March 2009
Budgets are moral documents
Jim Wallis

            Jim Wallis is a well known evangelical writer and speaker focusing on faith-based efforts to overcome poverty and inequality.  The quotation appears in his 2005 book, God’s Politics, and seems especially appropriate now at a time when budgets are big in the news.  Most often, the focus of discussion is the economic importance of the public budget.  It’s good to remember that there is a moral dimension as well.

              As Wallis points out, budgets are statements of our priorities, what is important as compared to everything else.  When God’s Politics was published, the Federal budget gave a priority to war and large tax cuts for the very wealthy, with the poor being left far behind in the order of what was important.  This, Wallis writes, is not the way that Isaiah would have done it. 

            Today, our mew proposed Federal budget is not so loaded toward the top, with priorities instead given to job creation and funding for states which are hard-pressed to maintain programs of social service and support. Efforts to improve and widen health care will serve to right some of today’s injustices.  But no square attack on the blight of poverty is in the offing, nor is there even a focus on trying to correct the great shift of wealth to the already wealthy that has occurred in the last several decades.  Everything is argued in terms of its economic cost or benefit.  Analysis of the moral implications is missing.  Isaiah, we think, would think that we could do better.

February 2009
Play fair. Don’t hit people. Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody.
Robert Fulghum

            Robert Fulghum, who grew up in Waco, Texas, is a Unitarian Universalist minister who rose to national fame with the publication of his first book, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, a book that stayed for nearly two years at the top of the New York Times best-seller list.

            For some people, the quotation above will probably remind them of the good report once received about a child in nursery school or kindergarten – “Plays well with others.”  The all-important goal of socialization is being achieved.

            We all are born with two conflicting drives – one egotistical, the other social  It is best if we learn to reconcile those drives early in life. This may come to a few rules.  The rules are simple and easily learned, but finding out how to apply them in the best way is the challenge of a lifetime.  They  provide a foundation.  Without them, our subsequent education, however extensive, may yield more frustration, bitterness and disappointment than fruit.  On the other hand, an approach to learning that incorporates those rules may magnify and transform education into a life of integrity, service and love.

January 2009
“Religion is ... morality touched by emotion.”
Matthew Arnold

            Matthew Arnold, a 19^th century critic and poet,  is perhaps best known today for “Dover Beach,” a  poetic meditation on a time of waning traditional faith.  Arnold is described in the Britannica as a “religious liberal” which is the term Unitarian Universalists (UUs) generally today use to describe their religious faith.

            UUs can broadly endorse the concept of religion as stated in the above quotation.  Because they emphasize actions as the manifestation of religion, they are open to many religious beliefs – or for that matter, philosophies of non belief – so long as those beliefs or philosophies express themselves in actions and attitudes consistent with generally held standards of ethical thought and behavior.  

            One of our traditions calls upon us to accept “[w]isdom from the world’s religions which inspires us in our ethical and spiritual life:” including “Jewish and Christian teachings which call us to respond to God’s love by loving our neighbors as ourselves.”   Within the great range of the world’s religious and philosophical systems, people may turn to a variety of beliefs to support their passages through life.  What one may take as high truth may be to others pure myth.  The Bible to one UU may be an inspiring religious source while others see it as only a book containing some beautiful literature. One may be a Christian theist; sitting next to him may be a woman who looks to pre-Christian “earth-centered” traditions; another may subscribe to a system of beliefs best described as post-Christian or New Age; still another might be a Buddhist, an  agnostic, or an atheist who denies any supernatural authority. 

            All these beliefs can exist side by side in a UU congregation, since our denomination does not question anyone’s personal belief or source of belief;  it looks instead to religion as reflected in ethical outlook and character.  A corollary of this is that UU’s do not depend upon others to support or second their personal beliefs, whatever those beliefs may be.   Viewpoints from various religions may enrich congregational experience.  But so far as any particular religious belief  is concerned,  each of us, so to speak, must stand on his or her our own feet,  relying on no congregational affirmation.  Our search for religious meaning is essentially personal; it is our commitment to ethical principles and personal religious freedom that we hold in common.

