Ministry

 Meditation
1. Benjamin Franklin’s own epitaph on his grave in Philadelphia:

 

 

“The body of B. Franklin, Printer, Like the Cover of an old Book, Its Contents torn out, and stript of its Lettering and Gilding, Lies Here, Food for Worms. But the work shall not be lost; for it will, as he believ’d, appear once more in a new and more elegant Edition corrected and improved by the Author.”

 

 

2. from  Longing of the Heart  by Paul N. Carnes

 

“We are not isolated from nature.

We are not isolated in our thinking. 

We exist and have our being

In an intangible sea of thought.

We live in this sea

As a fish lives in water.

Floating in this sea for the taking

Is all the wisdom of the ancients.

Floating in this sea for the taking

Are all the aspirations

of those now dead.

Floating on this sea for the taking

Are all the creative imaginings

Of the world’s artists and prophets.

In this evolution

Each has a mission and place.

We all contribute

To this sphere of the mind. 

Thus our actions live on

Deathless through eternity.

Comment: please take the words of both readings with you into the silence.

 

Our Unitarian Universalist religious tradition of pluralism and non-creedal diversity encourages us to explore the edges, horizons, curiosities and mysteries of our human spirits Even so, reincarnation for most  Unitarians and Universalists is one that has about as much interest to it as does re-exploring the notion of original sin. We are a religion of the present, of the NOW of life; what happens after death [if anything] is not too important to most of us. But is that really the case? And just why would I want to delve into this old chestnut? 

It is for several reasons.

First of all, I continue to believe that the use of reason and the use of the scientific method in the pursuit of understanding is necessary, even essential to us as Unitarians and Universalists. They are two of our central religious requirements. And yet - there are times when we close our eyes to the myriad of other realities that cannot yet be comprehended by reason or science.  I am concerned about that. Very seldom can we “explain” crucial and yet often ephemeral things like hope, courage, love, loyalty, discrimination, or evil by rational, scientific means...and yet...we all know  these  qualities exist.

I still recall (from ten years ago) hearing with some amusement, an announcement on the radio. Medical researchers were celebrating that they had found a hitherto unknown muscle that connects the neck to the brain and - as the  broadcaster said: “Therefore there is something to be said for having massages to take away headaches.”  Hello, finally medical research has caught up with other methods of healing, of knowing, of learning and of being and the medical researchers felt that now they had given their stamp of approval, that now massages have been given credibility. There is more than a little arrogance being transmitted here!

It is important for us to be clear about the role reason has to play in understanding the world from our religious perspective. Reason helps to sort, organise, clarify and deduce meaning from thoughts, events and emotions. But reason needs partners in its task - partners like experience, intuition, imagination, wonder.

Secondly, we Unitarians and Universalists are moving into a resurgence or a restating of some of 19th Century’s Transcendentalist themes and towards a re-balancing of mind and spirit. This brings in its wake a rediscovery of the questions that Transcendentalism found to be exciting and uplifting. Questions like: What is the soul? How can we, how do we, know it? How does ‘mind’ relate to the soul? The Transcendentalists did not find the ‘present’ as disconnected from the past and future as we do -- life was more of a flowing river...and always part of the larger ocean.

As we interact more and more with the world community and in particular with the eastern half, we are forced to the conclusion that belief in reincarnation is not some passing fancy for a few superstitious natives in some backwater of the world. It is a belief that brings comfort and strength to millions of people from quite different theological positions. Therefore it is something we need to do more than tolerate. For those of you who are strict rational humanists with little use for anything other than the intellect ‘straight-up,’  hold on tight - this sermon may make you experience a bit of metaphorical white-water rafting!

Reincarnation - a word that is used by different people - Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, Taoists, Theosophists, mystical Jews and Christians, and New Age people, to mean somewhat different things. At its simplest level however, it means the belief in a form of survival; that individual souls [or some aspect of one’s self] are born over and over again to improve themselves; that many lives are as essential to our spiritual evolution as a succession of years are to our physical development. Often used at the same time, is the word ‘karma’ - the moral law of cause and effect. Karma is a ‘cosmic accounting’ - a totaling up all the debits and credits in a lifetime presumably resulting in what kind of a life is next. Karma is a cosmic harmoniser - the opportunity to learn from the effects of our actions so that we can bring harmony  into our immortal souls.

There is so much about the reincarnation belief  package that I find captivating and an equal amount that I reject.

Let me start with that which troubles me; with the illusion of reincarnation as a useful means to live life fully and deeply.

