Away from Religion; Toward a Philosophy of Life

Rembrandt, Philosopher's Meditation

Proving and Holding

Here’s an historical sketch about the first Unitarian sermon and the beginning of Unitarianism as a distinct religious denomination.

The prevalent, progressive intellectual outlook of the 18^th century was The Enlightenment—the Age of Reason.  What we now proclaim as American Exceptionalism was the product of an intellectual elite--yes, an elite including the likes of Jefferson, Washington, and John Adams,--an elite well versed in Reason’s way and thoroughly steeped in Greek and Roman Classicism. 

Included in this intellectual elite of the emergent American Republic was a certain group of liberal clergy within the traditional New England Church, mostly Harvard educated and Boston-centric.  Their influence rippled through the Boston congregational establishment.  These liberals gained control of the Divinity School at Harvard in the first decade of the 19^th century.  In reaction, all the conservative ministers abandoned Harvard and the Boston churches, retreating to Western Massachusetts’s newly minted Williams College and then to Amherst college to build a new base, from which a later generation would try to recapture Boston.

For twenty years, between 1805 through 1825, the liberals within the old Puritan church establishment, evolved into a denomination.  The name they took on, Unitarian was originally intended by the conservatives to be a term of derision. In 1825 the fledging liberal New England Churches joined together in The American Unitarian Association.

The turning point for this emerging denomination occurred several years earlier and can be narrowed down to a day and hour in an 1819 sermon given by William Ellery Channing in Baltimore at the ordination of a fellow minister.  This so-called Baltimore Sermon was titled “Unitarian Christianity” by its author. When Channing delivered the Baltimore Sermon, he was the preeminent liberal minister; his pulpit  the influential Federal Street Church in Boston

Channing was a persuasive liberal preacher, distinguished for his presence/demeanor as for his reasoned rhetoric. As the acknowledged leader of the Boston liberals, he had long resisted becoming what he called a sectarian, that is, he didn’t want to tear the liberals who rallied around him from the traditional New England congregational establishment

So, it was a major event that Channing publically declared that the so-called Unitarians were a distinct sect.  That he did so in “faraway” Baltimore cast it as an event of national import.

I still enjoy reading that long ago sermon.  It was a bold declaration offering not only the attributes but also justifications of the new Unitarians.  It’s first among the three important documents of 19th century Unitarianism.  14,000 words in length, it took Channing an hour and a half to deliver it.  It is said that Channing could be heard only by the first three pews. Yet in publication, the sermon became an instant and long running “bestseller.” Through 1830 it was the single must published piece of literature in the country.

As with all sermons of that era, it was preached from a Biblical text, a verse from 1 Thessalonians attributed to Paul:  “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.” 

I maintain that its scriptural verse (“Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.”) has been and continues to be Unitarianism’s (now Unitarian Universalism’s) foundational and fundamental) orientation. It continues to be my orientation to all that is presented to me as truth, especially regarding Religion.

“Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.”

Dr. Suess’s Counsel

Here’s a more whimsical expression of Unitarianism’s proving and holding, from the inimitable Dr. Seuss, Ted Geisel, who once gave an unforgettable and short commencement speech at Lake Forest College:

My uncle ordered popovers 
from the restaurant's bill of fare. 
And when they were served, 
he regarded them 
with a penetrating stare . . . 
Then he spoke great Words of Wisdom 
as he sat there on that chair: 
"To eat these things," 
said my uncle, 
"you must excercise great care. 
You may swallow down what's solid . . . 
BUT . . . 
you must spit out the air!"

And
as you partake of the world's bill of fare, 
that's darned good advice to follow. 
Do a lot of spitting out the hot air. 
And be careful what you swallow.

My Critical Odyssey

I first studied history, expecting to write and teach it in university.  Generally, I learned that what we call history involves the organization and interpretation of surviving information.  There is no one true history, but a multitude of possible interpretations serving the historian and her audience’s point of view.  My early discipline of History honed my analytical/critical skills.

In my early adult years a skill set relating to my study of history and the essential orientation of Unitarianism came together, informing me when I began to study theology.  Forty years later, I've not been dissuaded.

I first look at any particular religion as embedded in its historical time and place.  I also put all religions into the larger context of Comparative Religion that looks at religion in terms of commonalities—as human phenomena.

I have delighted in what now seems a lifelong journey into Religion, less from a spiritual yearning or quest, more as an ENLIGHTENED UNITARIAN charged to prove all things; hold fast to that which is good.  On this journey, I’ve gained considerable knowledge about a variety of historical faiths as well have come to an understanding of from time immemorial.  In recent years, I have self-identified as a Religious Naturalist, and advocate Natural Religion, while continuing to function with an historic liberal Protestant church and denomination context.  To be fair, my sense of Natural Religion bends more to the natural sciences, such as, psychology, than it does to traditional revelation.

In the last decades of the 20^th century I grew into a postmodern perspective that includes the notion of deconstruction, that all attempts to create a system of belief inevitably falls prey to critical analysis—being taken part.  Systems are time bound; and systems are subjective.  Ever-advancing knowledge and an outsider’s point of view cannot be accommodated to make any system universally true.  Postmodernism has made me an ever-more radical Unitarian who proves all things and holds fast to that which is good.  Again, I look at Religion as a human phenomenon.