December 2008
True religion is the life we lead not the creed we profess
Louis Nizer

Louis Nizer was one of the best known and most successful lawyers of the 20^th century. The quotation fits Unitarian Universalism very well since ours is a denomination that has no creed, no statement of belief in some higher or supernatural power to which all must subscribe.  We are held together instead by affirming principles that have to do with how we are to live on this earth, in this life.   This does not mean that individual Unitarian Universalists may not hold beliefs in a religious sense that may amount to a creed.  There are, for example, many Unitarian Universalist theists who believe in God or some higher power that guides the universe and can offer them guidance in their individual lives.  These people are accepted just as those accepted who are purely secular.  UUs don’t ask what motivates you to lead a worthy life, only that you do your best to live such a life.  Recognize the inherent worth and dignity of every person, work to promote justice, equity and compassion in human relations, accept one another and encourage one another in spiritual growth, engage in a free and responsible search for truth and meaning,  respect the right of conscience and the use of the democratic process, try as you can to promote a world community with peace liberty and justice for all, respect the interdependent web of existence of which we are a part.  Do these things – or do your best to do them – and it does not matter what your individual creed or religious beliefs may be.

November 2008
Life ultimately means taking responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.

Viktor Frankl

            Viktor Frankl, a medical doctor and psychiatrist,  was a survivor of Nazi concentration camps in which his wife and other family members were killed.  Of the family, besides Frankl, only his sister, who had fled to Australia, came out of the war alive.  Striving while in the camps to assist others who found their position hopeless, Frankl developed a system he described as Logotheaphy.   It was featured in his 1946 book Man’s Search for Meaning.

            At some point in their lives, many, perhaps most, people, reach the point where they ask, “What’s the meaning of it all?” “Why am I here?”  They may at this time begin to question attitudes and beliefs which they had adopted earlier, perhaps without much reflection or as a matter of habit following family or friends.  Unitarian Universalism welcomes these people.  One of its basic, guiding principles is “A Free and Responsible Search for Truth and Meaning.”  The search is “free” because there is no prescribed answer, no creedal path provided to UUs; it is responsible because UUs are encouraged on their own  to look at different possible answers and to explore the truths found in different religions and philosophies.

            For Frankl, the meaning of life was not in some abstract principle or truth but in facing up to life’s challenges. Sometimes one could be helped  in doing this by taking a longer perspective on life, even by imagining that one was living a second time and weighing from that vantage point what one was about to do or fail to do.  His approach was essentially “tough minded.”  It emphasized responsibility; meaning was to be found in facing up to what was before you.  Indeed, he once suggested that our Statue of Liberty on the East Coast should be balanced by a Statue of Responsibility on the West.

October 2008
There are dinners without appetites at one end of the
table and appetites without dinners at the other.

                                                                                     Charles Sumner

Charles Sumner was a Civil War era United States senator remembered best for his efforts on behalf of human equality and the abolition of slavery.  He also happened to be Unitarian  The quote above is taken from a small book edited by Edward A. Frost that discusses the seven principles of the Unitarian Universalism – Justice, Equity and Compassion in Human Relations 

Of the three terms in this principle “compassion” is the easiest to separate from the other two, since it is usually associated with feelings of love, sympathy and pity not necessarily associated with “justice” or “equity.”  It may prompt us to do more towards assisting other people in distress than we would do if motivated merely by justice or equity. 

Between “justice” and “equity,” the difference is more subtle. In the dictionary each is commonly defined in terms of the other.  Justice often is associated with the law and can be seen as though it may be blind to a bad result even while it claims to be evenhanded.  As Anatole France put it, “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids all men to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread – the rich as well as the poor.”  A better way of looking at justice, a way that places it within the Unitarian Universalist concept, is to associate it with “right” or “rights,” as found,  for example, in the Declaration of Independence,  our Bill of Rights or other accepted statement of human rights.  In contrast to justice, the common law conceived of  “equity” as something that was available for redress of wrongs in situations where the law would otherwise produce an unfair result.  So to practice equity requires that one be fair to others, assuring each receives her or his fair share or fair treatment, whether or not that person can claim any established or legal “right.”

