Rainbow Spirits

img_0266-1For LGBTQIA folks all over the world, June is Pride Month. This morning I led a worship service at Oak Ridge Unitarian Universalist Church celebrating Pride and the colorful rainbow of LGBTQIA humanity. Here is a transcript of my sermon. (Links to source material are provided in the text.)

Rainbow Spirits: Celebrating Pride

Sermon – ORUUC – June 25, 2017
FOR PRIDE
Reading By Lois Van Leer

[http://www.uua.org/worship/words/reading/pride]

They will march, walk, wheel, dance, shimmy and shake
Block upon block of undulating color, flesh, banners, signs, clothing or lack thereof

Hands raised, hands linked, apart, together

Singing, shouting, chanting, silent,

Joyous, tearful, nervous, afraid, proud, defiant, angry, happy, delirious, tentative, ecstatic, courageous, brave, free
The stereotype

The unrecognizable

The flamboyant

The ordinary

The parent, the child

The runaway, the lost, the lonely, the found
Gay, Lesbian, Bi-Sexual, Trans, Queer, Intersexed, Questioning

Allies

Those who taunt and jeer

Their banners of hate 10 feet tall:

“God made Adam and Eve; not Adam and Steve”

“Burn in Hell”

The other slogans:

“Straight but Not Narrow”

“I love my gay child”

“Standing on the Side of Love”
One day a year

One out of 365

Mardi Gras out of season

Festive, bacchanalian, tame,

Booths, food, shopping!
Underneath there is a history:

Resistance.

It was the marginalized of the marginalized,

Drag queens, transvestites, the butch and the femme

Who unlike Rosa Parks did not sit down,

But in their tired rage

Stood up, rose up

fought back

holding the police captive in the bars they had come to raid,

their weapons: their oppression, their hands, beer bottles

Stonewall

Six days of riots in New York

June 1969
A year later a march in Philadelphia, New York, Chicago, L.A., San Fran

And now, any weekend in June, anywhere around the world, PRIDE
Why do we march?

For those who are not able

For those who have been murdered

For those who are ravaged by disease

For those who are still beaten, still taunted, still harassed, still victims still targets
Why do we march?

Because some truths ain’t self-evident

Because all men ain’t protected equal
And we love a good party…
They will march, walk, wheel, dance, shimmy and shake

Block upon block of undulating color, flesh, banners, signs, clothing or lack thereof

Hands raised, hands linked, apart, together

Singing, shouting, chanting, silent,

Joyous, tearful, nervous, afraid, proud, defiant, angry, happy, delirious, tentative, ecstatic, courageous, brave—
Free.

************

In the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, New York City police raided the Stonewall Inn, a club in Greenwich Village that catered to the LGBTQ community. This was nothing new, bar raids happened frequently. In fact, the Stonewall Inn had been raided just a few days before. This time was different. For starters, the police ignored the arrangement with the bar’s owners to warn them of an impending raid, giving them time to cover the illegal activities going on inside the club. Thus, the bar’s staff and patrons were caught completely off-guard and unprepared.

Police raids had shut down most of the other clubs, leaving the Stonewall Inn as one of the few remaining places where LGBTQ folks could gather, drink, and dance. The bar was also one of the very few places that welcomed drag queens and LGBTQ youth. The raid went down as usual at first. People were rounded up, and arrested. Then a police officer struck a woman over the head, and incited six days of rioting from a community that had. HAD. ENOUGH. Tired of the way they were being treated, the community fought back.

Though the Stonewall riots were not the beginning of the gay rights movement, they were certainly a catalyst for renewed activism, leading to the establishment of organizations like the Human Rights Campaign, GLAAD, and PFLAG. In June of 1970, on the one year anniversary of the Stonewall riots, the first Pride parade was held in New York City. There were also marches Los Angeles, Boston, San Francisco and other cities.

Fast forward to 1978, San Francisco had just elected its first openly gay city supervisor, Harvey Milk, who had campaigned on a message of hope for LGBTQ youth. Milk challenged San Francisco artist Gilbert Baker to create a positive symbol symbol of pride for the gay community, an alternative to the upside-down pink triangle that had been used by the Nazis to identify, persecute, and murder homosexuals. Though it had been reclaimed as a symbol of pride (and is still widely used), the pink triangle, for many, represented persecution and death.