I am troubled by the way reincarnation can be used to explain misfortune. “Too bad that little baby/young woman/old man  had to die so horribly-- s/he must have had a terrible karma.” To me this attitude tends to belittle the life of the person - to negate its worth as nothing more than a learning experience. Believing thus, we might mistakenly give in to each impulse as it comes along and take no responsibility for any outcome of our actions. Any belief encouraging a lack of responsibility is dangerous indeed.

I also have difficulty with reincarnation when it is used to support fatalism. You know, the attitude that says: “There is no point in trying to improve myself; this is my lot in life this time around,” or, “it’s not my fault, I’m just acting out my karma,” or, “There’s nothing we can do to help those people in Darfur, they’re just paying for their previous life mistakes.” to be fatalistic about life is to give up free will; it can also be a way that supports laziness and a sense of helplessness. This perception leads to apathy and for me, apathy is one of the many faces of evil.

And I am also cynical about the number of important people that seemingly can be discovered in one’s past lives, but seldom any ordinary human. As Daniel Douglas Home reports in A Case for Reincarnation:

“I have had the pleasure of meeting at least twelve Marie Antoinettes, six or seven Mary of Scotland, a whole host of Louis’ and other kings, about twenty Great Alexanders, but never a plain John Smith. I, indeed, would like to cage the latter curiosity.”

Finally, when I watched a double program on the Tibetan Book of the Dead, which dealt with reincarnation I was also puzzled by, and unaccepting of, the fact that this is all preordained - that scripture says that this is what will happen and that therefore it is the only thing that can happen. As a Unitarian Universalist I am bound to have problems with this creedal statement!

But even though I have serious reservations, I still find much in the theory of reincarnation to make me want to think more on it.

For example, I was amazed to learn just how many Unitarians and Universalists of the 19th Century were believers in reincarnation. The whole school of Transcendentalists were supporters of this view - Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Bronson Alcott, Frederick Hedge -- and also Unitarians from England; Coleridge and Dickens and many, many more. The list of people who have found this theory to be helpful to them in living their lives to the fullest in every century is huge - and full of politicians, scientists, poets, musicians, philosophers, theologians. It quite boggles the mind!

My reading and research has also informed me about the amazing method and equally surprising results used by the Tibetan Buddhists to find a new and reincarnated Dalai Lama each time the old one dies. It is a search and journey that makes the search of the Magi for Jesus look like an afternoon trip with a detailed road map! (The Magi also believed in reincarnation, by the way] Well, the Tibetan Buddhists believe that the next Lama is always reincarnated from the previous one but that his identity is not revealed ahead of time. The long search (it took 3 years this time) involved physical clues, the advice of oracles, mystical questions, deliberate misdirection to put off any false Lamas, the paying of a large ransom to the Chinese governor of the province in which the young boy was found. 

 

 

For someone like myself who enjoys reading mystery books, I was right at home! And the writings of the mature Dalai Lama are not to be scoffed at. He is obviously a person of intellectual and spiritual depth and one who is courageous and humorous into the bargain.

 

 

For those of us still around at the time, it will be interesting to see how the search for the next Dalai Lama goes....  the present Lama has said that there is no way that the next Dalai Lama will be born in a country that is under the thrall of a military dictatorship - which is the case of Tibet at the present time.

I have also been impressed in my reading to learn about the hundreds of verified cases of children  who remember their past lives. They seem to offer undisputed proof of reincarnation around the world and the research has been done by scientists/doctors of integrity (Dr. Ian Stevenson being the best known) [look at his web site: http://www.healthsystem.virginia.edu/internet/personalitystudies]. I have also, however, read the scientific critiques and problems with accepting this data. Yet, fascinated though I am, I still hold back. Will I have to give up my dance with the Unitarian Universalists if I find support and enhancement for myself in this life view?

One of my colleagues, the Reverend Denise Tracy said in a sermon, “...we Unitarian Universalists are supposed to be able to believe diversely, but sometimes we have an unwritten, unspoken doctrine of theological correctness...[we are] more comfortable with those who believe similarly to the majority of us and we respond with awkwardness to those who believe differently, which results in their silence.”

I realise my religious views are being exposed to new, foreign ideas. And further than that, the different is always seductive and not always true. What then is at the core of my fascination? I think it is the excitement of learning something new to me and ancient to so many others and perhaps even finding another tool to help me become all I can be.

