Stories and metaphor are essential to any religious language, but perhaps even more so to Unitarian Universalists who are not bound by creed. Stories give us an opportunity to speak about larger things, using a broader vocabulary than we might in our every day conversations.

Religious educator Rev. Sophia Lyon Fahs (1876-1978) understood this importance, particularly in the realm of teaching children about religion. In this introduction to her Beginnings of Earth and Sky: Stories Old and New, she talks about the very evolution of stories of creation, and the human desire to explain the world around us.

Around Campfires

by Sophia Lyon Fahs

Long, long ago around a campfire in the evening twilight, a tribe of shepherds sat talking. They looked out across the valley — and over the hills — at the changing colors of the sky — rose and orange beams spreading overhead — pink, fleecy clouds floating among them — golden light coming from beyond out of the nowhere — or was it out of the everywhere?

There was too much greatness all around for anyone to speak. These shepherds of old felt themselves a part of something very large and high and wonderful.

At last someone asked, “From where has this great beauty come?”

Then another asked, “And how did it all begin at the very beginning?”

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For many Unitarian Universalist congregations, the time of “In-Gathering,” or the first Sunday of the regular church year, is fast approaching. For many, this is a time of re-commitment to their faith community, of “getting back into the swing of things” and reconnections. Many congregations will begin their year with new faces in their pulpits, an added service, or other changes to the way they do things.

Rev. A. Powell Davies (1902-1957) preached the sermon from which this excerpt is taken on September 10, 1944. Even ninety-four years later, his message rings true. Why do we go to church? Because we can be more together than we are by ourselves.

from “On Going to Church”

by Rev. A. Powell Davies (1902-1957)

Let me tell you why I come to church.

I come to church—and would whether I was a preacher or not—because I fall below my own standards and need to be constantly brought back to them. It is not enough that I should think about the world and its problems at the level of a newspaper report or a magazine discussion. It could too soon become too low a level. I must have my conscience sharpened—sharpened until it goads me to the most thorough and responsible thinking of which I am capable. I must feel again the love I owe my fellow men (and women). I must not only hear about it but feel it. In church, I do.

I need to be reminded that there are things I must do in the world—unselfish things, things undertaken at the level of idealism. Workaday enthusiasms are not enough. They wear out too soon. I want to experience human nature at its best—and be reminded of its highest possibilities, and this happens to me in church. It may seem as though the same things could be found in solitude, but it does not easily happen so.

In a congregation we share each other’s spiritual needs and reinforce each other. In some ways, the soul is never lonelier than in a church service. That is certainly true of a pulpit, for a pulpit is the most intimately lonely place in the world—yet it is a loneliness that has strength in it. Perhaps this is because the innermost solitude of the human heart is in some paradoxical way a thing that can be shared—that must be shared—if the spirit of God is to find a full entrance into it.

We meet each other as friends and neighbors anywhere and everywhere, but we seldom do so in the consciousness of our souls’ deepest yearnings. But in church we do—in a way that protects us from all that is intrusive, yet leaves us knowing that we all have the same yearning, the same spiritual loneliness, the same need of assurance and faith and hope. We are brought together at the highest level possible. We are not merely an audience, we are a congregation.

I doubt whether I could stand the thought of the cruelty and misery of the present world unless I could know, through an experience that renewed itself over and over again, that at the heart of life there is assurance, that I can hold an ultimate belief that all is well. And this happens in church.

Life must have its sacred moments and its holy places. The soul will always seek its nurture. For religious experience—which is life at its most intense, life at its best—is something we cannot do without.

Source: from “On Going to Church” by Rev. A. Powell Davies, as reprinted in Without Apology: Collected Meditations on Liberal Religion by A. Powell Davies edited by Rev. Dr. Forrest Church.

Sometimes it is important, spiritually, to let go of our individual control. Unitarian Universalism places a great value on the individual search for truth and meaning, but also on the value of conducting that search in community. We realize that sometimes, we are weary and just need to rest.

This hymn for an Evening Service, from the 1917 Hymns of the Church: With Services and Chants, published by the Universalist Publishing House, recognizes this need. The tune, Lux Benigna, was written by the Rev. J.B. Dykes and the words by Rev. Dr. John Henry Newman.

