Maybe it’s my Irish heritage, but “Be Thou My Vision”, our opening hymn, is one of my favorites. The words and melody resonate deep within my soul and speak to me of my relationship to the Source of Being. When I hear this song, it inspires me to be a better human being and is a reminder of the higher ideals I strive to live by. Music is part of my spiritual path: but, what is your vision? What gives your life purpose and meaning, and are you nuturing that? We each have our own unique ways we connect with the world and/or the Infinite Source, and it is a lifelong, dynamic process. Many psychologists believe that all human problems are spiritual problems, and that we must address the larger context of our spirituality in order to live a full and meaningful life. According to Dr. Leonard Felder, a psychologist and social activist and author of the book The Ten Challenges, how you decide what you believe about God and how you want to practice your spirituality is Challenge #1. Where does Felder’s list of ten challenges come from? One of the main sources of our UU heritage, actually: a source that I feel we often overlook – namely, the Bible, and more specifically the Ten Commandments.
Be honest – did you just experience an aversive reaction to the mere mention of the Bible? Did your eyes glaze over, your minds and hearts snap shut in fear, terror or a sense of superiority that you’ve already been down that road and moved on? Before you go running for the nearest exit and decide that coffee hour should begin – oh – about now, I would ask you to engage your curious, exploratory, tolerant UU nature and keep your minds and hearts open to the possibility that this ancient source of wisdom may still have some application to your life today.
As UU’s, we value our ability to reason, our free will to decide what we will believe, and some of us may view the Ten Commandments as straitjacket proscriptions from a judgmental God in whom we do not believe - or no longer believe in - as we have “evolved” spiritually. Often, UU’s face a challenge in considering the Judeo-Christian literature in a deeper, more meaningful way within the context of our modern-day environment and experience.
There’s a UU joke that hints at our secular bent:
It is show-and-tell day at school, and all the children are requested to bring in an item which illustrates their religious beliefs. David stands up and says, “This is a Star of David, and I am a Jew”. Dorothy stands up and says, “This is a crucifix, and I am a Catholic”. Jimmy stands up and says, “This is a casserole, and I am a Unitarian”.
Delicious casseroles aside, I do think we UU’s tend to question more and explore our spiritual paths more deeply than many others. It is my belief that no matter which religious or spiritual path we choose, as we mature, broaden and deepen our spiritual understanding, we ultimately arrive at the same destination, no matter what we choose to call it: God, clear ground of being, pure potentiality, universal life force, Love.
I realize there are many who come to Uuism as refugees from emotionally difficult experiences with Christianity, and want nothing to do with their former religion. Among other things, it was gender inequality and, to me, a misogynistic viewpoint, as well as wanting more engagement in social justice that led me away from the Catholic church. From the “One True Church” I grew up with, my path has evolved to ever-widening circles of religious tolerance, leading me to eventually to Uuism. Ironically,my path now calls me to return to my religious roots to see things I was unable to see earlier in the journey, to reclaim the deeper truths that speak to me, that I am more equipped to understand, and to examine them in the much more spiritual, and soulful, way they were intended – not as dogma, but as signposts. I am not the same disenchanted person who left the Catholic church 20 years ago. It is not that the reasons I left are no longer present – they are, and I don’t think the institutional church will change in my lifetime. However, I now view the teachings and the rituals from a much broader and deeper perspective than I ever would have had I remained in that faith. There is much good to be gleaned from Christianity as a spiritual path, and learning from the wisdom of our Judeo-Christian roots is part of our UU tradition. We need to separate the wheat from the chaff and take that which can provide us with the spiritual nourishment we need.
Ideally, our childhood perspective of church teachings changes and matures as we do. Perhaps, like so many of us, however, you put your childhood understanding of the Ten Commandments on the back burner as you went through life. This is what happened to Dr. Felder, until a college professor said, “Maybe the Ten Commandments are misnamed. They ought to be called the 10 hardest things we try to do in life – honoring our parents, dealing with adultery, attempting to get off the treadmill for one day a week, and not feeling jealous about what other people have. These topics aren’t ancient history – they are the core issues that most of us struggle with in our personal lives.” Dr. Felder indicates that Jews tend to take a more fluid approach than other religions to the Ten Commandments, thinking of them as an “evolving set of guidelines”, freshly interpreted for each new generation.
