I began our service this morning with these words taken from a reading at the back of our hymnal: From the fragmented world of our everyday lives we gather together in search of wholeness.
Indeed, our lives can become fragmented as we try to do all the things that life demands of us: We do our errands, make our appointments, try to earn a living wage to support our families, try to find time for our own interests like exercise, reading and rest, yes, even getting enough sleep is a challenge for many.
We spend time in car pools, in church meetings, and maintaining our homes.
We listen to talk radio and NPR and all the other news shows and we are reminded continuously just how fragmented our world really is.
No one seems immune from the pressures of everyday existence.
Why even ministers aren't immune from this fragmentation. Just this week I think I put over 300 miles on my car just traveling back and forth between meetings.
And in recent years the phrase "appointment TV" has come into popular use to describe those shows that are so important to us that we put them on our PDAs and calendars so as not to schedule some other conflicting event.
From the fragmented world of our everyday lives we gather together in search of wholeness.
We, you and I and all of us this room, have chosen to come out of the fragmented world, if only for the hour we spend in worship, to come into this space of love and light to be present with one another in our individual search for wholeness.
We, you and I and all of us this room have chosen to come out of the fragmented world in our search for a moment of rest before we tumble headlong into the next demand on our time.
From the fragmented world of our everyday lives we gather together in search of wholeness.
I think it is easy for us to agree about what constitutes our fragmented world, but what is this wholeness the author speaks of?
Matthew Fox, one of my favorite writers on issues of religion and theology has written this.
"In times like ours, when the planet is reeling from abuse and misuse at the hands of humans, when human inventions and discoveries have shrunk time and space so we can communicate by Internet and satellites instantaneously with others around the globe, when livable space for our own and other living species is dwindling and being depleted, it ought to prove especially beneficial to look to spirituality to help us find our way back (and forward) to what it means to be human."
And let me just repeat this last sentence, "it ought to prove especially beneficial to look to spirituality to help us find our way back (and forward) to what it means to be human."
Now I've been around long enough to know that for some here this morning what I just said has caused some discomfort. There he goes again using that spirituality word. Does it qualify to be an S____ word?
I think the word spirituality causes angst for those who associate the term with religious practices that they have rejected and left behind. So let me have another try at making this word less objectionable in some minds.
Yes, in my mind the word spirituality does relate to what is referred to as spirit.
I admit that the word, spirituality, has been so overused, and in such generic ways as to be almost meaningless.
But for me, the word spirituality refers to the life force that characterizes a living being as being alive.
The Latin root of spirit, spiritus, means simply to breath. And I believe that it is our sense of spirituality that allows each of us to breathe in the wonder of existence.
Or perhaps we can try and look at it from another perspective. Every traveler on this journey called life must wonder from time to time where am I on the path so far?
What lessons have I learned along the way and what challenges may hide around the next bend? Why am I on this journey? How much longer will it last?
To me being a spiritual person, a person in search of wholeness, means being a person willing to be open to your own life story, being willing to share this story with others, and being curious about where you are on your journey.
Again, Matthew Fox quotes the Dalai Lama. "Everything starts with us, with each of us. The indispensable qualities are peace of mind and compassion. Without them it's useless even to try.
Those qualities are indispensable. They are also inevitable. I've told you: We will surely find them in ourselves, if we take the trouble to search for them.
We can reject every form of religion, but we can't reject and cast off compassion and peace of mind.
Inner work, that which learns compassion and peace of mind, is key to being human and is the key practice in all spiritual traditions."
Now much of this work on learning where we are and who we are can be accomplished individually. Consider the Native American practice of the vision quest.
The "vision quest" was one of the prime elements in Native American spirituality.
In broad terms, it involved a person retiring alone to a remote spot in search of a life-guiding vision or a gift of supernatural power ("medicine") for healing or warfare.
The individual would go without food or sleep for three or four days and nights and undertake certain physical activities to help promote the sought-after visionary experience.
This would often, though not always, involve the appearance of a spirit in human form that would approach and address the vision seeker, then leave as an animal - this would be understood as becoming the quester's power animal or helper spirit.
The spirit appearing in the vision or waking dream might make a gift of a special song or dance step to the quester so that he or she could use it to "call" on that spirit helper in the future.
A person would typically undergo a vision quest as a rite of passage from childhood to adulthood, but in some tribes a brave might undertake several vision quests over a lifetime in order to restore any perceived waning of his supernatural warrior-power.
Also, medicine men or shamans, the magician-seers of American Indian spirituality, would typically undergo far more vision quests than normal tribal members in order to replenish or enhance their supernatural power, converse with spirits, and engage in other shamanic tasks such as divination or weather magic.
Shamans' visions would occur in particularly deep and powerful trance states that were often aided and abetted by the use of potent mind-altering plants - often strong tobacco and sometimes plant hallucinogens - along with chanting, drumming and other forms of trance induction.
But in most cases worship occurs in various types of gatherings. We meet in synagogues, temples, mosques, ashrams, house churches and cathedrals. In each of these place individuals gather together in search of wholeness in their lives.
The reason people have gathered together in worship for so many centuries is to have a place where they can experience a kind of intimacy, a kind of community support, that may not be available in the workaday world.
Folks come to church to gather together in love, to be together in times of joy and sorrow, and to come together so they can share stories of their experiences along life's journey.
Some come to find a deeper intimacy with what ever name they give to the holy and divine.
Some come to lift up their deepest joys and sorrows so others will know what is deepest in their hearts, and some come for the experience of the silence that helps them to heal and to find their sense of wholeness.
