Go to your fields and gardens, and you shall learn it is the pleasure of the bee to gather honey of the flower. But it is also the pleasure of the flower to yield its honey to the bee. For the bee a flower is the fountain of life. And to the flower a bee is a messenger of love.

Kahlil Gibran - The Prophet

In the 13th century, Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II set out to discover humanity's original, innate language. He ordered nurses to feed and bathe newborn infants, but strictly forbade speaking to, holding, or playing with them. The experiment ended tragically: before reaching the age of speech, every single child died. The emperor sought a spoken language, but instead uncovered a far deeper truth-our first and most vital language isn't words at all; it's human connection

The human need for connection is more than the frosting on the cake of life, but a basic human need. Have you ever considered that connection-the act of looking another person physically in the eyes, listening to what they are saying, and responding- is as fundamental to our biological well-being as that of food, or water?

This lesson has worked it's way into the fabric of my soul through my work as a chaplain. The word chaplain comes with a religious sort of tone. Patients and providers alike understandably assume that we are there to bless, pray, read sacred texts, and minister to the religious and spiritual needs of people in the hospital. And we do gladly offer these services. However, being with people through the most difficult moments of their life teaches me that, whatever the need may be, my deepest work is the nourishment of human connection.

One day, I visited a man whose wife had just died in a car crash they were both in. He was badly injured, grieving deeply, and sharing stories of their life together. He sighed, 'I have to come to terms with the fact that she's gone.'

Remembering a patient earlier that day who spoke of feeling a lost loved one's presence, I asked him, 'Do you ever feel her near you, even though she's gone?'

His eyes widened. He told me that after surgery, a butterfly fluttered around the sterile operating room and landed right on his forehead. I asked if he was dreaming, but he swore-and his doctors confirmed-it was real.

With a sudden light in his eyes, he told me his wife had a butterfly tattoo and always spoke of butterflies as messengers of love. As a self-proclaimed skeptic, he used to playfully tease her about it. He chuckled softly and said, 'She always did win our arguments.'

Walking out of his room, the image hit me: I am a pollinator. I had carried pollen from an earlier patient's story into his room, helping him cross the gap of his grief to blossom a connection that death couldn't break."

As I began to think of myself as a pollinator, I decided I wanted to learn more about bees to follow this metaphor a little further. I was led to Mark L. Winston's book titled, "Bee Time." In it he shares engaging stories and lessons from his life as a beekeeper and researcher. Bee time, as Winston describes it, is a common experience that beekeepers feel when they are near to a hive. Time slows down, and a profound sense of calm is experienced. We speak about this experience in chaplaincy too. The experience of being fully in the moment, present. Like a conversation that feels like 30 mins, but when you looked at the clock hours had passed. That is bee time!

Winston shares about his first time opening the lid of the hive to find calm, gentle bees going about their business. He learned that the bees remain calm as long as the beekeeper is calm.

Just like the beekeeper whose calm keeps the hive peaceful, a quiet, grounded presence in a hospital room can literally steady a dying patient's heart rate. Calm isn't just a mood-it's contagious.

We admire honeybees as models of work and efficiency, yet Winston points out that we would be better off calling them "rester" rather than worker bees because they spent two-thirds of their lives doing nothing.

When bees are "doing nothing" they are they are doing more than meets the eye. They are listening and conversing. Incredibly, Bees engage in conversation and exchange information far beyond what we humans can comprehend. Bees can communicate the location of a flower up to two miles away from the hive. Winston says, "[Bees'] elaborate interactions reflect a complex language based on specialized chemical signals that provide syntax deep in complexity and rich in nuance."

Our own human language operates far below the field of our conscious awareness. We know intuitively that a text message isn't the same as sitting across from someone. Science bears this out: real, face-to-face conversation physically lowers our stress hormones and floods us with trust. Texting can't do that. Social media can't do that. We are wired to be present in the room. We like the bee's are doing far more than nothing when we are engaged in shared experiences of connection.

