Stages of Faith: Part Two a High Holy Days Service

Offered at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Lafayette, Indiana

On October 9^th, 2005

By the Reverend Hilary Landau Krivchenia

 Reading

Rabbi Alan Lew from This is Real and You Are Completely Unpreprared

You are walking through the world half asleep. It isn’t just that you don’t know who you are and don’t know how or why you got here. Worse -- these questions never even arise. It’s as if you’re in a dream. A great horn sounds, calling you to remembrance. Every day for a month, you sit and try to remember who you are and where you are going. Then the great horn sounds in earnest. The time of transformation is upon you. The world is once again cracking through the shell of its egg to be born. The gate between heaven and earth creaks open. The Book of Life and the Book of Death are opened once again.

This may all sound like a dream—a nightmare—and it is. It is a deep dream of human existence. It is also a description of the round of Jewish rituals that are observed every year between midsummer and midfall. It is a description of the stages of the Days of Awe, each one constituting a passage in this ancient journey of transformation.

From the beginning of time, humans had seen the world as a play of competing forces, which they had personified as gods. The sea struggled against the earth, the rain either overwhelmed the forests and fields or famished them, men and beasts hunted each other, hatred and vengeance, love and compassion, struggled for hegemony in the human heart.  Judaism came to say that beneath this appearance of conflict, multiplicity, and caprice there was a oneness, a singularity, all-powerful and endlessly compassionate.

In the visible world, we live our routine and sometimes messy lives. We have jobs, families, houses. Our lives seem ordinary. Yet only beneath the surface the real drama of our lives is unfolding. On this journey our soul will awaken to itself.   This is a journey from denial to awareness, from self-hatred to self-forgiveness, from anger to healing. This is the journey the soul takes to transform, to evolve, the journey from staleness—from deadness—to renewal. It is the journey from isolation to a sense of our intimate connection to all being. This is the journey on which we discover ourselves to be part of a chain of circumstances, beyond death, the journey home.

When the Torah spoke of atonement and the Talmud tearing up the divine decree, obviously they were not talking about something that took place in the visible world. They were talking about a spiritual process. They were talking about transformation. The Days of Awe stand for something going on all the time. That period was merely a time to focus on it, when we give form to something invisible that lay dormant yet was possible to awaken at every moment of our lives.

Every moment, we take in a breath and the world comes into being, and then we let out a breath and the world falls away. The great journey of transformation begins with the acknowledgment that we need to make it. Our need to be more conscious is always there too, not just when the shofar blows on the first day of Elul. The soul wants to awaken. Every day we are called to the present moment of our lives. The world is always cracking through the shell to be born. We die to the world every time we breathe out, and every time we breathe in, every time our breath returns to us, we are reborn, and the world rises up into being again.

 Our souls are making this journey, yours and mine.

Sermon

The shofar is blown as a wake up call – the sound reverberating through body and soul, piercing the habit of every day calling each person into a keen awareness of the present moment and all the power and possibility it contains.   Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, also called Maimonides, said "Awake , O you sleepers, awake from your sleep! O you slumberers, awake! Look to your souls, and better your ways and actions."

The Buddha said that we have an appointment with life, and that appointment takes place in the present moment.  We must be awake and inhabit this moment in order to be fully alive -- it is not a simple matter of hearts beating and organs functioning – we are made of more stuff than that – and deeper -- we must fully inhabit the present to be aware, to learn, and to form a firm foundation for the next moment, the next and the next. 

            The Shofar is blown for one month as a wake up call – the sound piercing through our tendency to hurry over the surface of life.  It draws the hearer up short and down deep – but it’s just an invitation – there’s nothing magical about the shofar – it can’t awaken those who truly desire to sleep.  For those who hunger for life and meaning the shofar is magical.  Perhaps you know that the word Abracadabra comes from an ancient Hebrew phrase meaning "with these words I shall create it".  The Shofar has the magical power to speak into the softly slumbering soul. 