In the words of Barbara Holleroth, let me remind you of the opening words I used this morning:

"It is sometimes said that we are born as strangers into the world, and that we leave it when we die. But in all probability, we do not come into the world at all. Rather we come out of it, in the same way that a leaf comes out of the tree or a baby  from its mother's body. We emerge from deep within [the world’s] range of possibilities, and when we die, we do not so much stop living as our living takes on a different form. So the leaf does not fall out of the world when it leaves the tree it has a different way to be in it."  (UU Barbara Holleroth)

This is not the same thing as reincarnation, I know, and yet, it points in a similar direction. ‘We emerge from deep within the range of possibilities of the world ... and when we die, we do not so much stop living as our living takes on a different form.’ says Barbara Holleroth. This is the kind of living/dying cycle we are most comfortable with. We live on in some other form, in the memories of those whose lives we touched; the good or bad we did lives after us, we affect the world by our being here.

How large a step is it to believe that the ‘I’ that exists now is attached to a ‘soul’ that will return in some form or another? What impact would it have on us if we thought that we had individual immortal souls, and that we wore different personalities which were shed at the end of each lifetime, in the same way we wear clothes which we take off at the end of each day? How would it affect how we live today? What would it change if we believed that we were not living on a human plane and possessing a spiritual life, but rather, believed that we live on a spiritual plane and possess a human life?

One of the positive outcomes could be no longer blaming our backgrounds, our heredity completely for our problems; another would be not being able to blame the environment in which we live. It is how we handle/respond to both that is the reality and the testing ground for our soul. Perhaps for many of us this is how we live anyway, and we don’t need a rather exotic life view to explain living ethically and sensibly.

I wonder, though, if it might not give more depth to our living if we saw ourselves as having more than one opportunity to improve our mind, heart and spirit? In my case, as I am thinking through the possibilities of this question, I think it might. There is a certain sense of adventure, a continuity of learning in the school of life that appeals to me. I have often said that I would have to live to be 150 to even come close to learning and experiencing all that I know I have to learn and experience. If I were to find meaning in the idea of reincarnation I might be more willing to let go of some of the areas I am attempting to grow in, and concentrate on fewer of them. There might be less of a whirling dervish-ness to my life, and more of a listening awareness to a few items of worth.

This idea of reincarnation might also help to explain those times when there seems to be an instant recognition with some people that is extremely hard to explain. A “knowingness” that is eerie and yet at the same time comfortable. Very occasionally I have met someone and have had this kind of knowing. With one person I shared my sense of this recognition - and it meant nothing to him - but neither did it damage or impede our ability to work with each other. We were both dedicated UUs and we respected each other’s skills and ways of being in the world. I don’t think he even asked me for the name of the space ship I had arrived on!

One thing I know for sure. I am slowly and carefully exploring some new ideas, pushing at the borders of my present understanding and find a reality there that I did not expect to find. I may not end up with a “reincarnationist” life view, but I have had to admit that my ongoing research has forced me to take a long, hard look at what does matter to me. I know that I want to live as a being with spirit as well as with body. I know that I want to learn and do and be much more than it appears I will have time to learn and do and be. I want, when I am finished with this life, to have done the best that my spirit, mind, heart and body could manage and to await whatever adventure afterwards is there. Surely this is what we all want. Perhaps it will be simply contributing to that ‘sphere of the mind/[with]...our actions living on/deathless through eternity’ mentioned by Paul Carnes in his poem;  or perhaps more than that, as Benjamin Franklin’s epitaph proclaims. I am still checking it out.

All in all, I hope this poem of Kazantzakis might apply to me at the end of this lifetime: (I have changed the pronouns so that they match my gender)

“Let Death come down to slavish souls and craven heads

With his sharp scythe and barren bones, but let him come to this

.....like a great lord to knock with shame

on her famous castle doors, and with great awe

plunder whatever dregs that in her sturdy body still

have not found time, in its great fight, to turn from flesh

and bone into pure spirit, lightning, joy, and deeds.

...this woman has fooled you, Death, she’s squandered all your goods

till they escaped you in pure spirit, and when you come,

you’ll find but trampled fires, embers, ash, and fleshly dross.”

If I have lived life to the fullest, there will only be trampled fires, embers, ash and fleshly dross left -- that which is of no importance. What is of importance will have been absorbed and transformed. Something of me goes on, goes somewhere. that is where my research leaves me at this moment. Continuing to be curious, continuing to attempt an understanding of a much more complex subject than I had initially imagined, continuing to be a Unitarian*Universalist.  

“After all, it is no more surprising to be born twice than it is to be born once.”

                                        (Voltaire)

“A [mature] culture makes room for love and death together, not as enemies but as entwined aspects of one life. The great Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore wrote,

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Two of the books I read :

“Spook:Science Tackles the Afterlife” Mary Roach (2005)

“Life Before Life”  Jim B. Tucker (2005)  [continuing Ian Stevenson’s work...]