Like Scott Wells, I’d been reluctant to wade into the discussion about youth and young adult funding within the Unitarian Universalist Association, mainly because I care only slightly more about intradenominational politics than other people do. And most of you who read this aren’t Unitarian Universalists, anyway.

But this whole mess is a nice excuse for me to talk about organizing, which I love. Back to youth and young adults in a bit.

In organizing, we spend a lot of time talking about self-interest. Self-interest is distinct from selfishness (concern exclusively about the self) and selflessness (concern exclusively with others); a working definition might be “concern for the self in relation to others.” I have short-term self-interests: I’m hungry, so getting some food is in my self-interest. I have other, deeper self-interests: I want to have a family. I want to be respected. I want to be right with God.

The only way to relate honestly with other people is by finding common self-interests. Read that sentence again, and then again until you believe it.

A simple example: It’s in my self-interest to eat. It’s in the self-interest of the grocer to sell me food. So we come to an arrangement that satisfies both self-interests (namely, me buying food and paying for it) and then we’ve had an honest interaction. Viola! Our self-interests are different, but they come together in ways that are mutually satisfactory. The same is true of all honest interactions; they’re just more complicated or subtler. With me?

Now, power is just the ability to engage other people’s self-interest. The power that large groups of people have relative to elected officials is that officials have a self-interest in not ticking off people who vote for them. The power that my boss has relative to me depends (in part) on my self-interest in not being fired.

All of that stuff is in the first day of organizer training. So what does that have to do with Unitarian Universalist youth and young adults? If y/ya want to be “empowered” – which I can only assume means to be, well, powerful – they need to stop whining and find ways to engage the self-interest of the rest of the Association. Funding is being cut because y/ya “leaders” have not managed to engage the self-interest of the people who control the UUA.*

So what would a process leading toward real y/ya empowerment look like? Well, off the top of my head, it would involve introspection, one-on-ones, small group meetings, etc. — whatever was necessary to identify the individual and collective self-interests of UU Youth and Young Adults. It would, as Scott said, involve “creat[ing] institutions that create the desired goals.”

Then, with a clear understanding of what they want, they would meet with the key power people in the Association, and try to figure out how they could make what they want be in the self-interest of the power people in the denomination. They would need to be very clear in their own minds that denominational politics, like all politics, is about power. And political power is the ability to induce and/or engage the self-interest of whomever can give you what you want.

* This resolution uses the language of “investment” in y/ya programming, but doesn’t tell the rest of us what the dividends will be. It could be any number of things: Maybe the self-interest they engage is our desire for there to be strong UU institutions after we’re gone. Maybe it’s something else. But to be “empowering” for everyone involved, it will have to be negotiated out of our respective self-interests, not whined into existence.

Well, writing regularly here is not as easy a habit to keep up as you would think. But here’s an awful joke which I just invented, to fill the time until I get full entries done.

    Q: What’s another term for a Bible-believing Baptist?

    A: A Biblical alliteralist.

Too obscure? Too stupid? Or… perfect?

The chief glory of organizing is the one-on-one. It’s one of the main reasons I like this. I like the “soft arts of organizing,” even though the hard arts probably come more naturally.

Unfortunately, my one-on-ones have sucked lately. I mean, they haven’t flowed, and there must be all sort of obvious opportunities for the exploration of self-interest that I’m just not seeing. It’s never a good sign when you’re twenty minutes in and struggling for directions to go, and hurting for places to share something of yourself in the conversation, turning it into more of an interview and less of a real conversation (which is what I, my organization, and the world really need more of).

Over the summer, I had this down. I shoot for between 30 and 40 minutes for an initial one-on-one with a layperson, and I had them down to 35 minutes almost every time, and was getting everything I needed, building a relationship, and had time for a joke besides. Now they start to struggle after about 20 minutes.

I mainly just need to be doing more of them. I’m averaging under a dozen a week, and I’d like to average something closer to 15, and with the right people.