The bonds we share are formed in the depths of our emotional selves. Eckhart Tolle defines emotions as the body's response to a thought. Our human brains are outfitted with a limbic system, which is responsible for our emotional responses and is completely distinct from the part of our brain that is responsible for thought and language. Our thinking brain, and our feeling brain are two completely different neurological systems and cannot easily speak to each other. The spheres of art, story, and metaphor can be seen as our thinking brain and feeling brain finding a way to communicate their truths to each other.

Amazingly, the limbic system is present in infants long before language. Infants, only a few days old, can detect minute changes in their mothers' facial expressions and understand her emotional state accurately. As we grow and gain the power of language, the limbic system continues to feed us information about ours and others' emotions. This makes looking into the face of another an intense and multilayered experience.

Scientists call this limbic resonance. When we look at another face, we see far more than eyes as a pair of buttons, our vision captures information about the emotional state of those around us and resonate into infinity like two mirrors facing each other. Neuroscientists and authors of the book, "A General Theory of Love" say of looking into another's face, "The sensations multiply, just as two mirrors placed in opposition create a shimmering ricochet of reflections whose depths recede into infinity. Eye contact, although it occurs over a gap of yards, is not a metaphor. When we meet the gaze of another, two nervous systems achieve a palpable and intimate apposition." Feelings are contagious. When an emotion is present in one person in the room, more likely than not, it will also be present in the others as well.

When our connections are severed through distance, death, or conflict our bodies experience emotional pain. This pain is very real pain, and my experience at the bedside with patients and families through the process of death has been a teacher to me in this regard.

Death can be scary when it is a thought or product of the mind. But when you are in its presence, or nearby at the moment it occurs, many find it is a peaceful, calm, and often gentle experience. It's like how the beekeepers speak about their work in "bee time." A thing that your mind says is scary, but in proximity it produces euphoric feelings of calm, peace, and presence. And of course, your mind thinks it's scary, its job is to keep you alive! Being next to a beehive is scary too, there are so many of those little buggers and just one of those stings does hurt a lot. So, a healthy fear of death and bees is not a bad thing.

But what happens when we humans have so detached ourselves from the process of death to the point where one can go through their whole life never having been near a death experience. A memorial or celebration of life is the closest some of us may ever get. You can imagine that the mind would cause one to believe that death is the enemy and should be avoided at all costs.

And yet, are not death and life one, just as the night and day? A funny thing happens for me when I am near death. It's the exact opposite of what I had expected, having been around almost no death prior to becoming a chaplain. I feel a sense of incredible peace. That feeling you get deep in your gut that makes you feel it's all going to be okay. I get that is a weird thing to say, especially when this sense of peace is in proximity to deeply felt feelings of grief and sadness. But this is a kind of pollination that we humans are meant to do for and with each other. I leave having taken some of their feelings of grief into myself and my life, and I hope, even if ever so subtly, they leave with a sense of presence, that life and death are not the end of their connection. That the very nature of both life and death is connection.

So what am I getting at with all this talk of bees, chaplaincy, and the neuroscience, emotions, and death? The answer is quite simple really: I want to share some of these thoughts and lessons I have gathered to help you connect with the people and world around you. I desire to leave this room today having triggered a hunger in you to connect and to see yourself less as an independent solitary being but as an interconnected person who needs and finds pleasure in others and the world around you. I want to encourage you to resist the fear of connection that our mind feeds us and find the courage to make eye contact with a stranger. I want to compel you to make a connection with someone or maybe even with the bees. I am not a pollinator because I am a chaplain, I am a pollinator because I am human, and I believe you are a pollinator too. The divine in you calls out to the divine in others, when that happens, don't stand in way. Our lives and our personal well-being literally depend on it. My goal is to chaplain you to discover within yourself what connection you most need to make and bring it forth!

To this end I am going to invite us close today with a little experiment. I am going to invite us in the room and on the live stream to make a connection with someone and pay attention to how it feels. Now, I know that by merely saying this I have probably made about half of the room very nervous. I resonate. If I were seated in the congregation my first thought would be: "Oh god, what is this beardy chaplain going to make me do?" If this is you, I invite you to pay attention to this, try not to judge it, just let it be what is. This is your body trying to take care of you. You can thank it and then chose if you want to listen to it.