Having spent a lifetime studying them, I have a lover-of-knowledge’s fascination about organized religions.  For example, the millennia-long conflict among the Abrahamic faiths, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, is a crucial aspect of the world’s immediate future that I actively strive to understand in historical terms and contemporary global dynamics.

And I am studying up on Mormonism, an area of interest way back when, when I studied ante-bellum American history.  Mormonism was one of several enthusiastic religions that followed the course of the Erie Canal’s construction from Albany to Buffalo in the 1820s, a wide swath that earned the region the name of the Burned Over District.   Why my renewed interest?  It looks like Mitt Romney, a respected/influential leader in his Mormon church, will get the Republican nomination for President. His practice of Mormonism will be scrutinized.

A few weeks ago, the NY Times presented a lengthy article on Mr. Romney’s Mormon commitments in Massachusetts, affirming that his Mormon identity is integral in his worldview.

Several years ago, I presented a sermon series on world religions, in part, acknowledging this congregation’s historic interest in world faiths. The leading personality of the epochal World Parliament of Religions (1893), Swami Vivekananda of the Krishna Society spoke here twice in his first brief American sojourn.  In the mid-twentieth century the congregations’ minister was Sunder Joshi, a respected lecturer on World Religions.  During Sunder’s tenure six great paintings, representing six great world religions filled the wall behind me.

My sermon series focused on my approach to world religions, looking not at similarities rather at an “essential truth” each major world religion gives me, for example, Social Order from Confucianism, Justice from Judaism, and Compassion from Buddhism.

As I was putting this sermon series together, I realized my personal perspective on Religion was shifting away from theology/religion and toward what is more properly called a philosophy of life.

A Philosophy of Life Orientation

Throughout my career I’ve striven to keep a practical perspective, that is, how does my counsel relate to two overarching concerns for each and for all: meaning and happiness. That’s what a philosophy of life is concerned with. As a result, I have a growing appreciation for developing personal philosophy of life as compared for a striving to build a personal theology. (This goes against the UU grain a little, since one of the keystone UU adult curricula is called “Building Your Own Theology.”)

To my mind, a philosophy of life recommends a constant testing, a trying out through one’s own life arc and experiences.  A philosophy of life relies on Wisdom.  For me, Wisdom points to a broadly human consensus—a conventional sort of wisdom readily recognizable and affirmed.

 In contrast, a theology has in it the notion of faith, which includes a cluster of attributes such as commitment, trust, and hope without proof.  Theology is religion’s way of knowing, which from an objective perspective makes it easily deconstructed by new knowledge, by other subjective perspectives, or by essential flaws in its tenets of belief.

In my latter years, I’m advocating a philosophy of life over religion and spirituality.  Once again a philosophy of life relates to meaning and happiness.  And it’s also true that a philosophy of life can operate in addition to or to supplement one’s religion, though I also maintain that a philosophy of life can also replace a traditional religion in our postmodern context.

One of my favorite contemporary public intellectuals is William B. Irvine who teaches traditional philosophy at Wright State in Ohio; he has become a contemporary voice for Stoicism, an ancient, influential philosophy of life.  Stoicism’s aim is the achievement of tranquility by taking negative emotions under control.  Professor Irvine speaks not to fellow professional academic philosophers but to an ordinary, albeit intellectually upscale audience.

In October, I spoke to Stoicism via Irvine’s fine recent book A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy. I mentioned that Irvine fell upon Stoicism while he was seeking, at midlife, a philosophy of life to order his living.  He wrote: “I was contemplating becoming a Zen Buddhist and wanted to learn more about it before taking the leap. But the more I learned about Zen, the less it attracted me.

“Practicing Zen would require me to suppress my analytical abilities, something I found it quite difficult to do. Another off-putting aspect of Zen was that the moment of enlightenment it dangled before its practitioners was by no means guaranteed. Practice Zen for decades and you might achieve enlightenment -- or you might not. It would be tragic, I thought, to spend the remaining decades of my life pursuing a moment of enlightenment that never came. Zen doubtless works for some people, but for me, the fit wasn't good. …

“I mentioned above that the benefits to be derived from practicing Zen are uncertain. Stoicism, by way of contrast, does not dangle before its adherents a moment -- maybe -- of life-transforming enlightenment. Instead, it provides a body of advice for them to follow and a set of strategies for them to employ in everyday life. The strategies in question are easy to use.”

Irvine offers a cogent description of what a philosophy of life is: “a body of advice to follow and easy to use strategies to employ in everyday life.”  I add that such philosophies of life are a constant proving and holding.  The proof is in the pudding, with the pudding being one’s progressing life.

One of my foundational/favorite philosophy of life is the Old Testament book Ecclesiastes, the testimony of an Agnostic Realist, a Jew living in the yeasty era of Greek hegemony following Alexander the Great’s death, circa 300 BCE, who finds the meaning of life in enjoyment of the gifts of life through Wisdom.

If you want to consider the possibilities of developing a disciplined philosophy of life, I recommend my guide to Ecclesiastes, Wisdom for the Ages.  I have a couple of websites where you can access more information about this carpe diem, seize the day, approach of an ancient and influential text.

Also look to William Irvine’s materials from his personal website.  It includes a link to a compelling video of a lecture by Professor Irvine regarding a Stoic’s outlook on aging.

