Opening Words:  “This House”     by Kenneth L. Patton

This house is for the ingathering of
nature and human nature.

It is a house of friendships, a
haven in trouble, an open room
for the encouragement of our struggle.

It is a house of freedom, guarding
the dignity and worth of every person.

It offers a platform for the free
of security and danger, the full.

It is a house of truth-seeking, where
scientists can encourage devotion
to their quest, where mystics can
abide in a community of searchers.

It is a house of art, adorning its
celebrations with melodies and
handiworks.

It is a house of prophesy, outrunning
times past and times present
in visions of growth and progress.

This house is a cradle for our dreams,
the workshop of our common endeavor.

READING: by A. Powell Davies, All Soul’s Unitarian Church, D.C.

       “Let me tell you why I come to church. I come to church – and I would whether I was a preacher or not – because I fall below my own standards and need to be constantly brought back to them. “It is not enough that I should think about the world and its problems at the level of a newspaper report or a magazine discussion. It could soon become too low a level. I must have my conscience sharpened – sharpened until it goads me to the most thorough and responsible thinking of which I am capable. I must feel again the love I owe my fellow men and women. I must not only hear about it but feel it. In church, I do. “I need to be reminded that there are things I must do in this world, unselfish things, things undertaken at the level of idealism. Workaday enthusiasms are not enough. They wear out too soon. I want to experience human nature at its best – and be reminded of its highest possibilities, and this happens to me in church.”                                       

It may seem as though the same things could be found in solitude, but it does not easily happen so. In a congregation we share each other’s spiritual needs and reinforce each other. In some ways, the soul is never lonelier than in a church service…yet it is a loneliness that has strength in it.   Perhaps that is because the innermost solitude of the human heart is in some paradoxical way a thing that can be shared – that must be shared – if the spirit of God is to find a full entrance into it.    We must meet each other as friends and neighbors anywhere and everywhere, but we seldom do so in the consciousness of our soul’s deepest yearnings. But in church we do – in a way that is intrusive, yet leaves us knowing that we all have the same yearning, the same spiritual need of assurance and faith and hope. We are brought together at the highest level possible. We are not merely an audience. We are a congregation. 

I doubt whether I could stand the thought of the misery and cruelty of the present world unless I could know, through an experience that renewed itself over and over again, that at the heart of life there is assurance, that I can hold onto an ultimate belief that all is well. And this happens in church.   

Life must have its sacred moments and its holy places. The soul will always seek its nurture. For religious experience – which is life at its most intense, life at its best – is something we cannot do without.

SERMON:    “As We Are”  - Rev. Alison Hyder

        We are entering into Provincetown’s favorite time of the year.  I don’t mean the end of the summer tourist season, or the sight of the marshes turning red and gold and orange, or the brisk, clear days. No, I am talking about Halloween, that Gay National Holiday, when everyone gets to dress up in wild costumes and act out their secret fantasies in public and confront deep-seated fears of being too odd or ugly or bad (feelings we experience sometime or another) by accentuating and mocking them. For some of us, just wearing a funny hat is excruciatingly awkward. Halloween is dangerous because it confuses the us and the them, it blurs the lines we set up to distinguish gender and ability and culture. Anyone can be Charlie Chaplin, or a witch, or a Princess or a tree. All it takes is imagination and the right materials. On one night, no one looking at us knows the difference between what amuses us and what confuses us, which outfits feel natural and liberating and what we wear to conform. Even straight boys can try out pantyhose and a wig. 

                It’s a good experience to walk a mile in someone else’s high heels on occasion and be subject – however briefly – to their discomforts and limitations and pleasures. It can help us to expand our perspectives a little and grow in sympathy and understanding.  And maybe that’s what it takes sometimes. Maybe we have to live out the difference in our very blisters and bruises, in our bones, before we can hear another’s truth.

                Anais Nin said, “We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.”  Profound, and true:  “We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.” 

            Everyone brings her or his own culture and hopes and knowledge to each interaction.  If your parents fought and loved passionately you might approach disagreements differently than if you were raised by your Scottish grandmother.  World War 2 and Vietnam veterans argue about the military. People who managed to escape from poverty don’t always understand why others cannot do the same.  But often our opinions are so clouded by our own assumptions that we discount what other people tell us that they feel and experience. ‘How could anyone not like the beach?’ we might think. It’s not that we really think they are lying to us on purpose – just that they are deluded or shortsighted or wrong. They haven’t truly experienced the beach – or kumquats or bondage - in the right way yet.

