“creation spirituality – faith for today” sunday,...

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© 2017 Rev. Bruce Southworth

“Creation Spirituality – Faith for Today” Sunday, March 12, 2017

Rev. Bruce Southworth, Senior Minister The Community Church of New York Unitarian Universalist

Readings

(1) Matthew Fox in Original Blessing, Bear & Company, Inc., 1983:

…There is no question whatsoever in my mind that … ninety-nine percent know about original sin; and barely one percent have ever in their lives heard about original blessing. This is the great price we have paid in the West for following a one-sided, fall/redemption theology. There is a genuine scandal involved in this dangerous distortion of life and biblical data. The scandal is one of ignoring – and then despising – creation and those who love creation, such as Native American peoples or matriarchal religions. Even if original sin is to be taken literally (which it should not) still the facts are as follows: that, if we take the universe to be about … [fourteen] billion years old, as scientists are advising us to do, then sin of the human variety is about four million years old, since that is how long humans have been around. But creation is … [13],996,000,000 years older!

Fall/redemption theology has ignored the blessing that creation is because of its anthropomorphic preoccupation with sin! The result has been, among other things, the loss of pleasure from spirituality, and with this loss the increase of pain, of injustice, of sado-masochism, and of distrust.… [Fourteen] billion years before there was any sin on earth, there was blessing. (p. 46)

(2) Mary Feagan, For All That Is Our Life, Gene and Helen Pickett, Eds., Skinner House, UUA:

I am a millions-of-years-old wonder. I am an international – no, cosmic – treasure. I ought to be safeguarded in a museum somewhere like Paganini's old violin. I ought to be gasped at, talked about in hushed, amazed, reverential tones. Viewers would touch me gently and feel lucky.

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Daily newspaper headlines could say, "Mary Feagan Exists Again Today!" Radio and TV shows could discuss me, my ordinary events—that I saw a bluebird with my millions-of-years-old eyes and heard it sing with my highly advanced, evolutionary ears; that my graceful hands with opposable thumbs fed my sensitive mouth delicious strawberries that it tasted. Then, without a conscious thought, my brilliant brain directed my masterful, complex, digestive system to assimilate and use them for fuel to wash dishes, write poems, hold babies, laugh, and give kisses. No one would completely understand or dare to finally say how my marvelous magical, famous, fine self exists, really. I am just, bottom line, a millions-of-years-old wonder. You are too.

(3) Genesis 3:4-7a:

(In the garden,) “The snake said to the woman: … God knows that on the day that you eat from … (the tree), your eyes will be opened and you will become like gods, knowing good and evil. “The woman saw that the tree was good for eating and that it was a delight to the eyes, and the tree was desirable to contemplate. She took from its fruit and ate and gave also to her husband beside her, and he ate. “The eyes of the two of them were opened…”

“Creation Spirituality – Faith for Today” Sunday, March 12, 2017

Rev. Bruce Southworth, Senior Minister

From long ago, I recall the image of a bench at an overlook along the Skyline Drive atop the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. Spectacular views of the Shenandoah Valley await those who pause. Engraved upon the bench was the summons: “Rest awhile and give thanks.” It is a message that goes with me as a blessing and spiritual reminder about the most basic miracle of Life… when I pause sufficiently to honor it.

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Christopher Columbus and other explorers after him in search of spices and riches not only did not find India, but also failed in their imaginations to comprehend fully what was before them.

The so-called New World on the one hand was stunning in its “natural

endowments." Historian Frederick W. Turner reports, “The land often announced itself with a heavy scent miles out into the ocean.” In 1524, Giovanni di Verrazano and his crew “smelled the cedars of the East Coast a hundred leagues out.”

Henry Hudson and those with him on the Half Moon in 1609 were astonished “by

the fragrance of the New Jersey shore.” Other ships as they traveled “up the coast occasionally swam through large beds of floating flowers. Wherever they came inland they found a rich riot of color and sound, of game and luxuriant vegetation.”