I’m new here, so imagine my feeling when I take my first look at the search-engine terms which have drawn people here in recent days and find this one: “suffocate a relationship.” What are you looking for, a how-to guide? It’s weird, and kind of creepy. Maybe it’s something about the word “suffocate.”

Yes, it may say something about me that that search brought them here, but for me it was a turn of phrase, not what I’m looking for. Who searches for that? (Not to judge or anything. Whoever you are, pull up a chair and stay for a while. Just don’t get too close, or, well, you know.)

Tactics, or, An academic exercise in what I would advise other people to do in order to get what they want.

Humor as a tactic has long served a particular purpose in public life. Is there anything as hard to deflect as a well-placed bit of satire? This is only one recent example. Look at the expression on Hillary Clinton’s face when she realized she’d set herself up for that one. This is something that late-night hosts are doing, declaring their solidarity with striking writers.

But for striking WGA writers, humor might also serve another purpose, which has less to do with making fools of production companies and instead, as a good tactic ought to, provides some strategic leverage toward beating them. To start with, here’s a passage from the great Saul Alinsky, from Rules for Radicals.

John L. Lewis, the leader of the C.I.O., told me that at the height of this sit-down strike [against Chevrolet] he heard a rumor that General Motors had met with both Ford and Chrystler, [saying, “If] the C.I.O. beats us, then you’re next in line and there will be no stopping them. Now we are willing to let the C.I.O. sit in at Chevrolet until hell freezes and suffer the loss in our profits if you will hold your production of [competing vehicles]. On the other hand, we can’s hold out against the C.I.O. if you boost production in order to sell to all the potential Chevrolet customers who will buy your products because they can’t get Chevrolets.

…It doesn’t matter whether this is a false rumor or true, [said Lewis], because neither Ford not Chrysler would ever overlook an opportunity for an immediate increase in their profits and power, shortsighted as it might be.

The internecine struggle among the Haves for their individual self-interest is as shortsighted as internecine struggle among the Have-Nots. …I could persuade a millionaire on a Friday to subsidize a revolution for Saturday out of which he would make a huge profit on Sunday even though he was certain to be executed on Monday.

So it was smart of the WGA to make a deal with Worldwide Pants, Inc., which makes the Late Show with David Letterman and Craig Ferguson’s program which follows. Functionally, this puts CBS at an advantage relative to the other networks, since those programs air on CBS’s affiliates. But it defeats the purpose of the tactic if Letterman and Ferguson “battl[e] for second place,” not wanting to be seen “profit[ing] from the walk-out.” If there’s no ratings advantage to be had by having union writers at work, why should production companies and networks make a deal?

With that in mind, here’s an idea for striking writers: You have all these funny, talented folks out on picket lines striking, right? Put all of them to work writing jokes for David Letterman and Craig Ferguson. Or at least all the funny ones. The rest of them, of whom there are many, can continue to picket. The idea here is to give Letterman a huge ratings advantage, to the point where NBC (the main late-night competitor) is forced to make a deal.

Why would that force them to make a deal? Because late night is the only profitable unit at NBC television right now. If it stops being profitable then it’s not even worth it for GE to own a television network. (In other social and political senses, of course, it’s worth owning. But companies, in the end, are responsible to shareholders who would just as soon lose unprofitable divisions, whatever their political or social importance.)

In a similar vein, the SAG, which is not crossing picket lines in solidarity with WGA strikers, should bring out every high-ratings big-name celebrity it can find, and give Letterman and Ferguson the biggest boost they can. The biggest music acts should do the same. If Leno, O’Brien, Stewart, and Colbert want their writers back, they should tell their viewers, on the air, to tune into Letterman and Ferguson instead. They should say it every night until they win the strike.

And everyone – the WGA, the SAG, and everyone else – should make a big, public deal of it. I don’t know if other contractual obligations prevent something like this from actually occurring. But it would sure put a lot of pressure on the other networks, by punishing those who don’t agree to the union’s terms, and by explicitly rewarding those who do.