What I am going to ask us to do is to turn to someone next to you and share your name and one thing that deeply matters to you. I'll say it again, turn to someone next to you and share your name and one thing that deeply matters to you. Ideally this is someone you don't know but do what works. Also, a group of three is okay.

I'll also say, share as much or little as works for you. You can share about this at its most surface level, or you can share more deeply, your choice. There is no right or wrong here. Let me offer an example. If you're like me and music is something you care deeply about, you might choose to keep it at that and say, "I care about music." Great! You did it! Or, you might choose to take it a little deeper with a clause like "because." You might say something like: I care about music because when I was a child my grandmother would play her piano on Sundays when we went to her house for dinner. Now when I hear music, I feel connected to her." Choose to share at whatever level feels right for you today. Feel free to offer a response, or a question if that feels appropriate in the moment. Try to make a genuine connection.

A few things to pay attention to. Try to make eye contact and listen to your body. How are you feeling? Do you feel like you are making a connection? Does this just feel awkward or contrived? Does a shift happen in how you feel? If so, at what point did it occur?

And, if connecting with someone here today is making you feel like running for the door, please be kind to yourself. You do not have to do anything. You can simply say, I am not feeling up to it. If you chose not to participate, there is always the option of connecting with yourself. This is a great option for those of you watching the live stream alone. Try closing your eyes and naming something that matters deeply to you, to yourself. Maybe even begin a conversation with yourself about it.

Make sense? Oh and feel free to follow the conversation where it leads. I'll give you about 3 minutes. Ready, set, go.

In my ministry as a chaplain, I sit with people at the edges of life-places where intellectual concepts fail and only direct experience remains. When words aren't enough to capture the mystery of being alive, I write songs.

So today, the sermon will move back and forth between short spoken reflections and original music. Think of the sermon like a meditation. There is nothing you need to do, the invitation is to be as present as you are able and join me in the silence between the notes. As we dive in, let's take a deep, grounding breath together.

Song: Thankful

We all awaken every morning, rising from unconsciousness to greet the day. But life offers deeper awakenings-to an injustice, an attraction, or a profound inner truth. Awakening is the shift from a mental concept to experience.

I am awakening. You are awakening. But what are we awakening to?

I am awakening to what our Rumi poem calls "the place where everything is music," and what our UU seventh principle calls the "interdependent web of existence." It is a mystical experience of the unity of all life. It goes beyond the intellect. It is the realization that the ego-the story of "me, I, mine"-is just a role I play. I am not fundamentally separate; I am being itself. From this place, gratitude and sorrow sing the same song, and I can finally release control.

Song: In the Way

When I received my Master of Divinity degree, I had given up on my belief in God. Yet degree in hand, a question taunted me: What does it mean to "Master" the Divine? Seminary had left me with the insight that if divinity exists, personal experience is the only door to reliable perception of this ultimate reality.

So, I started to meditate and I treated it like an experiment. I sat in meditative silence for twenty minutes, twice a day. Little by little, the hole where my old belief in God used to sit began to fill with a peace outside my understanding. The noise of my fear decreased. I found myself anchored in the present. My desires shifted effortlessly-I suddenly stopped drinking alcohol, caffeine, or eating meat, experiencing a willingness rather than a forced choice.

Catching up with a seminary friend on the phone, she asked, "Do you believe in God?" My default "No, not really" slipped out. But the moment we hung up, a thought shouted in my mind: You liar. My practice was opening a perception to something I didn't have a name for. It wasn't the old God I had left behind, but something entirely worth calling God.

Song: Atman

My meditation teacher, Paramahansa Yogananda, called this experience Bliss. In 1920, he arrived in Boston as a delegate to the Congress of Religious Liberals-an international interfaith dialogue conceived and funded by our UU ancestors. There, he delivered his first American address on the "universal science of religion," nourishing the very soil our modern UU principles grew from.