You are already familiar with various philosophies of life:  Thoreau’s Walden is a philosophy of life that pares life down to its essentials; William Channing Gannett (our first minister) and his famous essay “The House Beautiful” is a philosophy of life on how to make a house a home.  The collected works and aphorisms of Emerson converge in a philosophy of life that urges “Trust thyself.)

I’m going to end with a brief philosophy of life that is often called “My Symphony,” by William Henry Channing, a nephew of William Ellery Channing:  You can follow along in our hymnal, Reading #484.

To live content with small means.
To seek elegance rather than luxury,
    and refinement rather than fashion.
To be worthy not respectable,
    and wealthy not rich.
To study hard, think quietly, talk gently,
    act frankly,

To listen to stars, birds, babes,
    and sages with open heart,

To bear all cheerfully,
    do all bravely, await occasions, hurry never.
In a word, to let the spiritual,
    unbidden and unconscious,
    grow up through the common.
This is to be my symphony.

And what is your symphony?

Identity

The name of our denomination, The Unitarian Universalist Association is awkward.  It has an embarrassing abundance of syllables—16 (17 with The), way too many for contemporary marketing sensibilities.  The customary acronyms or shortened forms don’t do much for me.  How about for you: UU or UniUni?  To the unitiated, these sound bytes might suggest a cult, while doing no justice to the tradition behind the contractions. They also tend to exclude those not in the inner circle.

And then ciphering out the whole name might seem on first hearing contradictory: Unitarian—One; Universalism—All.  One/All!  Is one/all oxymoronic, a self-contradiction, like jumbo shrimp?

When each part of the name stands alone there is often confusion with other religions. Unitarian gets confused with Unity (a new-agy Christian offshoot).  This congregation was founded in 1886 as the Unity Church of Hinsdale—a mission church of the Unity Men, radical Unitarians of the Midwest whose motto was “the Unity of all things.”  Unitarian also gets confused with Unification (the Korean cult of Sun Yung Moon).  Universalism conjures up the Universal Life Church of Modesto, California, which since the 1950’s has ordained anyone who applies to be a minister, able to perform marriages.  (Whenever I read the marriages chronicled in the Sunday New York Times, I’m astounded/amused by the number of officiants identified as Universal Life Ministers.

Historically Unitarian has social cachet (its roots are Boston Brahmin after all).  And it has a certain cultural notoriety and will show up in those lists that circulate now and again, offshoots or variations of the classic “how many so-and-sos does it take to screw in a light bulb.”  (I’ll let you figure out the punch line of how many Unitarians it takes—a hint, it involves a committee.) Arguably the best known joke regarding Unitarians involves the proverbial pearly gates and two signs:  one sign reads this way to heaven, the second sign reads this way to a discussion about heaven.  Recently departed Unitarians invariably head toward the discussion about heaven.  The second best known joke, arguably, is Mort Sahl’s rhetorical question,  “What do Unitarians burn on a lawn—a question mark? 

Unitarians are relatively well known in New England, particularly in Massachusetts and in the Boston orbit, which for many Unitarian Universalists is still the Athens of America.  Universalists, though some loyalists still cling to the identity, are hardly known at all, anywhere.  I don’t know any popular Universalist joke.

Unitarian Universalism is a merged denomination.  Merger was effected in 1961 when the Universalist Church of America joined with the American Unitarian Association.  The separate denominations shared some similarities, though there were also differences of substance and style—including significant markers of class.  They both had their origins in the American Enlightenment and emerged in New England at the turn of the 18^th into the 19^th century.  At their beginnings, each had a Unitarian Christology—that Jesus was special but not part of Trinitarian Godhead; each extolled freedom of belief and conscience; and most importantly each eschewed the notion of a creed.  Each evolved doctrinally throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.  The famous quip that still goes a long way in discerning the differences between the two traditions claims “the Unitarians thought humankind too good to be damned by God, while the Universalists thought God too good to damn humankind.”

One of the hot trends within our denomination these days involves writing what are called “elevator speeches.”  Imagine you’re on an elevator and a fellow rider asks you about being a Unitarian Universalists.  What can you say in fifteen or twenty seconds?   

American culture, among its many aspects, is a religious marketplace.  Some contemporary observers argue that the proliferation and vigor of religion generally, in American culture, is a consequence of competition among the many possibilities—that there is at the very least a product branding that distinguishes religion from religion, and that branding sets denominations apart and appeals to religious seekers/consumers. 

A few years ago our Association launched an ad campaign, thoroughly market tested, around the phrase “The Uncommon Denomination^sm.”  (When I first heard of it a few years ago, I flashed the 7-Up campaign around the notion of the UnCola!)

A famous and effective marketing campaign of the 1950s used the line “Are You a Unitarian and Don’t Know It?”  This slogan is the one we used when we placed ads in local papers for our “open-houses.”

I have discerned a yearning among my younger and/or new ministerial colleagues for what is summarized as UU Identity.  Toward this end they have elevated the seven principles of the Unitarian Universalist Association.  No one is yelling, “Let’s make these seven principles a creed,” but many seem to want something to at least hang a hat on.  (The Association is a free gathering of a thousandsome kindred liberal religious societies across the country; the Association has no hierarchical power over the independent congregations; yet the Association promotes even as it serves Unitarian Universalism.)