(Disclaimer: This is not to say that I’m a gung-ho pro-WGA guy, though I do instinctively want to fall more on the union side than on the Big Bad Business side. The whole fun of speculating on tactics is independent of who’s side, if any, I’m on.)

[Untitled]

There were two of us in the rain
at almost midnight and we had a dizzy-race
to a tree where I collapsed and she sat beside me
Leaned against me

There she kissed me—there I kissed her
with branches and needles and wet dirt and raindrops
Then we lay there for a minute tucked into
each other’s creases

I go back to Kentucky tomorrow. This trip home has been a qualified success. The problem this time has been that most of the people I’d hoped to see while at home are not around when I am. So there has been excessive down time – which I can have in Kentucky – and insufficient social time.

Emotionally, I invest a lot in the time I have at home, largely because I know so few people in Kentucky, where I’m still very new. There’s a proper balance in the ideal time with friends at home, between indulgent, idle hanging out, and having conversations that seem significant. I come home so seldom that it seems a shame to be here and not have those sorts of conversations that are best had in person. I also need to have a good balance of group activities and one-on-one time, and a bit of down time to regain my energy to really take full advantage of being around all the people here that I love. In practice it seldom works out that way.

But I’ve had a lovely Christmas and New Year’s, a couple of nice holiday parties, and lots of random errands and adventures with people from this house I squat in when I’m home. I eat very well here, and sleep late, and have an embarrassment of riches of churches that are mine, and not congregations I’m organizing.

And I did get at least one incisive and challenging conversation out of it. More on that later, perhaps.

Sermon delivered at the UNMC on April 10, 2005.

I have always depended on the possibility of meaning in all experience. Nothing is so trivial that I don’t want to discern its significance and put it in a universal context. Every bite of an apple, every bus ride, every conversation, offers transcendent grace, if only we will choose to perceive it. The deeply-lived life is painted stroke by stroke.

In October I began my travels through Mexico and Central America. I was excited that my route through southern Mexico took me through the city of Oaxaca on last year’s Day of the Dead, November second. El Día de los Muertos is a very big deal in that part of Mexico — Memorial Day, Halloween, and a bit of Mardi Gras all in one — and is a vital event in the spiritual lives of many of Mexico’s indigenous peoples. For a person determined to draw meaning from the world, it offered an marvelous opportunity.

A few days before the holiday, I was already in Oaxaca, reading some of the books I’d brought with me. Among them were B. F. Skinner’s books Beyond Freedom and Dignity and Walden Two, which present his theory of deterministic behaviorism, the notion that all learned human behavior is attributable to conditioned responses.

For me, the personal and the philosophical inevitably intersect. The abstract conviction that there is meaning in existence had always been a very real guide and source of strength. It drew me toward ministry as a vocation, and gave me a context in which to understand and better myself. I knew that Skinner’s valueless world wouldn’t jibe with mine, but I thought I was prepared for that. Moderate mental tensions are the growing pains of the soul. So I read.

Well, those two books boil down to this: If Skinner is right, then all human existence reduces to pleasures sought and pain avoided — to mere hedonism, albeit with varying degrees of sophistication. Nothing can be left of human morality or goodness. Nothing remains but the accident of our existence and the evolutionary habit of survival. Nothing remains of our selves, and much less of the God of light and goodness and all-conquering love.

My purpose here is not to argue for or against Skinner’s behavioristic determinism. That’s for another time. Here’s why I bring it up: Even before I exhausted Skinner’s pages, I’d started to panic. The implications of such a compelling and comprehensive determinism were devastating, not least of all because it rang so true. I was questioning whether or not I believed any of this, about the sacredness of Creation, the goodness of God, the reality of Transcendence. I doubted whether I wanted to believe. I doubted whether I really wanted this hard, complicated, illusory life to which I used to feel called.

The crescendo to the Day of the Dead outside my window echoed my internal stirrings. Before reading Skinner’s books, the holiday had promised understanding not only of Mexican culture, but of some small corner of Transcendence itself. Now all I could see were operant conditioners. Before, the fanfare of trumpets had honored the departed. Now they blew, and the walls came a-tumbling down.

