Minns Lecture Two: Stoicism/Epicureanism and the Way of All Flesh

1 Minns Lecture #2: Stoicism/Epicureanism and the Way of All Flesh Rev. David Breeden, PhD Senior Minister, First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis November 18, 7:00 p.m. (EST) King’s Chapel Parish House, Boston Synopsis: The growing number of religiously unaffiliated has many religious leaders looking for ways to innovate even as ancient traditions gain in popularity. Respondent: Rev. Shawn Newton First Unitarian Congregation of Toronto INTRODUCTION: Religion Surfing 1. What Might Have Been? Some wisdom for you: Constantly see the universe as one living being, having one substance and one spirit; and observe how all things reference that one reality, the reality of this one living being; and see how all things act with one movement; and how all things are the co-operating causes of all things which exist; observe too the continuous spinning of the thread and how the thread creates the web. (Meditations 4.40)1 What if those words had become central to Europeans and their scattered colonies such as the United States? What if those words had been considered sacred rather than these: And God blessed them, and God said unto them, “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” And God said, “Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, 1 Translations of Marcus Aurelius are by the author. 2 which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.” (Genesis 1:28-29 KJV) The latter is from the book of Genesis, in Hebrew scripture and accepted among Christians as part of their sacred text, called “the Holy Bible.” The former are the words of the Roman Emperor and Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius (121-180 CE). Which of those two texts makes more sense as a guide to how we live now, on a planet and in a time of climate disaster? Further, is Genesis 1:28-29 one of the causes of our current disaster? I merely ask the questions. You—as do we all—must answer the questions for yourself. You are Unitarian Universalists after all. In my first lecture, I posed an overarching question: How might we in the liberal religious tradition in general and Unitarian Universalism in particular find a way to liberation for all? Tonight, I will continue posing that question. As a Unitarian Universalist Humanist I consider all scripture and indeed all language to be the products of the fruitful human imagination, not the words of any of the many gods, which I also consider to be products of the fruitful human imagination. Religion; science; architecture; music; poetry; theatre . . . all of it . . . the products of the fertile human imagination. The British painter Francis Bacon once said, "The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.” That is my project for tonight. I hope to deepen the mystery by resisting dichotomies and polarities, even though such a project is impossible when we humans use our greatest invention—language. Yet, any polarities and dichotomies that I set up tonight, I do so with the hope that we see them for what they are: human artifice. Human artifice designed into a raft to carry across the river, to use an old Buddhist image. A raft to be discarded rather than carrying it through the jungle of the next mystery. For example, we create a scenario, such as religion verses science. Let the fight begin! And, if we are persistent and honest, the end of that rumble in the jungle is incomprehension: We sit, paralyzed, staring at the structures we have built, convinced 3 that these polarities and dichotomies we have created are in some way important. Forgetting that they are merely structures of our own making; conveniences for the difficult task of thinking. And meaningless in reading the light of mystical truth. Tonight I hope to deepen the mystery. 2. The Normal Paranormal The most popular class in my local community education catalogue is titled “The Oh So Normal Paranormal,” a class conducted by a person who has copyrighted the term “The Happy Medium.” The catalogue description reads in part, . . . the paranormal is completely normal and presents a thrilling presentation on alternative dimensions: the other side, ghosts, spirits, energy forms and beings. Get clarification about the Earth realm, haunted places and types of ghosts such as human spirits, animal spirits and poltergeists. Learn how to consciously open up and sense spirit activity.2 In my first lecture I outlined the beginnings of the Holiness movement that has led to the worldwide phenomenon of Pentecostalism and other charismatic movements. I talked about my own life’s journey between two fringe movements: “first wave” or “classical” Pentecostalism and contemporary Humanism. Both of these movements are part of a worldwide reaction to what is often called Modernism, an overused term that means very different things in different contexts. More dichotomies and polarities. Let’s deepen the mystery. 