This road will take you closer to the moon

I just love Linda McCullough Moore's writing and her book of short stories, "This Road Will Take You Closer To The Moon" is a gem. The title story describes a Thanksgiving back at home with her mother 20 years after her father has died with her three siblings and nieces and nephews. She describes the typical regression to sibling dynamics of their youth and the interaction with her nieces and nephews one of which, Molly, asks the narrator, Aunt Margaret, to turn a few times returning from the Thanksgiving buffet the whole family has attended which Aunt Margaret obligingly does as little Molly explains the reason for the request as "this road will take us closer to the moon."

The story is one of nostalgia and it is told with dark humor which I love. If there is a moral to the story it is that life, with its better and worse moments, is precious. You either laugh or cry. And I, the reader, does as I benefit from the story of Aunt Margaret's family visit at Thanksgiving.

Whose is the earth?

Climate disruption will hit the poor first and the hardest. Are we ready?

Disruption - Official Trailer from Watch Disruption on Vimeo.

What will we as Unitarian Universalists do to help when the climate disruption hits the poor first and the hardest? Are we ready? How can we prepare?

What kind of meaning is most meaningful for you?

When we consider what a free and responsible search for truth meaning is we have to assume as Dennis Ford points out in his book, The Search For Meaning, that the meaning offered in our culture is no longer persuasive or satisfying, in other words, we aren't buying it, and that living without meaning is not acceptable.

The existentialists have been telling us for decades that life is meaningless and God is dead. The existentialists argue that there is no inherent meaning in life for us to discover, but rather the meaning of life is whatever we want to make it. It's on us. God is dead because the myths that traditional religion has been selling about God are no longer believed and don't work any more to help us create satisfying and fulfilling lives.

In this 21st century, for those in the advanced stages of faith development, meaning is no longer satisfying settling for just buying more stuff and keeping up with the Joneses, vicariously living meaningful lives through our children's achievements, investing ourselves in the fan club of our favorite sport teams or celebrities, drinking, drugging, gambling, pursuing promiscuous sex, eating ourselves to greater and greater levels of obesity, giving our lives over to some corporation where we can work for 40 years to receive a gold watch at the end of our sentence.

The disenchanted usually become anxious and depressed and seek solace from their primary care physician who will prescribed psychotropic drugs to ease the symptoms of the dis-ease. And then there are those who turn to religion or what today they call "spirituality but not religious." There are those who look for guides and more actively engage in a search and those who just coast through life taking it a day at a time and living as if it were a do-it-yourself project.

For those who investigate Unitarian Universalism they receive permission and encouragement to engage in the search itself but that's about it. There is little guidance offered other than referrals to the six sources and joining groups where other seekers supposedly seek too and share anecdotes of the views from their experience traveling through life. The professional ministerial staff if there is one are not people of God, holy people, but rather professional hand holders who are more like the stewards and stewardess of an airplane that the pilot steering a plane to a previously agreed to destination.

The key to the answer of what will make me happy, how can I create a  happy life that is satisfying and fulfilling, is within not without. Jesus is clear about this when He tells us in Luke 17:21, "The Kingdom of God is within you." To what extent does Unitarian Universalism help us with the inward search?

Osho has said,

 "Man can live in two ways: either he can live according to the dictates of others - puritans, the moralists - or he can live according to his own light. It is easy to follow others, it is convenient and comfortable, because when you follow others they feel very good and happy with you.
     Your parents will be happy if you follow their ideas, although their ideas are absolutely worthless because their ideas have not made their lives illuminated, and it is so apparent. They have lived in misery, still they want to impose their ideas on the children. They cannot see a simple fact: that their life has been a failure, that there life has not been creative, that their life has never tasted bliss, that they have not been able to discover truth. They have not known the splendor of existence, they have no idea what it is all about. Still, their egos insist that the children should be obedient; they should follow their dictates."

How do you help people become a light unto themselves? Isn't this what the fourth principle is encouraging? And yet no method is provided. No field manual. No map. People are left to wander. The simple answer to the question is, as Dr. Freud taught us in the 20th century, to make the unconscious conscious. Socrates put it simply 2,000 years earlier "an unexamined life is not worth living", and yet how many people live examined lives in your observation? How does Unitarian Universalism help people live examined lives? How does Unitarian Universalism help us make the unconscious conscious.

Life has meaning of all kinds for all kinds of people in all kinds of cultures in every period of history since homo sapiens evolved into conscious, reflective creatures. The huge question is what kind of meaning is most meaningful for you in your life when and how?

What is the story of your life?

Linda McCullough Moore begins her story, Four Kinds Of People, in her book of short stories, This Road Will Take Us Closer To The Moon with these sentences: 

"I'm sitting in the late afternoon of my existence at Logan Airport reading the fine print on the backside of my boarding pass when my life walks in. Well, one of my lives, my former life. Carlton."

"The wife - I'll call her Mary Ann - asks him how long the layover in Charlotte is. He asks her how the hell would he know. Still the charmer."

"Are those your boys?" I say to Mary Ann.
No, we rented them for the trip. I make the only interesting reply.