Doubt is a particularly insidious form of suffering, because it robs the crutch that makes other suffering manageable. Nietzsche’s words ring true to the reluctant doubter: “[W]ho has a why to live can bear almost any how.” Who lacks it, he neglects to mention, cannot bear any.

I wrote a long e-mail to friends and family at home describing my unbearable disillusionment, and feeling blindly to reclaim some scrap of the purpose with which I’d come. Over three days, I stopped only to eat and to sleep. Writing helped me to think about my problem systematically, but sending it did not salve my sorrow. That night I found myself wandering the Oaxacan streets, passing tortillerías and mole shops, weaving back and forth among the parades and roving fiestas. An inescapable meaninglessness pursued me, darting and hiding behind puppets and tubas and drums.

Only later did I figure out that, despite my suspicions to the contrary, I was not going mad. Victor Frankl survived a number of years in Nazi concentration camps, and went on to found an influential school of psychoanalysis called logotherapy. In his book Man’s Search for Meaning, he writes:

“Not every conflict is necessarily neurotic; some amount of conflict is normal and healthy. In a similar sense suffering is not a pathological phenomenon; rather than being a symptom, suffering may well be a human achievement, especially if the suffering grows out of an existential frustration. I would strictly deny that one’s search for meaning to… existence, or even… doubt of it, in every case is derived from, or results in, any disease. Existential frustration is in itself neither pathological nor pathogenic. [D]istress, even… despair, over the worthwhileness of…life is an existential distress but by no means a mental disease.”

Doubt, and its attendant discomfort, are not an illness. Worry over the meaningfulness of life is not an sickness. But my experience of doubt makes me want to go further. More than simply not being harmful, I believe that doubt is a healthy and necessary part of religious life.

The conventional argument for doubt is that it’s a means to a stronger relationship with the divine. Scar tissue is stronger than unwounded flesh, and doubt ultimately binds us more strongly to the divine. But I believe the real goodness and power of doubt has less to do with the strength of our bond with God than with its quality. The strength of our need for God is always absolute. It cannot be greater or lesser, only more or less recognized. But the nature, the quality of our need, and the way in which we satisfy it, changes. This is where doubt and uncertainty are indispensable organs of authentic faith. Doubt is a symptom of living religion, not its antithesis, because it breaks the artificial boundaries we have established and demands that we stretch toward the Infinite. Doubt is an idol-breaker.

It is possible to go too far. Modern Unitarian Universalists have avoided the historical error of looking on doubt at something to be avoided for a person of faith. We are unlikely to burn anyone at the stake for professing honest doubts, or to pull at their fingernails until they recant. We are unlikely to torment ourselves too much one way or the other. This is surely progress.

But in making our little, sophisticated universe safe for doubt, we have too often confused doubt and disconnection. Doubt is different than not caring, or than actively avoiding relationship. These do not serve us or honor our place as “divinely human” creatures. Both are endemic in our congregations. Though ours is a liberal orthodoxy, and not a conservative one, it is just as idolatrous, and just as unfaithful toward the Divine. To say that doubts of God preclude transcendence is to admit the truth of the very dichotomy we ought to be rejecting, that doubt and faith are opposite, irreconcilable poles.

The essential choice is not between faith and doubt. It is between relationship and separation. It is between seizing the Holy from every morsel, and ignoring the prospect of holiness. It is between breathing with two full lungs, and a slow suffocation unto death. It is between relishing all the flavors of awe, and numbness.

Doubt can serve us well; we mustn’t be afraid of it. Like all suffering, it is wasted if we fail to breathe it in deeply. God can handle our doubt of God’s goodness and grace, God can handle our denial of God’s presence in every being — if we use our troubles for deepening.

As Universalists, we are called to be receptive to the meaning in every experience, pleasant or not, to draw out its significance and make that our own. We are called from every direction, even through doubt, not by booming voices from the sky, but by the innumerable elements of a single reality.