Yogananda taught that a universal motive guides all human action: the avoidance of pain and the attainment of permanent Bliss.

Why are we here today? Community, justice, spiritual growth? Yogananda names these motivations as branches, but the root that grounds them and all action is always the same: the universal desire to end suffering and attain sustained joy. When we practice our UU principles, when we honor the inherent worth and dignity of others and ourselve, we intuitively feel closer to that Bliss. No matter how clumsily or skillfully a person navigates the world, everyone is ultimately seeking this same end. There is no singular path. We simply need to taste and see.

Song: Arise

How do we arise to this experience of Bliss? The recipe is deeply personal, but the lineage of sages offers a few tried-and-true ingredients.

First, quiet the mind daily-even for three minutes, simply returning to your breath. Second, be here now. Give up trying to fix yourself or others, and allow the present moment to just be. Third, be radically kind to yourself, redirecting negative self-talk with love. Fourth, step down from the judge's seat; your mind cannot hold the whole truth. And finally, play. Give yourself permission to embody a childlike sense of wonder. As the movie Hopper reminds us, "It's hard to be mad when you feel a part of something big."

This is an empirical invitation: try the recipe, plant the seeds, and see what grows.

Song: Smile With Your Bones

Can you let go of the story of who you think you are, step into the place where everything is music, and simply allow yourself to awaken?

Song: Stop and Play

Sermon Written for United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities Course: Unitarian Universalist Theology, Directed Study, Fall 2024

Preached at University Unitarian Church in Seattle, WA on 12/1/24

Sung Acapella:
O come, O come, Emmanuel
And ransom captive Israel
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel

Today we are celebrating the first Sunday of Advent, a liturgical period of preparation for the celebration of Christmas. For Christians, Advent is a period of fasting and repentance, where followers prepare their spirits to be the home of Emmanuel, which translates to, "God is with us." It is both a reenactment of the Hebrew Bible's belief in a coming messiah and a foreshadowing of the Christian belief in the second coming of Christ. For many, this season sets the theological parameters of the human experience of reality. It is a way of saying that the world is not as it should be, but also the world is not yet as it will be. This is sometimes referred to as living in the "already, but not yet." Advent creates a liminal, affective season to hold together our human past, present, and future and make a theological assertion: God is present with us in our sorrow and joy, our captivity and our liberation, our yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

For us Unitarian Universalists, we have a more complicated relationship with the assertion that God is with us. Though we have, with good reason, left behind the dogmatic affiliations of the Christian tradition, it is important to remember that our theological ancestors understood themselves as Christians. This fact is present in the name of our UU faith tradition. Allow me a brief reminder that Unitarians were the rebellious Christians who could not accept the Trinitarian understanding of one God in three persons, and the Universalists were the rabble-rousers who understood the doctrine of hell to be an unbiblical, pernicious, and coercive doctrine that destroyed human confidence in an eternally loving God. Even a cursory reading of our history shows that their theological iconoclasm, which to us today may seem relatively meager, resulted in a profoundly life-affirming theological outlook and community, as well as much suffering at the hands of the entrenched majority.

Were we to boil down the mass of their courageous brilliance, spanning centuries of time and millions of adherents, into a single articulation, I would argue that one could not do much better than to simply say: "Emmanuel: God is with us." A member here at University Unitarian named this beautifully to me after a sermon I preached a while back. During coffee hour, she shared: "When I try to explain our Unitarian Universalist faith tradition to people, I say 'One God (Unitarian), for all (Universalist)."

I am going to invite us to mash up these two theological premises and ruminate on the phrase: "One God, with all." Can we Unitarian Universalists find spiritual meaning in this ancient concept of Emmanuel: God as with-ness or presence?

But before we proceed, let's get our God-talk in order. When I say God, I am not expecting us to find any consensus about what that means. I am going to articulate an understanding that is working for me, but this does not mean yours is not also welcome. You will hear in my language much gleaned from the Christian tradition because that is my language of origin, but you will also see that I do not fit neatly in that box. One of my favorite parts of our UU tradition is the fourth principle: the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. So, as we proceed into God-talk, I'll begin by reminding you of your liberty to insert your language when mine feels insufficient for you.