Lux Benigna, for Evening Service

words by Rev. Dr. John Henry Newman

Lead, kindly Light, amid th’ encircling gloom,
Lead thou me on;
The night is dark, and I am far from home,
Lead thou me on.
Keep thou my feet; I do not ask to see
The distant scene: one step enough for me.

I was not ever thus, nor prayed that thou
Shouldst lead me on;
I loved to choose and see my path: but now,
Lead thou me on.
I loved the garish day; and, spite of fears,
Pride ruled my will: remember not past years.

So long thy power has blest me, sure it still
Will lead me on
O’er moor and fen, o’er crag and torrent, till
The night is gone;
And with the morn those angel faces smile,
Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile.

Source: Lux Benigna, tune by Rev. J.B. Dykes with words by Rev. Dr. John Henry Newman, from the 1917 Hymns of the Church: With Services and Chants, published by the Universalist Publishing House, page 7, via Google Books.

The Flower Communion, introduced by Czech minister Norbert Capek, is one of Unitarian Universalism’s most beloved rituals. Usually held in the spring, and in many congregations as the last service of the “regular” church year before either recessing for the summer or paring down Sunday services, the Flower Communion holds rich symbolism for our faith communities.

The Rev. Susan Manker-Seale, serving the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Northwest Tucson, Arizona, preached this sermon about the Rev. Norbert Capek’s life and gifts to our modern Unitarian Universalist faith for their own celebration of this ritual on June 11, 2000. It is a powerful story of a life lived truly, “out loud.”

Capek’s Gift: The Flower Communion

by the Rev. Susan Manker-Seale

We don’t have a lot of Unitarian martyrs. There is Michael Servetus, a Unitarian Spaniard burned at the stake in the midst of the reformation of the sixteenth century for writing his book On the Errors of the Trinity. There is Francis David, Unitarian Bishop of Transylvania, who perished in prison after the Unitarian King John Sigismund died and orthodox views regained power, this also in the sixteenth century. Then, though there has been much persecution toward Unitarians, we don’t hold any more martyrs in popular Unitarian history until we come to the twentieth century and the Czechoslovakian Unitarian, the Rev. Norbert Fabian Capek. Capek was imprisoned by the Nazis for listening to foreign radio broadcasts and preaching freedom. He eventually was sent to Dachau and was gassed at Hartheim Castle in 1942.

Seven of his letters from prison survived. Ten of his eleven children, I believe, survived. He is remembered by his grandchildren, and by the Unitarian congregation he founded, The Prague Congregation of Liberal Religious Fellowship, which numbered in the thousands of members. He is also remembered here in the United States, because every year Unitarian Universalists celebrate the Flower Communion Service, a service Capek created and which, like the flaming chalice symbol of the Unitarian Service Committee, has taken hold in the hearts of our congregations.

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Philosopher Henry David Thoreau’s Walden has long been a source of wisdom for Unitarian Universalists. This excerpt, from the chapter titled “Conclusion,” calls us to a higher purpose than the deep meditation in solitude usually envisioned when Walden is invoked.

from Walden, “Conclusion”

by Henry David Thoreau (July 12, 1817 – May 6, 1862)

I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one. It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves. I had not lived there a week before my feet wore a path from my door to the pond-side; and though it is five or six years since I trod it, it is still quite distinct. It is true, I fear that others may have fallen into it, and so helped to keep it open. The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and confortuity! I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now.

I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

. . .

I desire to speak somewhere without bounds; like a man in a waking moment, to men in their waking moments; for I am convinced that I cannot exaggerate enough even to lay the foundation of a true expression. Who that has heard a strain of music feared then lest he should speak extravagantly any more forever? In view of the future or possible, we should live quite laxly and undefined in front, our outlines dim and misty on that side; as our shadows reveal an insensible perspiration toward the sun. The volatile truth of our words should continually betray the inadequacy of the residual statement. Their truth is instantly translated; its literal monument alone remains. The words which express our faith and piety are not definite; yet they are significant and fragrant like frankincense to superior natures.

Source: excerpted from the chapter “Conclusion” in Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, in the public domain. For further reading, see Rev. Patrick O’Neil’s brilliant sermon, “Out from Walden.”