I had a terrible fight once with someone I loved. I said some things I didn’t mean, she said some things she didn’t mean, and we found ourselves in the middle of a Montague-and-Capulet, I-don’t-even-remember-what-we-were-fighting-about fight.

There we were, furious but holding hands, loosely and more intimate for the distance
Our loose-locked hands left room for breeze, midwife to a common soul

All sin is separation, and separation is the only sin. Conflict, even detachment, when it is an intimate experience, is not sinful, but sacred.

Relationship demands more, and in unexpected ways, but that’s healthy, and appropriate for Universalists. Whether we perceive it or not, whether it is intentional or by some subtler design, the challenge and reward of all relationships — except dead ones — is in their shifting winds.

Existential crises are healthy. They keep us in a living, dynamic, and intimate relationship with the possibilities of existence. My panic in Oaxaca was partially a result of having allowed that connection to stagnate, and noticing it, catastrophically, only when I slowed down enough to let it catch up with me. All the stages of my doubt — heartbreak, uncertainty, and even avoidance — have been valuable. They have kept me from retreating to a new certainty. When I read B. F. Skinner’s books, the walls I had built, that had separated me from a vibrant connection with God, tumbled down.

To the extent that knowledge sparks these little revolutions, it is in the service of God. Faith and knowledge draw the same sleigh. Their real value is not in the contentment, but in the anxiety they provide, in the way they spur us to ever-deeper, ever-better, though perhaps more difficult, lives.

Being in relationship with the Infinite requires recognition of our own finite dimension. Not to doubt is idolatry because it requires a certainty that is, and must be, beyond us as created beings. As followers of Jesus, we are called to be eternally skeptical of any idol, even — especially — one hidden in the trappings of a beloved and all-too-certain idea of what our religion ought to be. The key to self-actualization, Victor Frankl writes, is self-transcendence. If we can transcend ourselves by not fearing doubt, then, paradoxically, we will overcome our attachment to our own narrow perspective and become closer to the Universal God.

Love is the most subtle of idols, but even love can suffocate a relationship with the divine. In my case it certainly did: I was so enamored of a theology, of an idea of God, that I lost the real pulse of Spirit. I thought I had lost my God, but I had only lost my idea of God, and the distinction is crucial. In Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, Lenny suffocates a mouse from love. He simply doesn’t know not to squeeze so tightly. Similarly, a part held too tightly keeps the Whole unknown to us. Only by constantly shedding ideas of God can the real, unknowable God be approached. Be not afraid. No soul is ever lost from God.

Our understandings of God are inherently inadequate, and even our cherished beliefs can become idols precisely because we cherish them. If our love of Christianity, or of the church, or of each other keeps us from that which transcends and includes all, we will have defaced Christianity, the church, and each other them by making them into merely the objects of our vanity.

So this is our challenge: to exist between the extremes of separation and ossification. We must learn to be serious but not self-important. A cult, after all, is just a religion without a sense of humor. We must seek a mature religion that is whole and of one piece, without ever being so idolatrously complete that it prevents evolution of our relationship with the ever-flowing Waters of Grace. God is not finished. The holy age continues. Revelation is not sealed. A living relationship, with all its doubts and dark crooks, is a surpassing beatitude.

“Ustedes universalistas”, dijo J.M. Pullam acerca del año 1900, “están ilegalmente ocupando la palabra más grande del idioma. El mundo ya empieza a querer esa gran palabra, y ustedes universalistas deberían mejorar la propiedad, o marcharse”.

En aquel entonces, la gran tensión dentro del movimiento universalista era si el universalismo sería una fe cristiana, y hasta que punto. Al respeto Brainard Gibbons en 1949 se preguntó:

“¿Es el universalismo una confesión cristiana, o es algo más, una religión verdaderamente universal? Este asunto es el más vital que hemos enfrentado nunca, porque el cristianismo y este universalismo más grande son irreconciliables. Un decisión grave debe ser tomado, ¡y pronto! Si el universalismo no significa algo distinto y afirmativo, caerá hasta ser naderìa. Ni amado ni odiado, sólo ignorado”.