"Are you married?" she asks me.
"Not at the moment, but I have high hopes for the thousand priests at Myrtle Beach."
"Oh," she says as though she has some clue what that might mean. I start to explain, but then think better of it. There are about four people in the world who are interested in the difference between Catholic and Episcopalian priests and their matrimonial proclivities.
"And you're not a nun, you say."
"Nope, still not a nun." I can see why she has a little trouble with the weather channel.

One might wonder how one should respond when stories of your past life encounter you unexpectedly and are filtered through the dark veil of ignorance begging for clarification which only the deeply initiated could possibly understand. In such instances the inherent worth and dignity of every person is hard to remember and, if remembered, hard to apply when people are clueless and naive. What does it take in moments like this to live the first principle? Patience, patience, and more patience.

Patience leads to forgiveness which leads to compassion which just might lead to gratitude. The narrator of the story is patient and has a good sense of humor, the kind that can laugh at the incongruity and absurdity of life. It is important to laugh with people and not at people, and experience the mysterious alchemy which transforms pain into peace, darkness into light, banal nonsense into grace.

The older we get the more former lives we have, the more stories that can haunt us, the more experiences we can cherish and enjoy in the sharing with others. We remember the children who were only with us a short time on the trip, the partner(s) we tried to love and hoped would love us, the goals we pursued some with triumph, some with defeat, some just abandoned for various reasons that we can't name or if we can, we don't tell others or want to talk about. Because we believe in the inherent worth and dignity of every person our faith inspires us to be grateful for tomorrow if it comes, because God only knows how the story will continue to be created and unfold, and we are filled with enthusiastic hope for the actualization of the divine potential that we and all our brothers and sisters possess.

Rising ocean levels - new NASA data

I have mentioned on UU A Way Of Life in previous articles as we have read Flight Behavior in July, and The Green Boat in August, that the sea levels on the Eastern seabord are rising rapidly. His is a segment from Thom Hartman published on 07/31/14.



How will this affect our UU churches in New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, DC, Florida, etc.?

Searching for truth and meaning in social justice projects or looking within?

When we consider the fourth principle of Unitarian Universalism "a free and responsible search for truth and meaning" we might first wonder what the words "truth" and "meaning" mean. Right? What are we talking about here? Is it Truth with a capital T or truth with a small t? And what is the meaning of meaning? Does it mean anything that means anything to me or is it psychobabble, or philosophical nonsense which is best left to the scholars and experts?

I am assuming that what the fourth principle is referring to is the existential question of "does life have meaning?" The Dali Lama has stated that the meaning of life is finding happiness. Slick answer isn't it? Everyone that I know wants to be happy. As a psychotherapist I have had clients who liked their suffering, their pain, their depression because it got them sympathy and attention, what we therapists call, "secondary gain", and playing the victim is great fun for the perpetrator of the game as it creates high drama and makes them the center of attention, the center of the drama and that, of course, you see where I'm going here don't you, makes them happy, as perverted as that may seem to some of the naive and innocent who don't get the game being played.

So the big question instead of what is the meaning of life is, perhaps, what will make me happy? Unitarian Universalism implies, in asking people to covenant together to affirm and promote the seven principles, that applying the seven principles will make them happy. And if this is the product which Unitarian Universalism is selling not many people are buying it at this point in human evolution. You might wonder if the product isn't any good or maybe Unitarian Universalism is just ahead of its time, offering something which most people are not at a place to appreciate and to know deep down that it is something they want and would make them happy.

Most people in American society are hedonists. They revel in the material world where consuming is the answer to our problems. After 9/11 President Bush encouraged Americans to keep shopping, to go shopping, to not let the terrorists win by showing them that capitalism is alive and well.

Osho makes a distinction between pleasure, happiness, joy, and bliss. To share my understanding of his four part model pleasure is sensory satisfaction, scratching the itch, drinking when you're thirsty, eating when you're hungry, sleeping when you're tired, having sex when you're horney. Happiness is an emotional state when engaging in an activity which is aesthetically pleasing, going to the art gallery, listening to good music, enjoying the company of someone you like, engaging in activities that are satisfying and fulfilling. Joy is not situationally related but an over all sense of well being and peace. Bliss is the flow state of becoming one with the all, transcending the ego plane of projected experience.

And so when we say that the meaning of life is pursuing a path of that which we think will make us happy are we pursuing truth with a small t or a capital T, and is the meaning of the pursuit idiosyncratic or something more universal?

Other religions help people distinguish the path to happiness and sometimes are dictatorial about it saying this will take you to heaven and that will take you to hell but Unitarian Universalism is more laid back, it has no one way, but is purposefully eclectic. This is both its genius and its downfall. For while Unitarian Universalism encourages and promotes and affirms a free and responsible search for truth and meaning it leaves the adherent, aside from acknowledging the six sources, entirely on his/her own aside from cultural preferences of every particular UU congregation some of which are humanistically oriented, or christian oriented, or buddhist oriented, or Earth-centered oriented or a potpourri which is of very little help to anyone because if you accept everything, you'll fall for anything.

The UU search for truth and meaning then becomes extremely difficult because the UU adherent is left pretty much on his or her own. The question of what will make me happy is left amorphous, ambiguous, open ended, up in the air, and so with no supplied guideposts, the UU adherent is left to engage in social justice projects in search for meaning or looking within. Of course these alternatives are not mutually exclusive and might include both or even a third or fourth way. How do you find truth and meaning in your life? How does your faith  help you?