"Life as a Pilgrimage"

This morning I am going to talk about life as a long, purposeful journey taken in community.  Another word that can be used for this type of journey together is pilgrimage.  Today I would like to assert that Unitarian Universalism itself invites participants in the faith to experience life as a pilgrimage.  Because a pilgrimage is a journey we take together,  first I'd like share a story about some locals traveling together that  heard the other day...
Two Middleboro police officers were recently parked on the side of Route 25 toward the Cape waiting to catch people speeding.  They saw a car puttering along at 25 miles per hour and decided to pull it over because, as you know, going too slow can be just as   dangerous as a speeding. So they turned on their lights and pulled the driver over. One of the officers exited the vehicle to talk to the driver, an older male who had with him four other passengers --- all wide eyed and white as ghosts. The driver, concerned about being stopped, said, "Officer, I don't understand why you stopped me, I was doing exactly the speed limit! What seems to be the problem?"
"Sir," the officer said, "you weren't speeding, but you should know that driving slower than the speed limit can also be a danger to other drivers."
"Slower than the speed limit? No sir, I was doing the speed limit exactly. Twenty- five miles an hour!" He said this a bit proudly.
The police officer hid his desire to chuckle and kindly explained that "25" was the route number, not the speed limit. The man realized his mistake and sheepishly thanked the officer for pointing out his error.
But the officer was still concerned. "Before I let you go, sir, I have to ask... is everyone in this car OK? These passengers seem awfully shaken and they haven't muttered a single peep this whole time." 
"Oh, they'll be all right in a minute, Officer. We just got off Route 195."

I do want to talk about Unitarian Universalist life as a pilgrimage. So, first, a little background about Unitarian Universalism.  Unitarian Universalists believe that, just as there can be many different paths that lead up a mountain to the same summit, there can be many paths to religious truth. Here we are free to work out our own path.  Here it is possible to call ourselves simply a Unitarian Universalist - or a hyphenate Unitarian Universalist, such as a UU-Christian, a UU-Buddhist, Jew or pagan to give a few examples.  Hence our depiction of the religious symbols of many of the world's great religions here on our sanctuary wall. A UU Christian or Jew or Buddhist will practice and live out of their Christian, Jewish or Buddhist practice because that stance or practice works for them, suits them by temperament, heritage or practice.  As UU's,  with our purposes and principles as tools to help us along, we allow others to seek and to find their own paths up the mountain.
Unitarian Universalist Jack Mendelsohn writes  Being Liberal in an Illiberal Age writes,  "The most fundamental of all Unitarian Universalist principles   is personal freedom of religious belief - the principle of the free mind."  
Many of you came as newcomers across the threshold of a Unitarian Universalist church with excitement because here you found spiritual exploration encouraged. Here you could comfortably examine your own religious thoughts and feelings.   Here, the freedom to ask questions or to express doubts or even to reject some dogma you've been struggling with raised no eyebrows, didn't have to be hidden, would probably even find a sympathetic ear. This is an environment where you can sort things out.  Many of you have said, or heard someone say, "I've always been a Unitarian Universalist but I just didn't know it!"
I remember when I was a newcomer being so impressed with Mendelsohn's description of Unitarian Universalism. "The goal of organized Unitarian Universalism," he wrote, "is to provide maximum freedom combined with full fellowship for each individual.  Truth, we recognize, is vast and many-sided.  Why should we all have the same theology?  It is a basic part of our faith that people of widely differing religious backgrounds and meaningful symbol systems can work cheerfully and productively together under the same denominational roof, strengthening and challenging one another, for the greater common tasks of making human life more splendid, more precious and more secure.... "
Here was a religion that spoke for me! My belief stance before discovering Unitarian Universalism had been to be respectful toward religion as a whole, but protective of my own beliefs and experience.  Every organized religion that I had been exposed to seemed to require giving up something of who I was.  I wanted to respect them all for the healing structure they provided for so many others, but I had also wanted to stay clear of them for myself.
So when people would share that they had always been a UU and not known it, I used to say, "Yes, me too."  But I don't say that now. I don't agree with that idea anymore. Since I've lived and breathed and acted within the context of Unitarian Universalist communities at Harvard, in Norwell and here, my understanding of Unitarian Universalism has changed.  I hope I have grown, as my level of experience and commitment have deepened.  This morning I'd like to tell you why I no longer think it is possible to be a UU without knowing it.