Today, I'll be working with a non-theistic understanding of God. This simply means that I do not perceive God to be a divine personality. Paul Tillich's definition is one of my favorites. He says: "God is being-itself, not a being."1 Let me drive home how inclusive I intend to be. All you need to believe in to follow me forward in this sermon is the belief in your own existence. Do you believe in yourself? My assumption is we can all affirm this belief, so on onward we move into the playful sandbox of theology!

In the gospel of Matthew, Jesus says, "Where two or more are gathered in my name, I am there among them."2 Here we see Jesus affirming this concept of presence. Jesus asserts that he is with those who are in proximity to each other.

To us in the liberal religious tradition, we need not understand "in my name" as a literal gathering in the name of the God-Man, Jesus, the second person of the Trinity. Our Universalist heritage helps us affirm that God is in all and with all, as being itself. Tomas Whittemore, in his book The Plain Guide to Universalism states: "Universalists are those who believe in the eventual holiness and happiness of all the human race, as revealed to the world in the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ."3 And from the 21st century, I would add to Whittemore's definition, "and also by innumerable other sacred beings."

Further, I suggest with our Unitarian tradition that we need not be coerced to see Jesus as God. At least not anymore-so than you or I are God. Michael Servetus, known to some as the father of Unitarianism, had a very similar contention in his resistance to the divinity of Christ. To him, the traditional belief obscured the divinity, which he believed that Christ was given to teach, that all are "sons and daughters of God". In his Errors on the Trinity Servetus says, "For the same divinity that is in the Father is communicated to the Son, Jesus Christ, (now, don't miss this) and to our spirit, which is the temple of the living God."4

Following our Unitarian Universalist ancestors, I suggest Jesus's invitation above is to recognize and participate in the interconnected web of existence, which he is a part of, as is each one of us. This reading is powerful because it brings together modern scientific understandings of human interconnection with radical monotheistic belief systems.5

Science is continuing to chip away at the ideals and concepts of individualism, showing they simply are not true. The Enlightenment is, like most movements, a double-edged sword. It liberated humanity from the autocratic hierarchies which saw unity of spirit as unquestioning allegiance to the authority of the church. But it was more of a blunt severing than a skillful incision. Because, tragically, it also severed us from the truth of our essential oneness.

Today many of us are returning to the truth of our interconnection, taking seriously that we are not solitary creatures. In another post-sermon conversation, one of our community members shared a learning she had gleaned from her relationship with Native peoples of the Pacific Northwest. She told me that they, too, have a hierarchy of needs, but it differs greatly from Maslow's. The foundation of their hierarchy is not physiological needs: air, food, water, shelter, etc., but instead, the most fundamental needs are relational, prioritizing strong relationships with family, community, and the natural world as essential for individual and collective well-being.

We are affective creatures, made up of mental, emotional, and physical aspects. In my understanding, the unending process of meeting these needs for ourselves, others, and the world is what I would define as spirituality. None of these individual aspects can be sustained alone. We need each other for physical and emotional nourishment.

In their book, A General Theory of Love, a group of neuroscientists and psychologists sought to understand the social and physiological realities we call Love. They demonstrate that our brains and bodies are not closed-loop systems, but rather open-loop systems that regulate based on the process of limbic regulation, this is one facet of the biological reality we call Love. They say, "Because human physiology is (at least in part) an open loop arrangement, an individual does not direct all of his own functions. A second person transmits regulatory information that can alter hormone levels, cardiovascular function, sleep rhythms, immune function, and more-inside the body of the first. The reciprocal process occurs simultaneously: the first person regulates the physiology of the second, even as he himself is regulated."6

If we use theological language to describe this process, we find ourselves back at the words from Jesus in Matthew. When we are being with each other then we are being with God. If we take God as being-itself, then we all participate in God because we all participate in being. If the being in me is the being in you then even in our physical separation we are together. We are one.

