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The Meaning of Life, the Universe, and Everything August 7, 2005 Claire Phillips-Thoryn Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church Bethesda, Maryland Reading: “Ask Me” by William Stafford
Some time when the river is ice ask me mistakes I have made. Ask me whether what I have done is my life. Others have come in their slow way into my thought, and some have tried to help or to hurt: ask me what difference their strongest love or hate has made.
I will listen to what you say. You and I can turn and look at the silent river and wait. We know the current is there, hidden; and there are comings and goings from miles away that hold the stillness exactly before us. What the river says, that is what I say. Sermon Some of you may have caught the literary allusion in my sermon title, “The Meaning of Life, the Universe, and Everything.” It’s from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which is probably the best science fiction comedy ever written. Some of you may have seen the movie version that came out a few months ago. In the story, scientists build the most powerful computer ever created, with one purpose in mind: to discover the Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything. The computer, named Deep Thought, tells the scientists that it will be able to figure out the Ultimate Answer, but that it will take seven and a half million years to do so. Finally, it is ready to share the Answer. With “infinite majesty and calm” Deep Thought speaks: “The Answer to the Great Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything is...42.” The scientists are of course dismayed by this answer! Deep Thought responds to their anger, “I checked it very thoroughly, and that quite definitely is the answer. I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you’ve never actually known what the question is.” As it turns out, Deep Thought is not powerful enough to figure out the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything. But a new computer is created, so large, so marvelous, that even “organic life ... forms part of its operational matrix.” The sole purpose of this computer will be to figure out what the Question to the Ultimate Answer is. This amazing computer is...Earth!1 So, in the Hitchhiker’s Universe, here we are, living the Question, but still never knowing exactly what it is, or what the answers mean when we find them. Unfortunately, in the novel, Earth is destroyed to make way for a hyperspatial expressway, so the Universe is left wondering what the Ultimate Question is. By now you may have realized that unfortunately, this seminarian standing before you is not about to tell you the meaning of Life, the Universe, and Everything. No, even Harvard doesn’t teach us that. No, much of my training thus far has shown me that even the people who seem especially confident, especially informed, these people, like all people, are just kind of muddling through. I have noticed in Divinity School that even the people who are “absolutely positive that they know what God wants for the next thousand years...do not know what their [spouse] wants for Christmas.”2 Life is a perplexing and mysterious affair, and sometimes it doesn’t seem too far-fetched to imagine that the meaning of life on Earth is to perpetually ask questions, to wonder and speculate and marvel, in the hopes that some day we will illuminate the answer. In a strange convergence of two literary worlds, whenever I think of this absurd science fiction story, I also always think of the great poet Rilke, who also wrote about the meaning of life being to live the questions. A young poet wrote a letter to Rilke full of questions, desirous of the answers the more seasoned poet would give. Rilke wrote the young man these words that are now well-known: Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves... Don’t search for answers now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.3
“Live the questions,” Rilke wrote, and some day you will “live yourself into the answer.” In the poem we heard earlier, the poet William Stafford said, “Ask me whether what I have done is my life.” By living the questions, by constantly seeking an authentic path through life, hopefully we will be able to live ourselves into a positive, life-affirming answer. We are a religious community of questioners. I think most of us here are constantly asking questions about Life, the Universe, and Everything, and we refuse to take 42 for an answer! A great many Unitarian Universalists were raised in other faith traditions. In this congregation, who here was NOT raised a UU? Raise your hands. Yes, we can see before us all our companions on the journey, who questioned the dogmas and doctrines and creeds offered by the religious communities they were raised in. And many of the religious traditions in the world do not take kindly to tough questions. If you are told the answer is 42, my friends, then you had better believe it, even if it doesn’t make sense. My guess is that many of you ended up wandering for a bit, perhaps wondering if there was anything good to be found in religion at all. I agree that a religion that does not allow us to doubt and question does not allow for an authentic religious or spiritual experience of the world. But somehow, we managed to find a home in a faith that would embrace their questions and their doubts as a sacred part of the spiritual journey, rather than as treachery against a tradition. Questions here are our spiritual bread, things to chew on and share, things that hopefully will nourish us in a stronger, more life-sustaining way than rote answers created for people long dead. The earliest roots of Unitarian Universalism and our legacy of questioning reach all the way back to the beginning of orthodoxy. Thanks to an adult religious education class I taught this year called “Roots,” about our UU history, I’ve been thinking a lot about our earliest history