In the larger perspective, then, the problem of ambiguity—what Unitarian Universalism as a denomination stands for as well as identity for individual Unitarian Universalists—has been a result of the defining features of our liberal religious way: freedom for the individual and independence for the local society, that is, congregation. Unitarian Universalism is many things suspended in an ever-progressing context.

What I love about Unitarian Universalism is its richness—a complex history that has led to an easy eclecticism—that I find on target for a world on the fast track of globalization, but even more on target for a wonderful human heritage I can claim, in any aspect, as my heritage.


A decade ago Jeff Briere, then our intern, and I wrote 101 Reasons I’m a Unitarian Universalist. Jeff and I each wrote 50 one paragraphs sketches about aspects of our liberal religious tradition. It recently has been published as an ebook, and among the niche category of UU books has had success in the UK as well as the States. It is the briefness of the paragraphs and their variety that makes it effective and creates a pointillist portrait of our complex heritage.

In a similar way, what we’re going to do today, sketching our own personal elevator speeches will not only help us hone our descriptions, it will illustrate the richness of our point of views.

Here’s, my elevator speech:

Unitarian Universalism is a non-creedal, liberal religious community of kindred spirits. We value reason, freedom of belief and conscience, as well as respect for one another and for other religions. Character—personal integrity—matters, perhaps most of all. We seek a just and equitable society, not for some but for everyone. And we will continue to progress from generation to generation. We’re never finished.

Winter: A Season of Itself and of the Self

Lawren Harris, "Red House"

I have admiration for many things Canadian.  I lived in Canada from 1970 through 1976—a year in Ottawa and five years in Montreal.

Beginning in those years, I have adored the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the CBC.  In the 70s, it helped me acquire a cache of Canadian lore, as well as an appreciation of a Canadian point of view. Back then, while still in my intellectually formative years, I listened to its a.m. programing from morning to night.  (For a couple of those years I was working on my theology degree at McGill’s Faculty of Religious Studies.)

Thanks to the Internet and streaming audio, I once again am listening a lot to CBC programing throughout the day. 

I’m glad that our own National Public Radio has adopted some Canadian programs.  Perhaps you’ve listened to one called IDEAS that is a potpourri offering of cultural and intellectual topics.  It’s simply outstanding.

This program, Ideas, has become the venue for one of the major Canadian intellectual events, the yearly Massey lectures.  These lectures were first offered 50 years ago by the CBC.  The lecturers have been distinguished, including Martin Luther King, Jr. who delivered the five talks in 1967. 

The 2011 Massey Lectures were delivered in November by Adam Gopnik, writer, essayist, and commentator, well known for his work in The New Yorker Magazine.  Gopnik, born in 1956 in Philadelphia, was raised in Montreal where his parents taught at McGill.  He titled his lectures, Winter: Five Windows on the Season.  Those lectures have been published as a book.

The central theme of Gopnik’s Winter lectures involves a modern state of mind.  Modern means an era from the beginning of the19th century through the end of the twentieth century.  He says:

A mind of winter, a mind for winter, not sensing the season of loss and life, and with them hope of life and divinity, but ready to respond to it as a positive, and even purifying, presence of something else – the beautiful and peaceful, yes, but also the mysterious, strange, the sublime – is a modern taste.

Now, modern I mean in the sense that the loftier kinds of historians of ideas like to use this term, to mean not just right here and now but also the longer historical period that begins sometime around the end of the 18th century, breathes fire from the twin dragons of the French and Industrial Revolutions, and then still blows cinder-breath into at least the end of the 20th century, drawing deep with twin lungs of applied science and mass culture. An age of growth and an age of death, the age in which, for the first time in both Europe and America, more people are warmer than they had been before, and in which fewer people had faith in God – an age when, at last, the nays had it.

Gopnik contends that in 200 years of a modern era, winter had ceased to be a season to be endured and tested (fated by God) and had become a season of metaphor (for human imagination to find meaning).  He labels this a Romantic vision.

Gopnik further says:

Loving winter can seem, in a very long perspective of history, perverse. Of all the natural metaphors of existence that we have – light versus dark, sweet against bitter – none seems more natural than the opposition of the seasons: warmth against cold, spring against fall, and above all, summer against winter. Human beings make metaphors as naturally as bees make honey, and one of the most natural metaphors we make is of winter as time of abandonment and retreat. The oldest metaphors for winter are all metaphors of loss. In classical myth, winter is Demeter's sorrow at the abduction of her daughter by death.  In almost every other European mythology it is the same: winter is hard and summer soft, as surely as sweet wine is better than bitter lees.

The taste for winter, a love for winter vistas – a belief that they are as beautiful and seductive in their own way, and as essential to the human spirit and human soul as any summer scene – is a part of modern condition. Wallace Stevens, in his poem the “Snowman,” called this new feeling a mind for winter, and he identified it with our new acceptance of a world without illusions, our readiness to live in a world that might have meaning but that doesn't have God.

And Gopnik summarizes:  My subject is the new feelings winter has provoked in men and women of those modern times: fear, joy, exhilaration, magnetic appeal and mysterious attraction. Since to be modern is to let imagination and invention do a lot of the work once done by tradition and ritual, winter is in some ways the most modern season—the season defined by absences (of warmth, leaf, blossom) that can be imagined as stranger presences (of secrets, roots, hearth).

