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Principle #3
Acceptance of One Another and Encouragement to
Spiritual Growth in Our Congregations
Reading for "Come As You Are"
"The Blessings of Age"
by Barbara Rohde
At sixty....I made...a remarkable discovery: I was beginning to find the foibles of my friends and relatives endearing.
I could understand how, after observing the real tragedies of life for two-thirds of a century, one would become more tolerant of minor irritations. In a world filled with the suffering of the hungry and the homeless and the victims of violence, the cap left off the toothpaste tube does not loom very large.
But my fondness for these foibles came as a surprise to me. I suppose I finally have come to understand that when one loves, one loves the whole person, a person defined by foibles as well as strengths. Of course, there is still the flash of irritation, but these days when we say, "Isn't it just like him," more often than not, we say it with affection, with the same pleasure of recognition as when the letter in the mailbox is addressed in familiar handwriting.
Perhaps every long marriage follows these five stages: 1. Darling, you are perfect. 2. Good grief! You seem to have a few foibles. 3. Let me help you get rid of your foibles so you will indeed be perfect. 4. Okay, I love you in spite of your foibles. I can't believe this has happened. I sometimes love you because of your foibles.
"Come as You Are:
The Challenge of the Third Principle"
Today's sermon is part of an ongoing series about our Seven Unitarian Universalist Principles. This morning our closer look will be at the third principle which asks us to affirm and promote "acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations." Acceptance of one another for UU's flows naturally from our belief in the inherent worth of every person. Our third principle joins acceptance together with the idea of spiritual growth for an important reason. Because UU's aren't told what to believe, we each need to decide what to believe for ourselves; and although we aren't called upon to agree, we understand we are called upon to journey in community. The very design of our faith, then, is to encourage the spiritual growth that becomes possible in that boundary between people where differences exist and are acknowledged and negotiated with respect. I think it is safe to say that Unitarian Universalists view the ability to accept difference as spiritual maturity. The word acceptance used this way in the third principle doesn't mean that one adopts or endorses another's beliefs. What it means rather, is we are encouraged to try to understand and make room for the other. We believe that as we negotiate how to live with one another's different beliefs, we learn to accept one another's basic humanity.
The dictionary defines acceptance as "the act of receiving or taking something offered. (is doesn't seem to matter what) The dictionary mentions two other uses that are interesting. Acceptance can be used in different contexts to mean specifically,"favorable approval" or "barely adequate approval." I'd like you to take a moment to think about your relations with the people in this sanctuary as you live through the church year. Does your acceptance of individuals fluctuate as you find yourself pleasantly surprised by something or getting annoyed from day to day? Do you approve of some and find others barely adequate? Or is your acceptance more like the first dictionary definition, unaffected by the vagaries of day to day?
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I'd like to share a story about acceptance that comes from my own life. When I was young my mother used to tell people that I was a twerp. The phrase is a familiar refrain in my head. "Patricia is a twerp." I can hear her saying it now. She had occasion to say it reasonably often, but I never minded. To give an example: one day a neighbor, Stewart Bunton, described in an incredulous voice how dirty and bedraggled I looked coming home from the pond covered head to toe with muck and proudly carrying a big snake! My mother listened, nodded, and spoke easily, "Patricia is a twerp." (The truth was, that my younger brother Gene, very different from me, was a twerp too, and so was my older brother Peter - but those are other stories). I somehow understood, even at the time, that we were being loved and protected when she used twerp to describe us to others. It was a term of affection that put us out of reach of criticism and was used to end the conversation. Growing up, I knew I was a little different, but my mother never made me bear that burden with fear. I was always acceptable to her if not perfect.
Behind the scenes on that day, away from Mr. Bunton, my mother was, in fact, annoyed with me for getting so dirty I'd left a trail when I entered the house. She also didn't like the snake. It was a water snake, 3 or 4 feet long, black and rather thick through the middle as I remember it. I really wanted to keep it. My mother didn't want me to, probably for a number of reasons, but her main objection was that it was bad for the snake. It was a wild creature, it probably was supposed to eat live something-or-others and it might escape out of whatever we could find to put it in. And even though it wasn't poisonous, it was big and it could still bite someone. No. No snake. That was final. But I pleaded and argued, and wouldn't let go. Finally, my mother relented and allowed me to keep it for one night only. The reason for her change of heart, she explained later, was simply my love for the snake. But, look," I had said pathetically, "it has such beautiful amethyst eyes!"
