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Defining a Spirituality: From Personal Beliefs to Science
By David E. Drakeddrakedo1@qwest.net First Unitarian ChurchDes Moines Sunday, February 2nd, 2003 9:30 and 11 a.m.
Readings:
“You must be the change you wish to see in the world”
M.K. Gandhi
“It is not we who should ask for the meaning of life, since it is we who are being asked. It is we ourselves who must answer the questions that life asks of us and to these questions we can respond only by being responsible for our existence.”
Viktor Frankl, M.D.
“Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. Do not believe in anything because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason, and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to.”
The Buddha
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Recently, I came across these top 4 indications that you might be a Unitarian/Universalist if . . .
---------------------------------------------------------------- Before I start, my thanks to Priscilla Witke and the Religious Services Committee and to Mark Stringer for inviting me to come here today.
In what sounded like a reverberation of an episode of Mission Impossible, Mark Stringer wrote to me: “February 2nd is open and the religious services committee is extending the invitation to you to provide a sermon on that Sunday. As I mentioned in a previous e-mail, the committee would see to it that all other elements are taken care of. You would be responsible for filling 15-20 minutes. If you wish to accept this challenge, I suggest you consider offering some of your personal perspectives and narratives as opposed to a lecture on someone else's knowledge. You could talk about the spiritual journey you have taken through your practice, the intersection of Quaker and UU faith (and what that has meant to you), or something altogether different from your life experience. “
This was a challenge I heartily accepted!
The following is the story of trying to find my way:
My experience and practice in attempting to become clearer on who I am with my family, friends, and even colleagues have shown me the value of taking a stand and allowing my beliefs, in some circles, to become known. My intention, as of late, has not been to try to convert or convince others. I had hoped that my actions of having taken a stand regarding what I believe, in different realms of my life, would bring out the diversity of opinions, in my family, in my local Quaker Meeting, as well as bring up dialogue – that might entail both respect (not tolerance! - Fitz) and interest in learning more from each other. In letting my family in the past know of my differences from them, I had let my parents and siblings know of my intention to join the Unitarian Church, when we lived in Albuquerque, New Mexico. In a second and more recent instance, I wrote an essay for publication in a Quaker journal. Before learning whether the journal would accept my essay, I decided to share it with members and attenders of our local Quaker Meeting. It was a bold essay, entitled: “Confessions of a Non-Theistic Quaker: Meeting for Worship without God.” Writing and sharing this essay with attenders and members of our local Friends Meeting brought out the wide opinions on theology in our Meeting and to my surprise, many told me they agreed with much of what I had written. Some of that text will appear in this morning’s talk. Let me begin by talking about ‘spirituality.’ My own sense of the ‘spiritual’ starts with the factual and scientific observation that we live in a never-ending space – a planet among planets – a universe among universes. It is a fact to state that we live as living breathing matter in the infinite. This morning, I would like to communicate, as best I can, how I came to a point in my life where I see myself as a ‘non-theistic’ Friend or Quaker – not at one pole or another: theistic or atheistic, but at a place where the question of the existence of God is not an issue. I would also like to address the issue of moving beyond what we believe – to look at how an appreciation of how science – facts, if you will, can bring us to an appreciation of how we are connected together – as a species and as part of the natural world. I first came to Friends or Quakers as an 18 year-old high school student in Denver, Colorado in 1970. The Vietnam War was raging. I was at loggerheads with my father, a retired Army Colonel and physician. Becoming increasingly socially conscious, I was also rebellious against nearly everything my parents stood for. Friends, or Quakers, were a perfect ‘match’ for my situation. Having been baptized and confirmed in the Episcopal Church, I had been active in the choir and later as an acolyte. I began to identify with the more radical elements of the Denver Episcopal Church – straying from the massive Cathedral where I attended church while growing up to attend a downtown church that fed and clothed the poor and preached a message of justice and peacemaking. I taunted my parents with how they weren’t living the Gospel in their comfortable church. I was heading for the ministry when I first began college. I saw myself as a future ‘Father Dave’ – one who would live according to a radical interpretation of the New Testament – and one who had answers for a troubled world. I now know that I would most certainly have had a ‘nervous breakdown’ had I continued in that direction. One evening while studying mathematics in my college library, I came to the very sudden realization that I didn’t believe in God. For the next several days or more I went around in a fog - shaken and overwhelmed. What could this mean?! How could I live without God in my life?! As a child, my mother had said prayers with me every night. I had asked God to help me in many moments of distress. My God had been a fatherly figure – kind, empathic, and powerful. As a teenager, I remember testing my notion of God – asking to see certain acts performed to prove that God existed. Could God close the drapes in my room when I asked? Could God turn on the light? I just wanted a little verification. As my doubt continued and I shared this with some select friends and family, my mother would let me know that she was “praying for me”, i.e., that I would return to what she believed. This was never comforting and it seemed to disparage my own struggles and search for what gave me meaning. Following a tumultuous year as student body president in college and just prior to a summer bicycle tour of the Orient, I met with the