So considering all three terms, “justice,” “equity” and “compassion,”our Unitarian Universalist principle tell us that we should promote respect for human rights everywhere, work for fairness in the distribution of the benefits and burdens of life, and recognize and respond to the pain and  suffering of others in a spirit of love. 

September 2008
As society advances the standard of poverty rises.
Theodore Parker

Theodore Parker was one of the best known Unitarian ministers of the 19^th century.  An economic slant on Parker’s thought can found in words attributed to President Kennedy – “A rising tide lifts all boats.”  In other words, economic progress in general is supposed to bring a fair share of its benefits to everyone, even if some remain relatively better off than others. Thus, because of economic growth in this country, a poor person may remain poor by current standards but nevertheless should be living better than a poor person did thirty years ago.

But what is supposed to happen is not always what in fact does happen.  The great expansion in the American economy from 1940 to mid 1960's produced substantial gains for the great majority of our people.  In recent years, however, while the economy has continued to grow, the gains have been going disproportionately to those at the top, to those already enjoying high incomes and wealth. One way of showing this is through changes in wages over time.  Suppose a worker in 1973 earned (in 2005 dollars) $6.79.  A worker in the same wage bracket in 2005 would be earning $7.20 an hour, an increase that would yield no significant change in her or his standard of living.  In fact, measured from 1979, the bottom fifth of earners have actually lost ground in earnings while the top five percent have enjoyed an 81 percent surge in income.

The rapidly growing disparity is also evident if one compares the top earners with those earning average wages. The pay of a corporate CEO in 1990 was typically about 107 times as great as that of the average worker; by 2005, the CEO was earning 411 times as much as the average worker.  So the worker who in 1990 could match his boss’s one day’s  earnings in three and a half months labor could in 2005 work for thirteen months and still not earn what the boss did in a single day.  And as income shifts to the top earners, relative wealth concentrates ever more heavily at the top.  The 10 percent of wealthiest Americans claim over 71 percent of all US wealth, leaving less than 30 percent to be divided among everyone else.

 Clearly, the benefits of economic growth are not being shared fairly and inequalities in income and wealth, far from decreasing or even holding steady, are growing at a very rapid rate.

August 2008
Most people are atheists about all gods except their own.
Tom Flynn 

Most of us grow up surrounded by the religion of our own culture, starting with that of our parents and families. So we typically adopt the god or gods that we first learn about and that are worshiped by those around us.  One who is born and grows up in the United States more often than not will worship the God of the Bible and will be either a Christian or Jew.  If that person had been born in, say, Kuwait, she or he would worship Allah and be a Mohammedan  If born in India, he or she most likely would worship Lord Vishnu and be a Hindu.  And in each case, that person will generally deny that the others worship a true god; each would be an atheist so far as those other gods are concerned.  Yet each of the great religions has something to teach us.  Islam, for example,  has an exceptionally strong commitment to charity;  Hinduism places a high value on our treatment of the other sentient creatures with which we share the earth; Buddhism does the same and adds a strong focus on a contemplative life.  One feature of Unitarian Universalism is that it looks to the values that can be derived from each great religious tradition.  The Covenant of the Unitarian Universalist Association lists as among our sources of faith “wisdom from the world’ religions, which inspires us in our ethical and spiritual life.”  Unitarian Universalists see this openness to other religious traditions as an essential element of one of out seven agreed up goals, “The goal of a world community with peace, liberty and justice for all.”

July, 2008
Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.
Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein is often credited with quotations suggesting that he was a conventional, Jewish believer in God.  Well known examples are “I am convinced that he [God] does not play dice or  “God is subtle bit he is not malicious.  Our quotation of the month also appears to show Einstein sympathetic to conventional religion, suggesting that it only needs to accommodate science.  In fact, Einstein was religious, but not in the usual way. He tried to explain himself a number of times, but the explanations often became lost behind quotations lifted out of context.  He wrote to a New York rabbi that “I believe in Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings.” He did not believe in immortality and said that “I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it.”  Perhaps one of his revealing comments goes like this: “The most beautiful and deepest experience a man can have is the sense of the mysterious. .... To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is something that our mind cannot grasp and whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly and as a feeble reflection, this is religiousness.  In that sense I am religious.”  This is a view of “religious” to which many Unitarian Universalists can relate.

