Two big deals happened this week. On Tuesday I attended a meeting of the Network of Spiritual Progressives where we had a discussion about spirituality among political progressives and some people talked about their faith and how it sustains them in their activism. I could relate. My faith as a Unitarian Universalist sustains me in the world. And speaking of UU’ism, yesterday I attended a meeting of this congregation in which we identified our many strengths and we identified some of our challenges and we began to think about what comes next. We did not talk about our faith, but we did talk about our faith.
The dictionary says faith is “confident belief or trust in a person, idea or thing. 2. Loyalty, allegiance. 3. Secure belief in God and the acceptance of God’s will. 4. A religion.” (American Heritage Dictionary) The English word faith relates to the Latin fides, which means loyal or trustworthy. Loyalty and trust lie at the core. Out of whatever and whomever we place our trust and loyalty comes an acquaintance with the deepest assumptions we hold about life. Out of an acquaintance with the deepest assumptions we hold about life we are drawn to “realize our ideals, walk our talk, and act in accordance with what we know to be true.” The Buddha said that faith is the beginning of all good things. In Pali and Sanskrit the word faith means hospitality, to draw near, to set forth. To place one’s heart upon. Faith is “the magnetic force of a bone-deep, lived understanding.” (Sharon Salzberg, Faith) Does faith require “secure belief in God and acceptance of God’s will,” as the dictionary notes? I don’t think so. Although those of us who do believe in god, however we understand god, place our loyalty and trust in that, faith does not depend upon a deity for its existence. One can place one’s heart upon humanity, or nature, or the laws of being and have faith. Nor does faith rest upon doctrine or dogma. Faith is not a commodity which you either have or you don’t have. Faith is not a litmus test for moral goodness, or political correctness, for that matter. Faith is not the same as belief. In contrast to belief, which can be thought of as a conviction of the truth without verification and which often becomes a definition of reality, faith is an experience of reality. The “truth” of faith lies in the experience. Faith does not define reality, per se, but it does describe each person’s reality. Faith is personal and individual. Faith is an active open state that changes and emerges and hides and emerges again, different. It’s a way of being, not an answer, not a way of thinking. To realize our faith is to embark on a journey that may have no end.
Would you take a minute to identify what you have faith in? In other words, what do you trust to be true, deep in your heart? Love? God? Science? Goodness? Possibility? Change? Other people? Yourself? Deep in your heart, what have you experienced that you trust is true? That is your faith. The journey of faith occurs when we give ourselves enough time and space to discover and name the truths upon which we rely. These truths inform our thoughts, our understandings, our relationships and our actions. That is what it means to live our faith.
I have, so far, experienced two truths that I trust and which form the core of my faith and in accordance with which I try to think and act. The first, which you have heard me say before, is the interconnected nature of life. Here, in this connection is the sacred. I have felt, or intuited it in the presence of others, with certain animals, in nature. This is affirmed in many ways by science and for me is both fact and ethic. John Stewart Bell, a physicist, theorized that particles, once connected, will, when separated, behave as if still connected, however distant. Because life is interconnected, we are called to respect it and remember that what we do has consequences far beyond ourselves, for good or ill. Thus an ethic of interconnectedness. The second truth, which you have not heard me say before, is that I trust myself. I have been through enough in my life to trust my ability to integrate for wholeness and healing. I trust my strength to maintain solidity in the face of change, my courage to be with my own suffering and my capacity to help it transform. I trust that within me there is accessible goodness and love. Other ways of saying this: I trust in my own Buddha nature; or I trust the inner light; or I trust that I am made in the image of the holy. Deep in my heart this means I have faith that I am not alone and that I am worthy. I am not alone and I am worthy. What do you trust to be true? And what does it mean? You might be wondering about now what this has to do with Unitarian Universalism and this congregation. Everything. Because in our tradition, our heritage, our history we give one another enough room to examine our own experience and to determine what of truth we have found in our lives. Our own experience, filtered through our minds and hearts, and tested in community. We claim the freedom to make our faith authentic. In this congregation no one will tell you what to trust. No one will define your faith for you. You must do that for yourself, and help your children do that, with the rest of us as willing companions and models, as mirrors to show you your reflection, as runway lights to help you take off and land again. What a gift. What a privilege. What a responsibility.
And it doesn’t end there. It begins there. “May we be reminded here of our highest aspirations.” For faith identified leads us to walk the talk. What we trust to be true leads us to try and replicate it in the world. “And inspired to bring our gifts of love to all living beings.” It is no accident that Unitarian Universalists have a long history of justice work. Our Universalist forebears taught us that if love lay at the core of the universe, it is our job to spread it around. Our Unitarian forebears taught us that we can have faith in the potential of human goodness. “May we know once again that we are not isolated, but connected, in wonder and joy, to mystery and miracle in the universe, in this community, and in each other.” My trust in the truth of this Unitarian Universalist approach sustains me in the world. It helps me to keep taking positive action in the face of great odds. It helps me to remember that the consequences of anything I do or say may not be clear, but may be important nonetheless. I am not in a position to determine that my efforts have no effect. This is my faith in us and what we have to offer. What of this congregation, of Unitarian Universalism, do you trust to be true, deep in your heart? The faith that I heard us speaking of yesterday, without naming it as such, was the trust in our tradition of freedom, of walking the talk, and the great benefits, both to ourselves and to the community at large, that can arise from it.