What if we look at the Ten Commandments from a more profound perspective? How can they be utilized as ten spiritual lessons, or challenges, rather than “commands”?
Many scholars feel that the original Hebrew term Ahseret Ha-deebrot translates more accurately as “the 10 words” or “the 10 things”, but was mistranslated into Greek and later into English as “The Ten Commandments.”
Dr. Felder chooses “challenges” rather than “commandments”, because “Commandments” implies that you either obey or disobey, whereas “Challenges” describes a voluntary, and ongoing process of what actually happens when you start applying these spiritual principles.
The First Commandment as written in the Bible generally goes something like this:
“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me.” This phrasing, though grandiose, is consistent with how royal treaties of the time were worded, where a king would identify himself and all of the beneficial actions he had performed for his people, and then he would list the stipulations of the treaty. To be more consistent with our modern culture, Dr. Felder interprets this first challenge as:
#1 – Discovering the Still, Small Voice Within, which takes as many forms as there are people:
Where are you today in your belief in God? If you do believe in God, what characteristics does he/she/it possess? I think past UU president Forrest Church stated another useful question to ask is, “If you don’t believe in God – who is the God you do not believe in?” to help you further clarify your thoughts on the Infinite. How do you view your beliefs? Have you shut out all possibilities but your own definition, or do you view your thoughts on God (or atheism) as ever-evolving? If you cannot entertain other possibilities, why is this so? Fear? Anger? Judgment? Blame? Certainty? Complacency?
Felder states that the Jewish Standing Prayer, which is recited throughout the day, includes “God of our ancestors, God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, God of Sarah”, etc. because even though there is only one God, we each have a unique way of understanding and expressing God’s presence, and must therefore find our own way – our own, unique path – to open up to the Divine.
And lest you are thinking to yourselves, “I can’t relate to all that “God” talk,” Listen to what Catholic theologian Anthony Wilhelm (in Felder) says:
“Many seek God and find God in the depths of their being without realizing it. Some through the unrelenting pursuit of truth and justice, or the good of the community, or another humanitarian ideal…. Through their total commitment to a transcendent idea they are reaching the absolute we call God.” I think Mr. Wilhelm makes a fine Unitarian, don’t you?
Dietrich Bonhoeffer speaks of a God beyond God, and Paul Tillich recommends a God beyond theism. Some do not use the word God, to avoid turning God into an idol. Thomas Moore, author of The Care of the Soul, and The Soul’s Religion, among other books, says, “A life given wholeheartedly to secular claims of beauty and human need may be the most religious of all.” - this coming from a man who was a Catholic monk for 12 years!
The deeper we go into our spirituality, the more the lines and forms of our understanding of God begin to blur. Moore references a diary entry by the fifteenth-century bishop Nicholas of Cusa in which he conducts a conversation between a Pagan and a Christian:
Pagan: Who is the God you worship?
Christian: I don’t know.
Pagan: It’s amazing to see someone devoted to what he doesn’t know.
Christian: It’s even more startling to see someone devoted to what he thinks he knows.
Pagan: Can God be named?
Christian: What can be named is small. That whose magnitude can’t be imagined is ineffable.
Pagan: Then God is ineffable?
Christian: No, he is beyond all that can be named.
One of the paradoxes of spirituality is that God is familiar, but unknown. Therefore, Moore states, everyone is called to be a mystic in his own way: to find that sanctuary where we know the presence of the unspeakable.
So, for this talk, do not put God in the traditional Judeo-Christian box of a kindly, bearded, white-haired father-figure, or a jealous, wrathful deity. “Think outside the bun,” as Taco Bell would say. I would also invite you to peek over the edges of any other boxes you may have put God into, especially the ones you have tightly wrapped up and put on your closet shelves with the big red tag, “Do not open until Christian,” or any other labels you may have applied. We are speaking of the Infinite – whatever term resonates with you.
