Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto

Tradition With a Twist

Reverend Amy Zucker
September 19, 2004
Palo Alto, CA

As Rev. Darcey Laine said from the pulpit last Sunday, this year is a "rainbow year" in children's religious education. In alternating years, we have a "chalice year" of focus on Unitarian Universalist history and identity, and then a "rainbow year" of focus on the many sources of our tradition. This year, the liturgical year will be following the same pattern. While the children are learning about, for example, humanism in their classes, the adults will be hearing about it in the Sunday service.

From a process that included every congregation in our Association, Unitarian Universalists crafted this statement (you can find it on page Roman-numeral-10 of your hymnal):

The living tradition which we share draws from many sources:

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;

Words and deeds of prophetic women and men which challenge us to confront powers and structures of evil with justice, compassion, and the transforming power of love;

Wisdom from the world's religions which inspires us in our ethical and spiritual life;

Jewish and Christian teachings which call us to respond to God's love by loving our neighbors as ourselves;

Humanist teachings which counsel us to heed the guidance of reason and the results of science, and warn us against idolatries of the mind and spirit.

Spiritual teachings of earth-centered traditions which celebrate the sacred circle of life and instruct us to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature.

In October, we will begin focusing on earth-centered traditions, making reference to that source in some way in each service. Several weeks later we will turn to Jewish and Christian teachings; then to the words and deeds of prophetic men and women; then to the teachings of humanism. A few spring months will be devoted to wisdom from the world's religions, and finally we will reflect on the direct experience of transcending mystery and wonder. These first few weeks, we are talking about the whole rainbow: the challenge, potential and pitfalls of drawing upon a wide range of sources.

My question today is, are there sources of inspiration and insight that we tend to exclude arbitrarily? It seems to me that there are. How often do we hear country music in a Unitarian Universalist church, or for that matter, how many of us listen to it at home? How many of us admit it if we do? It is a source that is largely untapped. I wonder how many others there are? And what would we gain by opening ourselves to their flow?

One of the foundations of our tradition is the conviction that revelation is not sealed. This means that God did not reveal truth in one book and then finish writing, set God's seal on the volume and fall silent forevermore. More broadly, it means that the holy is revealed to us in many books, in many ways, at other times than the era of the Biblical writing. More broadly still, it means that not only those things that are commonly regarded as holy are sources of religious insight and truth. We honor tradition, and we also welcome the twists and turns tradition takes as time and human experience progress.

When I was a child and read Bible stories, God was like a character in the book. There were all those stories of Genesis where God walks with Abraham and they talk like any two people, or the later stories where God appears to prophets and instructs them in what to say. And so I wondered, why doesn't God talk to us anymore? And now, after all these years, I have the UU answer: God talks to us all the time. Or, to translate into less traditionally theistic terms, the sacred is not hidden from us, nor was it revealed only to Abraham and Moses and Jeremiah, perhaps not even especially to them. It speaks, it whispers, it shines, as much today as it ever did. One of our hymns says,

In wonder workings and some bush aflame,
We look for Truth and fancy it concealed,
When in earth's common things it stands revealed,
While grass and flowers and stars spell out the name.

That is why our readings are sometimes from the Bible, sometimes from holy books, and sometimes from so-called "secular" poetry or essays. It's why you've heard about Harry Potter and Burning Man from this pulpit, and heard the Beatles from our piano. It is why we make water the center of our ingathering service and flowers the center of our spring Flower Communion, and may meditate upon stones, trees, stars, or skyscrapers in between. And it's why we are focusing on the six sources throughout this year.

Now, we've symbolized the theme by hanging a rainbow of colors here behind me, but just as there aren't six colors in the rainbow but an infinite number, there are not only six sources. Those are just broad generalizations, attempts to capture most of the possible sources within categories, which is fine, but when it comes to the fine print, the exact shade, we as a movement often draw on very few. And the in-betweens and seldom-seens are very valuable.

I began this service with Garth Brooks because, as a general rule, we don't draw on that source, the source called country & western music. It's not as if it isn't a potential source of inspiration, as you may have noticed when you listened to the words. And it's not as if it's obscure. This land has more country music radio stations than any other kind. But it's hidden in plain sight.

Rumi wrote, "Every thing in the universe is a vessel full to the brim with wisdom and beauty." Can you imagine what it is like to see the world this way?

Have you ever had a moment in which everything around you seemed to have something important to teach you?

Now, most of us aren't mystics and might find that vision too much of a challenge, so let's take it down just a notch. Let's look at every thing in the universe as if it contains some morsel, some scrap of wisdom and beauty. It might be hard to see, but it's there. One of our tasks as a religious community is to dig it out, hold it up to the light and allow its insight to fill our eyes.