Baker’s original handmade flag had eight colored stripes: hot pink, red, orange, yellow, green, turquoise, indigo, and violet; the colors of the rainbow, chosen because it was a symbol from nature. Gilbert Baker recalls the moment when the new flag was flown for the first time:

Raising it up and seeing it there blowing in the wind for everyone to see. It completely astounded me that people just got it, in an instant like a bolt of lightning – that this was their flag. It belonged to all of us. It was the most thrilling moment of my life. Because I knew right then that this was the most important thing I would ever do – that my whole life was going to be about the Rainbow Flag.

A few of Baker’s handmade flags were carried in that first Pride march in San Francisco in 1978. On November 27, 1978, San Francisco woke up to the news that city supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone had been assassinated. Galvanized by grief and rage, activists decided that the rainbow flag should be flown from the light poles on Market Street during the next Pride parade. Soon after, the now six stripe rainbow flag was visible all over the city. Whenever a symbol of hope and pride was needed, the rainbow flag appeared. Gilbert Baker described the flag as more than just cloth and stripes; putting the flag on a house or car is not just flying a flag, it’s taking action. On a personal note, when I was in grad school, I hung a rainbow flag in my window. I didn’t really think anything of it, but one night, a young woman told me seeing that flag hanging in the window every morning as she walked to class gave her hope and helped her realize that she wasn’t alone.

Gilbert Baker died this past March. He lived to see his creation become something much larger than himself, a symbol transcending sexuality, gender, race, and religion. Its universal nature is multiplied by Baker’s desire to share the flag with everyone, even if it meant not making a profit. He never trademarked it, nor did he attempt to monetize it. The Rainbow Flag has appeared on all sorts of products: coffee cups, bumpers stickers, shoes and clothing, and even as a reaction symbol on Facebook.
The Rainbow Flag has become a universal symbol of acceptance and peace. Singly, the colors represent a different aspect of human experience; together they form a beautiful tapestry of hope and pride.

I would like to close with a meditation on the different colors of the rainbow flag, adapted by H. Adam Ackley from a prayer by Cherry Kittredge and Patrick Cheng, and further adapted by me:
[http://jesusinlove.blogspot.com/2014/06/rainbow-christ-prayer-goes-nationwide.html]

The Rainbow Spirit embodies all the colors of the world. In mythology, rainbows bridge different realms: East and west, heaven and earth, queer and non-queer. So we celebrate each color of the rainbow.

Red Candle

Lighting a red candle: The red of the rainbow reminds us to LIVE FULLY a renewed Life rooted in Spirit. We seek the grace of healthy well-being. We are renewed in body, mind, and spirit as we follow our own inner light and live as the person we were born to be.

 

candleOrangeLighting an orange candle: The orange of the rainbow reminds us to be thankful for the gift of creativity, including the fire of sacred human sexuality, We are open and free us to pursue meaningful and grace-filled relationships. We forgive the past and now embrace this present moment, freely expressing our passion and our desire in creative, healthy, grace-filled ways.

Yellow CandleLighting a yellow candle: The yellow of the rainbow reminds us to REJOICE in the very gift of self, each of us filled with the divine spark, empowering us, radiating in and through us. We value and trust ourselves and each other enough to “come out” continually from secrecy, shame, and self-rejection into the light that illuminates and affirms the holy in each of us.

Green Candle

Lighting a green candle: The green of the rainbow reminds us to LOVE. When we seek to fill our hearts with untamed, compassionate love for all beings, including ourselves and each other, in every area of our lives, we give and receive love with happiness, balance, grace, and harmony.

Blue Candles

Lighting a blue candle: The blue of the rainbow reminds us to GIVE VOICE to the liberating spirit within us. We seek to use gracious, prophetic, active, and just voices to speak out with calm, confidence, and power against all that demeans and oppresses.

candlePurpleLighting a purple candle: The violet of the rainbow reminds us of the inner vision that seeks and knows the highest Truth, which is LOVE, the deep intuitive wisdom of the universe. Love grants us the grace of interdependence, freeing us from isolation.

 

As all the colors of the rainbow are connected and yet distinct, we are connected with each other and with all of creation in ways that bring peace, wholeness, balance, and nurture of our spirits. Like the rainbow, may we too embody and reflect light, color, beauty and promise. So may it be.

***********
[music starts]
Several years ago, UU minister and musician Jason Shelton wrote a song in response to President Bush’s announcement that he was supporting the introduction of a Constitutional amendment to define marriage as solely between a man and a woman. Following the 2008 shootings at Tennessee Valley UU, the song, Standing on the Side of Love, inspired a public advocacy campaign, initiated by the Unitarian Universalist Association, to promote respect for the inherent worth and dignity of every person. Recently, Jason Shelton, in thoughtful, heartfelt response to concerns about the ableist language in the song, changed the words to Answering the Call of Love. It is those words we will sing together now. Please rise in body and/or spirit and let us join together in singing #1014 in the teal hymnal, Answering the Call of Love. [Click here for video.]

