SERMON
When I began serving this congregation two and one half years ago I had (and still have) great appreciation for the amount of effort and money which had been put together to build this facility and prepare to call a first full-time minister. It showed a willingness to push ahead against doubt and difficulty. It showed a desire for leadership and a generosity in funding the dream.
I am glad to say that these dreams are today almost realized. We have every expectation of balancing our budget within a year or two. All of us are working hard to hold down our costs and control spending. We pretty much have the facilities we need for the next year or two at least. I know many of us have dreams of adding religious education space or increasing the parking area or buying land for future expansion. In good time, I hope we are able to move forward on these dreams.
I think all of our focus on infrastructure though, meritorious as it has been, has distracted us from articulating a vision for our congregation. A month ago I asked the question: "Why are we here?" I differentiated the reasons why we as individuals participate in our congregation from the unifying principles which bind our congregation together. Identifying and expanding the unifying principles or visions which make us a congregation can be of great benefit as we try to make a positive difference in our community. A clear vision assists in taking the inspiration of our words out of our minds and mouths and into our hands as social action. A clear vision helps us weave our way through conflicts and individual egos as we decide how to allocate our energy and resources. A clear vision makes people feel good about belonging and contributing time, energy and money. A clear vision makes us attractive to those who are seeking a religious home. I (and I expect you as well) want to be part of a religious community which not only feeds my spirit and the spirit of our members and friends but also seeks to take our vision out into our world and make a positive difference. Unitarian Universalism is much more than an armchair philosophy or an intellectual social club. Unitarian Universalism carries a transforming message which can inspire, heal and liberate.
We have a distinct message which is unlike the message of the Catholic Church or our fellow Protestant Churches. Other churches light chalices and candles, sing hymns, read from the same scriptures I may choose, have sermons, have silent and spoken meditations and prayers. Other churches have bazaars, potlucks, building and grounds work days. Other churches have celebrations of the life of Moses, Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, Christmas, Easter, the Days of Awe and Passover. In little of what we do here are we all that much different from many of the mainline churches except in one special way. We place a high emphasis on the importance of the individual mind and sharing our minds within the context of a religious community.
People often come to us after they find the faith of their upbringing is too narrow to encompass the events, feelings and ideas in their lives. The rebellion of their minds against the irrationality of revelation, the suppression of the human spirit by religious authority and its unreasonable use to limit human creativity and ingenuity, leads them to seek a religious community which respects and celebrates the use of the human mind, human history, and human understanding to determine right and wrong, good and bad. It leads them to seek a congregation where revelation is far from sealed but continues every moment of every day and into the inky blackness of the night. It leads them to seek a congregation which trusts each individual to develop a moral compass in their breast which can guide them more accurately than blindly following illogical rules and regulations frozen in a text of an archaic document compiled by numerous conflicting editors.
People come to us not seeking THE answer but rather MY answer. We acknowledge each person's religious journey as unique. This is a place to cultivate self- understanding and self-knowledge, seeking wisdom and insight into our own and our collective lives to see if we can make some sense of it all. In this process, we have one sacrament we celebrate in all Unitarian Universalist communities with which I have ever been associated. This sacrament nourishes our intellect as we grow in sagacity. This sacrament elevates the worth and dignity of every person. This sacrament is education.
I call education our sacrament today because education is central to our Unitarian Universalist valuing of the cultivation of character. We believe freedom comes from understanding why something works rather than just believing that it works. We believe each person is best served in their religious journey through gaining knowledge rather than obeying authority. Our knowledge and awareness of history cautions us about the risks involved in trusting authority uncritically. Authorities are susceptible to ignorance, deception and delusion just like the rest of us. We feel the best way to respond to talent, leadership, and brilliance in the women and men of history and today is to learn from them rather than to follow or worship them. Central to our faith is culturing our own minds in ever greater insight and feeling for others rather than conforming and shaping it to some external ideal. Learning and education are at the core of cultivating wisdom and compassion.
Education is important to members and friends of this congregation. I'd like to demonstrate this with a show of hands:
So you see from this show of hands, we value education highly in this congregation and some have given their lives to it as a vocation. The people who originally formed this congregation sought a place to illuminate their minds in the intellectual desert Charlotte County was in 1969. Members and friends of our Fellowship have been movers in building the libraries, the schools, the intellectual infrastructure of this community. Even though we had only a few children in the early days, Charlotte Wharton, Ida Kaufman and others worked to put together a religious education program for the kids. Rusty Stetson took a stint revitalizing our program in the early 90's. Throughout our history, educational talks and lectures have been periodically offered.
