Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Briarcliff, Croton, and Ossining

I’m a Seeker. How About You?

Given by James Covington on March 19th, 2006

I’m a seeker. How about you? Let me define what I mean. I am a seeker for truth, understanding, and meaning. I seek other things too, like love, rest, pleasure, companionship and if David Brooks is right in his op ed article in today’s NY Times, I seek recognition, especially if I am a man. And so on. We are alive, conscious and know that we are going to die. That fact alone makes us seekers, some would say, religious. Human beings are seekers to the core. We have to be, lest we die either of starvation or die spiritually of boredom and meaninglessness, depression or anxiety. I am a human being before I am anything else, even a Unitarian, therefore I am a seeker. Whether I am conscious of it or not, I believe I am seeking when I am reading the news, reading books, talking with friends, meditating, writing, thinking, self analyzing, or going to church.

In his recent book, Restless Souls: The Making of American Spirituality from Emerson to Oprah, the author tells us that Americans are restless souls. Countless American churchgoers have rejected their inherited faith traditions but not their searching. These days they have become spiritual seekers, turning to individualized sources of enlightenment. In other words, they become spiritual rather than religious. The emphasis here is on individuality, the right of a person to find his or her own path. This is not a new claim in American history. Emerson, one of the founders of Unitarian Universalism, proclaimed his right for individual faith in the 19th century. This is one of the reasons I am a Unitarian Universalist. My right as an individual to shape my own faith is respected, even encouraged.

That is both our strength and our vulnerability. People have the notion that we can believe whatever we want. This is not true, although I understand why people might think that. There are thousands of jokes about Unitarian Universalists being seekers—that we have no truth to stand on, and that it’s only the search that’s all important to us. You see a bumper stick that says “Question Authority” or “The Question is the Answer” and you may have a car belonging to a UU. Garrison Keillor has a field day with jokes about us.

On the whole I believe it’s a good thing for us to laugh at ourselves, to not take ourselves too seriously. So let’s go to the jokes. Here are a few vintage Unitarian Universalist jokes about seeking.

“Why did the UU cross the road?”
“To support the chicken in its search for its own path.”

And here’s one, a little naughty, but I think you can handle it. A UU walks into a fabric store and asks the clerk for 9 yards of material. The clerk says, “What are you going to make?” The UU says, “I’m making a nightgown for myself as a present for my husband.” The clerk says, “But 9 yards is way too much material for a nightgown.” The UU says, “I know, but my husband would rather seek than find.”

Okay, one more. Some of you I know have heard this one, but I have to say it’s one of my favorites. “How many Unitarian Universalists does it take to change a light bulb?” Answer: “We choose not to make a statement either in favor of or against the need for a light bulb. However, if in your own journey you have found that a light bulb works for you, that is fine. You are invited to write a poem or compose a modern dance about your personal relationship to your light bulb and present it next month at our annual light bulb Sunday service. We will explore a number of light bulb traditions, including incandescent, fluorescent, three-way, long-life and tinted, all of which are equally valid paths to spiritual luminescence.”

I am a seeker. Always have been, from my earliest days. Many of you know that my religious journey started in my youth when I was a Southern Baptist born-again Christian. At the age of nine, I accepted Jesus as my Savior and was baptized with a full-body, head to toe, soaked-to-the-skin immersion. It was the thing to do in my youth in small town West Tennessee in those days but it was the only avenue available to me for my seeking for meaning and purpose. When I was 16 I became a preacher and started baptizing sinners in the ponds of Obion County. I conducted my first wedding when I was 18, my first funeral when I was 19. You might say I was ahead of my time, my age.

Then years later, after I graduated from seminary, I left the Baptists and the ministry and the church altogether. I couldn’t abide by the born-again theology anymore. I had studied pastoral psychology while in the seminary which led me to pursue personal psychotherapy which transformed my life. So I studied psychology and became a psychotherapist. Psychology had become my new found avenue for seeking. I felt liberated. I was emancipated from the need to seek salvation for the next life and felt compelled to find meaning and purpose in this life.

But, surprisingly, I began to miss the religious community. I needed a place where my faith and new outlook could be cherished and nurtured by other human beings, where I could join others in the long tradition of searchers. I did not enjoy being alone in my spiritual quest. Some do. I know that, and that’s fine. But I needed a spiritual home with other people I could see face to face, where my faith could be celebrated, cherished and disciplined and my longing embraced.