[Additional source material from: http://www.sftravel.com/article/brief-history-rainbow-flag and http://www.history.com/topics/the-stonewall-riots]

Rainbow Spirits: Celebrating Pride

Sermon – Oak Ridge Unitarian Universalist Church, June 25, 2017

For LGBTQIA folks all over the world, June is Pride Month. On June 25, 2017 I led a worship service at Oak Ridge Unitarian Universalist Church celebrating Pride and the colorful rainbow of LGBTQIA humanity. Here is a transcript of my sermon. (Links to source material are provided in the text.)

They will march, walk, wheel, dance, shimmy and shake
Block upon block of undulating color, flesh, banners, signs, clothing or lack thereof
Hands raised, hands linked, apart, together
Singing, shouting, chanting, silent,
Joyous, tearful, nervous, afraid, proud, defiant, angry, happy, delirious, tentative, ecstatic, courageous, brave, free

The stereotype
The unrecognizable
The flamboyant
The ordinary
The parent, the child
The runaway, the lost, the lonely, the found

Gay, Lesbian, Bi-Sexual, Trans, Queer, Intersexed, Questioning
Allies
Those who taunt and jeer
Their banners of hate 10 feet tall:
“God made Adam and Eve; not Adam and Steve”
“Burn in Hell”
The other slogans:
“Straight but Not Narrow”
“I love my gay child”
“Standing on the Side of Love”

One day a year
One out of 365
Mardi Gras out of season
Festive, bacchanalian, tame,
Booths, food, shopping!

Underneath there is a history:
Resistance.
It was the marginalized of the marginalized,
Drag queens, transvestites, the butch and the femme
Who unlike Rosa Parks did not sit down,
But in their tired rage
Stood up, rose up
fought back
holding the police captive in the bars they had come to raid,
their weapons: their oppression, their hands, beer bottles
Stonewall
Six days of riots in New York
June 1969

A year later a march in Philadelphia, New York, Chicago, L.A., San Fran
And now, any weekend in June, anywhere around the world, PRIDE

Why do we march?
For those who are not able
For those who have been murdered
For those who are ravaged by disease
For those who are still beaten, still taunted, still harassed, still victims still targets

Why do we march?
Because some truths ain’t self-evident
Because all men ain’t protected equal

And we love a good party…

They will march, walk, wheel, dance, shimmy and shake
Block upon block of undulating color, flesh, banners, signs, clothing or lack thereof
Hands raised, hands linked, apart, together
Singing, shouting, chanting, silent,
Joyous, tearful, nervous, afraid, proud, defiant, angry, happy, delirious, tentative, ecstatic, courageous, brave—

Free.

For Pride, Lois Van Leer (http://www.uua.org/worship/words/reading/pride)

In the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, New York City police raided the Stonewall Inn, a club in Greenwich Village that catered to the LGBTQ community. This was nothing new, bar raids happened frequently. In fact, the Stonewall Inn had been raided just a few days before. This time was different. For starters, the police ignored the arrangement with the bar’s owners to warn them of an impending raid, giving them time to cover the illegal activities going on inside the club. Thus, the bar’s staff and patrons were caught completely off-guard and unprepared.

Police raids had shut down most of the other clubs, leaving the Stonewall Inn as one of the few remaining places where LGBTQ folks could gather, drink, and dance. The bar was also one of the very few places that welcomed drag queens and LGBTQ youth. The raid went down as usual at first. People were rounded up, and arrested. Then a police officer struck a woman over the head, and incited six days of rioting from a community that had. HAD. ENOUGH. Tired of the way they were being treated, the community fought back.

Though the Stonewall riots were not the beginning of the gay rights movement, they were certainly a catalyst for renewed activism, leading to the establishment of organizations like the Human Rights Campaign, GLAAD, and PFLAG. In June of 1970, on the one year anniversary of the Stonewall riots, the first Pride parade was held in New York City. There were also marches Los Angeles, Boston, San Francisco and other cities.