2: Generational Tweets Anoka-Hennepin School District Community Education Adult Classes, Fall 2022. “Jodi Livon Making the Oh So Normal Paranormal . . . Truly Paranormal.” p. 16. https://www.theintuitivecoach.com/speaking-engagements-view/jodi-livon-makingthe-oh-so-normal-paranormal-normal/ 2 4 Not long ago I saw a very telling and instructive Twitter exchange. The first Tweet read: I quickly became an atheist after leaving an orthodox Christian faith. Five years later I’m open to spirituality but absolutely no organized religion. A response to that Tweet read: I cannot get my head around what is meant by “spirituality.” Are we really talking about “spirits” in this day and age? LOL The response came back: For me, spirituality is embracing the unknown with a sense of awe and childlike wonder. There’s plenty we still don’t know about life. I’m open to the strangeness of the universe without dogma. Now, I don’t know a thing about those two Tweeters. But I’ve been involved with atheists and agnostics long enough to see a generational divide between the two people in this exchange. The person expressing skepticism at the word spirituality appears to me to be a very typical atheist of my generation, a Boomer. Why do I think that? Because that’s the old atheist line that I’ve heard all my life: strict materialism, yes, but a strict materialism that embraces a worldview of an imagined human intellectual progress: the Tweet says, essentially, “We thinking people are over all that now, and everyone else will be soon enough as well.” Further, that Tweet claims that any thoughts to the contrary are laughable. The second Tweeter is also an atheist—after all, they both care enough about the subject to belong to the American Atheist Association. But notice the subtle difference between the two attitudes. The first Tweet expresses strong opposition to religious orthodoxy and organized religion. The last Tweet expresses an openness to “strangeness.” Again, back to those words of Francis Bacon: ”The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.” 5 The younger Tweeter is open to mystery. 3. The Age of Eclecticism What if the growing disaffiliation from congregations is about ways of deepening the mystery? People seeking to deepen the mystery? The religions scholar Wilfred Cantwell Smith argued that the boundaries around religious traditions are a modern invention that serves to draw sharp distinctions that exist only by way of the forming of definitions. For example, British colonialists showed up on the Indian subcontinent and observed that people in India had distinctive practices that the British identified as “religion.” They named what they observed “Hinduism.” Did “Hinduism” exist before it had a name? Does it exist now except as a construct of colonialism? Is there any point to comparing and contrasting something labeled “Hinduism” with something labeled “Christianity”? Again, “words, words, words.” Today, fewer and fewer people draw distinctions in their own religious thinking, their “lived religion,” as Meredith McGuire outlines in her masterful book Lived Religion: Faith and Practice in Everyday Life is “eclectic.” Consider this: Pew research indicates that the percentage of Americans who report mystical experiences has risen sharply in recent years, even as religious affiliation has dropped significantly. In 1962, 22% of Americans reported having had a mystical experience; in 2009, 48% of Americans reported having a mystical experience.3 What is happening? Is the mystery deepening? Pew Research, October 1, 2018. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/ 2018/10/01/new-age-beliefs-common-among-both-religious-and-nonreligiousamericans/ 3 6 Another example: Pew researchers talked with evangelical Christians and discovered that • • • 33 percent believe in psychics. 19 percent believe in reincarnation. 18 percent believe in astrology. All of these ideas are outside the bounds of traditional Christian doctrine. Heresy. It appears to me that many Americans are feeling the mystery deepening and finding the traditional religious structures inadequate. 4. Re-tailoring the Tailor The British writer Thomas Carlyle is not much known today outside of universities. Yet Thomas Carlyle was the most important influence on young American writers from the 1830s through the American Civil War. Carlyle’s thought was so important to artistic young Americans, that the young and then unknown Ralph Waldo Emerson took ship to Scotland and showed up unannounced on Thomas Carlyle’s doorstep. Thus began a bromance that lasted throughout most of the nineteenth century, both writers having long lives. At the end of his life, deep in dementia, Emerson still recognized and commented on photos of Carlyle. The book that inspired Emerson and an entire generation of American writers, and created the movement we call Transcendentalism was a novel by Carlyle from 1831 titled Sartor Resartus. “Sartor Resartus” is Latin, meaning "The Tailor Re-Tailored.” In the novel, Carlyle creates a character named Diogenes Teufelsdröckh, meaning something along the lines of ”God-born Devil’s-dung.” Teufelsdröckh is a troubled young German Romantic scholar who has written a book titled Clothes: Their Origin and Influence. 7 (By the way, Carlyle is credited with creating the field of study concerning clothing, which did not exist when he made it up, apparently thinking such a subject was a total joke.) So, what was Carlyle saying that was so new and so exciting to young Americans of the time? For one thing, Carlyle was fluent in German, and so read the German Romantic poets and philosophers in the original, before those works had been translated into English. Carlyle was communicating something brand new to the English-speaking world. What did Carlyle say? He titles one chapter of his book “Natural Supernaturalism” and says this, for example: . . . existence itself is miraculous . . . life contains elements of wonder that can never be defined or eradicated by physical science.4 You can see how this idea summarizes what young Americans were looking for in the early nineteenth century: a way to transcend the senses (what they called “the sensible”) and materialism, therefore evading the reductive, while at the same time respecting advances in reason and science. That was the program. Carlyle said this in a letter from the time: That the Supernatural differs not from the Natural is a great truth, which the last century (especially in France) has been engaged in demonstrating. The Philosophes (i.e., the French Enlightenment philosophers) went far wrong, however, in this, that instead of raising the Natural to the Supernatural, they strove to sink the Supernatural to the Natural. The gist of my whole way of thought is to do not the latter but the former. Allow me to repeat one sentence: “Instead of raising the Natural to the Supernatural, they strove to sink the Supernatural to the Natural.” The word “sink” says it all. Carlyle’s project, which became the project of the Unitarian Transcendentalists in the United States and other American writers such as Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman . 