Sermon Seck

Back Unitarian Universalists for a Just Economic Community

"The Great Turning" Toward What
The Rev. Dr. Lucy Hitchcock Seck
Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Miami
October 15, 2006

'tis the gift to be simple,
'tis the gift to be free
'tis the gift to come down where we ought to be
and when we find ourselves in the place just right
'twill be in the valley of love and delight.
When true simplicity is gained,
to bow and to bend we shan't be ashamed.
To turn, turn, will be our delight
'til by turning, turning, we come round right.

How presumptuous it is to think that we, or anyone, know just the right turn to take, to make things come out just right. The choir was discussing this week how appropriate it will be to sing, in a few weeks at a service on the history of this congregation, an anthem to Robert Frost's poem, "A Road Not Taken." So proud we, Unitarian Universalists, are to take the road less traveled by or at least proud we do not take a road just because it is the most popular one, or it is the one someone tells us we'd better take. We are proud of being a religion of heretics people who choose for ourselves.

But I confess, that ever since I became a serious social activist, I have longed for a recipe book. Not just any recipe book, but a really comprehensive, yet understandable one, like "The Joy of Cooking" is to food. And the subject of the recipe book would be a game plan for the steps toward a truly beneficent society. Beneficent in a comprehensive and an equitable way.

I started my social activism about the same time I left being a Presbyterian. I left being a Calvinist Presbyterian because I read the Westminster Confession as a freshman in college when my jaw dropped open. I never knew that the religion of my childhood believed in predestination and that only the elect would be saved. And I never got until several history books and courses later that our American society was built on the Calvinist doctrine of manifest destiny (predestination) and an economic elect and an economic damned. We call ourselves a democratic nation, but there is democracy and then there is democracy. As David Korten writes, "One of the important lessons of history is that those who own, rule." Our US Constitution was written so that only propertied men could vote. It has been twice amended so that now all US citizens can vote, but, I would argue the original purpose stands: it is the generously propertied folk who rule, rule our country and rule the world.

To me it is obvious, even simple, in writing this cookbook to begin with the premise that the recipes will stir up beneficence, not just for the elect, but for all. Many of us wear a teal colored t-shirt with a white dove on the front and the words, "The price of world peace is economic justice for all." That would be a great turning indeed, if we turned from rule by who has the most property, to democracy because everyone, every American had an equal voice. Or, better, as the road the recipe book would reveal, a turn to a democracy where every citizen of the world has an equal voice.

But, it turns out that that is too simplistic a pudding to aim for. And it can't even be the first step. There is something bigger wrong than inequality and it is spiritual. Or rather it is the locus of the spiritual. If we can't get right the locus of our ultimate concern, as Paul Tillich called it, we aren't gonna "turn 'round right."

So, today I am going to talk theology and worldview and a turning toward a proper locus of our ultimate concern. It is so deeply and infinitely important that I am going to save for another day a sequel on the practical whats we could turn towards. It is a complex topic because it is important to understand the history of how we got to where we are now so that we will not stay trapped by that history and mindset. But, I believe it is also absolutely simple and dare I say common sense. As David Korten says, we must find new stories in order to turn from Empire to Earth Community. Korten also gives a progression in orders of consciousness to develop. His five orders are magical consciousness, imperial consciousness, socialized consciousness, cultural consciousness and spiritual consciousness. But it is not David Korten I want to quote but Thomas Berry in a new book called Evening Thoughts: Reflecting on Earth as Sacred Community. He concentrates on spiritual consciousness and as a religious institution I urge us to begin there and thus under gird our progressive thinking.

Thomas Berry is now in his nineties. He is Roman Catholic. In fact his book is dedicated to "my monastery community, which has guided, educated, and supported me through these many years." He is also a scientist, a cosmologist, a cultural historian, a student of comparative religions and an ecologist. He calls himself not a theologian but a geologian. His writing draws insights from many religions so he is not christocentric in his presentation.pretty out there for a Catholic still in the fold. Perhaps his best-known book was written with the mathematical cosmologist, Brian Swimme, The Universe Story.

Berry reviews for us the progression of spiritual consciousness through the ages and shows where we, and his own Catholic church went astray. Berry's creation story is one inspired by scientific evolution and Teilhard de Chardin's spiritual evolution. First and foremost, an evolution of life forms, and then an evolution of human forms and human consciousness. The first stage of human spiritual evolution, he calls the tribal-shamanic period. This was a period where people were in awe of the universe they found themselves in. Their needs and their divinities were intricately tied to the earth and its provisions. He writes "A pervasive religious rapport with the spirit powers of the natural world developed. The gods and goddesses were born in the human mind as expressions of those ultimate creative sources of existence. Ritual enabled humans to enter into the grand liturgy of the universe itself. Seasonal renewal ceremonies brought humans into the rhythms of the solar cycle. This was a period of wonder and creativity that was to shape the human future until or timesThe human experienced itself in integral relationship with the surrounding forces of the universe."