Fast forward to 1978, San Francisco had just elected its first openly gay city supervisor, Harvey Milk, who had campaigned on a message of hope for LGBTQ youth. Milk challenged San Francisco artist Gilbert Baker to create a positive symbol symbol of pride for the gay community, an alternative to the upside-down pink triangle that had been used by the Nazis to identify, persecute, and murder homosexuals. Though it had been reclaimed as a symbol of pride (and is still widely used), the pink triangle, for many, represented persecution and death.

Baker’s original handmade flag had eight colored stripes: hot pink, red, orange, yellow, green, turquoise, indigo, and violet; the colors of the rainbow, chosen because it was a symbol from nature. Gilbert Baker recalls the moment when the new flag was flown for the first time:

Raising it up and seeing it there blowing in the wind for everyone to see. It completely astounded me that people just got it, in an instant like a bolt of lightning – that this was their flag. It belonged to all of us. It was the most thrilling moment of my life. Because I knew right then that this was the most important thing I would ever do – that my whole life was going to be about the Rainbow Flag.

A few of Baker’s handmade flags were carried in that first Pride march in San Francisco in 1978. On November 27, 1978, San Francisco woke up to the news that city supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone had been assassinated. Galvanized by grief and rage, activists decided that the rainbow flag should be flown from the light poles on Market Street during the next Pride parade. Soon after, the now six stripe rainbow flag was visible all over the city. Whenever a symbol of hope and pride was needed, the rainbow flag appeared. Gilbert Baker described the flag as more than just cloth and stripes; putting the flag on a house or car is not just flying a flag, it’s taking action. On a personal note, when I was in grad school, I hung a rainbow flag in my window. I didn’t really think anything of it, but one night, a young woman told me seeing that flag hanging in the window every morning as she walked to class gave her hope and helped her realize that she wasn’t alone.

Gilbert Baker died this past March. He lived to see his creation become something much larger than himself, a symbol transcending sexuality, gender, race, and religion. Its universal nature is multiplied by Baker’s desire to share the flag with everyone, even if it meant not making a profit. He never trademarked it, nor did he attempt to monetize it. The Rainbow Flag has appeared on all sorts of products: coffee cups, bumpers stickers, shoes and clothing, and even as a reaction symbol on Facebook.
The Rainbow Flag has become a universal symbol of acceptance and peace. Singly, the colors represent a different aspect of human experience; together they form a beautiful tapestry of hope and pride.

I would like to close with a meditation on the different colors of the rainbow flag, adapted by H. Adam Ackley from a prayer by Cherry Kittredge and Patrick Cheng, and further adapted by me:
[http://jesusinlove.blogspot.com/2014/06/rainbow-christ-prayer-goes-nationwide.html]

The Rainbow Spirit embodies all the colors of the world. In mythology, rainbows bridge different realms: East and west, heaven and earth, queer and non-queer. So we celebrate each color of the rainbow.

Lighting a red candle: The red of the rainbow reminds us to LIVE FULLY a renewed Life rooted in Spirit. We seek the grace of healthy well-being. We are renewed in body, mind, and spirit as we follow our own inner light and live as the person we were born to be.

Lighting an orange candle: The orange of the rainbow reminds us to be thankful for the gift of creativity, including the fire of sacred human sexuality, We are open and free us to pursue meaningful and grace-filled relationships. We forgive the past and now embrace this present moment, freely expressing our passion and our desire in creative, healthy, grace-filled ways.

Lighting a yellow candle: The yellow of the rainbow reminds us to REJOICE in the very gift of self, each of us filled with the divine spark, empowering us, radiating in and through us. We value and trust ourselves and each other enough to “come out” continually from secrecy, shame, and self-rejection into the light that illuminates and affirms the holy in each of us.

Lighting a green candle: The green of the rainbow reminds us to LOVE. When we seek to fill our hearts with untamed, compassionate love for all beings, including ourselves and each other, in every area of our lives, we give and receive love with happiness, balance, grace, and harmony.

Lighting a blue candle: The blue of the rainbow reminds us to GIVE VOICE to the liberating spirit within us. We seek to use gracious, prophetic, active, and just voices to speak out with calm, confidence, and power against all that demeans and oppresses.

Lighting a purple candle: The violet of the rainbow reminds us of the inner vision that seeks and knows the highest Truth, which is LOVE, the deep intuitive wisdom of the universe. Love grants us the grace of interdependence, freeing us from isolation.

As all the colors of the rainbow are connected and yet distinct, we are connected with each other and with all of creation in ways that bring peace, wholeness, balance, and nurture of our spirits. Like the rainbow, may we too embody and reflect light, color, beauty and promise. So may it be.