and what it means for us today. A few hundred years after Jesus died, there were a vast number of different beliefs about what it meant to be a “Christian.” Everyone was allowed to question who Jesus was. But around 300 AD, the emperor Constantine called together a series of church councils to decide what would be the “right” belief. He knew that if there was only one version of Christianity, it would be easier for him to rule a large, multicultural empire. The church councils tackled the religious questions of the day, and the decisions they made laid the groundwork for what is still Christian orthodoxy. For example, the Apostle’s Creed, written in 340 AD, is still recited in many churches, almost two thousand years later. The ancestors of modern Unitarian Universalists were the heretics who questioned the answers they were given. They questioned the beliefs stated in the Apostle’s Creed. They questioned the idea that Jesus was God instead of an inspiring human rabbi. They asked whether what Jesus had done was his life—or his death. They questioned the idea that regular humans beings needed other humans to be intermediaries between them and God. The word heresy comes from the Greek word “I choose”—and these heretics wanted to make their own choice for what they believed in. These questioners were not tolerated very kindly, and for centuries they were exiled, tortured, and killed. 450 years ago, a man named Michael Servetus, who had written a book questioning the existence of the Trinity, was burned at the stake in effigy by the Catholics, and for real by the Protestants. We have come a long way to having a socially accepted institution of officially recognized heretics. The Rev. Rebecca Parker, a seminary president who has dual ministerial fellowship in the United Methodist and Unitarian Universalist traditions, has written about one of the ways she first learned that it was okay to question and doubt within a religious tradition. Her grandfather and father were both Methodist ministers. Rev. Parker writes, I remember being in church as a small child, standing next to [my grandmother] for the reciting of the Apostle’s Creed. My grandmother would begin “I believe in God the Father, maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ,” then she’d close her mouth until she joined in again on the last phrase, “I believe in the communion of saints.” As a child I was impressed that though she was the minister’s wife, she didn’t do what we were supposed to. “Grandma,” I asked one Sunday, “why don’t you say ‘conceived of the Virgin Mary, descended into hell, rose again from the dead’?” Well!” she said, with a bustle of impatience, “Because it doesn’t make any sense.” My grandmother approached religion like hemming a skirt. She taught me to make the stitches strong enough to be visible on the outside. The lesson was clear. “Don’t believe anything unless you can see it is stitched together well.” Unitarian Universalists are looking for the stitches, testing the fabric between our fingers, and peering with suspicion towards the very suggestion of a mysterious Seamstress in the sky. Living the questions, and deeply examining the world around us and our own beliefs, can be an almost excruciatingly challenging task. When we ask the most difficult questions of Life, the Universe, and Everything, it can be tempting to alight quickly upon easy, technical answers. Recently, in the sad circumstances of Terri Schiavo and her family, I saw many people shying away from the strong theological questions her life and death raised, and instead finding immediate answers like “Write your living will!” A living will is important, but like the answer 42, the answer “Write your living will” does not give a satisfactory response to the persistent yearnings within, questions like What does it mean to be alive? What does it mean to die? Where is our soul-in our brains, or in our bodies? Is all life really sacred or is some life not worth continuing? Why is there suffering? What is the “right” answer? Is there a right answer?4 In my “Roots” class, we tried to answer the question of what happens when we die. One person said, “we live on in other’s hearts.” Another said, “our bodies rot in the ground.” Another said, “their life energy is released, somehow.” Several others said, softly, “I don’t know.” We have our guesses, our hopes, our intuitions, our dreams. But for many of these Ultimate Questions, we may never know the “right” answer, the true and final orthodoxy, a creed to end all creeds—at least, in this life. I have heard it said that agnostics are the most humble of all people, for they alone admit to the world that they simply do not know with certainty anything about the mystery of life and of God, whereas theists and atheists battle for their respective versions of righteousness with smug conviction. I believe that even if we never find the Ultimate Answer, we must be brave enough to face these questions and the meaning they hold for how we live our life. In the reading we heard today, the poet wrote, “Ask me whether what I have done is my life.” Living the questions does not only mean that we find the courage to ask our questions of Life, the Universe, and Everything. As our hearts live out our deepest questions, we are also able to grow through being questioned by others. Parker Palmer, a Quaker teacher and writer, has one such story. He had been asked to become the president of a small college. Palmer thought this was right career path—after being a teacher and a dean, surely the next move was to keep going up on the hierarchy of prestige. He writes: As is the custom in the Quaker community, I called on half a dozen trusted friends to help me discern my vocation by means of a “clearness committee,” a process in which the group refrains from giving you advice but spends three hours asking you honest, open questions to help you discover your own inner truth.... For a while, the questions were easy, at least for a dreamer