Although, we might say now, that the first stage was primitive, it was also holistic and ultimate concern was focused on the earth and within a lively cosmos. There was not yet a thought of separation of the human from the rest of nature. Our interdependence was so obvious.

The second stage of human spiritual evolution was for Berry "the period of the classical religious culture of the Eurasian, American and African worlds." He writes, "To alter this primordial sense of continuity throughout the universe seems to have been the basic purpose of biblical revelation. Within the biblical context, the continuity of divine presence with the natural world was altered by establishing the divine as a transcendent personality creating a world entirely distinct from itself.The continuity between the human community and the natural world was altered by identifying the human as a spiritual being in contrast to all other beings. Only the human belonged to the sacred community of the redeemed. The previous sense of a multi-species community was diminished."

I want to rest a while on this insight. This is the most devastating critique of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition I have heard and the most telling. The earth's troubles began with a concerted attempt by religion and the governments who came to expression out of that religion to separate what is religious, what is spiritual, what is good, from what is earthly. The earth's troubles were then exacerbated by framing human beings as the good spiritual beings, at least when they behaved well, and depriving all other beings, animate and inanimate, of the frame of "spiritual." Heaven was no longer on earth or in the universe but was a some altered state or transcendent level that trees and cats and even diamonds could not aspire to. The wilderness became demonic. The human began to use the earth for agriculture, for fuel, for "development." The earth was deforested, plowed, built upon, paved over, polluted, abused. This process of abuse and neglect of the earth which should have been a relationship of a basic spiritual interconnection and care was defended because of religion a religion that held the human in higher regard that all else. This same humanism that inspired great books and art, music, cathedrals and museums, and locally sustainable agriculture for a growing population, has also led to the devastation of the planet on which we must surely depend for our future.

The third stage is the scientific-technological-industrial period that is completing its arc now. The inventions of the human mind have been extraordinary. Combined with a wealth, mined originally from the earth, our minds have created fantastic inventions. There are petrochemicals to produce a green revolution. There are amazing transportation and communication systems which have interwoven the far reaches of the globe. There are medicines to prolong human life. There are moon shots, microscopic intrigues, and cultural exchanges never possible in earlier ages. The ongoing creation story is extraordinary. But there is also a destruction story arising from this also military-industrial-corporate complex. The destruction of thousands of whole species, annually, is terrifying when we stop to look. The fourth stage is where Thomas Berry and David Korten put their hope and where I suggest we place our ultimate concern. Berry calls it "the emerging ecological period when the intercommunion of all living and nonliving systems of the planet is being activated at a new level of mutual presence." Korten calls it "earth community."

Berry again, "The New Story of the universe is a biospiritual story as well as a galactic story and an Earth story. Above all, the universe as we now know it is integral with itself through its vast extent in space and throughout the long series of its transformations in time. Everywhere, at all times, and in each of its particular manifestations, the universe is present to itself. Each atomic element is immediately influencing and being influenced by every other atom of the universe. Nothing can ever be separated from anything else.Thus everything is needed. Without the perfection of each part, something is lacking from the whole. Each particular being in the universe is needed by the entire universe. With this understanding of our profound kinship with all life, we can establish the basis for a flourishing Earth community."

This brings me back to our part in this whole. And I want to start simple. I want to see if we, as a congregation, can agree that the focus of our ultimate concern can be unanimous. I want to see if we are in agreement that the glory and the integrity of the earth/cosmos is worthy of our worship and our primary care through an intentional "earth community" dedicated to its reflorescence. I want to see if we are willing to address ourselves to leaving behind what I would call a pathological separation from reverence for the earth. This means learning to analyze our thinking patterns, our speech patterns, our assumptions on which we base our daily living to see where our ultimate concern currently lies and with the help of each other shift it toward a simple and lively celebration of and protection of the earth and all its creatures.

I urge you to join our study group on "The Great Turning" as a place where our deliberations may begin. If we agree, I plan to under gird my presentations with you with a liturgy of earth community. I will ask you to help me and to help each other to bring us toward a simple-gifts-laden unity, which appreciates our diversity of culture and individuality and which co-conspires, breathes together, toward a generous creativity and compassion for the world around us of which we are a part.

When true simplicity is gained
To bow and to bend we shan't be ashamed.
To turn, turn will be our delight
Til by turning, turning we come round right.

Quotes from David Korten, The Great Turning from Empire to Earth Community, Kumarian Press, Inc, Bloomfield, Ct., 2006

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