Episcopal Bishop of Colorado, who prayed with me at his private altar that I would “find Jesus in Japan.” On my travels I sought out spiritual people who spoke English who I hoped could help me with my questions and struggle. The son of a Buddhist temple master sat with me on a wooden deck outside the meditation hall – with a shaved head and dressed in the traditional long black robe, smoking a cigarette. He told me that if I had been born in Japan, I would be Buddhist and if he were born in the United States, he would be Christian. What he said was so simple and yet so profound for a twenty year old seeker like myself back then. An Anglican minister in Hong Kong took me to the church altar and prayed with me – telling me that “Your doubts are just the cross you will have to bear in this life.” I was mortified. Was this the best he had to offer?! A former girlfriend, who later entered the ministry, would tell me she couldn’t accept my view of the world. She told me that there was no reason to have any ethical standards at all without God – that life without God was meaningless. It seemed rather empty to me at the time – that there wasn’t something more basic, some connection that would allow human beings to remain compassionate if perhaps God really didn’t exist. Back at college in Colorado Springs, Colorado, I began to attend a very small Quaker gathering. The 6 or so of us who met usually found ourselves in silence for most of the hour. It was a time to stop my usual actions and just sit. I found it restorative. Never was there any pressure to profess anything. After graduation from college, I moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where I attended Harvard Divinity School. I became a regular attender at the Cambridge Meeting and took a class on Quakerism. I came to realize that when I attended Quaker Meeting I could believe anything! I had some Sundays when I counted myself as an atheist, others as agnostic, and some still as a theist. In this transient student community, attenders at Meeting from a variety of religious traditions came and went. While in medical school, I attended the Des Moines Valley Friends Meeting only a few times. I also came to this Unitarian Church just as infrequently, and was exposed to a rational approach to religion, which intrigued me. I found Unitarians to be quite bright and often to have a sense of humor about serious topics – perhaps especially around the meaning of life. During my internship following medical school, I met my future wife, who had strong ties to the Methodist Church in Alabama. When we moved to Topeka, Kansas for my residency in psychiatry, we began to search for a church we would both want to attend. I was frankly disappointed by several that we went to, until we found a small preparatory Quaker Meeting that met in the lobby of a Methodist Church on Sunday afternoons. I became socially involved with many of the attenders, several of whom were also in mental health, as our work overlapped. This first spiritual home together for me and my wife was both friendly and supportive. Once again, I found no pressure to believe one way or another. When I once considered membership, a ‘clearness committee’, as they are known, was formed with some four good male friends (small ‘f’) from Meeting coming to my home. With great anxiety, I recounted my thinking about officially becoming a Friend, receiving great support from the members present. To their surprise, I decided against membership, even though not all of them were members themselves. I was later told that I had been the first person in this preparatory Meeting to have had a clearness committee for membership who decided not to become a member. After completing my residency and in my early practice years in South Carolina, my wife and I both attended the Meeting across the border in Charlotte. Later in Albuquerque, my wife and I began to split ways, where she became a regular attender at a Quaker Meeting, while I began attending and eventually joining the Unitarian Church. As opposed to the step-by-step process of becoming a member of a Friends Meeting, the Unitarian Church in Albuquerque only required that one sign one’s name in a book of members. My wife used to tease me – asking me if I had written my name in pencil! I enjoyed the quick and curious intellects of the Unitarians, their comfort with questions in place of answers, as well as the option to become involved in leading services in the absence of the minister. My wife wasn’t happy with the split in our attendance, and I occasionally would attend Meeting with her on special occasions. Before actually joining the Unitarian Church in Albuquerque, I decided to use the opportunity to make a statement to my family in Denver about who I was in terms of our differences, having first worked diligently on remaining in regular and more responsible contact with each of them. I wrote a letter to each of my siblings and each of my parents, separately, to let them know of my decision. This was no small deed in my family. The reactions were perhaps predictable. I began to hear from my mother about how she was upset that I didn’t believe in Christ and once again, she was going to pray for me. My father was silent – tending to share his discontent through my mother, who in turn spoke for him or for the two of them at times. All of this transpired via letters. When I finally came to Denver where most of them lived, I made a point of meeting with each of them separately, and among other news once again brought up my decision to become a Unitarian. By the time I had finished and returned back to New Mexico, it seemed it was no longer an issue. Somehow, it seemed the effort had resulted in my family loosening up a bit and becoming less reactive to differences in our beliefs. I’m sure it helped that I at no time criticized my upbringing or what they each believed. On our move to Des Moines in 1995 from New Mexico, I began attending both the Unitarian Church and the local Friends Meeting. The Meeting is only 6 blocks from our house so just as our conservative Jewish neighbors take off on foot to Saturday services, walking to Meeting gradually became a regular habit and a method of settling myself in to the silence. I again felt the pressure to consolidate our family (now 4 of us) at one church. I did so and became an active and regular attender at the Des Moines Valley Friends Meeting. After several years of thinking about it, I once again toyed with the idea of becoming a member of The Society of Friends. My anxiety