Unitarian Universalism gives you the freedom and permission  to accept yourself as you are religiously, when you cross our threshold.  And that comfort can be a something you have longed for. But "freedom," as UU minister Henry Whitney Bellows taught his congregation more than a century ago, "has no power to produce anything.  It merely leaves the faculties free to act."
The question immediately surfaces - freedom for what?  What act is required of you?   With freedom always comes responsibility. What is the responsibility of the Unitarian Universalist?  Let us not overlook the importance of the answer: we are free to pursue our own path up the mountain, to pursue our own religious growth,  to think, to feel, to explore - to actively try to grow in religious knowledge and experience. If you do nothing with the freedom you find here, you abuse your freedom and ignore your responsibility to yourself. And you are not being a particularly "good" Unitarian Universalist.
Let me summarize what we've learned so far:  the main features of Unitarian Universalism are 1) respect for the religious beliefs of others 2) combined with the freedom from having a specific belief system imposed on us.  And with this freedom comes 3) the responsibility of pursuing our own growth, not just through childhood  religious classes that end when we are a certain age, but lifelong.
If these features alone defined Unitarian Universalism then it would be possible to be a Unitarian Universalist and not know it. There are many people who avidly pursue their spiritual growth. But there's one more feature that I've come to believe is essential to Unitarian Universalism.  Mendelsohn's definition of  Unitarian Universalism specifically said "maximum freedom combined with full fellowship for each individual."  Full "fellowship meant "working cheerfully and productively under the same denominational roof,  with people of different religious backgrounds, strengthening and challenging one another.." 
Mendelsohn's idea of working together "cheerfully and productively" sounds a bit like an old-fashioned elementary school primer, but I think he's on to something. Our commitment to working together, especially in view of our differing beliefs, can be of tremendous value.
The over-arching issue of the religious life is not what we believe, it is if how our beliefs are manifest in the world. We are, at least in the ideal, traveling with a purpose together.  It could be said that we are on a pilgrimage together. Does that   Parabola Magazine describes a pilgrimage as "journeying toward the holy."
A pilgrimage is a journey is within in which depth, not distance is the goal. Pilgrims travel together in order to be affected, to be altered, to be touched and to be touched deeply enough so that a transformation of significance occurs. Doris Donnelly: an associate professor of theology at John Carroll University has written that most pilgrims who undertake physical pilgrimages are spurred to do so by their awareness of their own interior incompleteness.." Is your passage through the sanctuary doors in part due to a sense of incompleteness that might be relieved if you do your work here? What makes this place part of the geography of your soul?
Other questions follow.  If fellowship is essential to pilgrimage, how do we help one another in our journeys?  How does fellowship grow us? We grow by sharing our faith stories over time, by admitting that what we do together is important at our best moments and at our worst. I think we come in to church life expecting that here human relations will, or should, run more smoothly than they do in other parts of our lives. It can be disappointing, then, to realize occasionally that someone has been abrupt with you, been thoughtless or let you down. It is natural to want church to be the place where your own   and other people's best sides are drawn out, nurtured and grown.  You might hope that at least at church one can experience a taste of what the world would be like without arguments and hurt feelings. But all religions are clear on the fact that human beings aren't perfect and never will be.
But this is precisely where the journey within begins. Religious growth is so rarely an act of surfacing our more perfect selves.  It is more often, learning how to deal with our imperfections and of learning forgiveness, of self and others. Religious growth is a by-product of struggle - as we use our principles and purposes  to guide us in our walk together.
It's easy to walk away from those with whom we differ or of whom we disapprove, or who are simply different from us - religious growth may not change the walking away, but it may result in your coming back. It is found in better listening and in not giving up on each other. We grow from our commitment to being together and from the from the center of what it means to be human. Religious growth has long been known to be an arduous process, and that's why you can't be a Unitarian Universalist in the true without ever knowing it! The core values of Unitarian Universalism are not  contained in any single given idea - like religious freedom - and never has been - an important part of what it means to be a Unitarian Universalist is played out by living and struggling with our differences and in our commitment to growth, together, over time. All true religions are hard when put into practice.
Spiritual growth has never had a reputation for being easy.  You know the story about Moses and his wife. She has journeyed with him for 40 years. As they approach the Promised Land, she reminds him: "And soooo, we finally got here, Smart Guy. Forty years in the wilderness. I told you to stop and ask for directions.