A sermon by F. Jay Deacon
Preached at the Unitarian Society of Northampton and Florence

September 12, 2004

On this perfect September day, in this Great Hall now more beautiful than ever: — You are truly a splendid sight. I'm thrilled to see you! It's good to be here.

We know that as we gather, a terrific storm gathers around us, a time of testing, and so it's supremely reassuring to be here again, surrounded by you who love this world of life and care about its future.

Maybe you heard Ron Reagan a few weeks ago, Ron Reagan, saying this:

We can choose between the future and the past, between reason and ignorance, between true compassion and mere ideology. This is our moment, and we must not falter.

The message was the same in 1990, when Vaçlav Havel stood before the United States Congress. This is what he said:

Without a global revolution in the sphere of human consciousness, . . . the catastrophe toward which the world is headed — ecological, social, demographic, or general breakdown of civilization — will be unavoidable.

Yes, we know: it is urgent. If we don't want to be the last gasping century of human life on Earth, something essential will have to change, in a very short time.

What kind of faith, and what kind of faith-community, — can mobilize us to do that, move us to do it and support us in doing it?

Sometimes we can feel a little redundant — here in this Valley, this progressive hotbed. What can we contribute? We can't vote in Ohio from here!

But it's often from such enclaves as this that the most vital and transformative vision comes, isn't it? The vitalizing, luminous, soul-deep dimension of spiritual energies is now and always has been an essential power in this alchemy of social transformation.

So here we are. Again.

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Let us think a moment about spirituality, real, honest, gut-level spirituality. I think of Nikos Kazantzakis¹. He makes sense to me. He said:

The essence of our God is struggle. Pain, joy, and hope unfold and labor within this struggle, world without end.

Not to look on passively while the spark leaps from generation to generation, but to leap and burn with it!

Every victory . . . fills with joy every living thing that breathes, grows, loves, and gives birth.

We have seen the highest circle of spiraling powers. We have named this circle God. We might have given it any other name we wished: Abyss, Mystery, Absolute Darkness, Absolute Light, Spirit, Ultimate Hope, Ultimate Despair, Silence.

I do not care what face other ages and other people have given to the enormous, faceless essence. They have given a face to their hopes and fears . . . , they have found a higher justification by which to live and labor. They have fulfilled their duty.

But today we have gone beyond these needs; we have shattered this particular mask of the Abyss; our God no longer fits under the old features.

The . . . entire human island quakes.

My God is not Almighty. He struggles, for he is in peril every moment; he trembles and stumbles in every living thing, and he cries out. He is defeated incessantly, but rises again, full of blood and earth . . .

My God struggles on without certainty. . . . He flings himself into uncertainty; he gambles all his destiny at every moment.

God is imperiled. He is not almighty, that we may cross our hands, waiting for certain victory. He is not all-holy, that we may wait trustingly for him to pity and to save us.

Within the province of our ephemeral flesh all of God is imperiled. He cannot be saved unless we save him with our own struggles, nor can we be saved unless he is saved.

We are one. From the blind worm in the depths of the ocean to the endless arena of the Galaxy, only one person struggles and is imperiled: You. And within your small and earthen breast only one thing struggles and is imperiled: the Universe.

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So there you are. We cannot live without this work, this struggle. It is our lives.

So here we are. Gathered again to take up this work, this good, this holy work.

But why gathered, why together? Let me go at it this way.

In a supremely hopeful book titled Non-Zero, Robert Wright shows cultural evolution — the great advances in human achievement — virtually pouring from human societies that were big enough, concentrated enough, — so that they could function like a many-celled brain; with all of its members participating in a creative interaction; —
and he shows how other societies, — too small, too sparse and isolated, remained stagnant or died out. No stimulation, no creativity. It's true of just about everything — even bacteria. They solve problems by interacting, forming a kind of collective mind smart enough, stimulated enough, to grow to the next stage.

So with us. We won't do what we need to do in isolation. And we, and the world, face a crisis truly like none humanity has ever faced.

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I want you, I want us — to participate in dreaming a vision of what human society can be, and dreaming ways to get there. Creative vision — the fire to drive our efforts in these — let us be honest — these desperate times.

We together are a many-celled mind. This many-membered Mind can face this time of upheaval, danger, promise — face it, navigate it, creatively bring our deep spiritual resources to this work. We can nurture that power in each other.

