There were two children in a family who had very different world views. One always complained about what went wrong, what wasn't right, what still was needed and what was missing. The other seemed to have an unrelenting positive attitude. Whatever was available was fine for this child and there was a way to make things work in any situation. The parents decided to test the limits of both world views. One Holiday season, the parents decided to give the children their presents in different rooms. To the one never satisfied the parents gave a room full of toys of all kinds. To the one never disappointed, a room full of manure. The parents observed the child with all the toys and, lo and behold, each toy had a problem according to the child: not enough pieces, the wrong size, not for the right age, wrong color....the parents then went to the room full of manure. In the middle was the positive child throwing the manure in the air, laughing and giggling. "Why are you so happy?" the parents asked. "Well, with all this manure," said the child, "there must be a pony!"
I've described two stark examples of theologies. One a theology of curse, where in the world something can always go wrong. The other, a theology of blessing, when even when the stuff hits the fan, you can still feel the breeze....
This morning I commend to you a theology of blessing . And I have members and friends from this congregation to help me. On August 30th, part of the worship service included spontaneous group psalm writing. As part of our time together, the worshiping community divided into six groups, and with generous spirits endeavored to write a psalm as instructed by me. As our benediction that day, we read those psalms to each other. Four of the six have been retrieved. I will share them today throughout this sermon. The other two, I regret, are still at large, but this will give you a taste of the creative spirit amongst us.
"Oh, exciting, unpredictable, challenging life.
I know you when I am alone and grieving.
Sometimes I fear you when there are new beginnings.
Why can't life be a celebration?
Thank you for feeding my soul.
Oh, exciting, unpredictable, challenging life."
(Spontaneous psalm written by members and friends of UUFHC 8/30/98)
Tonight, at sundown, the Jewish High Holiday of Rosh Hashannah begins. Rosh Hashannah is the celebration of the birthday of the world. The Book of Life is opened for the next ten days. It is time to return to your soul -- to the essence of the joyful blessing of your birth. In Judaism, as in Unitarian Universalism, it is believed that our essential nature is life affirming -- geared toward the good, and that we have within us a divine spark, a bit of the creative source out of which we sprang. This spark of divinity within is kindled by remembrance of our ability to seek justice and compassion in this world. This sacred knowing informs our living as we remind each other of better ways of being. Seeking and granting forgiveness is part of this remembrance of what is essential to our lives. So is understanding the tremendous blessing and potential bestowed upon us all. The Book of Life is open, so the Jewish tradition goes, for the next ten days; and it is time to look into ourselves and at our actions to bring about a better world. On Yom Kippur, the solemn day of Atonement, the book will be closed for another year. I thank our Jewish brothers and sisters for the wisdom of these "Days of Awe".
The word "blessing" is a significant word in religious traditions. The range of interpretation spans from meaning a statement of divine favor -- a gesture from that which many call God -- to anything that gives happiness or prevents misfortune. The general concept of giving and receiving blessing, however it is specifically defined, is to keep, guard and preserve life-giving attributes.
The meaning of words often help me to explore the nature of our culture. Researching the word "blessing" was an eye-opener. I looked "blessing" up in Harper's Bible Dictionary. The listing read: "blessing: see curse". So I turned to the definition of "curse", a little surprised that "blessing" did not have its own listing.
There are three separate words denoting "curse" in the Hebrew Bible. We seem to have an abundance of "curse" attributes in our Judeo-Christian tradition. There's alah, the "conditional curse", used to achieve a desired result or punishment, a curse of consequences, (if you do this, this curse will happen to you). There's araru, the "operational curse", used to forbid something or create a barrier; a curse of detachment, banishment. And then there's killel, the "generalized curse", used to describe a wide range of injurious activity from verbal abuse to material harm....It would appear that "curse" is forever busy.
Through all of this, there is one word used for "blessing": berakah. This one meaning unit, berakah, covers concepts that refer to vitality, health, longevity, fertility and children. Berakah, the life-giving presence in the world and in our lives. Berakah: ever available in all situations.
Does this say that in the Judeo-Christian world view, the culture from which our faith emerged, there are far more negative and destructive forces, needing multiple names, than there are positive ones? Do we have to prepare ourselves for all that can go wrong, capturing each possibility with a name, making sure all negative consequence is covered? Is it truly "a jungle out there"?
Or can we say that through all the different devices and powerful occurrences of negative behavior there is one consistent, interconnecting counter response, Berakah. Blessing: the one true constant in our lives.
Let's travel a bit more with the word "blessing". The Anglo-Saxon derivation of this word comes from the word bledsian, a compound of the root meaning blood. Blood is essential to human life and has been perceived, in religious spheres, as the mainspring of life's power. The pulse of bledsian, then, is in all things, flowing through struggles as well as joys.
