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The Better Soul A Worship Service by the Reverend Mark W. Christian First Unitarian Church of Oklahoma City Sunday August 13, 2006
Reading “The Oversoul” Ralph Waldo Emerson (SLT 531) Let us learn the revelation of all nature and thought; that the Highest dwells within us, that the sources of nature are in our own minds. As there is no screen or ceiling between our heads and the infinite heavens, so there is no bar or wall in the soul where we, the effect, cease, and God, the cause, begins. I am constrained every moment to acknowledge a higher origin for events than the will I call mine. There is deep power in which we exist and whose beatitude is accessible to us. Every moment when the individual feels invaded by it is memorable. It comes to the lowly and simple; it comes to whosoever will put off what is foreign and proud; it comes as insight; it comes as serenity and grandeur. The soul’s health consists in the fullness of its reception. Forever and ever the influx of this better and more universal self is new and unsearchable. Within us is the soul of the whole; the wise silence, the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related; the eternal One. When it breaks through our intellect, it is genius; when it breathes through our will, it is virtue; when it flows through our affections, it is love.
The Gates of Freedom (adapted) Napoleon Lovely (HCL 510) Though our knowledge is incomplete, our truth partial, and our love imperfect, we believe that new light is ever waiting to break through individual hearts and minds to enlighten the ways of men (and women); that there is mutual strength in willing co-operation; and that the bonds of love keep open the gates of freedom.
Prayer and Mediation The Summer Day From New and Selected Poems, By Mary Oliver
Who made the world Who made the swan, and the black bear? Who made the grasshopper? This grasshopper, I mean-- The one who has flung herself out of the grass, The one who is eating sugar out of my hand, Who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down- Who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes. Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face. Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away. I don't know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down Into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, How to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, Which is what I have been doing all day. Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
The Better Soul A Sermon by the Reverend Mark W. Christian Delivered to the First Unitarian Church of Oklahoma City Sunday August 13, 2006
Bluesman Blind Willie Jefferson sang a question that has been dogging me lately: I’m gonna ask a question Please answer if you can Can anybody’s children tell me Tell me what is the soul of a man? What is the soul of a woman, of a man, of a child? What is it for? Is it something real? What does it do? Is it eternal and infinite? Can you lose your soul? Can a soul be lost? Can a soul be sold? Can a soul be saved? Can a soul save? Can a soul be grown? And what about Naomi?! One can turn to scripture and philosophy and psychology in search of answers to those questions. One can search the stars or tea-leaves or the intricacies of DNA through an electron microscope trying to define and describe the soul. Blind Willie stabs at an answer by singing “As far as I can understand it’s nothin’ but a burnin’ light…” Nothing but a burning light. While that answers lacks a certain scientific verifiability, it offers much in terms of functionality and comprehend-ability. Staying with the functional and comprehensible for the time being, what can we say of the soul? There’s a great scene at the end of John Ford’s cinematic adaptation of “The Grapes of Wrath” that may be instructive about the care and nurture of the soul. Tom Joad, played by Henry Fonda, must leave what’s left of his family for their safety and to respond to a yearning deep within him. Jane Darwell’s character, Ma Joad, holds one last visit with her son. Tom tries to explain why he must venture into the wilderness alone.