I have been reading the diaries of Victor Klemperer, a Jew who somehow survived the Nazi era in Dresden, and then lived through the grim rebuilding of Soviet Germany. He saw this:

He saw people — living in a society that was the absolute opposite of what we cherish and nurture here. The terms and conditions of life turned on their head. The air was thick with fear, intimidation, and hatred. This was the way it was supposed to be in that society.

And he saw what that did to people. He saw what his neighbors, his former associates, people in positions of responsibility and ordinary people — what they did. He saw people becoming false, people faking it, people organizing life around terror and never-ceasing lies, people doing despicable things that once they could not have dreamed of doing.

You see? What a community can make of us. What it can make of us when it's founded not on some nightmare of lies and violence, not on the rock-rigid dogma of other ages; —

but on these evolving human principles, on faith in each other, faith in the possible; organized on the principles of love and care; guided by a creative vision of hope.

That's the place where these lives of ours might flourish. From such a place, who knows what can come?

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This work of ours.

It's good work. Great work, work our hands and our souls need, work essential to what this world is to become.

Please — join me, responsively, in the Response in your Order of Meeting.

Now the work begins again.

Now our hands take up the threads that must be knit into a radiant whole

Now we approach again the torn fabric that must be made whole

Now we touch again the tired and frightened and teach it to hope

Now we approach the unconceived and dream it into being

Now we stretch and now we dare and now we grow in strength and wisdom

in vision and compassion

in clarity of thought and feeling

Now the work of community begins again

Now the work of prophecy begins again

For none of us can do this work alone

Each brings particles of truth and life and skill

All this together will be strong and wise and full of light

We look into each others' eyes and say

Welcome home!

Now the work begins again!

Copyright © 2004 F. Jay Deacon. All rights reserved.

¹ Nikos Kazantzakis. Saviors of God: Spiritual Exercises. Trans. Kimon Friar. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1960, 92-105, excerpted.

Meditate

Let's be gathered now in quietness, our mental noise quiet. Our young people are with us today, and you might hear voices of our very young, and that is okay. It doesn't matter. Let us gather in the stillness and let these moments be sacred space in this gathered silence.

The seasons turn again, and great Nature turns, the we meet in this Great Hall, gathered again from our separate pursuits, joined in the hope

that we shall hear some strain from beneath and beyond the furor and noise,

that we might glimpse, beneath the surface of things, the depth and the magnitude of Being,

that our minds and hearts shall expand into the Immensity of Being, made wise and strong by the creative intelligence that turns the seasons and paints the autumn world in splendor, that lights our minds and glows in the eyes of friends, —

heard in music and poetry, felt in human caring and moral courage, in all this amazing world.

We know this world of Life is endangered and we gather for the love of it.

Be freed from obsessions, from distractions, from falsehood; —

Let a finer wisdom, fresh clarity of thought, a mightier love: —

now rise among and within us

in this silence.

Reading

Nikos Kazantzakis. Saviors of God: Spiritual Exercises.
Trans. Kimon Friar. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1960, 92-102. excerpted.

The essence of our God is STRUGGLE. Pain, joy, and hope unfold and labor within this struggle, world without end.

Whether we want to or not, we also sail on and voyage, consciously or unconsciously, amid divine endeavors. Indeed, even our march has eternal elements, without beginning or end, assisting God and sharing [His] perils.

We discern a crimson line on this earth which ascends, struggling, from matter to plants, from plants to animals, from animals to [humanity].

The ultimate and most holy form of theory is action.

Not to look on passively while the spark leaps from generation to generation, but to leap and burn with it!

Action is the widest gate of deliverance. It alone can answer the questionings of the heart. Amid the labyrinthine complexities of the mind it finds the shortest route. No, it does not "find" — it creates its way, hewing to right and left through resistances of logic and matter.

Within this gigantic circle of divinity we are in duty bound to separate and perceive clearly the small, burning arc of our epoch.

We travel in harmony with the Universe, we gain impetus and dash into battle.

By consciously following the onrush of the Universe, our ephemeral action does not die with us.

It does not become lost in a mystical and passive contemplation of the entire circle; it does not scorn holy, humble, and daily necessity.

. . . it stoops and labors steadfastly, conquering easily both space and time within a small point of space and time.