[music starts]
Several years ago, UU minister and musician Jason Shelton wrote a song in response to President Bush’s announcement that he was supporting the introduction of a Constitutional amendment to define marriage as solely between a man and a woman. Following the 2008 shootings at Tennessee Valley UU, the song, Standing on the Side of Love, inspired a public advocacy campaign, initiated by the Unitarian Universalist Association, to promote respect for the inherent worth and dignity of every person. Recently, Jason Shelton, in thoughtful, heartfelt response to concerns about the ableist language in the song, changed the words to Answering the Call of Love. It is those words we will sing together now. Please rise in body and/or spirit and let us join together in singing #1014 in the teal hymnal, Answering the Call of Love. [Click here for video.]

[Additional source material from: http://www.sftravel.com/article/brief-history-rainbow-flag and http://www.history.com/topics/the-stonewall-riots]

To Love Life: Dancing Between Order and Chaos

yin-yang-14264436247Kt

This is a sermon I gave at the Oak Ridge Unitarian Universalist Church on  June 26, 2016.

Chapter I: AN UNEXPECTED PARTY

[I began by reading an extended section of the first chapter of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit up to the line until he had in fact apparently settled down immovably.]

————————–

During the month of June, we have been talking about REVELRY. We define revelry as boisterous festivity or wild, noisy merrymaking. Other words we use include celebration, carousing, rejoicing, and debauchery. Often associated with imbibing large amounts of alcohol, there is a strong element of disorder and abandon. Some might even call all this, chaos. June has traditionally been a month of revelry, being the most popular month for weddings, with all of their celebratory aspects. School lets out for the summer in many parts of the country (at least teachers and school staff are celebrating; parents, maybe not so much). The Summer Solstice happens in June, and many communities celebrate LGBTQ Pride Month. If you’ve never been to a Pride celebration, they can get pretty wild.

Opposite chaos, we have, for lack of a better word, order. Order provides structure, stability, comfort, and security. It involves rules, lists, planning, and predictability. Take a look at the piece of paper you were given as you walked in today.  Its main function is to let everyone know how we’re going to structure this hour we have together this morning. It lists the different activities we do, songs, prayers, movement, in a specific pattern. We call it an Order of Service. Order is what allows us to get things done, to see a project through to completion, to manage our lives.

Popular entertainment is full of characters that embody extremes of chaos and order. Big Bang Theory’s Sheldon Cooper is an example of someone so obsessed with structure that he literally cannot function if even a small element of chance is introduced into his routine. On the other hand, his friend Howard Wolowitz seems incapable of being serious about anything and is always getting himself into trouble because he doesn’t follow procedure in the lab. Other TV and movie franchises deal with this subject, but perhaps in a more meaningful way, their stories driven by characters seeking to strike a balance between the two extremes. To reference another of my favorite shows, the original Star Trek series features Mr. Spock, an alien character who approaches situations in a very logical, emotionless manner. Opposite Spock, we have … Dr. Leonard McCoy. (You thought I was going to say Captain Kirk, didn’t you?) McCoy is entirely driven by his emotions and he is very vocal about his opinion of Spock’s cold, calculating manner. Here’s where Jim Kirk comes in. Kirk is the one who often mediates between the two, and bring them together to solve whatever problem they’re having and save the ship. Kirk, with all of his foibles, represents balance.

And now, back to our friend, Bilbo Baggins. When we left left off, he had settled down … immovably. One morning, the wizard, Gandalf comes riding by, and promises to send Bilbo off on an adventure. The following afternoon, there is a knock on his door and the next thing our poor Bilbo knows is that his orderly existence is turned completely on its head. Much of the drama in the story comes from poor Bilbo trying to maintain a semblance of his structured lifestyle in the face of challenge after challenge. He finally comes into his own when he learns to embrace the chaos without sacrificing himself in the process. After a journey filled with wonder and terror, Bilbo returns home a much-changed person. He does experience some loss, but he gains so much more in the end.