Eventually I found the Unitarian Universalists and a church where I felt I could unapologetically be the human being I had become. So one Sunday morning in the spring of 1988, I signed the book at All Souls Unitarian in Manhattan and shook the minister’s hand. I didn’t have to baptized again or take communion. And that was fine. All I needed to do was to bring my searching, incomplete, wounded self to that church– searching.

Now coming to Unitarian Universalism may seem easy, compared to becoming a Catholic or a Southern Baptist, but actually the theological demands are much greater. When I signed that book, you see, I agreed to be a responsible human being for finding my own truth, finding the truth that was compatible with my intellect and my experience; I agreed to be open to new truth and to changing my beliefs, if I felt led in a new direction; and I agreed as a human being, to try to make my life congruent with my beliefs—that is, to live as best I could, a life of integrity.

In Unitarian Universalism, there is no set creed, or belief system. We support one another in developing our own theologies; we are tolerant and accepting of many approaches to finding truth; but we recognize that ultimately, only the conscience of the individual—yes, guided by tradition, by history, by ultimate values, by wise teachers—but ultimately only the conscience can be the authentic guide to truth for any given person.

In all my sixteen years as your minister, I have never stated my theological position. And I’m not going to start this morning. I don’t want to make any kind of statement that would box me in. I did take the “Belief-O-Matic” quiz that Paul Yue emailed to us this week. I came out 100% Unitarian Universalist ( so I guess I am still in the right church), 98% secular humanist and 90% mainline Christian. I wasn’t surprised by that. I have been heavily influenced by the Christian tradition. I still find the teachings of Jesus to be the most profound in helping me to be a human being. To me, that Jewish prophet remains one of the most challenging historical figures. Unfortunately, the word “Christian” these days is almost synonymous with “narrow” in the popular culture, and that is a shame, for there are many Christians who are anything but narrow, and Jesus himself made a point of condemning those who narrowly followed rules and strictures instead of following the more encompassing law of love.

My theological studies have taken me down many different roads, and I have benefited from all of these: liberation theology, from Central and South America, which teaches radical truths about poverty and justice; feminist theology, which taught me that the very language I use is full of assumptions that are untrue for women; Buddhism, which I find intellectually very satisfying and which helps me understand the dangers of the dualism of the West; Native American religions, which honor the earth and find sacred all living things; Sufism, that helps me delight in the sensual nature of God; and mystics of many faiths, who teach me that there is a holiness within that can connect with the Holiness that Is, if I can but humble myself and empty myself to receive.

If I had to say where I place myself theologically—and I think many of you are going to be surprised to hear me say this—I would say that I am an agnostic. That’s how I think about it today. An agnostic, by definition, is one who says, “I do not know. I cannot know.” You see, when I begin to say, “I know,” then I find that I begin to be less open to the Mystery. On the other hand, I do believe, which is different from knowing—an important distinction. I believe that there is a spiritual dimension in the universe. I believe that! Though I cannot understand the Great Mystery. In my finitude I cannot understand the infinite. I believe that I must give myself completely to that which I cannot understand and cannot even name, that which has a thousand names. Sometimes I may make reference to the Holy One or the Beloved. Sometimes I say God. Or we say Creator, God, Father, Mother; we say Allah, Yahweh, Atman; we say Great Spirit, we say Infinite Mystery. We use all these names precisely because we do not and cannot know: all these names are metaphorical—they are poetry–they are comparisons with something that we do know. We do know Mother, we do know Beloved, we do know Creator. So we are saying that the Mystery is like something we are familiar with.

I wonder these days at the certainties that some people arrive at, like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell of the so-called Christian religious right. And then there are the radical clerics of the Muslim faith who call westerners and those who disagree with them, infidels. I think that vehement religious certainties are generally signs of insecurity, or fear. Human beings are an anxious species. When we’re anxious, we want certainty. Certainty leads to a kind of rigidity, though, that makes idols of our supposed “truth,” and separates us from others—the unwashed, un-baptized, infidel, unbeliever—and shuts us down, separates us from the Mystery itself. As Unitarian Universalists, we are asked to bear the weight of doubt, for only doubt will leave us open to new revelation and spiritual growth. Listen to the words of Jungian James Hollis. He says, “Our doubt . . . is a form of radical trust, a trust that the world is richer than we know, so abundant that we can hardly bear it, and our growth requires a willingness to embrace the paradox that doubt is the key to its further riches.” Doubt is a form of radical trust.