I invoke Adam Gopnik’s lectures and their central theme, because my UU colleagues have liberally engaged in finding the meaning of the Winter Season we’re about to enter, particularly during the high tide of mid-Twentieth Century humanism.  These colleagues, as have I, have looked through the Winter window, perhaps etched with hoarfrost crystals, and have had their religious imaginations respond to the waterscape they encountered.  Adam Gopnik’s understandings have made me realize that UUs have made Winter, not only a season of the mind, but even more a season of meaning.

This meaning-making is no little undertaking/accomplishment, especially in the absence of God, a mark of the modern point of view.  This morning I invite you to repose in the reflections of a few favorite UU meaning-makers.

Lionel Fitzgerald

Look through this window and encounter your own feelings of a winter landscape.  What feelings, what meanings do you find?

Here are familiar words by Greta Crosby, one of my 20^th century colleagues and pioneering female minister: 

Let us not wish away the winter. It is a season to itself, not simply the way to spring.

When trees rest, growing no leaves, gathering no light, they let in sky and trace themselves delicately against dawns and sunsets.

The clarity and brilliance of the winter sky delight. The loom of fog softens edges, lulls the eyes and ears of the quiet, awakens by risk the unquiet. A low dark sky can snow, emblem of individuality, liberality, and aggregate power. Snow invites to contemplation and to sport.

Winter is a table set with ice and starlight.

Winter dark tends to warm light: fire and candles; winter cold to hugs and huddles; winter want to gifts and sharing; winter danger to visions, plans, and common endeavoring – and the zest of narrow escapes; winter tedium to merrymaking.

Let us therefore praise winter, rich in beauty, challenge, and pregnant negativities.

A. Y. Jackson

This phrase, pregnant negativities,  is my favorite expression of the modern propensity to make meaning, finding metaphor in an activity that comes naturally to we UUs.

[This was followed by readings by Henry David Thoreau, Kenneth L. Patton, and Max Coots.]

The Holidays, Liberally

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OPENING WORDS

 Increasingly, we Unitarian Universalists speak of the Holidays rather than using the culturally traditional word Christmas.  The Holidays embrace all Mid-Winter festivals–ancient and modern.  Christmas is one element in a season of diverse celebrations, and observances, a confusion of cultural appropriations.  We honor Hanukkah, working its themes of freedom and light.  We honor the Winter Solstice, reveling in its natural imagery and proclaiming the goodness of the cycles of life.  We honor the African American intentional festival of Kwanza, with its contemporary values and intentions.  Ours is a deliberately inclusive vision, celebrating religious and cultural pluralism, resulting in an easy eclecticism.  Yet we find harmony and common meaning summarized as light, life, and love.

If any religious way can do justice to the many moods and purposes of Christmas/Holiday Season, it is our liberal Unitarian Universalist tradition.  It is elastic enough and encompassing enough to allow each of us the latitude to observe the December Holidays as the spirit moves us to observe them–a little or a lot, with secular joy or spiritual meaning, with excess or responsible consumption, in grand public performances or intimate family circles. [46]

Cosmic Drama

Sunlight grows thinner.

Trees are mostly bare.

Flakes of snow float

            from gray clouds.

Early mornings,

Without calling birds,

Are silent,

Except for sounding wind.

Our houses take on the odors

            of warmth, the pungency

            of domesticity.

In them, throughout the dark nights,

We gather in pools of electric brightness.

So, winter approaches.

And we, creatures of the earth,

Protagonists in the cosmic drama

            of life/not life,

Steel our wills,

Feeling the warmth of our bodies

            against the seeping cold.

And we lift our voices,

Lamenting all form of oblivion,

As we feel the fragility,

            as well as the tenacity of being.

We lift our voices

For our own life,

For all Life,

In return

We are strengthened

            by Life’s undeniable tenacity. [25]

READING

A Christmas Card to You From Us

We live, not by things, but by the meaning of things.

Antoine de St. Exupery

            Ellie maintains the quality of the Christmas card matters.  “We shouldn’t send a cheap card,” she insists.

            I confess.  I found this card in a 99¢ Store in Orange County, California–and that’s not 99¢ a card but 30 cards for 99¢.  (But you knew this wasn’t a 99¢ card the moment you opened the envelope.)

With a little distance from the purchase and the perspective that distance allows, I suspect I was drawn to this card by sentiment, because the design, especially the cheesy gold embossed foil, reminded me of my Grandmother Searl’s decorations from the 1950s–how she garlanded her bungalow with similar cheap cards strung above doorways and windows.  (And there’s nothing wrong with sentiment during the Holidays.)

            In the fever of the biggest shopping day of the year, I thought this card was more than okay and brought two boxes of them home.  That’s when Ellie immediately pronounced them cheap.  “Look at the printing.  It’s off-center.  That’s why they were discounted.”  She paused and added, “But that’s not the only reason.  They’d be cheap with perfect printing.”  She paused again, then asked, “What will we do with 60 of these cheap cards?”  But I’m getting ahead of the story.

