We have to thank Regina Packard for today's topic: growing a UU spirituality. I have very much enjoyed being with this subject, and especially with the Affect Theology of one of our theologians, Thandeka. Will you take a moment now to sit together and try to recall an experience you have had that you would call spiritual? This may not be easy, so don't stress over it.. Maybe a time in nature, or creating something, or love with another person, or a vision? Or something else? I was out kayaking this week and I came upon a heron standing in a marsh closer to me than the doors at the back of the sanctuary. I remained as still as possible as we, me and the heron, just spent some silent time together. I felt the warmth of the sun on my body, the rocking of the boat. I saw the marsh plants turning red. I heard geese in the distance; I smelled the water and I sat with this magnificent big blue bird. A sense of peace and gratitude filled me and I thought, how wonderful is life. That's a spiritual experience, to me.

Spirituality, though, is such a slippery word. I could spend the whole time today trying to define it. So I won't, except to say that spirituality is an experience of spirit, which begins with the body because spirit comes from the Latin word for breath. Breathing is a bodily function. Further, spirituality begins with an experience in the body as we are physically touched by the messages that come to us from the world. Spirituality is interactive because we then respond to those stimuli: neurologically, physically, emotionally, mentally, like me with the heron. I saw the heron; I responded with bodily stillness and sensual awareness. Emotions filled me, and then thoughts. Sound comes to us from the piano, we identify it as music and perhaps we start to sway, or sing, or tap our feet, or dance. Perhaps our breathing synchronizes with the rhythm. We feel energized, or comforted, or touched in some other way. We might remind ourselves how much we like to sing. The world impresses itself on us and we express our reaction to that impression. That's the beginning. Unitarian Universalist spirituality is not, then, based on claims of truth or infallible doctrine, but rather based on individual experience. Our spirituality does not have a creedal basis, that is a basis in a belief, but instead it has an experiential basis. Thus growing a UU spirituality originates with our experiences.

Let's do it. Would you get comfortable in your seats, feet flat on the floor, hands in your laps, breathing slowly in and out . . . in and out. . .. . Close your eyes. Feel your body in the chair. . . . What are you aware of? Ease? Some aches and pains? Restlessness? . . . What sounds do you hear, beside the thruway? . . . What can you smell? . . . Are you hot? Cold? . . . Can you be aware of the people around you? Can you sense their physical presence? .. . . Can you hear them breathing? Sighing? Moving? . . . What is it like to have such silent, physical awareness of oneself here? . . . Of others? Neither our spiritual experience nor our religion can be reduced to reason and morality alone, despite our legitimate need for reason to inform our faith. We have sometimes forgotten this. Earl Morse Wilbur, a historian of Unitarianism, is famous for his statement that Unitarianism is based upon the principles of freedom in religious belief, reason and tolerance of different views. James Luther Adams critiqued this placing of reason as the foundation of our religion when he wrote: "What is especially to be noted here is the tendency of this intellectualistic view, first to interpret existence in terms of a rational, united, harmonious structure and second to exalt the cognitive (thinking), non-affective aspects of the human psyche." (As quoted by Thandeka in New Words for Life in A Language of Reverence.) Can you identify the difference in your experience when we sat here in silence together, aware of ourselves and each other, and the way my words might have just engaged your mind? Our spirituality is reflected in the connections we forge with one another to touch the spirit, to practice ethical living and to do justice making. Our congregation is like a triangle with three points: connecting with the spiritual, connecting with each other and how we act that out in the world. We are relational beings who, at our best, engage with each other in a creative interchange that enhances well-being. When I understand and authentically respond to your responses, we connect. If I do not understand or respond to your responses in a way that honors their reality for you, we do not connect. If you can "get" or positively respond to my experience with the heron, we connect. If you dismiss me as some kind of weirdo, we do not connect. We need not think of it as a weakness that Unitarian Universalism does not have a theology to tell us what to believe, or even what we should receive as truth. We could think of this as our gift. We are not a tradition that works through answers to questions. Rather we look to experience. Our spirituality is a living, growing, changing, connective, organic part of our lives, if we make it so. A Unitarian Universalist spirituality, then, has three parts, each flowing out from the others: bodily experiences, which when united with our rational understandings, tell us what we believe, which then is enlivened by our spiritual practices. Experience, beliefs, practices together make up a UU spirituality. How to grow yours?