Many, including Deepak Chopra and the late, esteemed mythologist Joseph Campbell, believe that we humans are hard-wired to seek something/someone beyond ourselves, and that we are born to wonder.
Because we are not a creedal religion and each of us is responsible for our own spiritual growth, deciding what you believe can be quite a challenge. What guidance do you have to form your beliefs? Uuism is not just escaping the constraints of more mainline religions. It is an active, self-directed search for spiritual growth.
Determining how we go about this is really the essence of the First Commandment, says Felder: “It is a request from God for each of us to decide whether we believe in and want to be partners with the Infinite One”.
You may have sought inspiration from many sources: speakers, books, friends, family, nature, etc., but there is much more work to be done to grow spiritually.
Kim Michaels, on her website www.askrealjesus.com, observes that those of us in the West tend to approach our search as we do other “problems” in our consumer-driven society. We, the spiritual path-searchers, have a need to fill. Hmmm, let’s see, where can I find a solution to my spiritual path dilemma? If I just find the right teacher/book/technique, I am sure my life will improve.
So we go spiritual path-shopping, as if going to the mall, in search of “the one thing” to fix this void or quench this desire in our lives. And we may try a lot of different “one things” since the last thing we tried didn’t quite do it. Michaels says that we are missing the basic, fundamental point of the spiritual journey: Although this problem-solution approach works great for a car, it does not work for spiritual growth. We are not in need of fixing only one aspect of our lives, but instead must look at changing our lives in toto. For true spiritual growth, we will need to change our entire consciousness, and that is only something we can do ourselves, no one outside of us can do it for us. (Sounds like a lot of work, doesn’t it? But, you knew this was going to be the answer, didn’t you?) The solution is not outside of ourselves: change comes from within, and we must each do our own work, as we each have a path unique to us. This requires a tremendous amount of self-awareness, which can only come with a lot of practice: Self-awareness is so necessary and yet so difficult to achieve! Chopra explains it this way:
“If you take a clear look at yourself, you will find that your mind is more like a swarm of bees than like an arrow shooting straight for the goal. A swarm of bees can travel from point A to point B, just like an arrow, but it does so in a vague, swirling, fuzzy way. Thus we hold in our minds all kinds of shifting attitudes, many of which contradict each other. Our love is bound up with hatred, our trust with suspicion, our altruism with selfishness. Because this is so, the only clear path to God is a path of constant self-awareness. You must see through your own mask if you want to take it off.” (What is the mask? Religious traditions have many names for it: delusion, wrong thinking, ego.)
This is the work of a lifetime (or many lifetimes), as what you believe and how you practice mature and evolve. What could not be seen or understood when you began becomes clearer as you travel your path. A friend of mine explained it this way: at sea level, the horizon is 17 miles, and that is as far as you can see. But, as you climb the mast of the ship, that horizon expands. Think of what your horizon would be from a plane, from the space shuttle, from the moon: the higher you go, the more you can see, and your understanding of things changes with each different perspective. The paradox of the spiritual path is that it is the deeper you go, the greater your perspective.
Now let’s look at that First Commandment with fresh eyes.
“I am the Lord, your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me.” The Hebrew translates as: I am the mysterious and unknowable name of God, your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. The word mitzrayim can refer to the actual place Egypt, or to anything that is narrow, restrictive, or limiting. This then translates to: “I am…your God, who can bring you out of a narrow way of seeing things, out of your enslavements and worries.” In addition to a Christian perspective of God, I think this actually fits very nicely with a Buddhist perspective as well, as articulated by Buddhist practitioner Gene Gibas: “There may be some ultimate force or power, but it will remain forever unknowable to mankind…The only thing that is really important is to attain a gentle, open, submitted relationship to the world around us.” Since one of the Buddhist tenets is that suffering is caused by wrong thinking about our relationship to the world, this could be the same power (whether you believe in a supreme being or not) to escape that narrow and restrictive way of thinking that is being talked about here.