            I bought the cards on the Friday after Thanksgiving, when I was out and about for the day with our daughter Katie who lives in Brea, California.  Katie’s quite a shopper, and the 99¢ store where I bought this card is one of her favorite bargain haunts.  (It’s near the Vietnamese sandwich shop Katie had to introduce me to, Lee’s Sandwiches.  By the way, the vegetarian sandwich I had on French bread at Lee’s was outstanding and quite the bargain at $1.49; and the iced Vietnamese coffee was a perfect complement!) 

Following lunch, at the 99¢ store, Katie and I poured over boxes of cards tossed in a bin at the entrance.  Back and forth, we showed each other various designs.  It was like old times when Katie was 10 and not 35–which is a little ironic, because Katie’s making a big transition. 

            Did you know Katie’s pregnant?  She’s going to birth to a boy in January–Brett Michael Bodnar, he’s already named.  (The Dad is Mike Bodnar.)  Ellie and I were in California for Katie’s Saturday-after-Thanksgiving baby shower.

            Back at the Bodnar house, after Ellie “dissed” my Christmas card purchase, and Katie and Mike joined in to tease me about my chronic love of bargains, I surreptitiously began to place the cards around the house: on the entertainment center, on the fire-place mantle, among the photos and notes on the fridge. When Katie or Mike or Ellie found a card, they groaned and removed it.  I managed to stay a card or two ahead of them the whole weekend.  I hid one card a little more deceptively as my parting carte de visite.  Mike and Katie will find it one day.

            So you see, our Holiday greeting, though it comes via a truly cheap (3.3¢) card, featuring two geese (why geese?) surrounded by a gold embossed foil border, with printing that is definitely off center, in faded red ink, is nevertheless rich in meaning. 

SPOKEN MEDITATION

Ellie and I share this meaning with you this Holiday Season.  So this card carries our wishes to you and yours:

May your Holidays also be full of meaning–old and new meaning–

And lots of Love, too,

Particularly the satisfying, intimate Love of family

And those friends

Who are like family. 

We count you as such a friend.

Along with the usual blessings of health and prosperity,

May your New Year bring freshness and hope.

Most of all:

Now and throughout the year

May you discover and revel in the meaning

That holds our world together–

The meaning of things, yes,

But even more the meaning of those

Who love us

As we love them. [13-14]

MESSAGE I

A Unitarian Universalist Christmas

A Progressing Doctrine of Incarnation

When it comes to Christmas, we Unitarians have long been of two minds.  True to our Puritan heritage, we demand the truth and meaning of it all.  But we also want to feel IT–to be possessed by the Spirit of the Season.  We want to expose falsehoods; but we don’t want to strip the season bare.

As I view it, throughout the 20^th Century, Unitarians developed a consistent way to talk about and experience the meaning of Christmas–the Christian festival.  It was a serious way, because it surveyed the traditional Christian story, interpreting and re-interpreting it in light of world religions.  It involved the Incarnation of the divine and the symbolism of the child.

First, Unitarians and Universalists recognized that the Incarnation of God in Jesus has parallels in the Incarnation of Krishna in Hinduism and the birth of Buddha (and subsequent buddhas), events that recur whenever the world is in need of an infusion of the Divine Spirit.  Among Unitarians and Universalists, the notion of Incarnation became universal.  We came to realize that every child is the Christ child, that every night a child is born is a holy night.  The hope and salvation of humanity became vested in every baby.  In this progression, Unitarian Universalists identified the mythology of the traditional Christmas story, found parallels in other world religions, universalized it, and made it compatible for a naturalistic and humanistic age.

In this serious/critical approach to the Season, literally and figuratively, the baby was not thrown out with the bathwater.  In this interpretation, Unitarians Universalists retained Jesus as a focus and the “true” meaning of Christmas.  In integrity, a good Unitarian could enter into the Christian Spirit of the Season. [45]

The Green Eyed Goddess of Envy

When the Solstice approaches and the wheel of the year turns, memories abound.  In the Season of Memory, I remember the Christmas of 1976 first of all.

That year, I was an intern minister at the First Universalist Church of Syracuse.  We were living in a government subsidized townhouse apartment complex in Fayetteville, NY, a Syracuse suburb.  In particular, I remember the yellow shag carpeting.  (Remember shag carpeting?)  I also remember a canary yellow AMC Pacer owned by an adjacent neighbor.  (Remember AMC and its curious collection of cars?)  And I remember a single parent dad, father to a young boy, whose living room was bare except for a television, reclining chair, and, next to the chair, a life-size plastic Santa Claus illuminated from within–a bleak but beguiling tableau seen through the drapeless patio doors, the dad often in full recline, with a can of beer in his hand, bathed by a soft light of Santa-glow. 

It was our first American Christmas after living in Canada for six years.  Our daughter Katie was nine years old.  Ellie had a make-money job as a chair assistant to an orthodontist.  We had little money, but enough to get by.  We were relatively young, embarking on a new adventure, unsure of what our future would be.  I was an apprentice minister in a remnant Universalist congregation, testing my suitability for the trade.  For reasons of economy but more for the sake of our daughter, we tried to make Christmas hand-fashioned and family centered.   

That year it snowed at least a little for more than forty consecutive days.  We ventured forth on a bitterly cold Saturday morning to cut a crooked little tree at a picked-over Christmas Tree farm.  When I dragged the tree through the sliding doors, from the patio to the living room, a frozen mouse fell out of a bird’s nest that rested in the midst of the tight branches onto the yellow shag carpeting.  (When we left that place six months later, we were still picking out balsam needles from the rug.)