The Rev. A. Powell Davies (June 5, 1902-September 26, 1957) was remarkable in the way he could say and write deeply profound ideas in just a few, well-chosen words. This short piece is from the collection of his writings edited by Rev. Dr. Forrest Church, Without Apology: Collected Meditations on Liberal Religion by A. Powell Davies. In it, an affirmation, and a challenge.

Is This Your Religion?

by Rev. A. Powell Davies (June 5, 1902-September 26, 1957)

We are the consummation of thousands of years of religious history. We are thousands of years that have stripped off superstition and battled with tyranny; thousands of years that struggled to take fear out of religion–to take it right out of human life; thousands of years that have marched, sometimes joyfully, sometimes in agony, toward spiritual emancipation. We are indeed the consummation of something.

Yet in this world of blood and sorrow it is scarcely important, hardly worth mentioning, unless in addition we are the beginning of something, unless our religion is new–the religion that has always been new in every prophet who died rather than forsake it; the religion that has been buried over and over again in creeds and rituals and sacred sepulchers and yet has always come to life; the religion that today is new all over the earth, stammering itself into utterance in every language known to humankind.

The religion that says freedom!–freedom from ignorance and false belief; freedom from spurious claims and bitter prejudices; freedom to seek the truth, both old and new, and freedom to follow it, freedom from the hates and greeds that divide humankind and spill the blood of every generation; freedom for honest thought, freedom for equal justice, freedom to seek the true, the good and the beautiful with minds unimpaired by cramping dogmas and spirits uncrippled by abject dependence. The religion that says humankind is not divided–except by ignorance and prejudice and hate; the religion that sees humankind as naturally one and waiting to be spiritually united; the religion that proclaims an end to all exclusions–and declares a brother-and sisterhood unbounded! The religion that knows that we shall never find the fullness of the wonder and the glory of life untl we are ready to share it, that we shall never have hearts big enough for the love God until we have made them big enough for the worldwide love of one another.

As you have listened to me, have you though perchance that this is your religion? If you have, do not congratulate yourself. Stop long enough to recollect the miseries of the world you live in: the fearful cruelties, the enmities, the hate, the bitter prejudices, the need of such a world for such a faith. And if you still can say that this of which I have spoken is your religion, then ask yourself this question: What are you doing with it?

Source: “Is This Your Religion?” by Rev. A. Powell Davies, as presented in Without Apology: Collected Meditations on Liberal Religion by A. Powell Davies, Edited By Rev. Dr. Forrest Church.

We’ve seen two historical contrasting approaches to a religious viewpoint of the natural world, particularly the theory of evolution, from Rev. Jabez Sunderland and French Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, and now we come to the present.

The 2005 report from the Unitarian Universalist Association’s Commission on Appraisal, Engaging our Theological Diversity (very long PDF), also tackled this question. They took statements from current members of Unitarian Universalist congregations, conducted surveys, and looked at Unitarian Universalist publications, and came up with this summary of a typical Unitarian Universalist understanding of the universe.

How Do We Understand the Universe?

from Engaging Our Theological Diversity, the report of the Unitarian Universalist Association’s Commission on Appraisal

One of the primary functions of religion is to provide people with a framework for understanding the physical world and their place in it. The Principle that most clearly expresses contemporary Unitarian Universalist cosmology is belief in the interdependent web of all existence. This guiding Principle fuels much of modern-day UU social justice and advocacy work related to environmentalism, animals’ rights, economic injustice, and homelessness, among other worthy and related causes.

The current UU understanding of an interdependent and interconnected cosmos has evolved from a theology that we can trace back through our Christian roots to the Old Testament book of Genesis. Genesis is the cornerstone for some of the basic cosmology evident in all three Abrahamic faiths (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam): specifically, Genesis 1:24-31 and 9:1-17. The most common interpretations of Genesis hold that human beings are the pinnacle of all creation. We are God’s favored creatures, with everything in creation—all the resources and all the animals—existing for our explicit benefit. Competing liberal interpretations hold that human beings are the custodians of creation, and that our role as custodians invokes great responsibility as well as privilege. Regardless of the interpretation to which one subscribes, both interpretations create a human-centered cosmology—humans are the centerpiece of creation.

