LOST AND FOUND IN THE LIBRARY

                       By Priscilla S Witke

I start by telling you about an experience that unexpectedly changed my life.

When I was a child, “Our Father… which art in heaven gave us our daily bread, forgave us our trespasses and delivered us from evil.”

I also believed in Jesus Christ, [God’s] only son, our Lord. I believed in The Holy Ghost, The Communion of Saints, The Forgiveness of sins and Life everlasting.  

These concepts were the foundation of my life.  I read, played, went to school, had friends and family, ate meals. But on Sunday we went to church to remind ourselves again of the reality beyond this world that was the guide for all we did. 

 

I also believed that people who were born before Jesus Christ did not have our advantage of knowing the True Religion. Particularly the ancient Greeks and Romans and Pagans were definitely on the wrong track with their concepts of multiple, imaginary gods who we now knew were not real. No question, not real.   

That was the world as I knew it on the fall evening in 1958 when I went to Northwestern University’s Library to do some assigned reading from reserved books for my Discussion B 210 class.

On that evening I was reading a psychological analysis of human development as it affected religious belief. I do not have the reading today but here is what I understood the author to say.

The human child relies on her parents. In good circumstances, where the child is adequately cared for, she is secure and believes the parents are all knowing and can handle all life’s problems. However as the child matures she gradually experiences situations in which she  sees for herself that sometimes the parents seem not to know everything. Having these experiences the young person, whether female or male, gradually realizes the parents cannot handle all situations.

 

At this point the child, being accustomed to rely on authority for guidance, looks for other sources of help and finds religion with its powerful, all knowing, parent, God the Father Almighty. Remember this was 1958 and a Western educated author. God the Father is defined as the One who knows everything and therefore is a logical replacement for the fallible parents. The child has a lifetime of experience in relating to parental figures and using their guidance to live a life that has gradually enabled her to do more and more things and gain more and more power. Those experiences have prepared the young person to feel comfortable, powerful and secure in such a relationship. So now the young person focuses on developing a relationship with God the Father in order to avoid being deprived of the power, security, comfort and guidance she can no longer get from the parents.   

As I was read the piece I was concentrated on following the reasoning, trying to understand it, trying to decide whether it seemed logical and to figure out how the idea could be used in class.

While I was totally absorbed in that work my world shifted. I suddenly experienced belief in the possibility that God and Jesus were not the certain realities they had always been to me but might be beings like Zeus, Hera, Athena and Apollo, human creations rather than actually existing beings. I already knew intellectually that not everyone believed in God. But in this moment I understood at some deep level, in an almost unspoken way, that I might disbelieve and that such disbelief would change my world.

Thus was my original faith “Lost in the Library.”

After that experience, saying the prayers and creeds felt bad: false, sacrilegious and hypocritical. For me the ritual was not satisfying unless it was real. So I stopped going to church.

Did I start sinning like mad? Obviously to some believing there is not a God is a sin but I had no desire to dishonor my Mother or Father. I did not want to do murder, commit adultery, steal, lie about my neighbors or do any more coveting than I had already been doing which was not much.

 

I knew about the Unitarian church even before I changed my faith but did not regularly attend a UU church until we moved to Des Moines. Then I wanted a way to meet people with whom I could share honest discussion about what I really believed. So I attended the Unitarian Church and keep attending it because, from the experience of knowing a Unitarian family, I believed that in the long run I would find good companions that way.

 

That has been true.  Awareness of white privilege, concerns for social justice for those not well protected by the world’s cultures and economic systems, awareness of world tensions, such as the Justice for Darfur actions, ongoing actions taken to support gays and lesbians and other groups, concern for the environment, the fair trade coffee sales, membership in Amos: those are some of the activities our congregation is currently involved with that contribute to my feeling at home here.   

Where do I stand religiously today?

            I think that God images are created by humans. Karen Armstrong, author of History of God, says in her more personal book, THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE: “Cantrell Smith was one of the first theologians to make all this clear to me…I remember the extraordinary sense of relief I felt when I read in his somewhat dry, scholarly prose that our ideas of God were man made: that they could be nothing else…” Works for me.       

That our ideas of God are “made on earth” does not seem to me to prove whether God does or does not exist. I live my life as if “She Who Is” does not exist outside of human concepts. However, while God may or may not exist, Belief in             God DOES EXIST. Whether the often alleged belief in God is genuine at any given time we do not know, but as long as vast numbers of people say that God (and it is usually GOD/HE they are talking about) exists, I am greatly interested in ideas about God.

I am personally interested in seeing images of God based on women’s lives developed and spread as I think women’s power is drastically undermined by the great amount of male imagery used in discussion about and in conversation with God.

 

I love the first hymn we sang, LADY OF THE SEASON’S LAUGHTER. I do not have to believe in the actual existence of ‘SHE WHO IS’. Singing, “Hold us in your steady mercy, Lady of the Turning Day”, creates an image of “SHE WHO IS” which empowers me.

I am also bothered by the Lord and Master, What-He-Says-Goes elements of so many human images of God. That is why I included Hymn 23, BRING MANY NAMES, which contains a variety of images of God, in the service. Another useful God image hymn is Hymn 31, NAME UNNAMED, where we meet “The Midwife of Changes… drawing us out through the shock of the new” and “Nudging Discomfort, prodding and shaking, waking our lives to creative unease.”