Tom:
I been thinking about us, too, about our people living like pigs and good
rich land layin' fallow. Or maybe one guy with a million acres and a hundred
thousand farmers starvin'. And I been wonderin' if all our folks got
together and yelled... Tom Joad’s realization that we don’t have a soul of our own, that we just possess a little piece of a big soul, is well worth considering. This religious tradition has long maintained that the prime spiritual task, far beyond offering praise to a creator, lies in the growth of the soul—in the growth of the human soul. The ongoing improvement—and improvability—of the human spirit is among our most distinctive calls. William Ellery Channing, the 19th century intellectual leader of the Unitarians, asserted that the religious life is characterized by growing in our “Likeness to God.” This focus on the growth of the soul and the moral obligations it makes is far older than Channing. It can be found in the Hebrew prophet Micah’s instruction to do justly, love mercy and walk humbly with God. The centrality of the growth of the soul is also found in Jesus’ assertion of the Great Commandment—to love God with all our heart soul and mind; and equal to that to love our neighbor as ourselves. Even older than Christian and Hebrew scripture, we can trace this notion of the universality of the soul back to the Hindu concepts of Atman and Brahman. Hinduism teaches that when we realize that the soul within us is inseparable from the soul of the world then the cycle of birth and rebirth will be broken. There is a sort of Hindu formula for salvation—Atman equals Brahman equals no rebirth. Why, you might rightly ask, have I led you on this path—from the Delta Blues to Dust Bowl Labor Camps; from American religious intellectuals to the prophets of Judaism and Christianity and then on to Hinduism? Why go to all these places in search of a soul? Welcome to Unitarianism! I go to all these places because I suspect that it is the search for your soul, the calling of your soul, which has led many of you here today. At the very least, the world today tends to neutralize souls. There is a reductionist force alive in the world that sees us as statistics and interchangeable modules of energy and matter rather than precious and integral parts of creation. This anonymity pushes away the light that burns within us that has a treasured place in the constellation of all souls. Our flames grow dimmer, lamps grow dusty, fires retreat to their embers, the soul slips into darkness. I felt this way this week as news of the latest terrorist plans came to light. While something must be done, there is something increasingly diminutive to the human soul inherent in the ever growing list of airline contraband and the ever declining role of personal freedom and privacy oozing in from somewhere I can’t see. Fear and planning against terror wear on the soul don’t they? Sometimes it seems that our souls live in a world that would feed us the empty, sugar-like, calories of what we want to hear. All the while we crave more. We deserve manna from heaven. Even worse are those who would slip in a sugar substitute that possesses sweet flavor without even the meager sustenance of empty calories. Without proper sustenance—souls decline. Souls must be fed if they are to grow. More than the neutralization and increasing cultural irrelevance of souls—I think some of you come here because you feel your soul under attack. The way that religious sentiment is manipulated—bought and sold and bartered—from the left and the right—does more than erode the soul, it seeks to eclipse it, it seeks to extinguish it. Perhaps many of you feel hounded and harassed in the same way Stienbeck’s protagonist was. That notion that Tom Joad named that there is really only one big soul and we’re all a part of it; Hinduism’s identification of Atman with Brahman; Jesus’ tri-fold loving ethic of God and neighbor and self; these things seem under outright attack Consider our ever-present temptation to move a bit higher up the ladder by looking away from the needs of others. This attacks our soul. The people who are left behind in a world with few buffer zones and little margin for error are a loss of soul—theirs and ours (or ours and theirs depending on perspective and circumstance). I have to admit that I become complicit in this attack when I decide to avoid giving to the poor, helping those in need or offering kindness to others because I am too busy, or only have $20’s in my wallet, or slavishly decide to stick to priorities that further my life ends. Far from pushing yourself up on someone, we drag ourselves down in soul and spirit when we withhold the help we could provide because of greed, callousness and convenience. I wish I could say I am not guilty of those things but I am. I wish I could say that my soul isn’t under attack but it is. I wish I could tell you that I see an end to the drought of soul and spirit on the horizon—but I can’t. What I can tell you is that all of “This” is why the church is here. All of that attack and erosion on the soul, my and our complicity in all this soul-less-ness is why this church is here. This is not a perfect church nor is it a church for perfect people. If you’re already “perfected” you might as well stay home with the New York Times and Meet the Press. This is not a church for those who have given up on the world or who have given up on their life. If you don’t think things can and will improve then you might as well stay home and surf the Internet, play video games or write vitriolic letters to the editor. If you have given up on yourself and on the world then go make sign proclaiming that “The End is Nigh” because for you it is. For the rest of us though, there is hope. There is hope for our soul and there is hope for that soul we share in common. I have become increasingly convinced that the purpose of this church is simple and straightforward. We exist to transform people who transform the world. The world which we would create is one more fully shaped by love and compassion and justice. Transforming people who transform the world into a place more characterized by love, compassion and justice. Sounds simple enough, right? All we have to do is “do it.” This is soul work. This means growing and nurturing our souls. This means setting aside our lesser selves in favor of something greater. It means that sometimes we have to set aside the soul-we-have and dream and stretch and claim a better soul yet-to-be. In this church our quest is for a better soul with which to create and live in a better world. “As far as I can understand it’s nothing but a burning light.” May our vision be clear. May our steps be sure. May our hearts be strong. AMEN
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