(Read on … )

Last week, we read a passage from Rev. Jabez T. Sunderland’s 1902 book, The Spark in the Clod: A Study in Evolution, in which he approached the scientific theory of evolution from a religious standpoint. Today, an opposite approach, where religious ideals are found from a more scientific point of view, in the writings of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955).

Teilhard was a Jesuit priest, but also a scientist, and his ideas were unsuccessfully quashed by the Roman Catholic Church. His primary work, The Human Phenomenon, was written in the 1930s but published after his death in 1955. While he was not himself officially a Unitarian or Universalist, it can be argued that his theology was very much in line with both forms of liberal religion, and informs liberal theology today. A rather comprehensive chapter on Teilhard from the book God and Science, by Charles P. Henderson, can be found here for further reading.

What I find fascinating in this excerpt, on the nature of matter, is Teilhard’s conclusion of the interdependence of all things, from our very atoms.

from The Human Phenomenon

by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955)

Moving an object back into the past is equivalent to reducing it to its simplest elements. Followed as far as possible in the direction of their origins, the last fibers of the human composite are going to merge in our sight with the very stuff of the universe.

The stuff of the universe–that ultimate residue of the more and more advanced analyses of science. To know how to describe it properly, I have never developed the kind of direct and familiar contact with it that makes all the difference between someone who has read about it and someone who has experimented with it. I also know how dangerous it is to take as material for durable construction hypotheses conceived of as only meant to last a day, even in the minds of those who originate them.

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Charles Darwin’s The Origin of the Species was published in 1859, and is still causing furor today, particularly in the relationship between religion and science. As Unitarian Universalists, we strive for a foot in both worlds — allowing science to deepen our religious experiences and our religious experiences to deepen our understanding of science.

Rev. Jabez T. Sunderland (February 11, 1842-August 13, 1936), wrote about this very struggle in his 1902 book, The Spark in the Clod: A Study in Evolution. This excerpt describes his take on the nature of truth, and how advances in science enhanced his understanding of God rather than diminishing it, in direct conflict with traditional religious thought at the time.

Rev. Sunderland, originally a Baptist minister, converted to Unitarianism and served churches in Massachusetts, Chicago, Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he also served as a Unitarian missionary for the American Unitarian Association. His full biography is here.

As with all historical material, you may want to mentally substitute gender-inclusive language.

from The Spark in the Clod: A Study in Evolution

by Rev. Jabez T. Sunderland (February 11, 1842-August 13, 1936)

We have now before us, in brief, the two theories of the origin of the world, which present themselves to modern men asking for acceptance. Is there any question which one we must receive, if we are truth-loving, and care at all to have our beliefs based on realities?

And now we come to the important question of the relative religious influence and value of the two theories.

I know the fact that one is ancient and venerable, while the other is new, and especially the fact that one is contained in the Bible, while the other is not, may seem to give the greater religious claim to the theory of creation found in Genesis.

And yet is the claim necessarily valid? Has God no truth besides that which the Bible contains?Rather, if we are not atheists, must we say that all truth is of God, whether found on parchment or on stone; whether inscribed by pen held by human hand, or by wind and rain and ice and fire on mountain sides; whether written two thousand years ago in Palestine, or to-day on the face of the starry sky above our heads, or of the earth beneath our feet.

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In a religion that draws from many sources of inspiration and learning rather than one chosen scripture, it is the stories that we tell that communicate our Good News. This 2005 message from the Rev. Dr. Kenneth W. Phifer, now minister emeritus of the First Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Ann Arbor, Michigan, gives us four of those stories:

The Stories of Our Lives

by the Rev. Dr. Kenneth W. Phifer

Is there anything more compellingly interesting than a story?

Is there anything of greater importance to our lives than the stories we tell and the stories we listen to and the stories in which we invest our faith?

Life-like or fantastic, ancient or modern, short or long, poetic or prosaic, musical or visual, written or spoken, filmed or signed, stories are a vital part of the human scene. Epics, comedies, tragedies, novels, short stories, grand operas and plays, soap operas, situation comedies, even advertisements, and dozens of other forms of stories fill our lives.

One storyteller observed, “so much of living is made up of story-telling that one might conclude that it is what we were meant to do.”

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