went up each time as I considered why I would want to do this. I was aware that I didn’t believe in a personal God – one who directs, answers, or comforts. I was aware that I didn’t believe I was divinely inspired when I got up to speak in Meeting – although I would not speak unless I did indeed feel considerable passion or inspiration to do so. I also became aware that to some degree it didn’t matter what church I joined – that regardless, I would struggle with the message, the doctrine, and core beliefs, even when there was little hard dogma. It’s just my nature, it seems, to always be somewhat of a rebel. Coming from a long line of men who were officers in the military and having been raised shooting small pistols to shotguns, the Quaker stance of pacifism or non-violent resistance was and has been a challenge for me to consider. I consider myself a peace activist. I am not a pacifist in the sense that I would not fight back to defend myself or others and in fact could not say that I would never serve in the military under any circumstances. I became increasingly aware that my wife was close to becoming a member. We decided to ask for a clearness committee for membership together. It was no big deal. My worst fears of some kind of inquisition into what I believed and why I wanted to pursue membership never materialized. We had already become active and attended regularly. I knew what Friends were about and the Meeting knew us. The members of the clearness committee greeted us warmly and told us we had already become valuable contributors to the Meeting. We were acknowledged as members at the next Meeting for Business. After this time, like having a ‘religious affair’, I would sometimes still meander over to this Unitarian Church. I have some good friends here and attend if the topic of the sermon or forum is of interest. I have also become enamored with Buddhist meditation and began a regular morning sitting – finding a calmer mind and greater focus as a result. This regular practice seems to have allowed me to more easily connect with the suffering in the world and that of the families in my psychiatric practice. I no longer needed Meeting as the place where I would sit quietly. Meditation became a place to rest, to stop, to become quiet. It is a place from where I can observe my mind and let it flow freely or just focus on my breath to become present in this moment. So why do I stay in a Friends Meeting? Meeting is a place where I can sit in community – sharing the change in seasons, births and deaths, doubts and callings, with a group of people who have not insisted I believe as they do. In fact, when I have shared my struggles and doubts in the silence of Meeting, I am often thanked afterwards for having done so. And, in coming from a Christian background, I am challenged by others who profess a belief in God. I also appreciate the regular focus on issues of social justice and peace . I do not believe in a heaven or hell. There is no afterlife of this body or a soul that dwells after this life in my beliefs. I do believe that our work, actions, and example in this life will affect others in ways and over time that we may never realize. My own suffering from seeing the poverty and violence in our world, the loss of both parents, from sharing the struggles of my family and friends, from my own disappointments and failures, and from work with countless persons in my psychiatric practice, has brought me to a point where I can begin to see the connection with all of life. I do not think of God while sitting in Meeting. I do, however, remind myself of the infinite space we live in. That is an awesome thought – and reality. I may remind myself from time to time that we, as a species, as a form of life, are connected with all the rest of life – that we are indeed the earth reflecting back at itself – being made up of the minerals and carbon and nutrients all around us. I start each Friends Meeting just as I do my own personal meditation – I begin with the intention that all ‘sentient beings’, as Buddhists write, will live in happiness, health, peace, and harmony – that my sitting practice will benefit all forms of life – and I name specific ones –my family, our household of three furry animals –my friends, extended family, colleagues, my patients that day, all those – known and strangers - I may come across during my day. It helps me to set a pace and a tone for the entire day – one I need to remind myself of to keep it going – and one I often fall short of.
The advantage of an spiritual perspective based on science and specifically, evolution, is described in the book by Richard Wrangham, professor of biological anthropology at Harvard University, and Dale Peterson, who both wrote a book on Apes And The Origins Of Human Violence:
“One of the merits of an evolutionary view is that it presents humans as a single group, worshiping, as it were, a single ancestor. It stresses our unity and trivializes our differences.…… If we could absorb the spiritual thought that humans –of all colors, creeds, sexes, and genders; residents and immigrants; conquerors and refugees – all of us, are descended from the same apes …… we might come to think that a rise in status is less important than the protection of peace, and to be more generous to our rivals.”
In the end, I don’t think it really matters if we believe there is or isn’t a god; if there is or isn’t an afterlife. As Dr. Murray Bowen is reported to have said, “You have your philosophy and I have mine”. I believe what matters is that we can see that we are connected – biologically, emotionally, and through our respective searches for meaning in our lives. If what we believe, drives us to compassion – allows us to find this connection in our common suffering – then it seems to me to be useful and helpful for us individually, as a species, and for our planet. Shortly before he died, Dr. Murray Bowen, psychiatrist and thinker behind the family systems theory that bears his name, said to a group of family therapists:
“You have inherited a lifetime of tribulation. Everybody has inherited it. Take it over. Make the most of it. When you have decided you know the right way, do the best you can with it.” I hope that each of you finds a way that works for you.
Thank you.
David E. Drake, D.O., a graduate of the Harvard Divinity School and the Karl Menninger School of Psychiatry, practices family psychiatry, teaches, and writes in Des Moines. He can be reached at: ddrakedo1@qwest.net
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