El universalismo cristiano, o el “universalismo más grande”. No podían coexistir.

Esta congregación eligió el universalismo cristiano; la mayoría de nuestras demás iglesias ecogieron varios tipos de esa “religión universal”.

No vengo para convencerlos de que adopten su formulario; no ha sido ampliamente exitoso, y más relevante, los cristianos tienen una necesaria testificación. Pero mientras nuestro mundo se vuelve cada vez más interconectado, es cada vez más difìcil quedar satisfecho con nuestra manera vieja de hablar de Dios. Nuestro Dios ya no cabe dentro de nuestro cristianismo antiguo.

Quiero recontar una historia de Richard Hurst, que él contó el mes pasado. Ninguno de ustedes estaban, así que no me siento culpable por apropriarme de él. Trata de un capellàn catòlico estadunidense en Japòn, durante la guerra en Corea, y su asistente.

“El sacerdote se da cuenta de que cómo de lejos ha venido del apartamento estrecho en el barrio de Brooklyn en el cual creció. Siente la grandeza del mundo y cómo hay tanto que conocer y explorar. Las posibilidades son animadoras y espantosas. ‘Cuando yo era niño, me ensañaron que la religiòn cristiana le hacìa una diferencìa fundamental al mundo’, dice el cura a su compañero. ‘Pero más de la mitad de la población del mundo está en este hemisfero. Ni siquiera saben qué es el cristianismo, y están contentos sin él.’”

Un Dios universal es más grande de lo que podemos concebir. Dios es siempre más profundo y más amplio que nosotros, no importa cómo de profundo o cómo de amplio nos hacemos. Dios debe ser así, si no, no sería Dios. Hoy en dia, más que nunca, está claro que esta idea de Dios la cual hemos compartido, en el lenguaje particular de la Biblia, y en las ideas occidentales (y bíblicos y occientales prejuicios), no es adecuada para expresar enteramente la experiencia humana de lo divino.

Esto no es decir que no hay verdad en la visión cristiana de Dios; hay muchìsima. El cristianismo, como todo, salvo el Eterno mimso, puede ser verdad, y puede ser completo, aunque debe ser insufficiente en sí, porque sólo Dios no tiene límites. El estado natural de todo es anhelar.

El reverendo John Beuhrens ha escrito que “Dios es una esfera inteligible que tiene su centro en todas partes, y su circumferencia en ninguna”. Si Dios es una esfera, y si estamos cada uno en su centro, pues profundidad es amplitud. No podemos ir más profundamente en Dios sin ir afuera hacia su amplitud. Como el espacio extraterrestre, Dios tiene ni arriba ni abajo ni izquierda ni derecha, sino sòlo afuera, afuera, más y aún más grande.

Yo creo que no podemos ser profundamente cristianos sin ser ampliamente religiosos, sin meter nuestro cristianismo en la verdad que existe en otras religiones, y en otras partes de nuestra existencia, que generalmente no se consideran como religiosas, pero lo deben ser, o el universalismo no merece su nombre.

Nuestra religión debe ser universalista en fuente y en aplicación. Debemos tomar ventaja de nuestra perspectiva expansiva en cada aspecto de la vida, no sólo para ser consistente, sino también porque las particularidades revelan a lo Universal, y lo Universal alimenta a las particularidades.

Nada es tan pequeño que no debemos intentar ponerlo en su contexto universal. ¿Qué lugar tiene tu desayuno en la vida religiosa? ¿Cómo te conectan tus pantalones a la Presencia Divina? ¿Cómo le afectará el color de tu pared a tu relación con el Cosmos? Estas parecen preguntas tontas—y lo son en algún sentido—pero así como el poema está compuesta por palabras, y el año se compone de días, la decisión de vivir significativamente se pinta por momentos innumerables de la gracia trascendente.