In the afternoon on the Saturday we cut our tree and brought it home, we fashioned ornaments from Styrofoam and chunks of wood, festooning our creations with plastic jewels, glitter, and water paint.  I used the occasion to lecture Katie about the real meaning of Christmas.  As an illustration, I moralized as I created the head of an anti-Christmas spirit that I named the Green-Eyed Goddess of Envy.  Her round Styrofoam head had green acrylic hair and shimmering emerald green eyes.  I told Katie, the Green Eyed Goddess of Envy’s refrain is “Gimmee, gimmee, gimmee!”

No longer a moral lesson, but a symbol of my ridiculous excess, the Green-Eyed Goddess of Envy–sometimes called the Green-Eyed Goddess of Excessmas–appears each year to perch at the top of our tree. 

When she appears, her green eyes are undiminished by ever-increasing years.  Memories flow. We laugh at my moralizing about Christmas meaning, even as I savor the irony of the lesson I learned. [73-74]

MESSAGE II

A Natural History of

Christmas Customs

In pagan northern and central Europe, straw played a significant part in Winter Solstice celebrations.  It symbolized the fertility of the earth and was a talisman for a good harvest.  Yule straw, preferably from the last sheaf of the harvest, housed the corn spirit.  Farmers spread it on their floors, scattered it in the fields and tied it to tree trunks to encourage fruitfulness.  In Denmark and Sweden, straw from that same last sheaf was used to bake the Yule Boar, a loaf in the shape of a boar that stood on the table throughout the various observances; it also contained the corn spirit.  Norwegians slept on Yule straw so guests who visited at year’s end might sleep in the beds; a dream dreamed on Yule straw would come true.

Scandinavians hung sheaves of oats outdoors for the birds to eat, probably a relic of an ancient sacrifice to the agricultural gods.  Polish people put a sheaf of rye, oats, wheat, and barley in each of the four corners of their homes.  In the Slavic countries of Eastern Europe, a creature name Polaznik visited the house at dawn on Christmas Day, throwing a handful of wheat over those who lived within, an omen of prosperity in the New Year.

Most familiar to us today–we can buy them in artsier specialty stores– are straw ornaments.  Perhaps you’ve seen the Swedish “jublock,” a straw goat to be placed on the Christmas table or beneath the tree.  No, it’s not a symbol of the devil, rather a representation the Norse god Thor, a friend of humanity, said to ride a goat.  And there is a variety of Scandinavian straw stars, crosses, and other figures derived from ancient fertility symbols.  In many areas, the Yule log, when first lighted, was sprinkled with wine and grain, another reenactment of sacrifice to the agricultural gods

In Europe, the Yule Log continues to be a centerpiece of the Seasonal observances.  It is strictly pagan, relating to the Viking Yule (which means wheel and suggests the turning of the seasons) and symbolizing the triumph of light over darkness–the rebirth of the sun at the Winter Solstice, the darkest time of the year.  Before the relatively recent advent of The Christmas Tree in England, the Yule Log was the season’s central symbol.  It was carried to the great hearth on Christmas Eve, children astride it, pulled by ivy-covered ropes.  A brand from the previous year’s Yule lighted it.  To assure a good harvest, corn and wine were sprinkled on the flames.  In Scotland a female effigy carved out of wood, the Christmas woman (perhaps a link to Freya, Norse goddess of fertility), was burnt in the fire.

Many different European groups beat the burning Yule Log, for example, Northern Italians, Bulgarians, and Spaniards, probably to drive out evil spirits.  Many other superstitions by many other peoples were associated with the great log of the Solstice Season.

The symbolism of evergreens is apparent, even in our contemporary observances, however removed and remote they may be from their sources.  In ancient as in modern times, they represented that which endures the darkest and coldest time of the year, when all else is sear, dormant, or dead.  In pagan days, evergreens of all sorts–mistletoe, holly, yew, bay, laurel, rosemary, ivy, plus firs of all varieties–were cut at the time of the Winter Solstice and brought indoors to help the sun rise again.  Northern Europeans brought branches in to their homes as a refuge for the woods spirits during the worst weather of the year.  Romans, at the January Kalends, gave each other green branches of holly; they nailed laurel to their doorposts.

The Druids held mistletoe in especially high regard.  The called it the Golden Bough and believed it contained the life of their sacred oak tree through the winter.  At the Winter Solstice, a white robed priest would cut it down with a golden sickle, sacrifice two white bulls, place some on the altar, and give the remainder to the celebrants that they might hang it above their doors.  Kissing under the mistletoe today, from a British custom, combines the Scandinavian custom of declaring a truce when under it with the belief that it conveyed fertility and vitality. 

An evergreen plant that bore berries–holly, ivy, and mistletoe–was a seasonal symbol of fertility.  Bound into wreaths as symbols of renewal, peace, and friendship, their round shape kept evil witches and spirits at bay.  Ivy, the sacred plant of Bacchus, was valued as a protection against drunkenness.  Yew protected against witches.  Bay leaves came from a Roman award to poets and conquerors.