Often when we first discover something and have a significant experience, we fall in love with it. Our faith sweeps us away. Upon hearing Bob Dylan for the first time, Bruce Springsteen, a rock star, is reported to have described his experience as a giant boot kicking open the door of his mind. New faith connects us to a bigger vision, to our own capacity to grow and change. We surrender cynicism and apathy and go forward on the journey. And then we hit a bump in the road. We begin to doubt. How do we continue on the path? Mother Teresa, as a young nun, recorded in her journals an ecstatic experience of feeling a deep connection with Jesus, to the point of having him present before her and receiving instruction from him about conducting her ministry in the poorest slums of Calcutta. She tried to persuade the higher-ups in her order that they should allow her to actually do this and it took her a while to get started. For about nine months she continued to feel the ecstatic connection with the divine and it propelled her to persevere through a difficult beginning and plant the seeds of a tremendous service to humanity. And then that ecstatic connection was gone. She lost it and it never returned. Years later, a priest went to see her and asked how she continued to do her work. What was the source of such great faith? He described his difficulties in remaining with his own ministry because he had lost his faith. How long had he been without faith, Mother Teresa asked. Seven years, he answered. She assured him that seven years was no length of time at all. She herself had been without faith for thirty years. How, why, did she continue? When this happens we go through a verifying period in which we question everything and agonize over our doubts. We examine the teachings, and the teachers, that inspired our faith in the first place. Often, through that dark night of the soul, we come through with a stronger faith. Faith based upon our own experiences of ecstasy and agony. Faith based upon our own understandings. Faith with eyes wide open regarding that in which we have placed our trust and to which we have given our loyalty. Mother Teresa might have lost her ecstatic faith, but I imagine that she arrived at a more abiding faith. Faith grows when we question what we are told, when we examine what we have experienced, and put the learnings into practice to see if they really make a difference in our lives. Questioning and doubt do not mean a lack of faith. They lead to a more authentic faith.
“If faith depends upon believing what we are told, when those beliefs fall apart, we are left with no where to stand.” Sharon Salzberg tells the story of a friend who “began to feel uncomfortable maintaining the Santa Claus myth with her growing daughter, and decided to tell her the truth. She explained that the presents under the tree on Christmas morning were put there by her parents. The child listened to this information, then sadly left the room. A few minutes later she returned to inquire, ‘Are you the Tooth Fairy too?’ Her mother said yes and agin the child left, looking sad. Soon she returned with the question, ‘Are you the Easter Bunny as well?’ When her mother said yes, the child looked at her fiercely and demanded, ‘Is there a God?’ . . . ” “Cherish your doubts, for doubt is the attendant of truth.” (Robert T. Weston)
Yesterday as we spoke of what challenges our congregation, issues of ownership, of caretaking, of stewardship, of how big is our “we” arose. Questions like What would we look like if we really knew and acted on the faith that we’ re all in this together, arose. Questions like Can we know ourselves more fully as the caretakers of this congregation and respond to its needs as generously as we are able, arose. These are the questions, the doubts. The faith, the trust in our community meets a doubt about our skillfulness and our willingness in taking care of our community. Cherish this doubt. Examine it, test it. If we do not fully trust, may each of us look at our part and consider what we need to do about that. Questions and doubt honestly engaged can build stronger faith. And if we are afraid, let us look at our fear as well. For fear constricts. It only sees the losses in change. It hinders us from seeing the possibilities. It stops us from learning how best to meet change. Mark Twain said “Some of the worst things in my life never happened.” Faith, when it has emerged stronger for doubts resolved, enables us to remember who we are and what we stand for and to live that. If there is something about Unitarian Universalism, about this congregation that we trust as true and place our faith in, it can withstand our questioning.
We are a faith community. We are a faith community because we claim the freedom to discover for ourselves, in an atmosphere of encouragement and acceptance, what our experience has led us to rely on as true, deep in our hearts. We may walk on different paths, but we are also on this journey together. We are a faith community. We are a faith community because we trust our approach to authentic faith is a true one. We trust our community to be one in which each member is called to support and respect other members. Each member is called to a responsible share in the care taking of the community. We are loyal to this sense of mutuality.
We are a faith community. We are a faith community because our faith leads us to know the assumptions we hold about life and to act in accordance with what we rely on as true. Our ethic affirms our interconnectedness with all living beings, and the earth, and values life as having inherent value, worthy of justice and compassion. We are a powerful force of love. Faith: that which we hold as true deep in our hearts, that which we base our actions upon. To know our faith and to live it is Unitarian Universalism. This is the treasure of lives lived deeply and richly. This is the treasure that is ours. Faith, “the magnetic force of a bone-deep, lived understanding.” What is yours? May it be so.
Spirit of Life
Closing words: Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Why should not we enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs? The sun shines also today. There are new lands, new people, new thoughts. Let us demand our own works and ...