect our hopeful human spirit;

Lift us from the ashes of our disappointment

And the splinters of our sadness.

Open our wide our hearts and minds

To the vast unfolding mysteries…

the reason…and the wonder

and ever present miracles

of this abundant life.

In peace and loving kindness,

Let us say…” Amen”