Of course, the Christmas Tree has a more ancient history.  St. Boniface, completing the Christianization of Germany in the eight century, cut down the sacred oak of Odin; behind it was a small fir tree Boniface dedicated to the Christ Child.  The custom of decorating a fir tree can be accurately traced back only to the 1600s in Alsace.  In its modern form, the Christmas Tree relates to the universal archetype of the Tree of Life from which springs all goodness and bounty.  The hanging of fruit and other foods, facsimile animals, symbolic treasures of all sorts may well be the most authentic and spontaneous celebration of the season.

To the ancients, straw and grain, the great Yule Log, various forms of evergreen plants were more immediate or vital symbols than they are to us today, removed as we are from Nature and agriculture. 

For us, they are familiar decorations, though their timeless symbolism surely endures on an unconscious level.  They are archetypes of our collective unconscious.

When days grow short and the warmth of the sun grows weak, a vital essence in each of us responds, because we’re of Nature, too.  These natural symbols, allow us to respond psychically, in the midst of the seasonal drama of life ebbing and flowing, assuring us that once again winter turns toward spring. [28-30]

MESSAGE III

Magic and Miracle

Santa Biker

Last year after the Christmas Eve service, I rushed to O’Hare to catch an eight o’clock flight to Los Angeles to join Ellie and Katie for a West Coast Christmas Eve.  O’Hare had so few passengers, it had the eerie illusion of being deserted.  The only noteworthy activity occurred at my gate, where a sixty-year-old man in a well worn Santa Claus suit sat–long gray hair and beard with a credible pot belly.  He looked so authentic that young children stopped and stared, while flight attendants veered to talk to him.

I wondered if he were working the airport, the City of Chicago’s Christmas Eve ambassador.  What a beguiling possibility.

When the flight to LA boarded, he was first in line, carrying not a sack of presents but a scuffed briefcase.  Passengers joked with him, of course, asking him what had happened to his reindeer and sleigh.  Up close, he was the most convincing Saint Nick I’d ever seen.

Cruising over Kansas at 30,000 feet on Christmas Eve, it was enchanting to have that red and white, right jolly old elf sitting forward.  The quarter-full cabin was transformed.  Usually blasé attendants were charmed by his presence; one produced a camera for group photos.  He produced a press kit from which he took eight by ten glossy photographs.  He autographed a head shot for each of the attendants.  Because of the press kit and our destination, I was thinking this was not a Chicago but a Hollywood Santa.

I’d stashed my bag in the overhead, two seats in front of Santa’s seat.  When we could walk about, I went through the pretext of looking for something in a bag.  In the process, Santa and I struck up a conversation.

Here’s the skinny:  He worked for a Santa Clause agency that contracted major malls and stores through the US.  He was in special demand and commanded greater pay, because he was a “natural beard” Santa.  For the past fortysome days, he’d worked in a Connecticut mall.  He’d come directly from work, without time to change (so he claimed), to catch a flight back to his LA home.  The rest of the year, he worked for the Navy making model ships and planes that were used in gunnery practice.  He hoped to become a movie actor and already had a couple of bit parts in major movies–hence his press kit from which he produced a resume.

As a young adult, he’d been a biker–not a Hell’s Angel, but another bike club.  As he talked, he removed his red Santa’s tunic to reveal a black, biker’s club tee shirt with a club logo.  Fading blue tattoos etched thick forearms.

His insights into being a good Santa fascinated me.  He related how he comported himself for both children and parents.  This man, who in civilian garb surely looked menacing–particularly on the seat of a thundering Harley wearing club colors–had internalized a complex Santa Clause code of behavior–a persona that was palpable. 

He had just enough of a menacing glint in his piercing blue eyes to make me suspect he was a markedly different man when not wearing that costume, a costume and persona he obviously relished, because he chose to wear it cross-country.

It was Christmas magic what that costume did to an elder, bona fide California biker, rendering him a curiously serious but still right jolly old elf.  It was Christmas magic to be flying to LA on the night before Christmas with Old Biker Santa.  

Magic of the Season

The Holiday Season is magical.  Think of the stories we love, though we know them romantic fictions:

• the Hanukkah miracle of the oil that occurred when the defiled temple of Jerusalem was rededicated in 165 BCE.
• the traditional Nativity Tale of a guiding star, an angel speaking to shepherds, a virgin birth, a promised child, magi bearing gifts, and a cruel king.
• Charles Dickens “A Christmas Carol” with three ghosts and redemption of the archetypal curmudgeon Ebenezer Scrooge.
• Frank Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life” with a guardian angel and excursion to what-might-have-happened-if land.

They all respond to a common impulse and touch us with a similar message of hope and transformation.

[62-63]

CLOSING WORDS

If Only for the Season

If only for the Season…

Let us banish cynicism

            and welcome wonder.

If only for the Season…

Let us downplay our differences

            and discover bonds

            of common origin and continuing cause.

If only for the Season…

Let us deny apathy and indifference

            and truly live by loving.

If only for the Season…

Let us set aside worry

            and smile and laugh and sing.

If only for the Season…

Let us subvert greed and jealousy

            and be good gift getters and givers.

If only for the Season…

The brief season

            of light,

            of life,

            of love,

Let us be wise enough to be a little foolish

            about candlelight and children and matters

            of the heart…

If only for the Season. [12]