            Two weeks ago we began an exploration of stages or phases of faith development as proposed by James Fowler, a critical figure in developmental psychology.  We explored the first three.  Unitarian Universalists tend to be beyond those first three phases – beyond mimicry, beyond untested faith, beyond a willingness to belong at all costs, and definitely committed to questioning.  It’s beyond the first three phases where the deeper stuff begins – and the challenge gets much keener.

            It’s safe to say that nearly every Unitarian Universalist has had more than passing experience with the next phase - which is Faith Self-chosen or Self-constructed.  Where earlier encounters with faith are more simply accepting, this phase is earmarked and often catalyzed by a crisis of faith.  This can start early —or never arrive at all.  It’s that time when the person begins to want to define, to debate, to explore.  This phase is why so many faiths have active campus ministries – because young people arrive at college not only ready for change but to make their claim as autonomous people.  A campus ministry is there just as a young person is asking – do I keep the faith I was given?  Is it just a hand-me-down?  What will give me a more expansive sense of living as I’m discovering my own freedom.  At this stage people don’t necessarily reject the faith of their parents – but they want whatever they believe – be lieben – to hold dear – to belong to them instead.  It’s a phase of passage from old assumptions to new understandings.  This can come out of active thought or rebellion.  At this phase a person doesn’t want anyone to tell them what to believe.  There’s a suspicion of authority and anything that’s non-rational – certainly of anything taken simply on faith.  Most of us here know that we shouldn’t be forced or coerced to believe anything.  I wonder if it’s equally true that we trust that we can’t be forced or coerced.  Do you know that your mind is free?

James Fowler says that the two essential features of this stage are distancing from the previous value system and then the emergence of a new mind – a new ego – for lack of a better word.  Fowler tells a story of the theologian Harvey Cox on break during college when he attended catholic midnight mass on Christmas Eve.  Fowler writes:

As the mass climaxed and people were receiving the Eucharist, Harvey said his college aged girl friend, who had just completed Anthropology 101, turned to him and whispered, “that’s just a primitive totemic ritual, you know.”  Harvey said: “A what?” She replied with great self-assurance, “A primitive totemic ritual. Almost all pre-modern religious and tribal groups have them.  They’re ceremonies where worshippers bind themselves together and to the power of the sacred by a cannibalistic act of ingesting the mana of a dead god.”  Communion, said Harvey Cox, was never the same again.

That’s the first part of this stage. The next part is forming new values, meanings and an identity that belongs to the adult who has emerged.  Not simply the rejection of the past.  I overheard a young woman at the video store talking with her mom on the cell phone.  “Mom, we’re going to come over to Aunt Jody’s for a while.  Sunday we’re going to the church in town (clearly not the church of her family back home).  We wanted to…Well, we can talk about it Saturday when we see each other – that’s what we want to do.”  A young adult establishing their own choices in religious practice.

Once the person has gained a sense of what they choose – of their own grounding, the next phase of spiritual formation is possible – not guaranteed – but possible.

To have a strong sense of where you stand prepares you for the great adventure – the rough exciting adventure – Walt Whitman wrote:

“Allons! we must not stop here! 

However sweet these laid-up stores—

however convenient this dwelling, we cannot remain here; 

However shelter’d this port, and however calm these waters,

we must not anchor here; 
Listen! I will be honest with you; 

I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough new prizes; 

Allons! after the GREAT COMPANIONS!

they are the swift and majestic men; they are the greatest women. 

The Soul travels..” Whitman Wrote

This is the new path – in this phase, which is called Faith Expansive there is a new readiness – even a hunger for the encounter with differences – the yearning for the open road – without fear or trembling.

Suddenly, in Faith expansive there is comfort with paradox and ambiguity – having found the ground it is possible to leap into space. Uncertainty is bearable – at least for a time.  You know the optical illusion of the vase either you can see the two faces or you can see the vase – well in this phase the person is ready to admit both interpretations are possible.  To sustain seeing them both at the same time – not so easy.

Buddhism has, perhaps, presented the greatest faith expansive opportunity in recent years.  Modern Buddhist teachers, like Thich Nhat Hanh, Chogyam Trungpa, or the Dalai Lama offer their teachings freely but always with the understanding that theirs is one of many paths and that these paths coexist – can coexist and enrich one another. 