Hace como un año, yendo a casa de la escuala, yo estaba parado en el semáforo. Por casualidad me toqué el lóbulo.

Naturalmente exploramos el cuerpo desde muy niño. Me imagino un regocijo similar al decubrir que tenía dedos, o eyebrows. Pero no tengo memoria de esa novedad. Y seguramente en viente años había tocado antes el lóbulo. Sea cual sea su fuento, esto fue un toque inculcado con significado.

¿Una revelación grande? Quizás no. Pero como cualquier experiencia religiosa, fue una fuente, aunque sólo brevemente, de entendamento trascendente, por lo cual es una experiencia que vale cultivar.

Asì como cada experiencia nos ofrece este entendamento, cada tradición religiosa es una respuesta a las corrientes vivas de la Eternidad. Meremente existir les da legitimidad como fuentes de la divinidad, y que comparten algunas verdades, se le hace un poco más fácil a nuestras mentes humanas pueblerinas.

El dilema es qué hacer con las diferencias entre estas tradiciones. Podemos inventar un ecumenismo que les quite el filo y que encalaca sus colores más brillantes, pero esto nos deja insatisfechos. Sí hay diferencias entre religiones, no sólo las debidas a la cultura, sino también las de su ética y de su espiritualidad. Además, las diferencias no son pequeñas, a veces hay contradicciones directas. El encalacar fracasa porque estas diferencias nos ayudan a entender su fuente común.

Para un Dios infinito, es preciso la paradoja. No hay una manera única de ver y entender al Trascendente, así como no hay unicamenta una manera de ver y entender una flor. Hay muchísimos poemas que tratan de flores, pero no es necesario que algunos sean “falsos” para que otros sean “verdadosos”, aunque se contradigan a sì mismos, o entre sí. Los poemas no necesitan ninguna unidad excepto en aquella flor que describan.

Así Dios viene de todas direcciones a la vez, y es por eso que el universalismo y el cristianismo son no sólo reconciliables, sino mutuamente necesarios. Así como un poema señala a la flor, pero no la es, el cristianismo señala a Dios, pero no lo es. Un Dios que no le trascenda al cristianismo debe ser demasiado pequeño para ser el Dios cristiano. Es en Dios mismo, y no en las religiones que lo gesticulan a Él, que la unidad se encuentra.

“Cuando conozcas al Buda, mátalo.” El Budismo ensaña que la religión es el obstàculo final a la Iluminación. El dedo que señala a la luna, según el dicho Taoista, no es la luna. Si permitimos que nuestro amor al cristianismo nos impeda señalar al cielo, habremos desfigurado al cristianismo por hacerlo ídolo.

Como tantos dedos señalando a la luna, ideas religiosas pueden ser paradójicas, aun contrarias entre sí, pero todas son dirigidas al Dios, en el cual encuentran su unidad. Esta tensión no es dañosa. Al contrario, es una fuerza vital en nuestras vidas religiosas. La paradoja nos vigoriza, porque es un Poder paradójico que nos sostiene.

Michael Stewart, un miembro de la Iglesia Unitaria Universalista de Arlington, Virginia, ha escrito de las paradojas que lo mantienen:

“En este punto de mi propio viaje, me considero como místico, ateo, diosa-afirmante, rationalista, casado, bisexual marido y padre. ¿Hay unidad en my diversidad? Para mí, el Unitario Universalismo me da una zona de lo ‘no examinado, por amor y de propósito.’ Dentro de las paredes de mi iglesia y dentro del corazón mío unitario universalista, no tengo que justificar mis contrasentidos, como insiste el mundo exterior—or abandonar partes de mí—sino puedo celebrar mis paradojas internas y ganar fuerza de ellas.”

Profundizar nuestras paradojas nos lleva más hacia el alma verdadera de Dios. No es solamente permisible, sino necesario, examinar nuestras paradojas, ver que se contradigan, y amarlas de todos modos, porque ellas son los dedos que señalan a la luna.

