Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto

Stepping into the Unknown

Reverend Amy Zucker Morgenstern
February 18, 2007
Palo Alto, CA

Several years ago a colleague of mine posed a question to a circle of Unitarian Universalist ministers. She had realized, she said, that the guiding metaphor of her life was that of learner. She approached life as a student, seeing each challenge as an opportunity to learn, each delight as that of a child whose mind was expanding to take in something new. She realized that this was not the metaphor everyone had embedded in their minds and hearts. She wanted to know, what were some other ways people approached life? Who were some of our models? One person suggested that some approach life less as a student than as a lover: ready to embrace the world, celebrate beauty, rejoice in everything they find in the world as something new about the one they love. Walt Whitman was the perfect example, that exuberant singer of human beauty and the glories of nature.

I reflected, reading these possibilities, that both of these approaches seemed quintessentially Unitarian Universalist. To be always learning, as Reverend Darcey said in her sermon last week; to embrace this life with passion; we see both in the statement of our congregation’s purpose.

Today, as I and you and we together look ahead to a period of flux and unpredictability, I think of a third metaphor: approaching life as an explorer, one who steps gladly into the unknown. When we are explorers, our models are pioneers of all kinds, pioneers of time and space and thought and politics. Our most needful quality is courage. Our guiding principle is a sense of adventure.

You can be an explorer even if someone else has traveled the same territory. What makes the unknown such a challenge is that it is unknown to you. The men on the maps in elementary school, the so-called original explorers of the Americas, Cortez and Balboa and da Gama and Columbus, were seldom, if ever, the first people to step into the territory — but it was new to them, and that took courage. No matter how many billions of people have become parents in human history, no matter how many stories they tell and how much advice they give about the experience, that step is a great leap into the unknown for each new parent. [Regarding today’s reading,] Elizabeth Blackwell was the only woman who had to be the first at what she did — but each medical student before and after her, of whatever gender, has also had to take a deep breath and a plunge.

Nor is the step into the unknown a one-time thing. It keeps happening over and over — if we let it. The adventure is not over with that first leap; it is in every step. Without a sense of adventure, who could become a parent? Not only is the transition into parenthood a step out of the comfort zone and into the great unknown, but raising children takes us into unknown territory again and again. Each time we get the routine down, each time we think we know who our children are and what it takes to parent them well, they go and change. And without that same sense of adventure, who could be a Unitarian Universalist? When people come inquiring about the requirements of membership in our church, I tell them that along with a promise of time and financial commitment, another requirement is that they keep exploring along their spiritual path. It doesn’t end at our door. When people arrive here, we certainly hope they feel that they have come home. But the kind of home it is is a houseboat, always traveling somewhere new. In the words of an old Universalist, “We do not stand — we move!” We generally call ourselves, not a denomination, but a movement.

Stepping into the unknown is core to our living tradition. Every religion suffers the temptation of freezing into position where it is. We could do that, as a religion and as individuals. We could choose a dogma and stick to it, choose a doctrine and memorize it. We don’t. Even our principles are up for revision every few decades. Some say this makes us rootless, and it’s true that that is the risk. The payoff is that being always on the move into new territory keeps us from getting stuck in the mud.

It’s not an easy way to live. Every time you get comfortable, someone is nudging you to move. We have this lovely hymnal, 15 years old now but still new in the minds of many of us, and what’s this the choir is throwing at us this morning, a new batch of hymns and songs and chants? One day the unfamiliar tunes [from Singing the Journey] will be as well-known to us as “Spirit of Life,” which is itself a modern classic that once seemed strange compared to chestnuts like “Forward through the Ages” and “Holy, Holy, Holy.” But today the songs the choir is singing are unknown to our ears. Maybe they make us homesick for what we know best.

Given how difficult it is to be always moving into the unknown, what makes it possible? When we don’t even have a map, what do we have?

We have strengths we carry within us and pick up along the way.

One is the beauty we discover, like Balboa first sighting the Pacific Ocean, like Lewis and Clark crossing the Rockies and seeing mountain sheep and grizzlies, great beasts they had never laid eyes on before.

Another is the joy of learning, the satisfaction of taking in something new.

Another is the conviction that to “adventure boldly and explore,” in the words of one of our hymns, is better than following the known path. As Darcey said in her sermon “Crossing the Desert” a few weeks ago, it’s important to be willing to get lost. That is part of our identity as UUs.

Another strength that enables us to explore the unknown, even risking getting lost, is companionship. Exploring can be a lonely business, and we do best when we don’t try to do it alone. We seldom do. Gradually we are coming to recognize that, so that instead of learning that the first person to reach the peak of Mt. Everest was Sir Edmund Hillary as I was told when I was a child, people now learn that there were two climbers: Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, and that they got there as part of a team that included several others and without which they never could have reached the summit.

