October 8, 2006
Myron Andes
Transition: On Interim-ness

The forbearers of the Unitarian half of our Unitarian Universalist heritage can be traced back to the early councils of the Christian church in the 4^th century. At this time, in the council of Nicea and others to follow, the divinity of Jesus began to be asserted, and with it the Trinitarian nature of God. Some at the time essentially said, “Wait it minute! Where did you get that idea from?” They chose to dissent from the majority opinion. They asserted their right of conscience, the right to make up their own minds. Hence they were called “heretics.” The root meaning of “heretic” is “to choose.” These brave souls with independent minds chose to believe and proclaim publicly their belief in “one God.” They became known as “anti-Trinitarians,” and many of them were burned at the stake for their choice.

In the 16^th century, Transylvania, there was a brief period of enlightenment on this point. King Sigismund ruled, with the aid of his mother Queen Isabella. Sigismund was the first, and as far as I know the only Unitarian king. Under his rule, the Edict of Torda proclaimed toleration for differing religious beliefs and practices, the right to choose. It was in a debate around this time that Unitarian Bishop Francis David uttered his succinct words: “We need not think alike to love alike.”

Tolerance didn’t last, but a firm anti-Trinitarian belief came down to us as the foundation of American Unitarianism in the early colonial days on this continent.

But Unitarians and Universalists are and have always been encouraged to think for themselves. So with the development of experimental science, many Unitarians concluded that the idea of a divine being was incompatible with what they had discovered through science. So the Humanist movement grew, and UUs were among the original signatories of the Humanist Manifesto. No god for them.

Then, with the growing environmental movement, significant numbers of people, including many UUs, found the framework of earth-centered or neo-pagan religious practice to fit their values.

In the tradition of tolerance, encouragement of individual spiritual growth, and “heresy,” all of these belief systems were and still are accepted and common in our movement. One God, no God, many goddesses and gods.

So the conclusion to be drawn from this seems to me to be: If you are a Unitarian Universalist, it is OK to believe in any number of gods and/or goddesses, one, many, zero: just not 3!

This little review of beliefs about the divine in our movement serves as an example for us, an example of change and transition. Sometimes that change was accompanied by violence, by burning people at the stake for their ideas. Sometimes it came about quietly, through calm (or animated!) discussion and reflection.

Change in our lives can take place in various ways. Sometimes it comes by choice. Often, it does not. And deep, foundational change almost always brings with it growing pains. In fact, Tony Kushner considers this very question in his play, Angels in America: Perestroika. The question is asked:

Q: How do people change?

And the answer comes:

A: Well, it has something to do with God so it’s not very nice.

God splits the skin with a jagged thumbnail from throat to belly and then plunges a huge filthy hand in, he grabs hold of your bloody tubes and they slip to evade his grasp but he squeezes hard, he insists, he pulls and pulls till all your innards are yanked out and the pain! We can’t even talk about that. And then he stuffs them back, dirty, tangled and torn. It’s up to you to do the stitching.

And then get up. And walk around.

Just mangled guts pretending.

That’s how people change.

Well, that’s one way people change. It’s often they way we transition when there are big changes we didn’t choose, which are forced upon us: death of a loved one, our own chronic illness, the closing of doors in our careers, our lives, our loves. Often in these cases, Kushner is right; his description is how people change.

But there are other models of change.

Process philosophy, developed by Alfred North Whitehead, is one of those alternative models. The dominant western model of reality, inherited from Socrates, Plato and Aristotle is the substance model. It views the most real things in the world as eternal, unchanging substances. Sure, they may occasionally change form when acted upon by an outside force, but the world is basically static.

In his development of process philosophy in the early 20^th century, Whitehead drew instead upon the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Heraclitus. Heraclitus’ most famous writing is that you can never step into the same river twice. When you try, you will note that the water you stepped into before has moved on downstream, and you face a new and different river. In this way he recognizes the constant flux of reality. He claims that change, transition, is more fundamental than stasis.

Change is the fundamental aspect of reality, continuity the exception. Every moment our present is leaving, becoming our past. Every moment we are making choices that decide what our present is. Those, in turn, affect what futures are possible for us.

Process philosophy is a network view. It is very much in harmony with our seventh principle, the interconnected web of all existence. Process thought asserts that everything that has happened everywhere in the past goes into forming the present. And as we make our choices now about who we will be and what we will do, everything in our current environment, everything everyone else is doing, also has an effect on us. Our choices, our actions, become the influences that go into future choices, our own choices and those of everyone else.

In this view, life is a series of moments of change. There is no time or space in which change is not taking place. Even if our choice is to remain as consistent and unchanged as possible, that very choice is something new in the universe. It is a change. We can’t stop the river. And we can’t step into the same river twice.

These ways of thinking apply to our personal transitions. They also apply to national and world transitions. And they apply, especially this year, for us, to church transitions.

UU tradition (Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, William Ellery Channing and others) emphasizes the importance of being conscious participants in our transitions, growth, development, forming our own character. Process thought is very friendly to this strain of UU tradition. These leaders and thinkers believed wholeheartedly that there is great potential inside each individual, and each institution. They believed it to be the sacred task of religion to help each grow and develop these inward capacities to the greatest possible extent. By teaching, in community, by encouragement to spiritual growth, the church was to be an active agent in forming the future, and in helping individuals become, if you will pardon the phrase, all that they can be.

There are within each of us, our tradition says, unknown possibilities. And there are within this congregation, possibilities that haven’t yet even been dreamed. Our religious task is to nourish those possibilities, and bring to fruition the best ones we can discern; to choose to be alive, growing, developing; that is changing. Our call is no less than to be in service of the sacred potential of the universe.

For this interim time in the church’s life, the time between one settled minister and the next, there are five tasks that those who research such things tell us we need to undertake. Their research suggests that when these tasks are not adequately addressed, it is very difficult to have a successful, long-term settlement with a new minister. And when you think about it, I expect that like me you will say, well, of course that’s what you need to do. As urged by those figures in our UU tradition, it is up to us to be intentional and diligent about these tasks so that we can make choices about our own future, our own development, about who we will become.

Those interim tasks are:

            To know and claim our History

            To realize our new Identity

            To encourage new Leadership

            To strengthen Connections to the larger movement

            And to prepare to call, receive and work with a new minister.

That’s a lot of transition. But it’s what we need to do together this year.

And I would like to ask you to also think about these tasks in terms of your own personal growth, whatever transitions you are going through. I think they apply. And they apply also to our national and international situations.

It has been said that those who don’t know their history are doomed to repeat it. And I fear we are on our way to repeating some very bad history indeed. History involving a massive, destructive world war, and a powerful nation bent on expanding its power and influence, that does this by scapegoating an ethnic group and minorities identified by sexual orientation and physical disability. Only this time, it is our own nation that is careening down the path of fascism. We need, that is, it is our sacred duty, to use the democratic process to influence our nation and our world in the direction of its most wonderful, peaceful, just, and beautiful potential. We may not solve all the world’s problems this week, but in concert with everyone else of good will we can make choices that contribute to bringing about a better world.

History,

Identity,

Leadership,

Connection to a larger movement, and

Preparation to receive the new.

If we are to be active, conscious participants in our own evolution, that of the congregation and that of our broader world, we must deal with these things. In somewhat simpler terms, we must ask ourselves:

Who are we?

Where do we come from?

Where are we going?

Let us rejoice together that we are in transition, because it means we are alive. We live our whole lives in the interim, between one moment and the next; affected by all that has come before and all that is around us now. And if we consciously and actively make choices about our own development, we can shape the world to come.