              This treatment happens a lot to children. When we were little and going out trick-or-treating, we often dressed up as someone we wanted to be. Free and fearless like an Indian seemed, or mysterious like a cat.  Some of us wanted to wear red satin and lots of heavy rouge and eye shadow, hoping to appear pretty, like a grown-up lady. But think about that as an adult. The grown-ups probably looked down and saw a trollop, or a freak. We were trying something new and they laughed and called us cute.     

Adults routinely discount children’s perceptions, telling them that they aren’t really afraid, or sad; that Mommy has that bruise because she walked into a door, or that good children don’t have those kinds of thoughts.  We learn what our family, our culture, wants us to believe about ourselves and about people who are different, what it is okay to hope for, and what we have to hide.  But any group in power will routinely ignore the thoughts and experiences of the minority – of women, for instance,  people of color, or the uneducated. “No,” Black people are told, “that shop clerk wasn’t following you.”  “Maybe you just need to work a little harder.” “We ask everyone for multiple IDs,” “Why are you people always so touchy? Can’t you take a joke?” 

              You would think that we would all be more sensitive to this dynamic, having survived childhood and struggled to forge some sort of identity for ourselves.  But I guess our own fears and prejudices get in the way. We believe in individual liberty and willpower.  Our culture tells us that anyone can make it.  It’s a free country, after all.

   Social scientists used to believe “that the same basic processes underlie all human thought, whether in the mountains of Tibet or in the grasslands of the Serengeti. [Despite cultural differences, they assumed that] the habits of thought – the strategies people adopted in processing information and making sense of the world around them – were, Western scholars assumed, the same for everyone, exemplified by, among other things, a devotion to logical reasoning, a penchant for categorization and an urge to understand situations and events in linear terms of cause and effect.” But recent work by social psychologists at the University of Michigan that compared European Americans to East Asians “found that people who grow up in different cultures do not just think about different things, they think differently.” For instance, asked to describe an animated aquatic scene, Japanese subjects were much more likely to set the scene and the context, saying, for example, “There was a lake or pond,” or  “the water was green.” The white U.S. subjects “tended to begin their descriptions with the largest fish, making statements like, ‘There was what looked like a trout swimming to the right.’ …Americans were much more likely to single out the biggest fish, the brightest object, the fish moving fastest.” Japanese subjects made twice as many statements as Americans about the relationships between animate and inanimate objects. And this was more than a superficial difference. In social situations, the Asians in the study were much more sensitive to context, “quicker than the Americans to detect when people’s behavior was determined by situational pressures.”  For instance, in one study, both Korean and European Americans were asked to read debates about atomic testing. They were informed that the essayists were told what to write and which side to take. But Americans were much more likely to believe the writers were sincere, even after they had to write their own essay according to instructions. The Koreans quickly revised their beliefs of the writer’s opinions after having to support a certain position themselves.  Perhaps Americans need to believe in autonomy and free will.

              Another striking dissimilarity the researchers found was the way East Asians and Americans responded to contradiction. “Presented with weaker arguments running contrary to their own, Americans were likely to solidify their opinions, ‘clobbering the weaker arguments’ and resolving the threatened contradiction in their own mind. Asians, however, were more likely to modify their own opinion, acknowledging that even the weaker arguments had some merit….  Chinese subjects were far less eager to resolve arguments,” favoring the dialectical approach of dialogue and balance and contradiction, while the Americans preferred the analytical and linear arguments. [“How Culture Molds Habits of Thought,” by Erica Goode, NY Times, August 8, 2000]

               Whether or not these differences are truly innate or are cultural, it is apparent that we don’t all see things in the same way.  U.S. culture favors individualism and autonomy and resists the idea that there are social forces and institutionalized bigotries and biases like racism and homophobia. We really think everyone has an equal chance. Our need to believe in free will and independence is so strong that we are willing to ignore injustice and poverty. 