Pay attention to what you respond to in your heart, in your body. There are many opportunities for body experiences in our services. Can we try to get in touch with them? Will you close your eyes again and focus on the different pieces of the service as I bring them up? The bell. . . . Listen to it; allow it to penetrate you. What affect does it have on you? . . . The prelude; the offertory. Listen to it. How does your body respond to it? . . . The chalice. Look at it. How does the flame affect you? . . . The words we say together. Hear the many voices speaking of aspirations and connection. What is that like? . . . The singing. Pay attention to your breath when you sing. How does it change? Do you hear your own voice? Can you hear the people around you? What is it like for your body to be standing, if you stand? . . .. The meditation. The sounds in the silence. You and your breath, you and your body. The people around you. . . . Joys and sorrows. How do you respond to the words, to the emotional expressions of joy and sorrow? . . . Do you reach out to touch a hand? Does a tear roll down your cheek? . . . The offering. What does it feel like to physically put money into the basket. . . . The sermon: does it sometimes touch your heart, or cause you to shift in your seat, or send some energy through your body as you recognize yourself in it? You see there are many opportunities for a physical, sensual, emotional response to something in our services. Pay attention to what touches you. Pay attention to your responses. Let your senses talk to you. Let yourself know the specialness, some would say sacredness, of this space when we are together in it. And not just here, but anywhere of importance to you, be it in nature, or with others, or through the arts, and on. Let your body and its responses tell you about yourself. Because we are relational beings who respond to the stimuli that comes in to us from the world outside, and because our responses then trigger responses in others, we have to trust our responses and allow their physical origins to find congruence with the rational understandings of our minds. We have to trust our responses in a culture that fosters a mind-body split. On the one hand, in our death-phobia, we devalue the body and exalt the spirit, deeming things physical somehow defiled or untrustworthy because they decay, age and die. On the other hand, in our spiritual short-sightedness, we indulge the body and the sensual, surrounding ourselves with sexual images having no relation at all to the spirit. How do we avoid such a mind-body split? When our minds have no congruence with our bodies we only half-live.

If we are relational beings, then we would begin with an assumption that we will try to connect with one another. We will seek connection from the depth of our souls. I'm not talking about a rational choice or decision. I am talking about life's longing for itself, as Kahlil Gibran said. Life looks to connect with life. When I saw the heron I stopped the kayak. I responded before I even thought about it. I wanted to be near the heron. I responded physically, instinctively, with a desire for connection. I sat still with the bird. I became aware of emotion, “I felt peaceful and happy. Then my rational mind kicked in with the observation of how beautiful was the world; how grateful I felt. In this case, mind and body united and I had a wonderful spiritual experience. But what if my mind had repudiated my initial responses, physical and emotional? What if my mind had gone into judgement mode and said "You've seen heron before, what's the big deal?' What if my mind had moved into responsible mode and said "You know, your friends have already gone in and wait for you at the launch site. Don't keep them waiting." What if my mind had split off from my other response mechanisms? Do you think I would enjoy a heron as much the next time I saw one? Do you think I would have loved that heron as much? Would I have even gotten to gratitude? You might know what this feels like. You feel a mutual connection with someone and you respond to that connection and maybe you say something and they tell you it doesn't exist. You're confused at first. Your instincts don't lie to you. Yet you begin to doubt yourself. Am I wrong? Am I making this up? You begin to distrust your responses toward connection. Your mind begins to judge you, to repudiate those initial responses. You split off from yourself. We do this to children frequently. A death occurs in the family and we want to spare our children. Yet they see us in our sadness and they ask us what's the matter and we say nothing. Nothing is the matter. The child then has to explain to him/herself why she/he perceived one thing but was told another. And as you know, most children explain this to themselves by deciding that somehow their perception was wrong. They split off from themselves. We respond to one another; we read one another and when we deny or do not respond to the readings that others do of us, a split between mind and body begins. So we pay attention to what we respond to and how we respond and then we pay attention to what our mind makes of those responses. Do we affirm our responses or do we deny them, minimize them, disregard them, judge them, wish they were otherwise, control them? How do our minds respond to the responses of others?