4 Sartor Resartus, p. 294. Scanned image and text by George P. Landlow 8 . . their project became an effort to “raise” the natural world to the level of the supernatural world . . . . To enchant the world that reductionist science and materialism had, as they saw it, damaged. They were looking for the mystery. As Emily Dickinson wrote—scandalously for the time: Some keep the Sabbath going to Church – I keep it, staying at Home – With a Bobolink for a Chorister – And an Orchard, for a Dome – ... God preaches, a noted Clergyman – And the sermon is never long, So instead of getting to Heaven, at last – I’m going, all along. (#236) Yes, Emerson and Dickinson and others of the period did exactly as many Americans are doing today: They dropped out of organized religion. They saw it as inadequate to reality and the mystery. Carlyle praised writing by the Transcendentalists for “the recognition . . . by these Transcendentalists . . . of a higher faculty . . . than Understanding; of Reason (Vernunft), the pure, ultimate light of our nature." (Works, 27: 27) These lines point out a common mistake concerning what people such as Dickinson, Emerson, and Thoreau were attempting to do. They were not searching for ways to exist on pink clouds of imagination in a fantasy world. That is not the transcendental experience they were looking for. They were looking for ways to express that real clouds—clouds that can be seen and painted and photographed—are the actual wonders of our existence on this planet, revealing to us “the pure, ultimate light of our nature." 9 So instead of getting to Heaven, at last – I’m going, all along. (#236) ONE: Where’s the Theology? 1. Commission on Institutional Change In 2020 the Unitarian Universalist Association Commission on Institutional Change published Widening the Circle of Concern. The report summed up the results of the history I have been underlining: . . . amidst the diversity of the theologies represented in our congregations, justice work has been a proxy for what we believe in some congregations, while in other congregations, engagement with the intellect, debate, and social ties have been the substitute. Our justice work without theological resources and spiritual practices leads us down the path of burn out. The Commission proclaimed their Guiding Principle: To keep Unitarian Universalism alive, we must privilege the voices that have been silenced or drowned out and dismantle elitist and exclusionary white privilege, which inhibits connection and creativity. Under “Take-Aways” the report says: • These times require a liberatory faith that invites us each into the spiritual work of empathy and healing. • Justice making is not a substitute for a coherent theology, and faithful justice making requires a liberatory theology. • A greater emphasis on the theological basis for our work for diversity, equity, and inclusion will help us to make decisions about the forms of this work most appropriate for our individual and shared faith lives. I heartily agree that answers to the questions asked by the commissioners are vital if Unitarian Universalism is to thrive. 10 Reflect that that these hard questions were answered in Pentecostalism at the beginning of the twentieth century, specifically the Pentecostalism of the Rev. William J. Seymour and the many people touched by the fire of the Azusa Street Revival (including me) that I discussed in my first lecture. Classical Pentecostalism offers answers to the questions posed by the Commission. Liberal Protestantism rejects the answers Classical Pentecostalism offers, but liberal religion and Unitarian Universalism in particular have had great difficulty convincingly articulating their own answers. Thus, I have some questions: Is it time for Unitarian Universalists to reject the last vestiges of liberal Protestantism (which is clearly in freewill) and embrace a more generalized, post-Christian, post-Protestant theology? Does Unitarian Universalism have a theology of culture? By which I mean a theology of what congregating means in the larger social context? Does Unitarian Universalism have a theology of social structure? Sure, we embrace “liberalism,” but how clear are we with ourselves concerning what liberalism means? Does Unitarian Universalism have a clear (and one hopes concise!) theology of ultimate concerns, ethical concerns, meaning, or value? William J. Seymour’s Pentecostalism had a coherent epistemology: By the time I was twelve years old (the “age of accountability” as it is called) I knew how we know and what we know: the God as revealed in Christian scripture (specifically in the King James Version of the bible) is all-powerful, all-knowing, and everywhere all the time. This god can and does violate the laws of physics routinely. This god is available to anyone, right here, right now, through the power of the Holy Ghost. My semi-literate parents knew the answers to those theological conundrums that seminarians know so well: epistemology, ontology, axiology, and on . . . My parents knew the answers cold. And so did I. Does Unitarian Universalism have a similarly coherent epistemology, ontology, axiology, and so on? 11 The Commission on Institutional Change report