And another of our strengths is faith, a word that sometimes makes Unitarian Universalists squirm, but it’s ironic that it does because it takes a great deal of faith to step into the unknown and trust that all will be well. Did you see the third Indiana Jones movie, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade? Of all the terrifying things the reckless archaeologist has faced, from poison arrows to Nazi gunmen to rolling boulders to boobytrapped temples, the one that scared this viewer the most was the “Path of God” he had to take in that movie.

He is told that to succeed, the explorer has to make “the leap from the lion’s head,” and when he gets to the lion’s head he discovers what a leap it is: he stands at the verge of an all but bottomless chasm, much too wide to cross. Indiana hasn’t shown evidence of what most of us would call faith. He’s cynical, secular, and irreverent. But he has a tremendous faith in himself and in his past experiences, which tell him that these clues will not lead him wrong. So in an act of tremendous courage, he steps right off the cliff into the chasm. And as he has always done before, he lands on his feet.

These last two strengths, companionship and faith, are closely linked. We acquire the courage to face the unknown from having people we can trust. A modern mystic named Reb Menashe, says, “Faith is the feeling that the baby has that its mother will not drop [it].” (Parabola Vol. 32. No. 1 [Spring 2007], 75). Modern attachment theory tells us that children with parents who are reliable and responsive, who make a solid home base — whose departure makes the child upset — those children do not tend to cling to those parents. You might think that a child who is constantly reassured that he or she can return “home” would be timid and afraid to explore, but just the opposite is true. It is the children with the most secure attachments who are boldest in exploring. I would suggest that those parents have taught their children faith.

Our congregation is stepping into some unknown territory. A new Consulting Minister, Alicia McNary Forsey, will begin speaking from this pulpit next week. A new Professional Religious Educator will join us soon. Darcey is departing after seven years of ministry with us and I will be home with my new baby for the next few months. After my maternity leave ends I’ve requested ten months in which to share the parish ministry as the lead minister, half-time alongside Alicia’s half-time, and while leading from a half-time position is not new for me, having done it before without difficulty, it is unfamiliar to you.

In a trackless landscape, with maps that don’t exactly fit the new territory, we rely on our strengths, and we have the same strengths as a congregation that we have as a faith tradition. We have the beauty and wonder of learning something new. We have a commitment to the search, encoded in our principles as the “free and responsible search for truth and meaning,” and in our statement of congregational purpose as “a free and loving search for spiritual meaning.” We have the companionship of each other, including many talented leaders both on staff and among the membership. And doubting, skeptical people though we are, we have faith. We have faith in ourselves and where we have been, trust acquired from the many times we have stepped into the unknown before and walked securely over what had appeared to be thin air. We know how to take risks, like letting homeless strangers sleep in our building, bucking the US government by refusing to sign a loyalty oath, putting our controversial theology on the air, taking cutting-edge positions in matters of social policy. It has never stopped being scary, but the solid ground under our feet has always held.

By way of closing, I want to share with you the words a friend wrote to me as I went off on a grand adventure many years ago. I was twenty years old and about to board a plane for India, a land about which I knew little, whose languages I did not speak, whose food I did not like (not yet!), clear on the other side of the planet from everyone I knew, with only strangers as my companions. I would be practicing Buddhist meditation daily, something I had never done before and wasn’t at all confident I could do. If I hated it there — if I were homesick, or decided this adventure wasn’t one I wanted after all — I was stuck for four months, until the date on my return ticket. Both literally and figuratively, I was journeying as far away as one could go. I did not know who I would be when I came back, only that, like all explorers, I hoped to return both different than I was and more myself than ever before. It was not just India that was new territory: it was myself. I was stepping into the unknown, afraid and excited, apprehensive and full of the thrill of possibility and discoveries yet to be made.

I know that each of you has been on journeys like that too, even if they took you no further, physically, than the walls of your home or the ever-expanding boundaries of your own mind. Whether you took them willingly, stepping boldly and deliberately off the cliff’s edge, or were forced, like a baby bird nudged from the nest into thin air, you have stepped into the unknown. Into new ideas, new relationships, unfamiliar jobs and places, unaccustomed beliefs. And perhaps, like me when I left everyone and almost everything I knew to go to India, you have wondered what and who would still be there for you when you came back.

So I repeat to you the words my friend wrote to me: “I’ll miss you, but I’m sure whomever you or I turn out to be in the next four months, there will be plenty of room for us in each other’s lives. This time it’s for real.”

 

Reflection: Entering the Unknown by Rita Hays