Rabbi Alan Lew, in Be still and Get Going says: “we have been practicing mindfulness meditation side by side with Jewish spiritual activities. Over years, we have used dozens of classical Jewish texts to support the integration of meditation into Jewish contexts. We began to see a spiritual practice standing side by side with Judaism and supporting it, helping it to reach its full natural depth.” This is faith expansive: to be open to the insights others and even to incorporate those without feeling diminished by this.

Unitarian Universalist theologian Henry Nelson Wieman calls this creative interchange: “which creates an appreciative understanding of the original experience of one another in such a way as to change the original experience in oneself.”  He means that we’re open to one another.  In faith expansive, the interchange – rather than causing anxiety as it can in earlier stages, strikes sparks, generates new forms, and new thoughts.

            You know—too often I hear that little voice in my own head – the inner judge and defender who persistently chants – “I agree, I disagree, I know where this is leading and I don’t want to go there, oh there’s that word I always tune out.” 

            Like you know how we joke that Unitarian Universalists have trouble singing because we’re always reading ahead to see if we agree with the words.  What it means is that I lose my chance to be in the song, hear its fuller message, to hear beneath the words, to be uplifted.  There’s too much static on the line to hear.  But when the static stops – we don’t loose our critical sense – remember you really can’t be coerced into belief.  The critical sense isn’t lost but we can be open and that’s when new and creative insight can happen.  James Fowler calls this dialogical knowing.  Suddenly there’s room for poetry, ambiguity, myth without anxiety.

            In terms of interfaith dialogue this phase is critical. I’ve seen interfaith gatherings where many voices are invited but one is really preferenced – subtly there’s one right way, one ultimate voice.  Fowler reminds me that Kirster Stendahl, who taught for many years at Harvard Divinity School, said that no interfaith conversation is genuinely ecumenical, unless the quality of mutual sharing and receptivity is such that each party makes her or himself vulnerable to conversion or transformation by the other’s truth.

How often is it possible to truly hear in this way?  With this radical openness?  Yet, I think, this is what we hope for and claim as Unitarian Universalists: that we’re open to the world’s many living traditions – not to measure against our own creed – we freely claim not to have a creed.  We’re open to these traditions in hopes that they will inform our lives and deepen our spirits.  When I think of people who achieved this phase, I think of people like Albert Einstein, Carl Sagan, or Huston Smith – individuals who have deep grounding in one area and yet see the deeper truth shining in other disciplines, stories, and traditions.  I think of Joseph Campbell who opened wide the world of myth and invited us all to travel on the open road – to take the hero’s journey – which is really the willingness to be changed by all that we meet. To risk all for truth.

            In our 7^th principle: the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part -- we have a hint of the last stage of faith – but it’s seldom attained.  Universalizing faith.  Buddhists call the people who reach this stage – Boddhisattvas – awakened ones.  James Fowler puts it this way:  They have a felt sense of an ultimate environment inclusive of all being.  They create zones of liberation from the social, political, economic, and ideological shackles we place and endure on humanity.  Their community is universal in extent.  When asked whom I consider to be representative of this I refer to Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr, Thomas Merton, Abraham Heschel, Dietrich Bonhoefffer.

            What Fowler’s pointing to aren’t perfect people – but people who’ve been changed by insight – awakened into a universal sense – and feel commanded to serve a more universal truth.  They’re given more than a glimpse of the thread that is connects the truths of this world and they can sustain that.  Yet they each have their own language in which to express this.  This isn’t an idea – it’s a lived experience – like a sunrise or an open vista – words can scarcely evoke reality.  A photograph can hardly awaken the same awe as the Grand Canyon.  Such an awakening changes us and uproots our lives.

Emerson – who glimpsed this in fragments said:  Within us is the soul of the whole, of which every part and particle is equally related.  The eternal one.