says, No. I think that we do. But we avoid answering the questions in a simple and concise manner. Part of the answer lies in the twentieth century development of Humanism within the Universalist and Unitarian tradition. Developments still often ignored or actively submerged. Remember: both Classical Protestantism and Unitarian Humanism developed in the early twentieth century as specific ways of addressing the questions posed by Modernism. First we need to define “liberal religion.” The short answer is that “liberal religion” includes any tradition that attempts to reconcile traditional religious practice with contemporary ways of knowing, especially ways of knowing discovered in the sciences. Mainline Protestant traditions such as Presbyterianism attempt to do that. Pentecostalism does not attempt to do that. Unitarian Universalism has and does attempt to do that. Therefore, UUism is a liberal religious tradition. Now, as I mentioned earlier, dichotomies are dangerous. But let’s go with that definition for the moment. Because going there may make the mystery more luscious. 2. A Spiritual “How To” To begin thinking this issue through, let’s consider an even more fundamental, foundational question: What is “religious” about “religion”? What is “religious” about “religion”? Again, we must be careful here. “Religion” is a category invented in a colonialist framework. But in the Western world we consider that something exists called 12 “religion.” (Its “polar opposites” are varied: “spirituality,” “mysticism,” and . . . “secularity.”) So, here’s my definition: Religion is a method by which human beings discover priorities and commit (and recommit) to acting on them. Religion is a method by which human beings discover priorities and commit (and recommit) to acting on them. (Yes, I know, Paul Tillich deserves a footnote here.) I derive my definition partially from the First Humanist Manifesto from 1933, which defined “religion” as “those actions, purposes, and experiences which are humanly significant.” From this definition, the answer to the Commission’s question concerning a coherent theology might be summarized as: Strive to be a better person so that you can better perform the work of improving the lives of sentient beings and our planet. That’s a valid answer, I think: Be better, do better, save the planet and its living things. It’s a valid answer that has been embedded in the UU-Humanist tradition for a long while, but perhaps it is not an ultimately satisfying answer for the human psyche. Or perhaps it just doesn’t sound substantial enough to cover all those “ologies”— epistemology, ontology, soteriology, and so on. Which is perhaps why the Commission does not think that it is a sound theology. Yet, think about that community education course I mentioned earlier, “The Oh So Normal Paranormal.” Think again about that catalogue description: . . . the paranormal is completely normal and presents a thrilling presentation on alternative dimensions: the other side, ghosts, spirits, energy forms and beings. Get clarification about the Earth realm, haunted places and types of ghosts such as human spirits, animal spirits and poltergeists. Learn how to consciously open up and sense spirit activity.” Notice how that description achieves Thomas Carlyle’s project in its first sentence: “the paranormal is completely normal.” 13 “Learn how to consciously open up and sense spirit activity.” Is that “religious”? Pentecostalism answers “yes.” Charismatic Christianity answers “yes.” How many other subsets of the world’s so-called religions answer “yes”? Does Unitarian Universalism answer “yes”? Depends upon who you ask, doesn’t it? Because, as a creedless faith, we trust the individual conscience. Reflect on that a moment. It is the tradition of Unitarian Universalism to trust the individual conscience. Sure, I know, we have that escape clause “a free and responsible search for truth and meaning.” Do we mean that? Might there be a lurking First Wave Humanist rejection of supernaturalism going on? Actually, as a Humanist, I do indeed think that the paranormal is completely normal and the supernatural utterly natural. I won’t be taking that particular class. But I’m no more scandalized by that class than I am the ubiquitous Instant Pot cooking classes. 3. The Solution of the Hyphen At one level, what the Commission is asking is impossible: creeds are simplified versions of theology, and if you don’t have a creed you necessarily also don’t have a theology, unless your theology is that all—or at least most—theologies are fine. Back to that old cliche about UUism: “You can believe anything you want. (As long as you believe anything you want . . . responsibly.)” Many of us as Unitarian Universalists have chosen to answer the theological mushiness addressed by the Commission on Institutional Change by becoming various sorts of “hyphenated-UUs”: I am a UU-Humanist. We have UU-Earth Centered 14 folks. We have UU-Christians, UU-Buddhists, UU-Hindus, UU-Jews, UU-Muslims, UUBaha’is, and the list goes on. The Commission on Institutional Change, however, appears to think that what I will dub “the solution of the hyphen” does not work to achieve a cohesive, coherent overall UU theology. What is the answer? Is it even possible to find one? TWO: What is “Religious” About “Religion”? 