Sermons

Minister: Rev. Margaret A. Beckman | Let me keep my distance, always, from those
who think they have the answers.
Let me keep company always with those who say
“Look!” and laugh in astonishment,
and bow their heads.
~ Mary Oliver ~ (Evidence)

If I had my life to live over again, I would have nade a ruke to read some poetry and listen to some music at leasr one each week. ~ Charles Darwin
 

Readings

From Charles Darwin:

For my own part I would as soon be descended from that heroic little monkey, who braved his dreaded enemy in order to save the life of his keeper; or from that old baboon, who, descending from the mountains, carried away in triumph his young comrade from a crowd of astonished dogs—as from a savage who delights to torture his enemies, offers up bloody sacrifices, practices infanticide without remorse, treats his wives like slaves, knows no decency, and is haunted by the grossest superstitions.  — Charles Darwin

The Descent of Man (1871), Vol. 2, 404-5. 

 

The main conclusion arrived at in this work, namely that man is descended from some lowly-organised form, will, I regret to think, be highly distasteful to many persons. But there can hardly be a doubt that we are descended from barbarians. — Charles Darwin

The Descent of Man (1871), Vol. 2, 404. 

 

From Mary Oliver:

To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.

You have to be in the world to understand what the spiritual is about, and you have to be spiritual in order to truly be able to accept what the world is about.

In Long life she says “[I] go off to my woods, my ponds, my sun-filled harbor, no more than a blue comma on the map of the world but, to me, the emblem of everything.”[6]

How It Is With Us, And How It Is With Them by Mary Oliver

We become religious,
then we turn from it,
then we are in need and maybe we turn back.
We turn to making money,
then we turn to the moral life,
then we think about money again.
We meet wonderful people, but lose them
in our busyness.
We’re, as the saying goes, all over the place.
Steadfastness, it seems,
is more about dogs than about us.
One of the reasons we love them so much.

 

SERMON

It is well known that whenever two Jews are together, they will offer at least three correct opinions on any subject of Jewish theology or tradition.

I often suspect that a similar thing could be said about Unitarian Universalists. We are neither burdened nor aided by a comprehensive definitive, even for a short time, theology that binds us together as members of a single faith. This openness to the continual exploration of theology is one of our greatest strengths and it differentiates us from most other religions. It places, however, the responsibility for developing and living a meaningful spiritual life on each of us individually. We ask more questions than we can possibly answer, and we value doubt more than certainty. And so, I acknowledge this diversity of thought and opinion and theology when I suggest that both Charles Darwin and Mary Oliver have made significant contributions to the development of many of our own personal Unitarian Universalist Theologies.

Charles Darwin was born February 12, 1809 – the same day as Abraham Lincoln. This week we pause to remember Darwin and the significant contributions he made to our understanding of life. As a young man, Darwin’s father determined that he was not intellectually prepared for the rigors of study at Oxford. So, believing that Charles needed a trade, he sent he son off to Edinburgh to be trained in medicine – the science of which Darwin adored, but he equally could not abide the practice of surgery without anesthesia and so never became a physician. He then tried his mind and temperament at a slightly lessor trade – that of clergyman with the Church of England – and went off to Cambridge to achieve a divinity degree. Before ordination could be considered, the very week he completed his divinity degree, he signed on as a gentleman naturalist with the crew of the HMS Beagle – a voyage that lasted five years and changed the course of his life permanently. We know Darwin primarily for the work of that voyage and the development of his theory of evolution and that natural selection, following the laws of nature, determines the continued development or extinction of species.

Darwin’s theory of evolution is based on key facts and the inferences drawn from them, which biologist Ernst Mayr summarised as follows:[6]

Every speciesis fertile enough that if all offspring survived to reproduce, the population would grow (fact).
Despite periodic fluctuations, populations remain roughly the same size (fact).
Resources such as food are limited and are relatively stable over time (fact).
A struggle for survival ensues (inference).
Individuals in a population vary significantly from one another (fact).
Much of this variation is heritable(fact).
Individuals less suited to the environment are less likely to survive and less likely to reproduce; individuals more suited to the environment are more likely to survive and more likely to reproduce and leave their heritable traits to future generations, which produces the process of natural selection (fact).
This slowly effected process results in populations changing to adapt to their environments, and ultimately, these variations accumulate over time to form new species (inference).

An unlikely theologian, Darwin nevertheless is credited by many with establishing a workable relationship between the facts of evolution and the spirituality of people. In his day, science and natural law were a subset of the field of theology and anything that contradicted church doctrine was rejected as false out of hand. Darwin showed the world and every successive generation that actual observation and direct experience with nature puts the lie to this church requirement. Science is not subordinate to theology nor is theology subordinate to science – each provides a window in our ability to understand life. “Some call it evolution, and others call it God,” he opined. He could welcome the work of a divine moved mover in establishing the first action of creation – which remains a mystery even today for many of us – the Big Bang theories not withstanding.

What he could not and would not welcome was the rejection of plain visible observation of nature and how it operates according to the laws of nature and demonstrable results. We share in much of our theology the rejection of improbable doctrine in favor of direct observation and experience. If it doesn’t make sense, we may feel at liberty to discard it.

Mary Oliver died on January 17th of this year. Hundreds of people have offered tributes and remembrances of Mary Oliver and the contributions of her poetry to their lives. Among those who revere or at least admire Mary Oliver are thousands of Unitarian Universalists. Many of us would claim to be among those thousands of admirers.