I recently had the opportunity to attend a worship service at Jubilee! Community Church in Asheville. That service, while following a definite structure contained a large amount of … revelry. The community, formed by musicians, artists, and “other creative types” developed as an alternative worship service for a United Methodist church, and later became a church on their own. It was very moving to see the joy in the folks gathered that morning as they sang and danced, laughed, and responded “Oh, Yeah!” (Jubilee!’s version of “Amen”).  They’ve just published a book about their style of celebration, The Main Thing: Celebrating Creation & Spirituality at Jubilee!, a collection of essays written by community leaders interspersed with transcripts of a conversation between their minister, Howard Hanger and theologian Matthew Fox. In one of these conversations, the two discuss a newspaper review of Jubilee! that characterizes them as a “religious romper room.” Fox references Thomas Aquinas’ idea that contemplation is play: playing with wisdom, playing with Sophia, playing with God. They go on to discuss the dangers of embracing the extremes of play and order: all order leads to rigidity, inflexibility, a kind of fascism, while all play leads to … chaos. The challenge each of us faces is how to allow ourselves to embrace the chaos, how to give chaos a space within the order, to dance between order and chaos.

Jubilee’s! answer lies within a concept that Fox, a former Dominican priest, articulated in the 1970’s, creation spirituality. An ancient tradition, creation spirituality draws on the experiences, writings and rituals of all wisdom traditions, including indigenous cultures, eastern and western spiritualities and contemporary science, Creation Spirituality runs too deeply and broadly to be considered as ‘founded’ or invented’ by one person, or indeed, one tradition. Fox writes, “Honoring all of creation as Original Blessing, Creation Spirituality integrates the wisdom of Eastern and Western spirituality and global indigenous cultures, with the emerging scientific understanding of the universe, and the passion of creativity. It is both a tradition and a movement, celebrated by mystics and agents of social change from every age and culture. … Creation Spirituality is not a newly invented path, but for twentieth century Westerners it is a newly discovered path.”

Fox gives us these principles of Creation Spirituality. Though he writes from a Christian perspective, these principles are universal and, indeed, they sound very much like the Seven Principles of Unitarian Universalism.

1)The universe is fundamentally a blessing. Our relationship with the Universe fills us with awe.

2) In Creation, God is both immanent and transcendent. This is panentheism which is not theism (God out there) and not atheism (no God anywhere). We experience that the Divine is in all things & all things are in the Divine.

3) God is as much Mother as Father, as much Child as Parent, as much God in mystery as the God in history, as much beyond all words and images as in all forms and beings. We are liberated from the need to cling to God in one form or one literal name.

4) In our lives, it is through the work of spiritual practice that we find our deep and true selves. Through the arts of meditation and silence we cultivate a clarity of mind and move beyond fear into compassion and community.

5)  Our inner work can be understood as a four-fold journey involving:

– awe, delight, amazement (known as the Via Positiva)

– uncertainty, darkness, suffering, letting go (Via Negativa)

– birthing, creativity, passion (Via Creativa)

– justice, healing, celebration (Via Transformativa)

We weave through these paths like a spiral danced, not a ladder climbed.

6)  Every one of us is a mystic. We can enter the mystical as much through beauty (Via Positiva) as through contemplation and suffering (Via Negativa). We are born full of wonder and can recover it at any age.

7) Every one of us is an artist. Whatever the expression of our creativity, it is our prayer and praise (Via Creativa).

8) Every one of us is a prophet. Our prophetic work is to interfere with all forms of injustice and that which interrupts authentic life (Via Transformativa).

9) Diversity is the nature of the Universe. We rejoice in and courageously honor the rich diversity within the Cosmos and expressed among individuals and across multiple cultures, religions and ancestral traditions.

10) The basic work of God is compassion and we, who are all original blessings and sons and daughters of the Divine, are called to compassion. We acknowledge our shared interdependence; we rejoice at one another’s joys and grieve at one another’s sorrows and labor to heal the causes of those sorrows.

11) There are many wells of faith and knowledge drawing from one underground river of Divine wisdom. The practice of honoring, learning and celebrating the wisdom collected from these wells is Deep Ecumenism. We respect and embrace the wisdom and oneness that arises from the diverse wells of all the sacred traditions of the world.

12) Ecological justice is essential for the sustainability of life on Earth. Ecology is the local expression of cosmology and so we commit to live in light of this value: to pass on the beauty and health of Creation to future generations.

There’s a song that’s popular among Unitarian Universalists that expresses these ideas perfectly, Holy Now by Peter Mayer. The sacred is all around, the divine spark is present everywhere, even in those dark places where there seems to be no hope. This belief that everything and everyone is somehow sacred is what enables us to keep coming here Sunday after Sunday. It is that fuel that powers our creative urges, be they creating works of art, advancing scientific discovery, or equipping our children to navigate a complex, and yes, chaotic, world.  This is what drives our passion for social justice and keeps us at the front lines fighting to preserve this beautiful planet that is our home.