Our valuing of education should not be a surprise. Our religious movement has its roots in the Protestant Reformation of the 16th Century, which was possible, in part, because of the invention of the printing press. Protestants are often called the people of the Book. In the 17th Century, Enlightenment thinkers such as Francis Bacon and John Locke, encouraged by the scientific revolution, proclaimed the advancement of knowledge to be beneficial to human society. Locke advanced the radical idea that experience of the sensible world was an important way to gain knowledge, not just the memorization of facts and principles.
Interest in education has a long history in our faith. The founder of our public school system, Horace Mann, was a Unitarian. In the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1837, he became the first secretary of the newly-formed Massachusetts Board of Education. In this position, he fought for free public schools. Not only was he interested in public education, he insisted it must be nonsectarian. In 1839 he was instrumental in the establishment of the state Normal School to train teachers, advocating for the acceptance of women teachers and the abolishment of corporal punishment[1]. His wife, Mary Peabody, was a leader in getting the Argentinean school system going, with 70 Unitarian widows as some of their first teachers - an interesting historical footnote. Some other early Unitarian leaders in education were Louisa May Alcott's father, Bronson Alcott, and Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, who founded the first public kindergartens.
At this point you may be thinking, "Yes, Sam, Education is important, but everyone believes that, don't they? All the churches have schools and strive to education their children. So what's so special about our leadership in education?"
Well, it is important to remember that not all education is the same. Conservative educators regard knowledge as fixed and immutable. The teacher has it and the student doesn't. Learning is a transfer process from teacher to student like filling a glass with liquid. Juxtapose that to Progressive education as found within our doors. We see knowing as a creative process. Guided by the pragmatic thinking of Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey, we focus on the knower, the student first. We begin with the student's interests; that allows him or her to grow and learn using, as much as possible, their own direct experience of the world. To grow in this way, one is becoming an autonomous learner, learning to be her or his own best authority, especially about his or her own perceptions, reactions, emotions and experiences. This personal knowledge, however, must be checked and verified against other criteria, including the perceptions of others and the legacy of the past. Thus, learning is best done in the context of a community.
Because education has been of great importance to us as a religious movement and right here in this congregation, I suggest today we may wish to use it as an organizing theme for our energies and activities in our congregation. I heard many voices at our Saturday workshop expressing commitment to our religious education program for our children. This morning's program on Biblical Archeology with Mike Keresztesi was well attended as have been our other adult classes at 9:00am. There is also strong interest for learning about our inner life in our dream group, in meditation classes, in our common concern group and in the grief group we held last year. People in our congregation want to grow in understanding of themselves and their world.
We are not alone in wishing to expand our minds. Charlotte County has important needs for education which we perhaps can fill. Our Ecological book, which is progressing forward, is a positive way we can educate the public about the use of native plants in landscaping to conserve water and prevent the use of harsh chemicals which contaminate the Peace River estuary. Volunteers from our congregation have worked at Cooper Street recreational center as tutors. Some in our congregation volunteer to tutor in their homes. We can be active supporters of the public schools in our community and investigate for stealth school board candidates in this year's elections. None of these activities are greatly taxing on our limited financial resources nor a great drain on our collective energies needed to run this fellowship. Yet to be known in the community as the protectors and supporters of public education will make us attractive to others like ourselves who value learning as part of their lives.
This vision of leadership in education should not diminish any of the other important things going on in our Fellowship such as our community-building potlucks, Wednesday bridge, or Conversation Among Friends and visiting the sick. A vision is most important as a way for the Board and the committees to try to focus our talents and efforts in a way which will bring life and vitality to us as we work to make a positive difference in each other's lives and our community.
Education isn't THE final answer to all of the dilemmas of life. Whether we are wise or foolish, smart or intellectually challenged, we all must face grief, loss and death. The human propensity for greed, hatred and delusion may or may not be diminished by the accumulation of knowledge. Ultimately life cannot be fully figured out or fixed, it must be continually engaged and challenged. And even if we become infinitely wise, our children and grandchildren must begin the learning process from scratch. Our ability to transmit our wisdom to them is far from perfect.
We believe the best way to cultivate a better life for ourselves and our society is through the active use of an educated mind. No God riding out of the clouds on a golden chariot or extra-terrestrial flying down in a space ship is going to do it for us. A democratic society cannot function without an educated electorate wisely casting their votes for the common good. Being the well educated of our culture, we cannot stand back with disdain at the foolishness of the narrow-minded religious right, we must advocate for creative, self-directed learning which is the key to our future prosperity and individual happiness.
Let us respond in the affirmative when we go to the oracle and the oracle says,
"Know Thyself!"
Let us clap our hands and shout with joy when young eyes
brighten with understanding.
Let us say "Amen!" when we hear the truth, for
the truth shall set us free.
Copyright (c) 1996 by Rev. Samuel A. Trumbore. All rights reserved.