However, all this seemed to mean very little. Turner concludes, “Had they been other than they were, they might have written

a new mythology here. As it was, they took inventory.” (Beyond Geography: The Western Spirit Against the Wilderness, Frederick Turner, Viking Press, 1980, p. 256; quoted in Matthew Fox’s Original Blessing, 43)22

The Native Americans whom they met shared most everything in common and

embraced a vision of walking in Beauty with Nature and one another.

The sense of Original Blessing… of natural beauty and abundance of which we are but a small but exceedingly precious part… this story was not the one that came to be told. The values and imprint from Christian Europe favored a vision of inventory, consumption, and materialism that surround us still today. Caretakers of wonder: Strangely difficult it is. But it is something, you – I – can practice each week, each day to combat seductions, such as cynicism or despair or self-doubt. One more spiritual teacher to set this theme: Alice Walker begins the final chapter of her novel The Color Purple with thanksgiving, humility, and reverence: “Dear God … Dear stars, dear trees, dear sky, dear people. Dear everything.”

All this is part of the liberating, powerful counter-cultural story of Creation

Spirituality. It invites an awareness of Original Blessing and is a jewel in one of the most sparkling of contemporary theologies. Creation-Centered theology is often associated with former Dominican brother Matthew Fox, who was silenced in 1993 by Cardinal Ratzinger, who later became Pope Benedict.

Matthew Fox, still grounded in Christian tradition, became an Episcopalian priest,

even as his wisdom in books such as Original Blessing has expanded with a

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universalism far beyond that tradition, especially embedded in his Institute for Creation Spirituality.

We live and move and have our being in the cosmic context of a blessed

Creation… not as depraved sinners, but as co-creators… an emergent theology in the 1980s, a liberation theology, that has powerful radiant kinship with our own religious path now 200 years in the making.

Original Blessing… co-creators… a gracious Creation filled with beauty and abundance and compassion… embraced by many in our own tradition with our multiple symbols and anchors.

Stories about human Creativity and Hope, about cosmic connection and the interdependent web, and about human worth and dignity and salvation by character, these stories resonate – conspire together – and are themes I find sustaining in my life.

I think of a Unitarian Universalist Mary Feagan who in our reading affirms, “I am a millions-of-years-old wonder… a treasure. And so are you.”

Each of us an Original and a Blessing….

In contrast to the despicable teachings of Original Sin, we have boldly celebrated the possibilities of goodness in the human heart. With awareness of our ability to make mischief and miss the mark, our bold, spirited, and liberating faith in human dignity, creativity, and possibility remains. There’s a story about a young boy and his teachers (by Helen Buckley) that reflects the deadly character of preaching a doctrine of original sin that says we – you and I – are not worthy, precious, or creative. At home the little boy loved to draw, and he was thrilled to learn that his teacher set aside time for art almost every day. The boy loved it at first, as he made extravagantly detailed and colorful pictures. The teacher, however, would soon stop them if they began on their own. She would tell them the assignment… and then show them how to draw it. “Today we are going to draw a flower,” and she displayed a red flower with a green stem. The boy would look at what he started to draw and what the teacher asked them to copy. He liked his better, but he turned his paper over and quietly did as she did. Each day, a different picture, or clay project, or tempera; each day following her exact directions. The next year the little boy went to a new school, and he was excited. At the time for art his first day, the teacher asked them to draw some flowers. He waited, and waited, and waited. The puzzled teacher came over and asked him if he were ok.

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The boy asked her, “What are we going to make?” “I don’t know until you make it,” said the teacher. “How shall I make it?” asked the little boy. “Why, anyway you like,” said the teacher. “And any color?” asked the little boy. “Any color,” said the teacher. “If everyone made the same picture, and used the same colors, how would I know who made what, and which was which?” “I don’t know,” said the little boy. And he began to make a red flower with a green stem.

