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Spiritual Maturity November 13, 2005 The Reverend Roger Fritts Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church Bethesda, Maryland Unitarian Universalist children, when asked about God, say: God is the earth and all spirits, everything, everywhere. God is in us and around us. God is not a person but a controlling force in all of us. God is all different colors. God is all beings and all life and all creation. God is all those things that make up me. God is in everyone. God is in your heart. God is anything that is mysterious and has remarkable power. God is like the wind because God is all around. God is like magic because God has all power. God is like a car driver because God is in control. God is like your heart because God keeps you alive. God is like friendship because God is loving. God is like a chair because God makes you feel comfortable and safe and great. God is like a protector. God is like a fire. God is the biggest camera ever made. God is an old man with a white beard who is tall and nice. God is a big woman who loves us all. God is a young woman. God is breath. God is a good feeling. God is the curiosity inside you. God is the whispering of the wind, the brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, grandmas, grandpas, cousins, gold and silver, a cross, a star, a chalice, and the people. God is a rainbow. God is a cloud and stays in the sky. God is in the sea or up in the air. God is the sun coming through the clouds. God is a very special person who lives in the clouds and all the dead people are his helpers. God is a spirit, not a person or an animal. God is the Spirit of Life. God is someone who sort of takes your spirit after you die. God is a spirit who looks a lot like Jesus, but not exactly. (Source: UU Kids Say... God Through the Eyes of Our Children Edited by Beth Graham) As you can see, Unitarian Universalist children have diverse views about God. As we grow older our view of God changes and evolves based on our life experiences. Some of us become theists, some atheists and some agnostics. Some of you have grown up in other religions where you had a particular understanding of God forced down your throat. You may be happier if I never mentioned the word. But I suggest that, if we can rise above our negative experiences with the word, God can be a wonderfully rich symbol for the unifying connections in our lives. In my own case, for over thirty years I have been attracted to the mystical tradition in religion. Over the centuries a few people in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, have developed these mystical traditions. They are similar to beliefs found in Buddhism and Hinduism. I find myself most comfortable in this religious mysticism. The Encyclopedia of Religion defines mysticism as “the intuitive and emotive apprehension of spiritual reality.” In my own experience the mystical is a feeling of unity that exists before I make distinctions between emotions and reason, mind and body, the individual and the totality of existence. The mystical is the experience of the unity that exists before our perception is divided. I experience the universe as one unified whole, with myself as an inseparable part of it. Mysticism is concerned with the presence of God, the presence of the unifying connections in our lives. It says that to draw closer to an understanding and awareness of God, we should use the intuitive rather than the rational approach. In mysticism we feel and experience God instead of thinking and reasoning about God. For me this is a crucial insight. In mysticism we feel and experience God instead of thinking and reasoning about God. I should add that I do not subscribe to mystical beliefs that violate basic, well proven scientific principles. The mysticism I am comfortable with is in harmony with science. Albert Einstein is quoted as saying:
The most beautiful and most profound religious emotion that we can experience is the sensation of the mystical. And this mysticality is the power of all true science. If there is any such concept as a God, it is a subtle spirit, not an image of a man that so many have fixed in their minds. In essence, my religion consists of a humble admiration for this illimitable superior spirit that reveals itself in the slight details that we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds. [Interview with Peter Bucky] In mysticism we feel and experience the underlying unity of life instead of thinking and reasoning about that unity. The Reverend Jacob Trapp wrote:
I like to think of mysticism as the art of meeting reality, or the art of richer and deeper awarenesses. ...[It is] a very special experience ... of that Oneness, a rare and wonderful realization of what always is but of which we are seldom aware, flooding in to overwhelm the illusion of aloneness, separateness. ... There are moments when life seems vivid and resplendent, when a more than mortal splendor breaks in, when there is a touch of grandeur and of glory in just being alive. ... In our experience ... of those moments when we’re rapturously one with the wonder of all that is, we have some indication of what has been meant by the mystic experience. In the book Blink Malcolm Gladwell talks about the first two seconds of looking at something—the decisive glance that knows in an instant. He looks at how we make snap judgments—about people’s intentions. He documents how people have the ability to make instant and often correct decisions in a wide range of fields from psychology to police work to speed dating. The key, Gladwell says, is to rely on our “adaptive unconscious” that provides us with instant and sophisticated information to warn of danger, read a stranger, or react to a new idea. In reading Malcolm Gladwell’s book, I wondered if his ideas about instant judgments could also be applied to religion. I thought of my own relationships with art, nature and human beings. If in mysticism we feel and experience God instead of thinking and reasoning about God, perhaps when I am in these relationships my adaptive unconscious is helping me make better intuitive judgements about the unity that underlies existence. Instead of seeing God as an objective fact, which can be demonstrated by means of scientific proof, I feel God as a subjective experience, mysteriously experienced in the ground of being. As Buber said: I can talk to God but not about God. I felt this unity I call God when I was present for the births of my three children. I feel it each time I visit Arizona and have the chance to gaze at the Grand Canyon. I feel it when I stare up at the stars in the night sky. I feel it when I am honored to visit dear members of this congregation in the last months of their lives, and later, to talk to their families about what they meant to them. I felt it when I listened to my son play the cello at the Kennedy Center. Those were mystical moments, in which I felt a sense of wonder, awe, connection and gratitude. I define spiritual maturity as an awareness of a unity that underlies all existence, all experience. I believe that this unity exists, although it is difficult to describe. I experience this unity through the special relationships I have with people, with the earth and with works of art like music and paintings. There are moments in these relationships when I feel a sense of unity. Most often it is a fleeting sense. It occurs when I notice the beauty of a fall day. It occurs when I exchange a smile with each of you at church on Sunday morning. It is the sense of unity I feel when I hear the sounds of beautiful music. It is the sense of holiness I feel when I hear the lines of a beautiful poem. It is the moment of sacredness I feel when we laugh together. Through these experiences I believe we encounter the unity that underlies the universe. I have come to believe that feeling this wholeness is essential, if we are to respond in healthy ways to the trials and tragedies of life. Those times, when we feel a part of this connection, we find that life seems richer and fuller; failures and disappointments seem more bearable and grief more acceptable. It seems to arise out of three types of relationships: Relationships with art such as music or theater or architecture. Relationships with nature, such as a walk in the woods on a fall day. Relationships with people, such as a smile exchanged between friends. Over ninety years ago as a young philosophy teacher, Martin Buber stood on a path in Berlin. He said to himself: “If to believe in God means to be able to talk about God in the third person, then I do not believe in God. If to believe in God means to be able to talk to God, then I believe in God.” This morning, if you are in search of spiritual maturity, I invite you to open yourself to the beauty of music or a poem. I invite you to experience the glory of nature. I invite you to cultivate respect, care, understanding and honesty in relating to people. In these relationships I hope you will feel gratitude and a sense of connection. In these relationships, I hope you will find a unity and meaning that will give you strength and renew your spirit. |
Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist
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