1: Back to one of my questions: What is “religious” about “religion”? Is it a way of thinking? A way of feeling? A way of behaving? All those and more? Back to religion as a Western construct: Is “religion” an element of human psychology that has been pulled out of its natural context? How many people who claim the title Christian in the United States today are “cultural Christians”? Christians only because Christianity is a thing here in the US? A colonial thing? To be frank about it, when I stopped being a Christian, I didn’t know there were viable Christian alternatives to the Pentecostalism I had grown up with. Sure, I knew there were Roman Catholics and Baptists and Presbyterians in the world. But I just assumed all those traditions were as bogus as I had decided that my childhood faith had been. When I moved away to college, I began attending a UU lay-led Humanist fellowship. I loved the people and the social justice commitments they embraced, but I didn’t see anything “religious” about it. In my mind, religion was this all-encompassing, allconsuming thing—a total life commitment—these UU folks I was meeting were secular as far as I could see. “Over” religion, if you will, as I wanted to be. However, I wanted to “be a poet” (another thing I didn’t know anything about) and the undergraduate literature classes I was taking were studies in the art of literature. Poetry became my spiritual practice. Reading it. Meditating on it. Writing it. 15 I was discovering the magic and mystery of working with words and images. I picked up meditation more or less accidentally. I had—as did so many of my generation—read several of the books written by Alan Watts on Eastern religions, and I read such books as The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra. But what got me thinking seriously about Buddhist meditation was studying at Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado with my poetry mentor, Allan Ginsberg and the Tibetan Buddhist founder of the school, Chögyam Trungpa. Naropa was and is an explicitly Buddhist school, and students were required to study Buddhism and meditate for an hour each day, which I did faithfully, if badly. (I simply have too short of an attention span to meditate successfully for an hour at a time.) So, more or less accidentally, I happened upon a way of living that I practiced for the next twenty-five years of my life as a college student and then a college professor: I “congregated” in lay-led UU-Humanist fellowships, and I pursued a spiritual life by reading and writing and Buddhist-style meditation. The UU congregations I belonged to did not—and I did not expect them to—in any way meet my spiritual needs. Then I retired and went to seminary where I began thinking about spirituality and religion and congregating. 2: Pragmatism Philosophically, I am a Pragmatist in the tradition of William James, John Dewey, and Alain Locke. Dewey signed the first Humanist Manifesto and a year later in 1934 published his book A Common Faith, still read and debated in seminaries today and very much part of the DNA of contemporary UU theological practice. For Pragmatists, ideas are tools. A tool is “true” if it works. Pragmatists see truth as socially constructed. Pragmatists draw a sharp distinction between “truth” and “fact.” A fact is measurable by anyone anywhere. For example, the effects of gravity are a fact. The effects can be measured. 16 Truths are socially constructed. Which is why Pragmatist philosopher Richard Rorty famously said, Truth is what your contemporaries let you get away with. Richard Rorty died in 2007, before the rise of Trump, but many consider him prescient in that Rorty predicted the rise of just the sort of right-wing populist that Trump is. People who haven’t taken a hard look at Pragmatist philosophy shout “moral relativism! moral relativism! Postmodernism!” But Pragmatism is not those. And Rorty’s statement tells us why. Truth is what your contemporaries let you get away with. By using the word “contemporaries” Rorty is pointing out that not only is truth socially constructed, but also that truth is the product of social construction within certain specific historical circumstances. The greatest and most important virtue that Pragmatism teaches us is intellectual humility. No, it’s not true that everybody is right, whatever they happen to think, but it is true that reality is very different for people who are rooted in different cultural and geographical locations. Truth is what your contemporaries let you get away with. The question becomes how to not allow certain groups to “get away with” un-truths if those un-truths are damaging to the larger social web. For many Humanists, this is not a new or exotic thought, because classic Humanism— that is, the Humanism that existed previous to the Second World War—was based in Pragmatist philosophy. One of the wrong turnings in Humanist history was veering away from Pragmatism toward the more popular analytic philosophy after the Second World War. (And, I quickly add, an embrace of existentialism without fully grasping its Continental antecedent, phenomenology.) Ideas are tools; they are true if they work. You can easily see why I embrace this philosophy: For my parents, Pentecostalism was a tool of survival as poor and uneducated people in our brutal capitalist society. Pentecostalism “works." 17 Pentecostalism ceased being true for me because I got an education and entered a considerably more cushy economic and social situation. For example, my father was a member of the Boilermakers union. They had a saying: “If you’re goin’ to work and know you’re a-comin’ home with all your fingers and toes, you ain’t goin’ to work.” By which standard I have not worked in many, many decades. For which I am very grateful. But you can see why the working poor such as my parents become Pentecostals. An interventionist god who cares for and takes care of you means a lot when you’re handling red-hot steel every day or, as my mother did, work in a sewing factory. Three: Exploding Eclecticism 1. Beats and Searchers One of the features among the privileged of my generation, the Boomer generation, has been spiritual searching. The post-World War Two interest in Buddhism has affected many, just as the exploration of German Romanticism and Hinduism played such a pivotal role among the Boston Transcendentalists of the nineteenth century. Once we called the searchers “Barnes & Noble Buddhists.” That designation has now, I suppose, become “Search-engine Buddhists.” “Search-engine Taoists,” “Searchengine Wiccans” . . . You get the idea. A more recent phenomenon has been the popularity of Stoicism and Epicureanism, the two ancient philosophies specifically condemned by early Christians. There is little wonder why Christians sought to stamp out these traditions. The Tetrapharmacon (“the four prescriptions”) of Epicurus reads thus: The gods are not to be feared. Death is not a thing that one must fear. Good is easy to obtain. Evil is easy to tolerate. 