The story ends on a sad note, but you and I know how it really ended after that new teacher began with that child. Resurrection, right? New life! The doctrine of original sin has had much the same effect as that first teacher who destroys human creativity. And where does it come from? Judaism’s book of Genesis – the mythic story of creation there – the poetry of the story – speaks of each day’s work of creation being good. Then with the creation of humankind on the sixth day, these words: “Now God saw all that God made, and here: it was exceedingly good!” (Gen. 1:31) (THE FIVE BOOKS OF MOSES, Schocken Bible, translated by Everett Fox)

Not just the typical “very good” on the 6th day, but “Exceedingly good.” Despite our heartaches or poor choices, we are an exceedingly good thing! Yet, a horrendous, catastrophic interpretation of lines from the Book of Genesis emerged from patriarchal culture in Christian doctrine from Augustine and others over the centuries. This doctrine of Original Sin denigrates, rather than celebrates, that out of such human choice came consciousness… an extraordinary blessing, as we are truly the universe coming to consciousness… with conscience… moral beings and meaning-makers. It is up to us to continue the centuries-old work of declaring the sin of original sin.

This morning I am looking at the faith, belief, conclusion, hunch, speculation, conviction… premise… that Creation, the Life Process, the Cosmos is Sacred, and we humans are Sacred. That does not mean at all that the universe is made to please us, nor does it mean that everything we do is sacred, for we humans surely can and do violate what is good and beautiful and act badly, horribly, even cruelly at times. Tragic choices mark our species…. Choices… not fate or depravity… for we are the universe itself coming to consciousness…. Star-stuff!!

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Despite the old story of depravity and original sin, there have been others who have had a different take on the world, a different view of humanity. If someone asks who Unitarian Universalists are, you can say, “We believe in Original Blessing rather than Original Sin.” Similarly, Islam has no pernicious doctrine of original sin. The closest it comes is to speak of forgetfulness… that we forget we are connected to one another, one family, an interdependence, acknowledging that yes, we can forget our better selves and make hurtful choices. Yet it is a choice. There is a story about a fellow Tennessean that I love and speaks to this matter. Fred Craddock, a teacher, minister, preacher who died a couple of years ago, was driving through Tennessee once. He stopped at a restaurant for a meal, and he was intrigued as one man went from table to table greeting everyone sitting there. When he came to Craddock and learned he was a minister, the man insisted on telling a story. He said that he had been born in the mountains not far from where they sat and that his mother was not married when he was born. In that time and in that culture, the mother was frowned upon and indeed scorned. The boy himself would feel as he grew up the love of his mother, but also the scorn of townsfolk. At recess, his classmates would ostracize him and he learned to keep to himself for recess and at lunch in order to avoid their taunts. Even walking downtown was a hardship because of comments of passersby. The boy at about age twelve took up going to church on his own. A new minister had come to the church near his house. He would slip into the church just as the service began, into the back row and leave before it was over so that no one would challenge him by asking, "What's a boy like you doing here?" However, one Sunday he forgot to slip out, so taken was he with the service. And before he could quietly exit, he felt the big hand of the minister on his shoulder. The preacher looked at him and asked, "Who are you, son?" "Whose boy are you?" Once again, the boy's heart sank, but then the preacher answered. "Wait a minute. I know who you are. The family resemblance is unmistakable. You are a child of God." With those words, he patted him on the back and added, "That's quite an inheritance. Go, and claim it." "As the boy changed to manhood in that restaurant, the old man said ... 'That one statement literally changed my whole life.' He explained that his name was Ben Hooper and he had twice been elected governor of the state of Tennessee." – a pretty good one at that too. (Quoted in "Preaching," March- April, 1995)

A word of encouragement… to encourage means to put heart into, to put love

into….

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That is certainly what Jesus was trying to do when he said to the so-called nobodies of the world, the outcasts, the lowly, to everyone, “You are the light of the world.” He said, “You are precious, whoever you are.” Encouragement, putting heart into, putting love into others and blessing the world….

On the other hand, John Calvin in his efforts during the Reformation in the 1500s gave his own interpretation of the Bible and declared, “Original sin seems to be a hereditary depravity and corruption of our nature, diffused into all parts of the soul, which first makes us liable to God’s wrath.”

Such a view, to my mind, is one of the most pernicious and destructive

declarations of religious teaching to wound the world. It is hurtful and hateful of our humanity and has inflicted cynicism and left too many scared and scarred with low self-esteem and self-doubt, blaming those victims of society’s inequities for their own oppression.