For many of us, we not only have to decide what our understanding of God is and whether we are in partnership with whatever our definition of the Infinite is, but our spiritual life also includes how we treat others, our environment, and how we handle the stresses of daily life. Felder adds that the First Commandment, then, isn’t just about resolving our feelings about God and religion, but also challenges us to “decide on a daily basis, “How do I want to conduct my life so that it’s consistent with my spiritual beliefs”?” Do we feel, as many religions state, that we are a divine spark here on earth? If we are in partnership with the Infinite, how are we carrying out our responsibilities to treat others – and our earth – with respect and dignity?
The Earth is not really separate from us: Thomas Moore states that “our dealings with nature are more complicated than they appear to be. They are as much about ourselves as about our world. The protection of nature requires a caring attitude toward our own inner wilderness, our passions and urges and instincts. How we deal with nature is tied up in how we deal with the untamed soul and its passions.”
So, even our challenges have challenges! Spiritual growth, like aging, isn’t for sissies! What holds us back from experiencing the divine more frequently? Time? Interest? Pressing life demands? Emotional baggage? These are thorny issues to resolve if we wish to experience further personal growth and healing. It requires healthy reactions to experiences, according to Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield: mindfulness, connectedness, compassion, concern, strength and fearlessness. And the landscape is continually changing, so how do you go with the flow of life, and prevent stagnation in your spiritual growth? Chopra’s answer is: “Stop defining yourself. Don’t accept any thought that begins “I am this or that.”….You are in passage. You are in the process of redefining yourself every day. Aid that process, and you cannot help but leap forward on the path.”
This ability to be fluid - to defy definition - applies to what we think of God, as well. In The Spiral Dance by Starhawk, one of the leaders of the Goddess movement, she acknowledges this. “When I originally wrote The Spiral Dance, my covens always invoked both the Goddess and the God. In the intervening decade, the covens I work with have become more fluid in our interpretation of our relationship to images of divinity, or perhaps more frank in our understanding that these things are mysteries that we cannot ever fully understand.”
Thomas Moore urges us to re-vision religion. He feels there are two important aspects to consider to have a full spirituality: the soul, which is grounded in the day-to-day struggles we face, emphasizing our humanity, and the spirit, often portrayed as light, airy, (pointing above us in the forms of steeples, and pyramids, for example), inspiring us to lofty ideals. Moore argues that we must strike a balance between soul and spirit, and that most religious institutions focus only on the spirit, not the soul. The danger of this is that it may lift you above life’s everyday struggles, but it can take you far from reality, giving you a sense of moral superiority, and setting you up for disastrous experiences because the soul’s humanity is not addressed. “Spirituality can bring a fresh vision,…but groundedness in the muck and ordinariness of life helps us to find depth.” (Moore)
Moore also says we need to have a healthy balance of belief and unbelief. In other words, a rigid, inflexible belief does not allow other points of view and insight, and stifles our spiritual growth. We need to use our intelligence to question, to have a healthy skepticism, to put off belief until it rings true for us, or even feel free to change our beliefs as our experiences and growth change us. He emphasizes that unbelief is not the same as non-belief, which he feels is a life lived unconsciously, unexamined.
Any one on a spiritual path knows this does not give you a “get out of jail free” card with regard to life’s trials. One of the paradoxes Moore talks about is ordeal: As in the myth of Icarus, who fashioned wax wings to fly, but got too close to the sun, It is not just soaring to great spiritual heights but also the crash and burn that is an important and necessary part of spiritual growth. It is human nature to want to avoid suffering, but this is a mistake, according to Moore (and Buddhist psychology as well).
He likens the crash to pushing all our hopes into the depth of ordinary life like seeds in the ground. We find our “grounding” within the complexities of life, and, as a seed changes into new life, we too can reincarnate as a deeper, more meaningful human being because of the ordeal, if we choose to. It’s not a pretty path: “The path of depth passes through depression, anger, failure, and doubt, but it still can lead to a visionary place.” (Moore) If we avoid dealing with these emotions, we do not address or get to know a vital part of ourselves. If we stay the course and enter and explore those difficult places with an open heart, we can deepen to a point that prepares us for even greater mysteries. Ordeal “cracks us open” to receive the Divine.