               Lisbeth Schorr, a social analyst at Harvard, says that after 30-some years of social programs, we know enough about what works to change the lives of the disadvantaged in our country. “What we know how to do, what we could do tomorrow if only we would, are all the things that work not to beat the odds, but to change the odds. It’s long been Schorr’s contention that we can’t change everything in the lives of a poor child and her mother and father.  But we can change enough to give that family a fighting chance.” [Rosemary Bray McNatt, “Birthing a New World,” sermon reprinted in Thematic Preaching by Rzepka and Sawyer, p. 133]. And we don’t, she says, because we’ve been told that we’ve done all we can, and that some people just can’t be helped. They’re weak by nature. The poor will always be with us.

               Discussing Schorr’s work, UU minister Rosemary Bray McNatt says,

It turns out that the things we most need to change the world are some of the same things I’ve learned are needed as a mother and a minister. For sure, they all take money, and sometimes more money than you feel like you want to spend; sometimes they take more money than you really have. But mothering, ministry, changing the world – they take other things too.  They take practicality and flexibility, patience and humor, love and the right kind of accountability. They take a willingness to stand with one another, not in judgment, but in profound and enduring faithfulness, as change takes place. [ibid]

               We learned how to do this in the 1990s, when this town – and Baltimore, where I was working, and communities across the country – began to reach out and minister to those affected by AIDS. Each situation was different. Suddenly, we were forced to listen to each other more carefully, to find out what people needed, then and there – a backrub, a ride, clean sheets, a good cry. It was no good having your own agenda, or to see things the way we wanted them to be. We had to pay attention to each other. We had to be able to respond.

              We still need those skills.    Ever since September 11^th, many of us have been engulfed by confusion and uncertainty. At one moment we’re out for vengeance and at the next fearful and ashamed. We know that terrorism must be stopped, but we’re unsure of the ethical implications of war. We feel all the indignation and fervor of a true patriot, and then wonder what to do with our zeal.  So many more of us have been reaching out to others, for comfort and reassurance and clarity.

               One of the reasons we value our friends is for their point of view: pragmatic, cynical, compassionate, learned, righteous, ridiculous, or serene.  We need people who will be honest with us, who will tell us when we’re being a little histrionic, and yet who will listen to our fears and hold our hand when we’re scared. Our friends make us laugh.  They stretch our hearts with their struggles and conflicts. And when we’re wrapped up in our own little assumptions and stereotypes, they make us hear another perspective, another truth.  They see things as they do, as they are, and not as we are.

              The Taoist Tract of the Quiet Way advises, “Seek for your friends those that are good; that will help you to practice virtue with body and soul. Those that are wicked keep at a distance; it will prevent evil from approaching you.”

              Right now many of us are seeking other people who are wrestling with the issues within a spiritual and ethical framework -  who are unsure of the line between justice and revenge, between compassion and naiveté; who question the role of God or the purpose of prayer. And that is the value of this free religious community.  Unitarian Universalists do not have a creed or a test of faith. Here we are accepted as we are, with all our doubts and questions and imperfections. We know that each person has struggled to find meaning and hope, and can teach us something more about what it means to be human. Everyone has something to contribute. 

              The other day at minister’s tea we discussed the recent military actions and US foreign policy. For an hour and a half we talked about past US policies and interventions, and our responsibilities to other countries and people in light of the attacks. Afterward, one of our members said to another, “well, I don’t agree with everything you’ve said, but I’m sure glad we’re in the same congregation.”  And that really is it in a nutshell, the purpose and the promise of the UU Meeting House.  We know – we learn, every day, whatever our convictions and fears – that we can respect people despite our different backgrounds and beliefs, however pigheaded and wrong we think they are, with faith in their inherent worth and integrity.  We need that trust in each other, and in our own strength and humanity.  We need not think alike to love alike.

Whatever your beliefs, however your path is leading you, we invite you walk it along with us.

We have more questions than answers, that’s for sure, but we covenant with each other to listen in an open and respectful way, to seek the truth in love. We minister to each other “in a profound and enduring faithfulness,” as we are, and as we hope to be.  And in these uncertain times, that is precious indeed.

CLOSING WORDS: by Wayne B. Arnason

Take courage, friends.
The way is often hard, the path is never clear,
and the stakes are very high.
Take courage.
For deep down, there is another truth:
you are not alone.