Contemplation on this reality begins to dissolve the myth of our separateness. The more we dissolve the illusion of our separateness, the pursuit of God becomes far more intimate and personal, than faith in a being that exists outside of our reality. Divine affection is experienced through our affection. It is precisely our interdependence upon the natural world, not removal from it, which is the experience of religious affection. This is the greatest mystery of all, and we need not look outside of the natural universe to contemplate it and find pleasure in its majesty.

Let's see how this sounds in another theological language and compare it to our scientific understanding of energy. The Hindu faith calls this individual experience of the interconnected being of all: Atman. Atman roughly translates to soul, self, or essence. It is the individual experience of the greater reality which Hindus call Brahman. Brahman is the ultimate reality, the unifying principle which connects all things. In the Bhagavad Gita, Sri Krishna calls his student, Arjuna to recognize his indestructible connection with Brahman: In verse seventeen, Sri Krishna says: "Realize That which pervades the universe and is indestructible; no power can affect this unchanging and imperishable Reality."7

I can't help but notice how similar this ancient verse sounds to our scientific understanding of energy. The law of conservation of energy states that energy cannot be created nor destroyed, only transformed. This law is a fundamental principle governing all physical phenomena. And, energy, in its various forms, constitutes the underlying reality of the universe. It's the driving force behind all change and movement. The physicist Richard Feynman helps us to see the limits of our knowledge. In his lecture on Physics, Feynman warns, "It is important to realize that in physics today, we have no knowledge of what energy is."8

So, without hyperbole or exaggeration, we can assert that this underlying reality is responsible for our human existence, as well as everything else that exists in the universe. And, what this thing we call energy is remains a mystery. When our body dies, our energy is imperishable, it cannot be destroyed. It was before our experience in this body and will be after.

When I tell a family member that their connection to their dying loved one remains imperishable after death, I can say this with certainty, both theologically and scientifically.

Many of us who deconstruct our theistic beliefs become humanists and atheists. We want to root our beliefs in facts, not superstition. This is a noble instinct, but the truth is that science and the empirical method are only one way of understanding and communicating knowledge. And frankly, the scientific method is the newcomer on the knowledge scene, especially if we consider that the conversation we are having today has been going on for millennia. Nevertheless, its contribution has been monumental. Yet, it is not without fault. Neuroscience is learning that the rational only has the capacity to speak to one part of our three-part brain. Our neocortical brain loves the rational propositions put forth through the empirical method, but our other two brains-the limbic brain and the reptilian brain-have no use for this information. They cannot comprehend it. The limbic brain, the brain that understands emotion, is left completely out of the conversation.9

This age-old divide between human reason and passion comes up when I hear the residual feelings of grief and loss that remain with many after giving up a belief in a traditional, personal God. One of the important criticisms leveled against Humanism is that many experience the belief system as deeply impersonal. Indeed, the ideas of energy, and evolution do feel impersonal when compared to a God who theists call Abba, Daddy.

What I am trying to encourage us to see is that if our theological paradigms can be fluid enough to hold all of our human experience, rational and emotive, we will understand that Jesus's words of being with the two or more, are alive in our very real human experiences of connection and affection. When we lay our head in the lap of a loved one, when we embrace and dopamine is involuntarily released in our brains, when we sing together and feel the oneness of our voices, we are participating in affection and connection with the eternal source of being.

What I want us to consider is that we are quite literally God for and with each other. What could be more personal, more intimate, more familial than that? It is far more personal than a faraway deity who sends his son as an atoning sacrifice. It is so powerfully personal that these relationships mold and shape the fabric of our existence every single day. It is Emmanuel: God with us.

Let us add one more voice to our ruminations this morning. The process theologian, Charles Hartshorne, critiques Tillich's perspective we have been working with, of God as being itself, and I think it's important because it helps us to not get too hemmed into this idea. Remember! I am advocating for fluidity and playfulness!