May 2008
Cherish your doubts for doubt is the attendant of truth
Robert T. Weston

Robert T. Weston for many years served the minister of the First Unitarian Church of Louisville, KY, and also helped found a Unitarian Universalist church in Omaha, Nebraska.  The quotation is from a reading appearing in the Unitarian Universalist hymnal, “Singing the Living Tradition.”

In religion, doubt often is seen as the enemy of faith. “O, thou of little faith,” Jesus says as he rescues Peter who, suddenly distrusting, had begun to sink into the water,“ wherefore didst thou doubt?”  (Matthew 14:3). John Bunyan in Pilgrim’s Progress must survive beating and starvation in “Doubting Castle.”  Doubting Thomas is portrayed in John’s Gospel as weak in faith. (John 20:24-29)  But in science, doubt is essential to progress. Scientists don’t accept on faith a new discovery no matter how authoritative the source: they insist instead that the discovery be replicated..  And even with that, doubt may remain, requiring further tests..  We must be patient with our doubts, wrote Sir Francis Bacon, one of the pioneers of scientific method.  As Robert T. Weston writes later in the reading quoted above.  “For truth, if it be truth, arises from each testing stronger, more secure” 

April. 2008
Study as if you were going to live forever; live as
if you were going to die tomorrow
Maria Mitchell

Maria Mitchell is one of many notable Unitarian or Universalist women who pioneered new roles and opportunities for their sex, women such as  Lucy Stone in public speaking, Olympia Brown in ministry, and Dorothea Dix and Elizabeth Cady Stanton in social and political reform. Maria Mitchell’s path led in what was for her time an unusual direction.  Starting out poor, she worked first as a librarian, but came to public notice as a self-taught astronomer, whose new career began after she discovered a comet that was named for her.  She became a professor of science at Vassar and was the first woman to be elected to the American Academy for the Advancement of Science.  An easy to find, 30 kilometer, crater on the moon has been named for her.  Among the sciences, astronomy has continued to prove attractive to women. One of them, Andrea Ghez, is featured in the article on black holes that appears in the current (April) edition of the Smithsonian Magazine.

March 2008
Surely the love that surpasses fear should be the
strongest stimulus to all good endeavor.

This quotation is from a letter written by Clara (Clarissa) Barton to a Universalist Minister.  Clara Barton is best known as the primary founder of the American Red Cross.  She is one of a number of nineteenth century women “movers and shakers,” such as, Dorothea Dix, Susan B.. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who were Unitarians or Universalists.  When the Civil War broke out, Barton was working as a clerk in the Washington D.C. patent office.  Moved by the sight of wounded soldiers, she went on to organize field hospitals and minister to and nurse the wounded on the battlefields, earning for her work the nickname “Angel of the Battlefield.”  After the war, she visited Europe and, while assisting there on battlefields during the Franco- Prussian War, learned of the work of the Red Cross.  She returned to America determined to establish the American Branch of the organization. She was appointed the first president of the Association of the American Red Cross and remained in that position for twenty three years.  It was during this period that the Red Cross became engaged in assisting in peacetime natural disasters.

February 2008
The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Now best known as an essayist, Emerson began his career as a Unitarian minister in a Boston church in 1829. He resigned three years later, considering that his duties hindered his creativeness as a writer and public speaker. His speeches and essays nevertheless reflect his training in the art of the sermon. Emerson rejected the supernaturalism of the Unitarian church of his day, including its acceptance of miracles, in favor of a more naturalistic, intuitive religion. He often stressed the need to look into one’s own heart for spiritual guidance and for the principles and strength to be one’s true self.

January 2008
"Be a Blessing to the World"
Charles Hartshorne