like me: What is your vision for this institution? What is its mission in the larger society? ... Then someone asked a question that sounded easier yet but turned out to be very hard: “What would you like most about being president?” The simplicity of that question loosed me from my head and lowered me into my heart. ...Tentatively, I started to speak: “Well, I would not like having to give up my writing and teaching...I would not like the politics ...I would not like having to glad-hand people I do not respect simply because they have money ...” Gently but firmly, the person who had posed the question interrupted me: “May I remind you that I asked what you would most like?” I responded impatiently, “Yes, yes, I’m working my way toward an answer.” Then I resumed my sullen but honest litany: “I would not like having to give up my summer vacations...I would not like having to wear a suit and tie all the time...” [Finally] I felt compelled to give the only honest answer I possessed, an answer that came from the very bottom of my barrel, an answer that appalled me even as I spoke it. “Well,” said I, in the smallest voice I possess, “I guess what I’d like most is getting my picture in the paper with the word president under it.” I was sitting with seasoned Quakers who knew that though my answer was laughable, my mortal soul was clearly at stake! They ...went into a long and serious silence-a silence in which I could only sweat and inwardly groan. Finally my questioner broke the silence...: “Parker,” he said, “can you think of an easier way to get your picture in the paper?” Parker Palmer decided not to take the job, thanks to the gentle and persistent questions of his clearness committee. While these clearness committees are a Quaker tradition designed specifically to invite questioning, many people feel defensive about being questioned when they make big life decisions. We may feel perfectly comfortable questioning the actions of prominent politicians, but still have a hard time receiving questions about our own behavior or words or choices. It can be strange to hear someone ask us out loud the secret questions of our hearts. When we have doubts and regrets about our past actions, it can be especially hard to hear a question that reaches deeply into our souls. Is what I have done my life? These deceptively easy questions can break us open to a world of deeper understanding and discernment. A similar question is found in a Hasidic story about a wise rabbi named Zusia. When Zusia was on his deathbed he began to cry. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, why do you weep?” Zusia explained, “When I get to heaven, I won’t be troubled if God asks me, Zusia, why were you not Abraham?” or “Zusia, why were you not Moses?” I could answer these questions. After all, I was not endowed with the righteousness of Abraham or the faith of Moses. But what will I say when God asks me, “Zusia, why were you not Zusia?” “Ask me whether what I have done is my life.” “Why were you not Zusia?” Are we living our own questions or approximating with a life of half-answers and unfulfilled quests? Just as we may shy away from being asked these personal questions, we may avoid asking these questions of our loved ones. We may ignore tears or a catch in the voice because to ask what is wrong may give us a defensive or awkward reply. We may say we don’t want to offend, or pry. It can be easier to talk about the weather, or give blustery unrequested advice. It can feel strange asking intimate questions, as though we are breaching through an intangible web of propriety. I’m not asking you to be a one-person clearness committee for the world. But I do believe that our friendships and relationships with all of our loved ones could be bettered by a stronger ability to question. Sometimes the questions don’t even need to be voiced. Allowing time for silence, a soft, questioning silence, can open up a space for authentic reflection and communion between souls. Living the questions can mean stretching ourselves to become better listeners, that in the silence we may hear not just the faint echoes of humanity’s great questions, but also perhaps the whispered answers in the sound of the wind, the flowing river, the breathing of a child in a darkened room. “Ask me whether what I have done is my life.” The poet described a frozen river, the current silenced by ice. The river has listened to his questions with holy silence. But for us, now, the ice has long since melted, the spring thaw and summer thunderstorms have left the creeks and rivers arounds us full and swift these days, swollen. So when we turn to the river and ask, “What is the Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything?” the river answers in her watery language. She is talking to us, babbling, pounding, whispering, in a language we can’t understand. Perhaps the river speaks the Pentecostal universal tongue, and one day we will know what the river tells us, what answer she has for the poet’s questions, to our innermost unspoken wonderings. But for now, the rush of the swollen river simply echoes the rush of our own blood in our veins, the sound that you hear when you lay your ear gently against a loved one’s chest and hear the swoosh-thump of a life, living the questions. May we all find the courage to ask the real questions, to listen with true compassion, to receive the questions of others with open hearts. May we one day live ourselves into the answer. May what we do be worthy of the gift of life. Amen.
1 The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams, pages 111-122 2 This turn of phrase by A. Powell Davies is apt in describing modern evangelical types that are ubiquitous at HDS, quoted from sermon”What is Meant by the Will of God?”, November 19, 1944 3 Letters to a Young Poet, Rilke translated by Norton, pages 34-35 4 Thanks to Megan Kelly, our discussion of Terri Schiavo, and her MFC sermon! |
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