Mary Oliver was also not keen on organized religion though she was not opposed to other people finding meaning and solace there. Her theological leanings are clearly in alignment with our UU tradition insofar as she placed great value in the individual search for truth and meaning. She, as well as Darwin, saw in her world the interconnectedness and interdependence of the web of existence.

One characteristic that these two people share is perhaps the single most important thing we can say about them. They were keen observers of life. They made it their life’s work to notice creation. And they made it their life’s work to share what they learned from their daily and painstakingly detailed observations of life. We are the beneficiaries of their ability to observe and notice and record the beauty, the ordinariness, the uniqueness, the situational subtleties and the wonderous mystery of life.

The scientist gave us physical observations and detailed drawings of plants and animals that he studied. If you have not seen his drawings, I encourage you to look for them in his writings. Google can help you find some.

Even as he found through his own work and study that he could not support the church’s doctrine that each species was fully and uniquely created as finished beings by God, he did not give up his connection to the astonishing beauty and wonder and fascination with the marvels and mysteries of complex and ever-changing development of species on our planet.

At the conclusion of On the Origin of Species Darwin offered his ultimate observations on his work and its meaning.
It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the external conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved. — Charles Darwin

Concluding remarks in final chapter, The Origin of Species (1859)
For those of us who find that science and the scientific method are the most reasonable and reliable methods of making sense of human life and providing a foundation for living a spiritual and ethical life, Charles Darwin paved the way and continues to be a beacon for those who walk in his footsteps.

Some call it Evolution. Some call it God.

Either way, we can appreciate, as he did, the utter amazement at the workings of the laws of nature that brought forth human life from simple primitive life forms through eons of adaptation and natural selection of those organisms that found ways to thrive in changing conditions. We are still at it and there is a theology and a spirituality in this amazement that contributes to Unitarian Universalist theolgies. It shows up in our principle of the interconnected web of existence and in our commitment to search for truth and meaning and in our reliance of direct observation and experience to describe the divine.

When I read the poetry of Mary Oliver, I gain a similar foothold in the development of spirituality and experiencing the divine – by whatever name or no name. Her observation of life and the words she weaves together to express those observations are breath-taking.

Mary Oliver, like Darwin, did not particularly end up trusting organized religion because of its habit of telling people what to believe and how to think. She did appreciate the value of ritual to mark significant events and relationships and experiences. She returned to church for a while after her partner of 40 years died and she found herself overwhelmingly lonely. But mostly, her spirituality was found and nurtured in the sanctuary of the great outdoors. She was able to notice and capture in words the slightest subelty in each creature or flower or, especially perhaps, tree.

I wish I could spend another thirty minutes reading her poetry aloud and inviting each of you to listen for the way that it reveals a truth about life and makes a lasting and deep connection to us emotionally and spiritually.

I don’t have thirty minutes, but I do have a few more, so I will offer just a bit of Mary Oliver’s poetry – without comment or commentary – just as she did. You will discover or uncover for yourselves what its meaning might be.

  

Percy (Four)

I went to church.
I walked on the beach
And played with Percy.

I answered the phone
And paid the bills
I did the laundry.

I spoke her name
A hundred times.

I knelt in the dark
And said some holy words.

I went downstairs,
I watered the flowers.
I fed Percy.

 

The First Time Percy Came Back

The first time Percy came back
he was not sailing on a cloud.

He was loping along the sand as though
he had come a great way.
“Percy,” I cried out, and reached to him—
those white curls—
but he was unreachable. As music
is present yet you can’t touch it.
“Yes, it’s all different,” he said.
“You’re going to be very surprised.”
But I wasn’t thinking of that. I only
wanted to hold him. “Listen,” he said,
“I miss that too.
And now you’ll be telling stories
of my coming back
and they won’t be false, and they won’t be true,
but they’ll be real.”
And then, as he used to, he said, “Let’s go!”
And we walked down the beach together.

 

After Her Death

I am trying to find the lesson
for tomorrow. Matthew something.
Which lectionary? I have not
forgotten the Way, but, a little,
the way to the Way. The trees keep whispering
peace, peace, and the birds
in the shallows are full of the
bodies of small fish and are
content. They open their wings
so easily, and fly. It is still
possible.

I open the book
which the strange, difficult, beautiful church
has given me. To Matthew. Anywhere.

 

How I go the Woods 

Ordinarily, I go to the woods alone, with not a single
friend, for they are all smilers and talkers and therefore
unsuitable.

I don’t really want to be witnessed talking to the catbirds
or hugging the old black oak tree. I have my way of
praying, as you no doubt have yours.

Besides, when I am alone I can become invisible. I can sit
on the top of a dune as motionless as an uprise of weeds,
until the foxes run by unconcerned. I can hear the almost
unhearable sound of the roses singing.

If you have ever gone to the woods with me, I must love
you very much.

 

Mornings at Blackwater

For years, every morning, I drank
from Blackwater Pond.
It was flavored with oak leaves and also, no doubt,
the feet of ducks.

And always it assuaged me
from the dry bowl of the very far past.

What I want to say is
that the past is the past,
and the present is what your life is,
and you are capable
of choosing what that will be,
darling citizen.

So come to the pond,
or the river of your imagination,

or the harbor of your longing,
and put your lips to the world.

And live
your life.

 
The Summer Day
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?

 

This is perhaps the essential question of all spirituality.

We want to find meaning and value in life – our own life especially.

Perhaps, we can thank the scientist and the poet who loved this world and this life and gave themselves over to the pursuit of sharing their observations, the result of their having noticed – everything – and allowed that pursuit to change them for the better – and now us.

Blessed Be. I Love You. Amen.