Do you ever walk through a bookstore and wonder what insights are hidden in the pages you are walking by? That happens to me a lot, inveterate browser through used bookstores that I am. So many hundreds of books, thousands of pages, millions of words, and somewhere, on a page I will never see, is a sentence or image or line of dialogue that would transform my life, if I only knew it.

We can't take in every scrap the world has to offer, any more than we can read every book on the shelves. But we can be open to whatever comes our way. And I worry when we don't, because it really matters. It doesn't matter to Mr. Brooks whether we listen to his song. It matters to us, because it's a good song with moving lyrics and can inspire us–but even so, there are other places to hear that message. (That's why I chose that song - because its words are so much like those we might hear in a song in our hymnal.) No, where it matters most is in the people we welcome, or fail to welcome.

If someone walked in this door and said that she found inspiration in country music and listened to it for several hours a day, would she and her insights be welcome? If someone said that the most important source of wisdom in his life was the New Testament, would he and his wisdom be welcome? How welcome do people feel who find inspiration in parapsychology, or the Republican Party platform?

The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and the proof of the source is in the actions it inspires. Garth Brooks made that song the keystone of his fourth record album, and he got some flak for the "gay rights" line, where he says "when we're free to love anyone we choose . . . then we shall be free." His popularity fell off a bit; the song only reached number 12 in the country charts, which is very impressive but below expectations for the superstar who had had one number-one hit after another. Some stations balked at playing it. But he went on singing it at concert after concert, and notably at Equality Rocks, a huge fundraising concert for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender rights held several years later.

When someone is inspired by his music to work for the golden vision of freedom he paints, then his song, this source, becomes holy. Any source becomes holy when it inspires insight and blessed action, whether it is a Merle Haggard song, a rap song, a cheap paperback novel, or an Elvis-on-velvet painting. Why exclude them out of hand? Shouldn't we be rejoicing that wherever people are and whatever sources they draw on, they can hear a word that will inspire them to act for justice, compassion, equality, world community - all the things we affirm and promote?

I admire the people who will speak up when their sources aren't very popular. Garth Brooks is a wealthy and successful man and can afford to alienate a few listeners, but still, it took courage to release that song and to keep on singing it. It took courage to carry country music, long associated with social conservatism, into a gay-rights concert. When you share that one of the sources of your inspiration is something that seems a bit out of the UU mainstream, that's courage. I want us to reward it by welcoming you and the wisdom you bring.

Ultimately, openness to sources is openness to people. Several years ago the Unitarian Universalist Association ran an advertising campaign on public radio (I know, public radio supposedly doesn't have advertisers. Sponsors, advertisers, same thing). Now, that's my radio station of choice, and it was sure nifty to hear my religion mentioned on it - "a home for freedom, reason, and tolerance," as the ads said - but I also happen to know, from the authoritative source that is the quiz show "What Do You Know," that the number of people in the US who listen to public radio on a regular basis constitute a whopping one percent of the population. I asked the office of public information at the UUA why we were advertising there instead of, say, on black, Latin, soft-rock, or country stations, and was told that we advertised where the demographic was similar to that already within our walls. That's a good principle if you're doing marketing, but a weak one if you're doing outreach.

I realize that advertising funds are limited and air time is expensive, but I question what is really going on when we put our scarce resources into reaching out to people who are "already like us," that is, like the majority (though certainly not the totality) of people already sitting in these chairs. We claim to welcome a diversity of people because we want to learn from each other. When we reach out only to the people who are most like ourselves, that learning - not to mention our hospitality - is thwarted.

The liturgical year coordinates with the religious education schedule this year because, as the title of Darcey's newsletter column always reminds us, we are always learning. Everything we do in church is about learning. And learning means going somewhere we have never travelled before, and welcoming new and surprising insights into our lives. You never know what will happen. When I played this song on my computer as I worked on this sermon, my cat, who is on the aloof side and seldom deigns even to be petted, perked right up, nosed around the speakers, and rubbed up against my face. And then, glory be!, she settled in my lap for the very first time. I'm going to be listening to this song a lot. (After I got tired of hearing the song, I tried it with classical music. It didn't work.)

I can't guarantee feline revelation if you broaden the scope of your sources. And it's okay to have your favorites. I'm not standing here this morning to tell you that any country music has to be among yours. I'm asking you to pause before you reject a particular source, and ask yourself whether the issue at that moment is that you're just not ready for new ideas just then. If it is, take note of it and try to move beyond your comfort zone now and then. When we are ruled by our comfort, then our lives run on very narrow tracks while all around us other possibilities beckon just out of reach.

As the historian Earl Morse Wilbur summed us up, we are the church that affirms freedom, reason, and tolerance. We don't accept constraints on our freedom of exploration, whether they are created by others or ourselves. We don't reject something new or challenging out of hand, but reason it through and fit it in if it makes sense to us. We welcome all sorts of views and practices, believing that we are enriched by our diversity and stretched by our tolerance of beliefs different than our own. When all of those things are true, then we shall be free.