Life is uncertain, often messy, and definitely not always beautiful, but in the midst of the clutter and disarray, we can find beauty and hope. We can find a place for the chaos within the order. We can do this dance between order and chaos.

And now, let it be a dance we do, through the good times and the bad times, too. May we find the balance between order and chaos. May the divine spark within each of us become a blazing beacon of light and hope. Go now in joy, love, and peace. LET’S DANCE!!! [We danced out of the sanctuary while the band played Twist and Shout.]

To Love Life: Dancing between Order and Chaos

This is a sermon I gave at the Oak Ridge Unitarian Universalist Church on June 26, 2016.

Chapter I: AN UNEXPECTED PARTY

[I began by reading an extended section of the first chapter of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit up to the line until he had in fact apparently settled down immovably.]

————————–

During the month of June, we have been talking about REVELRY. We define revelry as boisterous festivity or wild, noisy merrymaking. Other words we use include celebration, carousing, rejoicing, and debauchery. Often associated with imbibing large amounts of alcohol, there is a strong element of disorder and abandon. Some might even call all this, chaos. June has traditionally been a month of revelry, being the most popular month for weddings, with all of their celebratory aspects. School lets out for the summer in many parts of the country (at least teachers and school staff are celebrating; parents, maybe not so much). The Summer Solstice happens in June, and many communities celebrate LGBTQ Pride Month. If you’ve never been to a Pride celebration, they can get pretty wild.

Opposite chaos, we have, for lack of a better word, order. Order provides structure, stability, comfort, and security. It involves rules, lists, planning, and predictability. Take a look at the piece of paper you were given as you walked in today.  Its main function is to let everyone know how we’re going to structure this hour we have together this morning. It lists the different activities we do, songs, prayers, movement, in a specific pattern. We call it an Order of Service. Order is what allows us to get things done, to see a project through to completion, to manage our lives.

Popular entertainment is full of characters that embody extremes of chaos and order. Big Bang Theory’s Sheldon Cooper is an example of someone so obsessed with structure that he literally cannot function if even a small element of chance is introduced into his routine. On the other hand, his friend Howard Wolowitz seems incapable of being serious about anything and is always getting himself into trouble because he doesn’t follow procedure in the lab. Other TV and movie franchises deal with this subject, but perhaps in a more meaningful way, their stories driven by characters seeking to strike a balance between the two extremes. To reference another of my favorite shows, the original Star Trek series features Mr. Spock, an alien character who approaches situations in a very logical, emotionless manner. Opposite Spock, we have … Dr. Leonard McCoy. (You thought I was going to say Captain Kirk, didn’t you?) McCoy is entirely driven by his emotions and he is very vocal about his opinion of Spock’s cold, calculating manner. Here’s where Jim Kirk comes in. Kirk is the one who often mediates between the two, and bring them together to solve whatever problem they’re having and save the ship. Kirk, with all of his foibles, represents balance.

And now, back to our friend, Bilbo Baggins. When we left left off, he had settled down … immovably. One morning, the wizard, Gandalf comes riding by, and promises to send Bilbo off on an adventure. The following afternoon, there is a knock on his door and the next thing our poor Bilbo knows is that his orderly existence is turned completely on its head. Much of the drama in the story comes from poor Bilbo trying to maintain a semblance of his structured lifestyle in the face of challenge after challenge. He finally comes into his own when he learns to embrace the chaos without sacrificing himself in the process. After a journey filled with wonder and terror, Bilbo returns home a much-changed person. He does experience some loss, but he gains so much more in the end.

I recently had the opportunity to attend a worship service at Jubilee! Community Church in Asheville. That service, while following a definite structure contained a large amount of … revelry. The community, formed by musicians, artists, and “other creative types” developed as an alternative worship service for a United Methodist church, and later became a church on their own. It was very moving to see the joy in the folks gathered that morning as they sang and danced, laughed, and responded “Oh, Yeah!” (Jubilee!’s version of “Amen”).  They’ve just published a book about their style of celebration, The Main Thing: Celebrating Creation & Spirituality at Jubilee!, a collection of essays written by community leaders interspersed with transcripts of a conversation between their minister, Howard Hanger and theologian Matthew Fox. In one of these conversations, the two discuss a newspaper review of Jubilee! that characterizes them as a “religious romper room.” Fox references Thomas Aquinas’ idea that contemplation is play: playing with wisdom, playing with Sophia, playing with God. They go on to discuss the dangers of embracing the extremes of play and order: all order leads to rigidity, inflexibility, a kind of fascism, while all play leads to … chaos. The challenge each of us faces is how to allow ourselves to embrace the chaos, how to give chaos a space within the order, to dance between order and chaos.