No necesito escoger entre ser hermano y ser hijo, o entre ser amigo and ser amante. Lo soy todo. Tengo que andar por todos estos caminos a la vez, y permitir que cada cosa y cada experiencia me guíe al rincón de Dios que radica allì. ¿Somos universalistas, o cristianos, o budistas, o ateos, o poetas, o hermanos, o maridos, o amantes? El universalismo cree en no escoger, con tal que seamos honrados en amar, compremetidos al mejorarse, y abiertos a la verdad que hay in cada ser.

Andar tantos caminos puede parecer fácil, si ignoramos la carga tremenda de la libertad, pero en realidad es el trabajo más difìcil y más noble de los seres humanos. El universalismo no debe ser cómodo. Dios es grande, y nosotros somos pequeños, y el universalismo es la convicción de que para acercárnoslo a Dios debemos crecer nuestros espíritus para siempre.

Imitamos a Dios por andar tantos caminos, porque en realidad esto es lo que hace Dios: filtrarse por todas las grietas al mismo tiempo. Nos queda solamente percibirlo. La gran carga del creyente liberal es que la libertad nos priva de excusas. Tenemos la _libertad_ de escoger unicamente lo que nos haga còmodo, y no preocuparnos por el resto, pero nuestra llamada es negarse a escoger. Es insistir que Dios no está sólo en algunas partes, sino en todas, en cada persona, en cada experiencia, y en cada momento. Cuando no tenemos gobernadores, salvo nosotros mismos y Dios, el confort de fronteras nos abandona. No tenemos ninguna autoridad para protegernos de la luz tremenda de la Integridad.

Esto es el mensaje que comparten el cristianismo y el universalismo: la eliminación de todo obstáculo a una experiencia auténtica y amplia de la Divinidad. Yo creo, como creía John Murray, que “Jesucristo era el más gran universalista.” Como Cristo, el universalismo más amplio debe venir no para abolir, sino para cumplir.

Pues es hora de mejorar la propiedad, o marcharse. El envangelio cristiano exige movimiento, no más allá del cristianismo, sino hacia una renovación de él, por una fe màs amplia y universal. “Universalismo” es todavía “la palabra más grande del idioma.”

Que así sea, para siempre. Amén.

See also the sermon delivered on the same occasion.

We enter now into a time of prayer, spoken at first, and then silent.

Gracious Light, we are gathered to revel in your infinite refractions, that make for us an abundant life whose every moment carries the import of the ages. We would ask for the humility prerequisite to awe, and would respond with natural gratitude for your enduring and ever-giving love.

We pray for the earth, that we may still heal its scars and restore its splendor, and make it a fitting home for every creature.

We pray for those who bear transitions, particularly LM, as she leaves for college, and JS, as she searches for a job. May they confront every circumstance with energy and grace.

We pray for the forgotten and powerless, that they may know and claim their equal stake in the salvation of themselves and of humankind.

We pray for those who spend the night in wakefulness, in pain, grief or care. Remember the ill and the recuperating, particular MT’s sister SA, MS’s grandson KS, DS’s sister LS, and SM’s father D. Watch over them and their families, and keep them in your care.

We pray for those who have lost faith; that they may be sustained and comforted by your embrace. We pray also for those who walk oblivious to your touch, that they may know, by whatever name or none, the Miracle which composes all miracles.

We pray, O God of all Nations, for the whole world, that it may be delivered from its turmoil. Remembering the work that has yet been done, we give thanks for the succession of prophets, apostles, and martyrs, continued even to this very hour. We remember HJ, and all those who labor far from home for peace and justice.

Guiding Spirit of our souls, whom all worship under many names and diverse forms, we pray for your holy Church Universal, and for this congregation, that we may be delivered from hardness of heart, and show forth your glory in all that we do. Give us no victory but fellowship, and help us labor to build the Commonwealth of God, where nevermore shall we despair or dissemble, and where none shall be judged but by nearness to you.

For you are our Mother and Father, and we the children of your love, and naught can separate from you the souls which you have made and which you sustain forevermore.