"O Full, Compelling and Juicy Life
I know you because you are playful and different every day.
Sometimes I fear your unpredictability and the potential for pain and impoverishment.
Life seems so absurd, does it have any meaning?
Thank you for nourishing us throughout our little measures of time
O Full, Compelling and Juicy Life."
(Spontaneous psalm written by members and friends of UUFHC 8/30/98)
Believing in blessing....quite the challenge. We can easily forget, doubt, be lost, feel too insignificant to be included in this vast phenomenon called life. But believing in blessing is one of our faith disciplines. It takes practice, encouragement, humility and trust. Honoring the gift of life means claiming it as a blessing and accepting response ability to that blessing. One of our faith disciplines is to cultivate life-giving attributes so that they multiply in our world to heal, to praise, to teach, to embrace.
Matthew Fox, former Jesuit priest, found himself in troubled waters with this sensibility. The book Original Blessing inspired an operational curse -- the detachment kind -- he was silenced for a year. His last speaking engagement before entering into public silence was in a Unitarian Universalist church. The year's silencing and self search did not transform Father Fox to traditional imaging and teaching so that within a few years, Matthew Fox was permanently censured and expelled from the Catholic Church. When he encounters blessing, he does not want to talk about curse and that makes him dangerously counter cultural.
Now the ironies of history abound here, because Matthew Fox's teachings are ancient concepts which directly informed Christian origins. Teresa of Avila, 16th century Christian mystic, described the negative turn in spirituality this way: "It is no small pity," she wrote in one of her journals, "and should cause us no little shame, that through our own fault, we do not understand ourselves, or know who we are -- as to what good qualities there may be in our souls, or who dwells within them, or how precious they are -- those are things we seldom consider and so we trouble little about preserving the soul's beauty."
"Oh unpredictable, joyful, beautiful, tired life.
We know you when we suffer
Sometimes we fear we must grow up.
Why must we lose our innocence?
Thank you for nourishing our lives
Oh unpredictable, joyful, beautiful, tired life."
(Spontaneous psalm written by members and friends of UUFHC 8/30/98)
Our Universalist heritage stands witness to centuries of a theology of blessing. Deeply rooted in Judeo-Christian traditions, our Universalist forebears, though not yet organized, found a common voice for this claim during the European Reformation in the 16th century. By the 17th century, with the beginning of the European influx to the Americas, the Universalists found voice again in North America, this time beginning to organize as a denomination in direct opposition to the Calvinist doctrine of predestination. Predestination is a doctrine that assumes negative judgement of individuals. According to Calvinists of this time, a chosen few, known only by God, would be saved. The world view of Calvinists during what is known as the "Great Awakening" was that "curse" pervades society with precious few and far between pockets of blessing. The hope in this theology of curse was to behave "as if" you were blessed, although your worth was already determined and probably not good news.
Our Universalist forebears also believed that worth was determined from birth: it came in the form of a blessing from God. The good news was that all people have the ability to live out their lives in active love to reveal and answer that blessing. The work of humans was to multiply goodness, heal brokenness and come to their full potential of being. Thus emerged what is now the first principle of the Unitarian Universalist covenant: "We affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person.". The six principles which follow, referring to our interconnectedness to all life and the vision of a just and compassionate world, stem from our birthright -- our being blessed with the gift of life. How we behave in community and with our lives is the response to that blessing.
The key to this relationship to blessing is the response L.B. Fisher reminded us of in 1921 when he said: "Universalists are often asked to tell where they stand. The only true answer to give to this question is that we do not stand at all, we move."
"Oh Joyful, Challenging, Evolving Life:
I know you because you nourish and feed our souls.
Sometimes I fear we may never have these days again
How shall we celebrate this reality?
Thank you for our courage and growth from loss.
Oh Joyful, Challenging, Evolving Life."
(Spontaneous psalm written by members and friends of UUFHC 8/30/98)
The faith discipline of finding the ever present blessings in life is rarely easy. Finding the blessings in those we encounter is not always easy either. I'm not talking about ways to avoid pain. Living with a theology of blessing is living courageously even in the midst of struggle. It means believing in a larger presence of life that outlasts our limits. A larger presence which sustains joy -- joy we can tap into -- joy we can find from within.
Let us challenge each other toward a theology of blessing.
May we help one another to keep a sense of blessing in our lives. May we keep just enough knowledge of this gift and give the rest away, for then it will return with a life of its own as yet unknown to us. May we foster, encourage and praise life-giving attributes, so that the wisdom of berakah, blessing in life, be with us. And if we enter a room full of manure, may we believe in the pony. Blessings be. That the people may live. Amen.
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