Jubilee’s! answer lies within a concept that Fox, a former Dominican priest, articulated in the 1970’s, creation spirituality. An ancient tradition, creation spirituality draws on the experiences, writings and rituals of all wisdom traditions, including indigenous cultures, eastern and western spiritualities and contemporary science, Creation Spirituality runs too deeply and broadly to be considered as ‘founded’ or invented’ by one person, or indeed, one tradition. Fox writes, “Honoring all of creation as Original Blessing, Creation Spirituality integrates the wisdom of Eastern and Western spirituality and global indigenous cultures, with the emerging scientific understanding of the universe, and the passion of creativity. It is both a tradition and a movement, celebrated by mystics and agents of social change from every age and culture. … Creation Spirituality is not a newly invented path, but for twentieth century Westerners it is a newly discovered path.”

Fox gives us these principles of Creation Spirituality. Though he writes from a Christian perspective, these principles are universal and, indeed, they sound very much like the Seven Principles of Unitarian Universalism.

1)The universe is fundamentally a blessing. Our relationship with the Universe fills us with awe.

2) In Creation, God is both immanent and transcendent. This is panentheism which is not theism (God out there) and not atheism (no God anywhere). We experience that the Divine is in all things & all things are in the Divine.

3) God is as much Mother as Father, as much Child as Parent, as much God in mystery as the God in history, as much beyond all words and images as in all forms and beings. We are liberated from the need to cling to God in one form or one literal name.

4) In our lives, it is through the work of spiritual practice that we find our deep and true selves. Through the arts of meditation and silence we cultivate a clarity of mind and move beyond fear into compassion and community.

5)  Our inner work can be understood as a four-fold journey involving:

– awe, delight, amazement (known as the Via Positiva)

– uncertainty, darkness, suffering, letting go (Via Negativa)

– birthing, creativity, passion (Via Creativa)

– justice, healing, celebration (Via Transformativa)

We weave through these paths like a spiral danced, not a ladder climbed.

6)  Every one of us is a mystic. We can enter the mystical as much through beauty (Via Positiva) as through contemplation and suffering (Via Negativa). We are born full of wonder and can recover it at any age.

7) Every one of us is an artist. Whatever the expression of our creativity, it is our prayer and praise (Via Creativa).

8) Every one of us is a prophet. Our prophetic work is to interfere with all forms of injustice and that which interrupts authentic life (Via Transformativa).

9) Diversity is the nature of the Universe. We rejoice in and courageously honor the rich diversity within the Cosmos and expressed among individuals and across multiple cultures, religions and ancestral traditions.

10) The basic work of God is compassion and we, who are all original blessings and sons and daughters of the Divine, are called to compassion. We acknowledge our shared interdependence; we rejoice at one another’s joys and grieve at one another’s sorrows and labor to heal the causes of those sorrows.

11) There are many wells of faith and knowledge drawing from one underground river of Divine wisdom. The practice of honoring, learning and celebrating the wisdom collected from these wells is Deep Ecumenism. We respect and embrace the wisdom and oneness that arises from the diverse wells of all the sacred traditions of the world.

12) Ecological justice is essential for the sustainability of life on Earth. Ecology is the local expression of cosmology and so we commit to live in light of this value: to pass on the beauty and health of Creation to future generations.

There’s a song that’s popular among Unitarian Universalists that expresses these ideas perfectly, Holy Now by Peter Mayer. The sacred is all around, the divine spark is present everywhere, even in those dark places where there seems to be no hope. This belief that everything and everyone is somehow sacred is what enables us to keep coming here Sunday after Sunday. It is that fuel that powers our creative urges, be they creating works of art, advancing scientific discovery, or equipping our children to navigate a complex, and yes, chaotic, world.  This is what drives our passion for social justice and keeps us at the front lines fighting to preserve this beautiful planet that is our home.

Life is uncertain, often messy, and definitely not always beautiful, but in the midst of the clutter and disarray, we can find beauty and hope. We can find a place for the chaos within the order. We can do this dance between order and chaos.

And now, let it be a dance we do, through the good times and the bad times, too. May we find the balance between order and chaos. May the divine spark within each of us become a blazing beacon of light and hope. Go now in joy, love, and peace. LET’S DANCE!!! [We danced out of the sanctuary while the band played Twist and Shout.]