Yes, we can worship alone, but whenever we gather together in worship the awareness of our sense of belonging, our sense of honesty and openness, our sense of community seems to deepen.
Our bodies need rest. But more desperately than our bodies need rest, our spirits need to be re-energized.
That does not mean we do not engage in a variety of spiritual practices during the week.
But there is something especially refreshing and dynamic about being together in worship on a Sunday morning.
It is a time in which we can devote ourselves to the task of finding wholeness in our lives and being at rest with our spirit.
As we take a break from living in this fragmented world, our frayed emotions can have the time to rebound. Our over active minds will be able to let go of the cares and concerns that so occupy us all the other days and hours of the week.
Though we are spirit, soul, and body, we are one person. What affects one aspect of our being also affects the others.
When you are spiritually and emotionally refreshed, your physical being responds. We need this special day. We need this day that we may find respite from the fragmented world and in our coming together begin to experience the wholeness each of us yearns for.
We Unitarian Universalists do not all believe the same things about God or our spiritual lives, but we come together for worship as religious seekers with similar needs.
We come to worship in order to stretch ourselves toward the transcendent, which some know as God.
We come because we find ourselves a little too alone in our confusion or our despair for the world, a little too lonely in our solitude, and we need to feel the press of other people around us in a way that will linger and sustain us much more than a random gathering in a mall, or a theater.
We come because we feel too crowded by our schedules, our families, our chores, our worries, and we want to tap into the pool of contemplative silence we know is lying there somewhere a little deeper down.
We come to give our children the religious language and experiences they need for their own spiritual lives.
We come for the music, for the social contact, for inspiration in our struggles to bring more justice to the world, and for the new vision we might glimpse.
We come in the hope that when we mix all of those things together some small, amazing insight will arise, and the meaning of our lives will become a little clearer to us.
We come to worship in order to turn our attention toward those things in our lives that we hold to be of ultimate worth.
This morning in Boston Unitarian Universalists are gathering in worship at King's Chapel. Worship at King's Chapel has evolved over more than 300 years.
Its webpage states that worship at King's Chapel, the first Unitarian church in North America, follows a distinctive blend of Anglican liturgy and Christian theology.
The congregation is creedless in the sense that it does not require affirmation of or adherence to any particular doctrine or interpretation of religion other than what is implied in the words of the Covenant subscribed to by the members of The Society of King's Chapel: "In the love of Truth and in the Spirit of Jesus Christ, we unite for the Worship of God and the Service of Man."
The congregation's prayer book, "The Book of Common Prayer According to the Use in King's Chapel," is unique.
The first edition was published in 1785 under the ministry of the Rev. James Freeman. At that time the congregation voted to make certain changes to the 1662 Anglican prayer book then in use in order to give expression to a classical Unitarian Christian theology.
Among other things the recitation of a creed was omitted and the prayers were directed to God alone.
In the words of the Preface to the current (ninth) edition of the Prayer book published in 1986: "The resulting liturgy is both reformed and catholic. It is reformed because it is based on Scripture and is open to periodic amendment. It is catholic, as the early Unitarians used this word, because it includes a broad spectrum of Christian beliefs and is open to many interpretations."
In the Midwest this morning, many who call themselves Unitarian Universalists are gathering for worship not as congregations or churches, but as fellowships.
There may be no hymns, but if there are, they may be called simply songs; there may be no sermon, but rather a "talk" and there one rarely hears much about God, faith, spirituality or prayer.
This morning Unitarian Universalists are gathering to worship in the Buddhist practice of mindfulness, and in the Quaker practice of silence.
Some proudly retain their Unitarian roots while others are still known only as Universalist church.
But regardless of how they are known, and what liturgy they follow, in all our churches this morning people are coming together to find wholeness, to find a place of belonging and a place where they are known.
Writing in the May volume of the Christian Century, Barbara Brown Taylor observed that, "There is always tragedy somewhere, as the news reminds us so well. But there is not always tragedy everywhere, which the news does not make quite so clear.
She observes that even in tragic circumstances, like the events in the Nickel Mines schoolhouse, good people of every faith tradition come to the service of those most in need. She calls these less well known stories the "Good News" of the day.
"Terrible things will continue to happen, which the best efforts of people will not be sufficient to prevent, but bursts of gratuitous kindness are the mustard seeds from which healing bushes sometimes grow..."
But less we think that all news is bad news, she adds that "There are entire towns where nothing terrible is happening, where parents are caring for children with remarkable tenderness, where nurses are tending patients, mail carriers are delivering packages, and at least one person is taking off work early to coach a youth soccer team."
She goes on to say that, "When I resist the economy and despair of the dominant world in which I live, I resist from a minority viewpoint that I learned in church.
In that alternate reality... human beings are worth more than what they can buy or sell, and suffering breaks open as many hearts as it breaks down....
And here she concludes, "In a culture of fear, addicted to the bad news of sin and death, (we must) keep telling stories of human kindness and divine grace--without commercials of any kind. In a world like ours, the church may be the only corporate sponsor that can afford to deliver such good news for free."
This morning we have come together from out of our busy work-a-day worlds to find ways of living in this world that will build us up and not tear us down. We come looking for ways to find truth and meaning in an often chaotic world.
We come to do the inner work of seeking peace, seeking forgiveness, seeking good counsel and seeking ways to replace despair with hope.
We come together with the strength to give comfort to others and with deep needs that cry out for the support of another.
And when we come together like this, flowing together from out of our many individual springs of existence we form the stream we call humanity.
And this stream lifts us up and carries us toward wholeness.
Amen and Blessed be