18 These prescriptions are very nearly the exact opposite of the theology that Paul was building as Christianity took shape when he wrote: See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the universe, and not according to Christ. Colossians 2:8 (NRSV) “Philosophy and empty deceit.” “Human tradition.” “Elemental spirits of the universe.” The survival and reemergence of the “Athens” in the “Jerusalem verses Athens” tension demonstrates foundational fissures in the Christian tradition. The ways of thinking developed in Stoicism and Epicureanism never really died in Christendom, but, rather, often folded into Christian thinking itself. Still, Colossians 2:8 reveals the crux of the liberal/conservative chasm in postChristianity: thinking that takes the senses and other materialist impressions into account, and thinking centered on the material versus spirit dualism. (Contemporary Pentecostal theologian James K. A. Smith argues for a third way between these extremes, what he terms “enchanted naturalism.”5) As a spiritual practice, I began adapting and translating from The Daodejing, which in my translation is called “Following The Way of the Creative Universe.” I translate the first chapter this way: Daodejing 1 A way that can be walked is off the way of the universe. Smith, James K. A.. Thinking in Tongues: Pentecostal Contributions to Christian Philosophy. United States: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2010, p. 89. 5 19 A name that can be named blots the lasting name. Without name, the way is origin of all that is; named, a way creates all we see. Reaching, we find edges. Without reaching, we find essence. All has the same source; only the names and the naming disagree. Mystery has two ways— naming and not naming. Mystery itself is the gate to knowing.6 Speaking of mystery and language, that makes a lot of sense to me. And an unpublished manuscript from the Stoic philosopher Epictetus—not to be confused with Epicurus! In the Enchiridion or Handbook, Epictetus writes, Some things we can do, some things we can’t. We control our opinions, desires, aversions, and—to be plain—our own emotions. We have little power over our bodies, our things, or what others think of us. To be plain—these things are not our worry. What happens when you try to take power over what you have no power over? Frustration. Complaints. Fuss and bother. Finding fault with everything. 6 Daodajing, translated by David Breeden, Wally Swiss, and Steven Schroeder. 2015 20 Rather, take power over what you have power over. Then there’s no resistance. There is no “no.” You won’t get hurt. Just keep in mind what you have power over. Don’t cross the line. If you forget —if you go looking for riches and power—you might get hurt. At any rate, you will miss what’s important: Happiness. Freedom. Listen: learn what illusion looks like. Learn to say, “Hey, that’s an illusion.” Learn to ask: “What is in my power?” If it’s not in your power, forget about controlling it. And I have an on-going practice of translating from Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, which I find to be an utterly delightful book. Putting those old ideas into new words. I love doing that as a spiritual practice. I find that Stoicism is much like Buddhism, but exists in a Western framework that is considerably more understandable to me. 4. Religious Naturalism As I see it, institutionalized religion in the West has served two basic functions: teaching the creed or dogma of the denomination to the people gathered; and community. As I mentioned earlier, by the time I was twelve I knew the creed and dogma of Pentecostalism: By the time I was twelve years old I knew all the answers to all the subjects taught in seminary: epistemology, ontology, soteriology; missiology, pneumatology, ecclesiology. So did my mother, who couldn’t read. It was oral culture at its finest. 21 There was just one catch: You can’t question the creed or dogma. It is this way or the highway. As I mentioned earlier, since Unitarian Universalists have no intention of enforcing a particular belief system in in that manner, it is almost inevitable I think that we have the situation that the UUA Commission on Institutional Change describes. I read it earlier, but allow me to repeat: . . . amidst the diversity of the theologies represented in our congregations, justice work has been a proxy for what we believe in some congregations, while in other congregations, engagement with the intellect, debate, and social ties have been the substitute. Our justice work without theological resources and spiritual practices leads us down the path of burn out. Allow me to be prescriptive for a moment: One answer the the challenge the Commission has given us is nowadays called religious naturalism. Religious naturalism, though it can be learned, exists in a non-creedal space. What Thomas Carlyle attempted to achieve with the concept he called “natural supernaturalism” was “raising” the natural world to