The story of Adam and Eve in the Bible, in which our eyes are opened, instead of

being a story of liberation of humankind, liberation to consciousness, awareness, became part of patriarchal oppression. Women were to blame for … well... almost everything!

It also infects our culture so that we humans are never quite good enough. Something is wrong with us, with me, with you. Not just occasionally when we do something of which we are not proud. But deep self-doubt, self-questioning, and a teaching that there is something deeply sinful and evil within each one of us, about which we can do nothing, on our own. As the Book of Common Prayer sadly asserts, “There is no health within us.”

What a perversion! We know that we do not always do what we want or should

do to honor our best selves. Absolutely. Do we hurt others, live by our compromises, forget some of the important things?

Absolutely. Yet, there is health within us, for we are children of a creative universe, filled with

possibilities of joy, strength, power, love, and justice. And the truth of the matter is that religious convictions grow and change. They

are in constant evolution in culture, and that is decidedly one way that we in our heritage seek to bless the world.

We affirm the worth and dignity of all persons, and not only affirm but also work toward justice to make it real for all persons. It is quite an inheritance, to remember that we are all children of a gracious creation… called to welcome each to the service of all… to welcome the stranger.

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The invitation surrounds us… to celebrate the sacred within and around us… to live with compassion and kindness… to encourage others and put heart into them…. to be grateful for the blessings of Life… all of which is liberating and transcends our wounds, fear of others, and weariness.

Pete Seeger, a fellow member with us at Community and raised a Unitarian, is

among those interviewed in a wonderful book titled REFUSE TO STAND SILENTLY BY, An Oral History of Grass Roots Social Activism in America, 1921-1964.

Along the way, Seeger speaks in that book about his own religious journey in his

younger years:

I confess if somebody asked me what’s my religion, I’d say, I don’t’ know. But I do put a last verse on [my version of “Gimme That Old-time Religion”]: [singing]: “I will arise at early morning, when my Lord gives me the warning, that the solar age is dawning, and that’s good enough for me. Give me that old time religion.” Then Pete Seeger adds, “I guess that’s my religion. I walk out of here and I feel like yodeling when I see the sun come up.”

Creation Spirituality… affirming the shared Original Blessing within us and about us and beyond us. The beauty within and around us and in each other….

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Who are you? A child of Creation? And Creativity and Beauty… an Original and

a Blessing… Libby Roderick, whose words we sing on many Sundays, puts it so well. The lyrics begin, How could anyone ever tell you You were anything less than beautiful?

(How could anyone ever tell you You were less than whole? How could anyone fail to notice That your loving is a miracle How deeply you're connected to my soul.)

Libby Roderick sang that song at a concert at our Unitarian Universalist General Assembly meeting a number of years ago, and it was a great blessing. As she spoke throughout her concert, she kept saying in different ways: "Hang in there. Don't feel so bad if you feel overwhelmed at times. The world is screwed up. Don't feel so bad if you feel as if your life isn't what it could be. Forces conspire against

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us all the time, against our self-esteem, our dignity, our beauty, and our creativity. Don't feel so bad about yourself for all the compromises with which you live; it’s almost impossible not to be affected." She went on to say, however, "Don't stop there. You can be more and do more, and you can be part of what resists the killing of our souls and spirits." … “How could anyone ever tell you you are anything less than beautiful?” "Who are you?" "Whose child are you?" "Wait a minute. I know who you are. The family resemblance is unmistakable. You are a child of all that is sacred, a child of a glorious creation."

"That's quite an inheritance. Go, and claim it." Opening Words

Max Kapp was for many years Dean of the Universalists’ seminary known as The Theological School of St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York. He writes,

Often I have felt that I must praise my world For what my eyes have seen these many years, And what my heart has loved. And often I have tried to start my lines:

“Dear earth,” I say, And then I pause To look once more. Soon I am bemused And far away in wonder.

So I never get beyond, “Dear Earth.”

“creation spirituality – faith for today” sunday,...

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