For when our minds and bodies split off from one another, we disconnect from ourselves and growing our own spirituality becomes derailed. But when our minds and bodies unite, we experience wholeness and we touch the depths of ourselves. This is one reason why small groups like covenant groups have such power. They allow us to express ourselves, to tell the truths of mind and body and be received. Out of that touching the depths comes our beliefs. What beliefs of mine emerged from my encounter with the heron? That I am part of the interconnected web; that experiencing the connections can fill me with peace and joy; that this is holiness for me. Life's longing for itself. Some of you might call this connecting God, or a psycho-biological mandate of evolution based upon survival of the species, or the way of the universe, or something else. The words don't hold the paramount importance here; the experience of whole connection does. Out of the experience I articulate my beliefs. After I articulate them, after I have grown the tender shoot of my spirituality, I return to the experience of living the beliefs and the ethical values inherent in them. The spiritual practices we do keep our beliefs alive, allow us to live according to them, while deepening them because spiritual practices are experiential in nature. They take us back to our bodies. What are spiritual practices? Anything we do with an intention of going deep and finding the congruence of our bodies and minds: prayer, meditation, dance, artistic creation, yoga, and many others. My chief spiritual practices are meditation, both sitting and walking, and kayaking. When I do either of these I am aware of the synchronizing of my breathing with my body motions. Awareness of the body brings on awareness of emotions, brings on a connection with myself. Finding the spiritual practices that work for us may require some experimentation. What do you respond to? What practices speak to you? What practices help you to feel whole? What practices enable you to live your values and beliefs? Only you can answer that. The spiritual practices in our service include meditation, singing, affirmations and prayers. There are so many more. How do you grow a UU spirituality? Practice, practice, practice. And we've come full circle. We began with the experiences of the world impressing themselves upon us through our bodies, our nervous systems, our senses. We saw how we respond to those impresses with expressions of our own. Often all of this happens before we have a consciousness of it. When our mind kicks in, it can affirm the impressions and the expressions, or it may not. If our minds do not affirm our impressions and expressions, our minds and bodies split off from one another. We suffer for it. This splitting off is at the root of violence, objectification, scapegoating, persecution, etc. Our world is not safe because we cannot trust our own perceptions. We cannot trust ourselves at the deepest level. If our minds do affirm the impressions and expressions, we experience a sense of wholeness, confidence and trust in our own perceptions. The world outside corresponds to the world inside. We can both understand and experience what we believe in. We can find practices that work for us. We grow a spirituality.

In our Statement of Principles and Purposes we say that the first source of our living tradition is "Direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces which create and uphold life." It begins with experience mediated through the body. The spirit is the breath of life. UU theologian Thandeka takes the song Spirit of Life as a paradigm for growing a spirituality. "Spirit of Life, (breath of life) come unto me." It starts with a direct bodily experience. "Sing in my heart all the stirrings of compassion." It touches us sensually, emotionally. We express the response of compassion. "Blow in the wind, rise in the sea, move in the hand, giving life the shape of justice." It lives outside of us also, in the wind, on the sea. We connect our inner world with the outer world, mind and body, and the result is justice. "Roots hold me close, wings set me free." Practices root us and free us. "Spirit of life, come to me, come to me."

Grow your spirituality through experience, belief and practice. Pay attention to your body. What do you respond to? How do you respond? Pay attention to your mind. What does it do with your initial impressions? Is there a mind-body connection? Out of that connection your beliefs will be clear to you. Pay attention to your body. What spiritual practices work for you? Which ones allow you to deepen your experience and live your faith?

Growing our spirituality is our life work and it is good to do this in community. I hope there will be interest in a credo group, a group that will look to its experiences and find the beliefs arising from them. I hope there will be interest in a spiritual practices group, or some sort of covenant group with a focus upon spirituality. You will hear more about these in the coming weeks and months. Growing our spirituality asks us to be gardeners. In the words of May Sarton, "Help us to be the always hopeful gardeners of the spirit who know that without darkness nothing comes to birth as without light nothing flowers." May your gardens flourish. May it be so.