Let’s talk for a few minutes about why this kind of openness, this not-knowing, not-believing, is so challenging. It is a grown-up kind of faith, and requires a lot from us.

What are some of the pot-holes in the spiritual path? (Do you remember the movie “Groundhog Day,” in which Bill Murray keeps repeating his day, and keeps making the same mistake, keeps falling in the same hole, over and over again? Sometimes the spiritual path feels like that.)

First of all, there are the distractions, the diversions, the addictions. These are the temptations of the ego, which seeks rest, peace, pleasure, release from conflict of any kind. The soul, on the other hand, is a risk-taker. The soul says growth is more important than ease. The spiritual seeker will have to explore his shadow side, as well—ignoring that will keep a person on the surface of things.

Then there is the challenge of the larger cultural context in which we find ourselves. We cannot help being informed by the assumptions and systems of the culture. We adopt these internally, whether we want to or not. Who can escape racism in a racist culture? Who can escape personal greed when we are in a country that is the consummate consumer of the world’s resources? Who can escape materialism?

You know, sometimes I hear people say, “I’m spiritual, but I don’t believe in organized religion.” One good argument—perhaps the best argument—for the existence of the church today is to counter the assumptions of a secular culture whose bottom line is economic gain and not the well-being of the human spirit. The church is not a business, is not government, is not even a non-profit. The church assumes a covenantal relationship between its members and that covenant is grounded in respect and love and care for one another. It is grounded in trust. As we each seek our own way, we are held in that container of trust and care, and that community is called church. Another way of being thrown off the path is to follow someone else’s path—to find a teacher or guru whom you admire, and to take your cues from that other person. I like the title of the book If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him. Yes, we can learn from wise teachers, but we must internalize the teaching, we must make it our own—we can’t just borrow it, for doing so would be failing to respect our uniqueness.

It’s difficult, I’m sorry to say, to become a true seeker without suffering and loss. Oh, you can be an intellectual seeker in your callow youth—but then as you experience sorrows and uncertainties of life, you begin seeking in earnest. That’s what the Book of Job is about, I think. Job was a good and righteous man. And he loses his wife, his children, his servants, his lands, his sheep, his cattle, and even his health. He is reduced to sitting on an ash heap, scraping his boils. He cries out to God, “What is going on here? What did I do to deserve this?” And God answers out of the whirlwind, “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth, where were you when I made the morning stars sing?” In other words—Job, you don’t make the rules. You have to surrender to what is.

Life is not about a growing perfection of character—it’s not about achieving ease and happiness. It’s about noticing what’s on your plate, being present with it, and addressing it in a way that your soul is enlarged. It’s loving what is yours to love and manifesting that divine energy in the world as only you can.

Sometimes we feel that we’re lost, or that we’ve lost something. Maybe we wouldn’t have that feeling if we didn’t experience our separation from a larger something, a larger whole that we sense is there. The truth is that we are all part of one another and we are all held in a larger love—all the time. As an agnostic, that is the strongest belief statement I can make. In my opinion, this truth is the essence of our worship every Sunday morning. Let me say it again: in this place we experience the truth that we are all part of one another and we are all held in a larger love—all the time.

How’s that? Through music we connect our hearts to the rhythm of eternity to that sense of a nurturing presence we often call God. By pondering inspired readings, we connect our minds to the wisdom of the ages. In prayer, we proclaim our compassion for the brokenness in our hearts and in our world. In silence, we pour out our deepest longings to the Spirit of Life and Love. Through the ministry of the word, we declare our commitment to each other and our compassion for a broken world. We do this because we are seekers. We do this because we seek unity in love, which I sometimes refer to as The Beloved. We do this because we seek wholeness in our lives, which I sometimes name as “holiness” and other times as “God.”

I am a seeker. How about you? So this is my prayer. My prayer for you today is that you will surrender to whatever is seeking a fuller expression in your life. Go in love, and go in peace.