My mother wasn't taken in by the snake's eyes; she saw only a big, fat snake. But when she looked past the snake and the mud she saw a child possessed by something she thought was beautiful and wonderful, and so she worked hard, against her grain, to make room for my excitement.
My mother's love for me felt unconditional - the first dictionary definition always applied - it seemed she would receive what was offered ( me, in virtually any form) no matter what. I sensed no qualifying, "you are only accepted if...".Within the comfort of that acceptance, however, she did let me know when my behavior earned her stamp of approval and when it didn't, and why. She argued details about the muck in the house and the health of the animals I brought home, but never about the essentials; I was always allowed to go to the pond and bring the creepy crawlies home. Those behaviors were simply accepted as part of who I was.
As you can tell, I was quite a tomboy. My mother was quite different from me. Before marriage and having children she had been a dancer with the American Ballet Theater. As her only daughter, it seems very likely that I disappointed her expectations, or at least differed greatly from them, but she never made me feel that way. She did, however, call me a twerp once in a while. I looked the word up in the dictionary for this sermon. It's in there, but it's defined as "an insignificant or despicable person." Forget that. We have plenty of words that mean that and we don't need another one. I have lived with the word twerp for a lifetime and I can tell you what it means: a twerp is "a person who is different from you that you love."
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Now I would like to share with you a true story from the American writer Langston Hughes in which he describes the moment when he was saved from sin, but not really, at age twelve. It began when his Auntie Reed's church hosted a big revival for several weeks. Just before it ended they held a special meeting for children, "to bring lambs to the fold." Auntie Reed had told Langston that when you were saved you saw a light and something happened to you inside, and then Jesus came into your life. He had heard a great many other, older people say the same thing. He believed and he was excited.
When the day finally came the preacher preached a wonderful sermon about the 99 lambs in the fold and the one lost out in the cold and when he finished he put his arms out to the children, "Won't you come? Won't you come to Jesus?" Langston remembers that some jumped up and went to Jesus right away. Then folks gathered round and prayed for those who just sat there. One child after another went forward while the church rocked with prayer and song until all were saved but one boy named Wesley and himself. Langston kept waiting to see Jesus, but nothing was happening. Finally, Wesley whispered, "I'm tired of sittin' here. Let's get up and be saved," and he got up. Langston's grandmother prayed for him, now in tears, as he continued to sit alone, unsaved, while the whole congregation prayed in a mighty wail of groans and voices.
The minister and his aunt called out to him again and again, "Langston, why don't you come?" Langston sat in unbearable tension, waiting. Then he began to wonder what God thought about Wesley, who hadn't seen Jesus either, but who was now grinning at him from the other side. Finally, just to end the horrible moment, he got up and was saved. When he did, waves of rejoicing and ecstatic 'amens' shook the church. Langston Hughes still remembers how hard he cried in bed that night because he didn't believe there was a Jesus any more, since Jesus hadn't come to help him.
He was a young boy who wanted to see Jesus, who wanted to earn salvation, But when he couldn't see Jesus, what everyone else saw, he found himself in the terrible position of disappointing not only himself, but everyone in his community. As the church prayed for him, he felt physically separated from them all, and undoubtedly worried that it could be permanent. He finally "saved" himself by pretending to "see Jesus" even as he was losing his faith. The meaning of salvation in the story was thus cleverly changed -- he was 'saved,' not by his love of Jesus as the preacher and the congregation intended, but by pretending to be other than who he was.
One wonders what would have happened if he hadn't stepped forward. What would the congregation have seen when they looked at him? Would they have seen a frightened little boy? A twerp? Or would they have seen a snake that might harm the community? It's hard to say. What is evident though, is that Langston felt he would have been rejected.