The 20^th century Jewish sage and prophet, Abraham Joshua Heschel, said: "The heart of being confronts me as incompatible with my categories, sheer mystery. All we have is a sense of awe and radical amazement in the face of a mystery that staggers our ability to sense it."  I had an unsettling experience this week when our intrepid Terrie Kercher returned from the community prayer breakfast with a brochure from the Tippecanoe Evangelical Association of Ministers and Ministries. Their affirmation and statement of faith – which one must sign to join claims: “The Bible to be the inspired, the only infallible, authoritative Word of God, That salvation has been provided through Jesus Christ alone for all people.”  And their statement of vision calls forth a hope in “the day that God in His sovereign grace may revive His people and awaken the lost in our community to their need of Christ.”  Now let me be clear – you may in fact have experienced that the teaching of Jesus healed you.  You may have had an insight that Jesus was speaking to us all as a Universalist – and that teaching and insight may be sweetest honey to you.   Yet the awakening of universalizing faith contains a recognition that the holy shines out of all people in diverse ways and that we’re not called to be homogeneous – universalizing does not mean that everyone must stand on the same point – but, as my colleague the Rev. Cindy Landrum said – It calls us to something more like a mountain range – where the heights are diverse peaks and vistas.  Elsewhere Abraham Heschel said: “Perhaps it is the will of God that in this aeon there should be diversity in our forms of devotion and commitment.” 

Rabbi Lawrence Kushner said: “This world is broken and fragmented because not even one soul can remain aware that the brokenness of this place is a mere illusion for more than one second. If you or I could but go one seeing through the illusion

To the great holy stream of light

That binds everything to each other

And their common source in great holy unity

It would kindle a fire never to be extinguished.”

When we light our chalice I think we hope to kindle such a fire.  Not so that we aspire to join the ranks of Abraham Heschel, Thich Nhat Hanh or the Dalai Lama – but we can each look to the growth of our souls – look to the expansion of our insight and, rather than simply accumulating information and knowledge -- we may strive to be changed by wisdom.  A lifetime may be spent growing wisdom – sometimes for its own sake – but more often for the fruit that it brings to our world.  Every wiser soul brings a greater portion of justice, peace, and mercy to our torn and needful world.

In the Reform prayer book for the High Holy Days it says:

“We worship the power that unites all the universe into one great harmony.  That oneness, however, is not yet.  We see imperfection, disorder, and evil all around us.  But before our eyes is a vision of perfection, order, and goodness, these too, we have known in some measure. There is evil enough to break the heart, enough good to exalt the soul.  When will redemption come?

When we master the violence that fills our world.

When we look upon others as we would have them look upon us.

When we grant to every person, the right we claim for ourselves.”

At a time when our world is reeling from human made and natural disasters it’s hard to escape the sharp awareness of the suffering that surrounds us.  I am staggered.  And yet – staggered seems like the best way to move through these high holy days and through great passages of consciousness.  Heart open, mind awake, conscience afire, soul singing we awaken, each in our own time – which is this time set before us. 

This is the season of turning – allow your hearts to turn in love, your feet toward justice, your hands turn toward healing, your arms toward mercy.  With every new year, every new day, with each new moment the shofar sounds.  We call it aloud at this time as a reminder.  The shofar is sounding that we might each turn more deeply into life – to the depth at which our divisions fall away, our separations are seen as the momentary perceptions that they are, and our interconnectedness is revealed.  It is commanding -- for once we see that we are so connected, we can never turn back and abandon this connection of which we are a part.  Out of this comes the hope for which we long in days of challenge and struggle.  Out of this comes an irresistible call to justice and healing because we will desire to serve one another.  Out of this comes the peace for which we hope, because we do not desire to defeat that which we love.  Out of this comes the creativity which we so need because the answers exist here.  We need to be paying close enough attention to see them, we need enough courage to bring our answers to light.

            Thoreau said: We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake by an infinite expectation of the dawn.  Therefore allow the sounds of the shofar to pierce your heart and enter your awareness.  This is the ancient call – sounded from village to village, from hill to hill, from soul to soul.  A new year, a new day, a new moment has come into our hands – let us awake and give ourselves to it.