I like the Buddhist view that this work is the work of a warrior, not in the traditional sense of aggression, but as someone of courage, because it is far more difficult to engage a spiritual journey than to live “unconsciously”.
Going to the depths of our soul is required for growth. As Rainer Maria Rilke puts it (Moore):
- God won’t be in life like a bright morning
- We have to go down into the shaft
- And through the hard work of mining
- Bring up the earth’s abundance.
- We have to stand hunched over
- And in tunnels dig him out.
We can’t use spirituality to escape from life. Rather, we must use our life as a vehicle for transformation. This life is the gift we have been given to learn to be who we truly are. Transformative introspection, though difficult, has its rewards. It shifts our center away from ego to a broader, multi-sided perspective. As Moore states, “From there we can be more tolerant of ourselves and others, and allow life to pass through us, shaping us as it does so, taking us to places we didn’t have the wisdom to wish for.”
We can’t use spirituality to achieve a goal of perfection, either. Moore cautions that “Fantasies of perfection grow like weeds in a mind focused on spirit. The very thought of becoming perfect or healthy or enlightened is riddled with ego. Why worry about the level of your progress when there is a world of people in need of whatever sensitivity you have?” (right now??) “The spiritual traditions focus on a loss of self, but fantasies of perfection magnify the self and make it the object of spiritual practice.”
One of the Buddhist meditation methods to calm the mind is focus on the breath. The word inspiration also refers to breath. Our spiritual growth can only occur with the give-and-take of breathing in life, breathing out our response to life. By not defending against it, we live life to its fullest and attain our fullest humanity.
Can we reach a point in our spiritual journey where we see all of life as one, rather than separate? Poet Wallace Stevens’ journal entry in Moore’s book The Religion of the Soul describes him nearing this realization:
…An old argument with me is that the true religious force in the world is not the church, but the world itself: the mysterious callings of Nature and our responses….But today in my walk I thought that after all there is no conflict of format but rather a contrast. In the cathedral I felt one presence; on the highway I felt another. Two different deities present themselves;…The priest in me worshipped one God at one shrine; the poet another God at another shrine. The priest worshipped Mercy and Love; the poet, Beauty and Might. In the shadows of the church I could hear the prayers of men and women; in the shadows of the trees nothing human mingled with Divinity. As I sat dreaming with the Congregation I felt how the glittering altar works on my senses stimulating and consoling them; and as I went tramping through the fields and woods I beheld every leaf and blade of grass revealing or rather betokening the Invisible.
Moore adds: “We re always reforming our vision, always refining our practice, and always trying out our own heresies – deviations from the direction we have found worthy of our belief…. Everything pulses with a hidden vitality and emerges from a hidden mystery. The point of a holy life is to be in harmony with that underlying source.” Secular and sacred should be interchangeable – we should see the eternal in everything.
Thank you for your kind attention. I hope as you journey on your spiritual path that you will each use your divine spark to greater service and to light the world. As UU’s, we are reminded that we are all divine light bulbs and we affirm the right of all bulbs to screw into the sockets of their choice regardless of the bulb’s illumination preference. UU’s seek for each light bulb the fullest opportunity to develop itself to its full electrical potential, so when you leave the coffee hour today, rise and shine!
- Chodron, Pema. The Places that Scare You. Boston: Shambhala Publications, Inc. 2001.
- Chopra, Deepak. How to Know God. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2000.
- Felder, Leonard. The Ten Challenges. New York: Harmony Books. 1997.
- Kornfield, Jack. The Wise Heart. New York: Bantam/Random House. 2008.
- Moore, Thomas. The Soul’s Religion. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. 2002.
- Starhawk. The Spiral Dance. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco. 1999.
Also, the following sources:
- Michaels, Kim, at www.askrealjesus.com
- A talk by Gene Gibas at the Fox Valley Unitarian Universalist Fellowship on 7/22/01 entitled, “Are Buddhism and Unitarian Universalism Made for Each Other?”