All three of those hymns can broaden your picture of what God may possibly be. I think that taking the time to occasionally read through those hymns,(or sing them if you can), is a worthwhile religious practice. How humans think about God seems to me to impact what humans do. So whether you believe in God or not I think knowing something about possible images of God and considering how those images might affect human behavior could empower you.

Now, the closing hymn, WHERE IS OUR HOLY CHURCH, expresses a powerful sense of sacredness using the here and now world that we know and experience on a daily basis and without using any supernatural imagery.

 

I           want our church to be a place serving both those who believe in the existence of “She Who Is” or He Who Is and those who believe there is no supernatural. “WHERE IS OUR HOLY CHURCH” was one of the first Unitarian hymns that gave me a strong sense of joy and connection when I sang it.

 

 

Some people say that Muslims, Jews and Christians have in common that they are all “people of the Book” because they all read and follow scriptures: The Hebrew Bible, the Christian Bible and the Koran. When I first heard that idea, People of the Book, I felt an inner certainty that I was not a person of the book. I did not want to figure out how to live by studying some book.

But now I am not so sure that I am entirely not a person of the book. I do not base all my religion on one bible, one sacred scripture. I believe that revelation is not sealed. That means if Sophia, God of Wisdom, She Who Is, has ever spoken to humans, She is still speaking to humans and the Library, Borders, Barnes and Noble and the Half Price Store have more scripture in them than just the Bibles and the Koran et al. Two of the scriptural quality books I like have been Elizabeth Johnson’s SHE WHO IS and Karen Armstrong’s THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE. Earlier this year, Mark preached two sermons on Sam Harris’ book, THE END OF FAITH, a scriptural quality book several of you have read and like.

When I read these books I learn new ways of thinking about life. Thru this reading I find in the Library new Faith, new ideas and beliefs to replace the Faith I Lost in the Library in 1958.  Thus “LOST AND FOUND IN THE LIBRARY.”  

For example, Ms Armstrong, a nun for seven years, was unable to find ecstasy or faith in the convent. She came to believe that there was no God. Then she started writing THE HISTORY OF GOD. As she worked on that book she found herself experiencing feelings that she expected to find in the convent. Her understanding was that as she worked on HISTORY OF GOD she lost her own ego as she used her mind and imagination to understand how God had appeared to different people in different times. The work of putting herself into the minds of the people whose concepts she was explaining became a meditation for her. That working meditation provided her the sense of being taken out of herself in a kind of ecstasy she had not found before.

You may have noticed that in talking about working on writing HISTORY OF GOD, Armstrong says she lost her own ego as she worked to understand the people whose ideas she wanted to describe.

 

When I became a Unitarian my mother did not worry about my going to hell. She was concerned because she said, without God to guide them, humanists were self centered, too wrapped up in their own egos. I wish my mother were alive so I could discuss Armstrong’s perception with her.

So I have a new concept, given to me by Armstrong, to use in considering the appropriate place of ego in our lives.

A second point from Armstrong’s THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE that I found interesting is a variation on an old concept: the concept of compassion.

Armstrong asks the question often raised in Unitarian Universalist circles. “But did that mean we could think what we liked about God?”

 

I quote Armstrong’s answer, “No. Here again the Religious traditions were in unanimous agreement. The one and only test of a valid religious idea, doctrinal statement, spiritual experience, or devotional practice was that it must lead directly to practical compassion.”

To be valid a religious practice or belief must lead to practical compassion. I think that criteria may be worth using. In THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE Armstrong not only states the need for practical compassion she also talks some about what practical compassion is. Practical compassion may be shown by developing understanding of others and doing something to reach out based on your understanding as well as by physically providing food, clothing or shoveling walks etc.

When I agreed to do this service last November my intention was to tell you where I had been in my religious journey. Then last month I picked up THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE for a little easy reading and found new directions to go. We do not have enough time for me to tell the whole story today. That’s ok. John Isom always wanted us to keep on with our personal exploration of the world so unfinished feels ok to me.

I hope these fragments have given you some food for thought.

 

                               End Of Sermon

 

PS Many of you will remember that John always said making a sermon short was the hardest thing to do. PSW

 

PPS – other info about the service

Readings used:

“Out of the Stars” by Robert T Weston, # 530 in “Singing the Living Tradition”. Since this can be found in the hymnal I will not type it out here. 

“From The Spiral Staircase” by Karen Armstrong:

“It seemed that [Iris] Murdoch had developed a form of secular mysticism, so that natural objects ,works of art, or the experience of falling in love revealed a transcendent dimension that seemed natural to human beings. These experiences were clearly a revelation, similar to what religious people described as God or the sacred. Something similar had happened to me when I had listened to Dame Helen Gardner reading ASH WEDNESDAY. If traditional religious disciplines had failed to enlighten me, perhaps I would find in literature what had eluded me in the convent chapel.  And this raised all kinds of questions about the nature of religion. If an unbeliever could experience the same kind of ecstasy as a Christian mystic, it seemed that transcendence was just something that human beings experienced and that there was nothing supernatural about it.”

 

From SHE WHO IS by Elizabeth Johnson:

 

“Speaking of the blessing that feminist theological discourse is for the church, Mary Collins notes, ‘One of the best gifts for the critical mind and for a living tradition is the gift of a new question.’ Not everyone sees it this way, however. It is not uncommon for those whose certitudes and securities may be threatened by …emerging theological speech to relegate it to the periphery of importance.”

 

                                   That’s all folks.