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My mother's highest value, I think, was in raising a child who could think and feel and see for herself. The word salvation was not in her vocabulary. The closest she ever got to a religious statement was, "I believe in goodness." I think her goal for me was to help me become myself within the bounds of goodness. The parishioners in the revival meeting probably had similar ambitions for Langston with one important difference. They no doubt literally believed these words of Jesus in the Book of John: "I am the way, the truth and the light. No one comes to the Father except through me." Salvation was their highest value for him, and they understood it to be possible only through Jesus Christ. He had to see Jesus.
Many Unitarian Universalists don't find the word salvation useful in the orthodox sense of being saved from sin. When we do use the word it tends to conform to this view put forward by Alice Wesley. She says:
"Unitarian Universalists are as concerned with salvation in the sense of spiritual health, or wholeness, as any other religious people.
However, in many Western churches the word has come to be associated with a specific set of beliefs or a spiritual transformation of a very limited type.
Among Unitarian Universalists, you will hear instead, of our yearning for and our experience of, personal growth, increased wisdom, strength of character, gifts of insight, understanding, inner and outer peace, courage, patience and compassion. The ways in which these things come to us, change and heal us, are many indeed."
As you can see, this UU understanding of salvation as wholeness is compatible with my mother's desire to raise me able to think and feel for myself. Unitarian Universalism conforms to the idea that we believe whatever it is that we must believe; whatever our experiences have led us to believe. It operates on the premise that our individual desire for wisdom and transformation and wholeness will cause us to seek healing and growth in accordance with our own brokenness and passions and loves. The great Jewish sage Rabbi Zusya said it well: "In the coming world they will not ask me: 'Why were you not Moses? They will ask me: 'Why were you not Zusya?'" Our spiritual quest is to become ever more fully ourselves. Many folks who discover Unitarian Universalism for the first time exclaim, "I've always been a UU. I just didn't know it!" Like many UU's, when I first discovered Unitarian Universalism I felt I was coming home.
The Unitarian Universalist religious task, to be present as ourselves, takes a certain courage. But the commitment to walk intentionally with others whose view and understanding of the world is different serves to bring us to the heart of a task which is central to virtually every religion: we are being challenged to love the stranger. What's more, we are being asked by Unitarian Universalism to share our church with the stranger as he is. That is the meaning of the sign which is always displayed in front of the UU church where I first entered into membership. It says, "Come As You Are" in large letters right below the week's sermon title. Come in, stranger, you are welcome as you are.
The people in Langson Hughes's revival meeting were also taught to love the stranger: they would have been familiar with this injunction from Deuteronomy 10:19: "You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt." It was not acceptable, however, that one's own child might become a 'stranger.' Langston, after all, was being given the opportunity to love Jesus, so he didn't have to be a stranger; he feared he would be understood only as sinner or saved.
This brings us back to the challenge of the third principle, that we affirm and promote "acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations." Unitarian Universalism operates on the premise that, at some level, everyone is a stranger, or to put it in a somewhat lighter way, everyone is a twerp. The truth is we do not see beauty in the same places. Some of us see it in Jesus, others in Buddhism or in New Age wisdom or perhaps only in the natural world. We are encouraged by Unitarian Universalism to accept each other for the sake of our own spiritual growth and for the good and growth of the community. This sounds wonderful and wise, which it is, but it is also emotionally and practically difficult. Accepting spiritual differences means living under the same steeple with beliefs that we may have left behind, or that we consider inferior, silly or just plain wrong. It requires a kind of genuine dialogue that is challenging and difficult and sometimes painful. Frankly, it's easier to be lazy. As UU writer Barbara Rohde has noted, sometimes by our behavior we seem to be saying "Leave me alone," rather than "Tell me what you see," and sometimes our tolerance atrophies into indifference or into not letting others know we disagree with them.
Acceptance of those who are spiritually different exacts a price. Sometimes we can't agree on what church is about. Sometimes when we fall into the trap of trying to please everyone we meet the needs of no one. Ours is also a difficult faith because it lacks certainty. But where else can we go where we will will be encouraged to our own spiritual growth, to speak our truth whether or not it fits a mold? Where else is there a community dedicated to such openness, made up of others who are willing to share their own but different journeys? I am proud of our third principle. As the world gets smaller and religions of the world bump increasingly more into one another I believe that other religions will begin to see that learning to accept those who are spiritually different is an imperative. I am proud that we have started early on a difficult journey. Come as you are.