the level of the supernatural world, to enchant the material world that science and the human senses easily perceive, and thus, sadly, we forget how amazing our reality is. “Natural supernaturalism” is nowadays called “religious naturalism.” Dr. Demian Wheeler, a philosopher of religion, defines religious naturalism in this way: . . . religious naturalism is a perspective that regards nature as both exhaustive of reality and worthy of deep reverence and devotion. On the one hand, nature is all there is; there is no such thing as the supernatural. On the other hand, it is both possible and desirable to live a spiritually fulfilling existence on a completely naturalistic basis. Dr. Wheeler further writes: For the religious naturalist, nature itself is capable of evoking awe, wonder, gratitude, amazement, celebration; nature itself is the object of our ultimate 22 concerns and commitments; nature itself is sacred—i.e. vitally and centrally important and, thus, deserving of our utmost loyalty.7 Thomas Carlyle could not have said it better . . . Being or becoming “transcendent” is perhaps not the right term for a mystical experience that convinces you that all that you see in the natural world is in reality supernatural. As Thomas Carlyle said, That the Supernatural differs not from the Natural is a great truth . . . As for me, I would say that that is the greatest truth of all. And, not only is it a truth, it is a fact. How do we achieve the wholeness that we feel we’ve lost? By re-enchanting our worlds and refusing, every moment of every day, to allow our reality to be disenchanted. How do we each re-enchant our world? By becoming magicians, wizards . . . artists. Artists doing all sorts of arts, even the art of creating ourselves. That good old self culture that Emerson taught long ago. The poet, visual artist (and Unitarian) ee cummings wrote, “The Artist is no other than he who unlearns what he has learned, in order to know himself.” Allow me to broaden the genders there: “Artists are no other than those who unlearn what they have learned, in order to know themselves.” That’s the invitation that life extends to each of us: to experience deeply “the pure, ultimate light of our nature.” As Emily Dickinson phrased it, “Where the Meanings are.”8 Wheeler, Demian. “Religious Naturalism: A Theology for UU Humanists, Part I.” The Canvas. 7 8 #320 “There’s a certain Slant of light” 23 Yet, despite often overt condemnation and resistance to Pentecostalism, Unitarian Universalism does have resources within our theological tradition that run counter to the currents of liberal Protestantism and the complacent—or at least materialistic—god imagined in process theology. This is the liberationist-humanist theology of such Unitarian Universalist Humanists as William R. Jones, expanded by contemporary Humanist theologians such as Dr. Sharon D. Welch and Dr. Anthony Pinn. Now, add to this the work of the twentieth century UU theologian James Luther Adams called “Five Smooth Stones.”9 One: Revelation Is Not Sealed Two: Use the Ethic of Mutuality to Guide Relationships Three: The Beloved Community Is a Just Community Four: The Beloved Community Creates Justice in the World Five: We Are the Ones Who Can Bend the Arc of the Universe Which I think are better revised to leave out the “five smooth stones,” a reference which has to be explained to many people and emanates from particular religious traditions. Also, however about some reframing: We trust that: Revelation is open. Mutuality is the way of all things. We wish both to congregate in and establish a beloved community. A beloved community is a just community. A beloved community is a justice-creating community. We human beings can change things. (I realize that we have the concept of covenant. But covenant is a difficult and culturally-embedded concept. Besides, many are aware that covenants have long been used as ways to exclude people.) 9 https://www.uua.org/re/tapestry/youth/wholeness/workshop1/167560.shtml 24 As I see it, both religious naturalism as a stance and a version of “Five Smooth Stones” manage to be non-creedal. They are ways of being and behaving, not ways of believing. The popular writer Diana Butler Bass distinguishes between “belonging” and “behaving” and claims that these two are considerably more important than “believing.” I agree. Let’s talk less about what we believe and more about being and behaving. This theological tradition insists upon liberation and—if a deity is wanted—a deity that underwrites human agency. I’m convinced that this rich and powerful tradition is essential to the self-differentiation of Unitarian Universalism from other declining liberal Protestant denominations. Dr. Jones asked, “Is process theology a theology of, for and by the oppressed or the oppressor?” That’s an incisive and decisive question. Process theology and its god are for the “haves.” Jones differentiates between ontological suffering—the suffering of all human beings due to the human condition— and suffering caused by human oppressions. Religion, according to Dr. Jones, must address both sufferings. Theologies that address only one, such as process theology, are inadequate. That’s the conundrum addressed by the Commission. Our tradition contains the tools to find the answer. CONCLUSION As Francis Bacon said, "The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.” As I said at the beginning of this talk, one very good theological stance, I believe, is resisting dichotomies and polarities, even though such a project is impossible. Sure, we are locked in language, but language can also demonstrate the way out of selfimposed imprisonment. And deepen the mystery. 