Many Paths; One Center

You’ve probably heard someone say, “I feel closest to God or most connected to the Holy or most spiritual or most centered _______________” . Fill in the blank at the beach, in the desert, in the woods, on a mountain, by running water. “ So I don’t need to go to church.” You may have said it yourself, sometime in the past or very recently. Lots of people say this. Especially, perhaps, when they meet a religious professional and feel the need to explain why they themselves do not participate in a church or other organized religious community.

I believe people when they tell me this, even if I inwardly roll my eyes sometimes at the hint of defensiveness. After all, I’ve been to the beach, the desert, the mountains. I’ve spent time in the woods and by running water. I’ve seen stars in the night sky far from the light pollution of a city. I know the power of these places and experiences. The holy is there. Deep peace. Exhilaration. Wisdom. Inspiration. Solace. All of these experiences, emotions, states of beings are at the shore. On the mountaintop. On the prairie. Near running water. In the woods and in a desert. Readily accessible, perhaps, to solitary sojourners who venture to such places, hoping to find their centers.

I also know this: ‘human beings are social animals.’ Well, that’s the way Aristotle put it. I’d say, we’re drawn to, and into, community. We gather ourselves in families, groups, organizations, communities for safety, to share resources and expertise, to raise our children, to preserve traditions and cultures, and to find our center. Faith communities are often primary among the communities in which we gather in pursuit of our center.

I won’t argue that churches, temples, mosques, congregations of one faith or another are for everyone. But a lot of people have been and are drawn to and eventually into faith communities. This has been true through the ages and is yet today, even as participation in religious communities shrinks across the board.

We in this room and participating this morning on Zoom have been drawn to and into this faith community. We got here by many paths. From different faith backgrounds or no faith background at all. New to Unitarian Universalism or having moved here from other places where we participated in a UU congregation. We came seeking the companionship of like-minded people, a place from which to do good in the world, a place to hold a wedding or memorial service that would satisfy the more traditionally religious members of our families without grating against our own progressive beliefs and values, a place where our gender identity and expression are fully embraced. And we came seeking something more than any one or even all of those things. Because we could meet like-minded people in other organizations. We could do good in the world through service clubs or environmental organizations. We could hold our weddings in parks or gardens or museum courtyards. We could have our memorials services in funeral homes or at a favorite place in nature. We might find our gender identity and expression, our full being, supported and embraced at First City Pride or the GLBTQ Center on a campus or in a gay bar or coffee house or a CrossFit Gym.

We come to church instead of those places, or in addition to those places, because here we find all that, and also deliberate, earnest questioning of life’s meaning, and exploration of many paths that might lead us to our center, to the person we are at our core. Here in covenant groups or adult faith enrichment, in Sunday services or the UU World Magazine or other resources of the Unitarian Universalist Association, or through the particular and specific mix of justice ministry projects, we discern how to apply or amplify or make sense of whatever wisdom or joy or inspiration came to us in solitude or in nature.

In the book Blues Ain’t Nothing but a Good Soul Feeling Bad, Sheldon Kopp wrote:

'Once several members of a Hasidic congregation had become hopelessly lost in a dense forest. They were delighted when unexpectedly they came upon their rabbi who was also wandering through the woods. They implored, “Master, we are lost! Please show us the way out of the forest.”

The rabbi replied, “I do not know the way out either, but I do know which paths lead nowhere. I will show you the ways that won’t work, and then perhaps together we can discover the ones that do.”'

Here at church not just the faith leader but all of us tell each other what ways won’t bring us out of the wilderness, home to our center, and together we seek to discover others ways that might.

More than simply showing one another the paths that don’t lead to the center, which can amount to finger pointing or shaming or insistence on a single right way, and in addition to exploring a multitude of time-honored paths that have lead the way to the center for others through the ages, and might lead us home to the center of our being, too–besides all that, together, in church, we deliberately create ways to the center. Through ritual and song and the commitment of showing up. Becoming, as Kathleen Norris suggests in 'Mrs Schneider at Church', greater than ourselves. Not, I would say, simply a noise greater than ourselves, but a being greater than ourselves. In Saint Maybe, Anne Tyler also uses music as a metaphor for the alchemical transformation that can take place when ordinary broken lives gather: healing for individual souls and the creation of a unified, healed and healing body out of the many gathered souls. "The voices ceased to be separate. They plaited themselves into a multistranded chord, and now it seemed the congregation was a single person–someone of great kindness and compassion, someone gentle and wise and forgiving."

Both Norris and Tyler anchor this transformation to the necessary, fearful, inseparable experiences of being known, wounded and flawed, and forgiven, not despite, but because of our woundedness and flaws. The language of forgiveness might strike uncomfortably in ears and minds that have left or never accepted Christianity, in which forgiveness is indelibly tied to the concept of sinner and the image of Christ on the cross. Yet, I believe, we know ourselves, each one of us, to be deeply flawed and wounded unto brokenness at times. We long for forgiveness–from those we have hurt and from ourselves and from the Great Other–and we fear that the revelation of our true self will be too awful, precluding all possibility of forgiveness. Perhaps we seek the shore, the mountain, the woods because there are fewer words there, fewer societal mirrors, to make explicit our true, flawed and broken nature. There is healing in that. But Maya Angelou has it right: "nobody, but nobody/can make it out here alone." Not all the time.

So, here, in church, in community, together we seek and explore and create our way to a deeper, more lasting truth at the center of both our faith and our individual existence: our flaws and woundedness and brokenness are not the whole of us. We are flawed and wounded and broken and tough, resilient, tender, precious, miraculous gifts of and to Creation. Centers of holiness, deep peace, exhilaration, wisdom, joy, inspiration, solace, and yes, forgiveness, in our very being and for one another. Amen.