25 To conclude this second of three lectures, allow me to share the words of Marcus Aurelius: When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: the people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can't tell good from bad. But I have seen the beauty of the good, and the ugliness of the bad, and I have realized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own—not perhaps of the same family or class, but the same mind—and possesses a share of all that is sacred. No one can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at my relatives, or hate them. We were born to work together— like feet, hands, and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower. To obstruct each other is unnatural. To feel anger at someone, to turn your back on someone: these are unnatural. (Meditations 2.1) How’s that for a cohesive theology? Perhaps we could call it “kosmocentrism.” Thomas Carlyle said it well a long time ago: That the Supernatural differs not from the Natural is a great truth . . . In which case all of us can join Emily Dickinson in the dance: So instead of getting to Heaven, at last – I’m going, all along. (#236) 26 SOURCES and Further Reading Abrams, Minnie F. (1859-1912) biography. Anoka-Hennepin School District Community Education Adult Classes, Fall 2022. “Jodi Livon Making the Oh So Normal Paranormal . . . Truly Paranormal.” p. 16. https://www.theintuitivecoach.com/speaking-engagements-view/jodi-livon-makingthe-oh-so-normal-paranormal-normal/ Buch, Neville Buch, “Preliminary Conclusions in the Search of Philosophical Grounds for Contemporary Unitarian Identity. https://www.academia.edu/s/b746ae8ebf? source=link Carlyle, Thomas. Sartor Resartus: The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh,1831 Chauncy, Charles. Seasonable Thoughts on the state of religion in New-England. Cox, Harvey G., Jr., Fire from Heaven: The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and the Reshaping of Religion in the Twenty-first Century. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1995. Dreßler, Markus. “Modes of Religionization: A Constructivist Approach to Secularity“ Working Paper Series of the HCAS “Multiple Secularities – Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities“ 7, Leipzig, February 2019. DeWitt, Norman Wentworth. St. Paul and Epicurus. Originally published by the University of Minnesota Press in 1954 (copyright expired) Greenwood, Andrea and Mark. W. Harris. An Introduction to the Unitarian and Universalist Traditions. God Conversations https://www.godconversations.com/podcast/060/ Hall, J.L. “The Meaning of Affiliation of Churches in the United Pentecostal Church According to the Manual.” Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc®. Biblica, Inc.® 27 Higginson, Thomas Wentworth, translator. The Works of Epictetus: His Discourses, in Four Books, the Enchiridion, and Fragments. New York. Thomas Nelson and Sons. 1890. Israel, Jonathan. Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650-1750 James, William. Essays in Pragmatism, Alburey Castell, ed. New York: Hafner Publishing, 1949. Jones, Paula Cole, on the Eighth Principle of Unitarian Universalism. Jones, William R. Is God a White Racist? a Preamble to Black Theology and “Process Theology: Guardian of the Oppressor or Goad to the Oppressed” Lakoff, George and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: U of Chicago Press, 1980. LaPlante, Eve. American Jezebel, the Uncommon Life of Anne Hutchinson, the Woman who Defied the Puritans. San Francisco: Harper Collins, 2004. Lee, Richard Wayne. “Strained Bedfellows: Pagans, New Agers, and Starchy Humanists in Unitarian Universalism.” Luhrmann, T. M. When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God. New York: Vintage, 2012. Maslow, Abraham H. Religions, Values, and Peak Experiences. McGuire, Meredith B., Lived Religion: Faith and Practice in Everyday Life. Oxford UP, 2008. Morrison-Reed, Mark S., editor. Darkening the Doorways: Black Trailblazers and Missed Opportunities in Unitarian Universalism. Mead, Sidney E. The Lively Experiment: the Shaping of Christianity in America. Morris, Leslie Takahashi, James (Chip) Roush, Leon Spencer editors. The Arc of the Universe is Long: Unitarian Universalists, Anti-Racism and the Journey from Calgary. 28 Radwell, Seth David. American Schism: How the Two Enlightenments Hold the Secret to Healing Our Nation, Greenleaf Book Group Pinn, Anthony B. What is Humanism and Why Does it Matter? Poskett, James. Horizons: A Global History of Science. New York: Viking, 2022. Smith, James K. A.. Thinking in Tongues: Pentecostal Contributions to Christian Philosophy. United States: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2010. Smith, Wilfred Cantwell. The Meaning and End of Religion, New York: HarperOne, 1978. Taylor, Charles, A Secular Age. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press Harvard UP, 2007. Putnam, Robert D., Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. Unitarian Universalist Demographic Data. https://www.uua.org/files/documents/ congservices/2012_uudemo_survey.pdf Ulbrich, Holley. The Fellowship Movement: a Growth Strategy and Its Legacy. UUA Commission on Institutional Change: Widening the Circle of Concern. Wacker, Grant. Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American Culture. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2003. Welch, Sharon D. Communities of Resistance and Solidarity: A Feminist Theology of Liberation ———————. After the Protests Are Heard: Enacting Civic Engagement and Social Transformation Wheeler, Demian. “Religious Naturalism: A Theology for UU Humanists, Part I.” The Canvas. Wilbur, Earl Morse, Our Unitarian Heritage: an Introduction to the History of the Unitarian Movement. Boston: Beacon Press, 1943. williams, Angel Kyodo, et. al, Radical Dharma: Talking Race, Love, and Liberation.