Process theologians see God in the processes of change, becoming, and transformation, not as a timeless being that exists outside of our world. For Tillich, God is the ultimate ground of being, thus he hangs onto this timeless quality of classical theism. For process theologians, God is the process of becoming, and human actions affect God. In process theology, God is not the one being who transcends feeling, but rather the one that feels all the feelings of the world. Hartshorne suggests that Tillich misses an opportunity in his desire to assert that God is not "a being." He agrees with this statement, but wants to take it further, he says: "God can be, not simply 'a being,' but 'the being,' essential to all, strictly unique in status. For this being is universally relevant, the Subject to whom all individuals are infallibly known objects, and upon whom all objects depend."10 This resonates with the Hindu perspective we outlined above and allows us to understand the power of this energy in less abstract terms. To use the language I am suggesting, God is infallibly with us. God is presence, and as our Islamic siblings often say, "God is as near to us as our jugular vein."

In my work as a chaplain, I think of what I do quite humbly. On one level, my job is to be a human in the room. I don't mean this to denigrate the work that I and other chaplains do. Rather, I mean to raise the bar on what it means to be a human with each other. Our modern world has given us so many reasons to fracture our relationships, cutting us off from the experience of ultimate affection, which is literally the giving and receiving of love, from which and by which we all exist.

My work is something any one of us can do. It is ironic to me that it takes such intense, lengthy training, and yet often I think to myself: give me six weeks and I could teach almost anyone to do this job. What I mean is, to be a chaplain is to show up in people's experiences of suffering, loss, and grief, and to be Emmanuel, God with us. I truly believe you don't need a degree, or any fancy training to do this. You simply need to be willing to arrive, be, and trust that your proximity is more than enough God-ness for the situation. We are biologically wired to do this for and with each other in the most mundane and intense moments of our lives. To show up and be-not a witness-but a with-ness. To celebrate that two or more are gathered and thus Emmanuel is indeed with us.

Sung Acapella:
O come, Desire of nations, bind
In one the hearts of all humankind;
Bid Thou our sad divisions cease,
And be Thyself our Kin of Peace.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel

This sermon, Emmanuel: Toward A Theology of Presence © 2024 by Kyle David Turver is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International

Christian doctrines of God and Christology have been shaped by their passion for perfection or the unambiguous, but the unambiguous has the status of an abstraction. The concretely real is ambiguous. An ambiguous God is of greater stature than an unambiguous deity.

-- Bernard Loomer, The Size of God

When I came upon this argument, I was reminded of a debate with my childhood neighbor, Jake, one of my best friends at the time.

Jake and I were somewhere around ten. One day, while playing in his backyard, the topic of heaven came up. I remember him bluntly saying, "I don't want to go to heaven; that place sounds boring." I felt scandalized by the comment. How could one not want to go to the place of perfection when the only other option I knew of was the place of eternal conscious torment? I tried to correct his judgment, but he said, "I don't want to sit on a cloud next to golden streets playing the harp for eternity!" He continued, "At least hell sounds interesting!" I could not believe my ears. I remember telling him it wasn't all harps and clouds, and he asked, "What do you think heaven is like?" I said something about it being the place of perfection where bad things don't happen. Jake quickly and wisely retorted, "That's what I mean. Doesn't that sound boring to you? To live for an eternity where nothing interesting happens? That sounds like hell to me."

I was dumbfounded; I did not know one could think such things, let alone allow them to come out of their mouth. But what I remember more than anything else was a feeling inside that I dared not translate into words. I knew exactly what he meant. Sitting in catechism at my Lutheran church, I had felt the same things he was naming but could not imagine having the freedom to put them into words. Even at that moment, I was too terrified to allow myself to consider it further.

Why has this story stuck with me all these years? My answer is it stands in my subconscious, continually asking me, how big is your God? What my ten-year-old self could not (or maybe would not) see is Jake's God, regardless of whether he believed in God, was significantly larger in stature than mine.

Another important fact about Jake is that he had muscular dystrophy, a terminal illness that, at that time, usually meant death came around twenty years old. Every day Jake had to confront the fact that his life would be far shorter than his peers and family members. He was always confronted by ultimacy and the reality of his finitude.

On the other hand, I encountered ultimacy in the abstract. Through attending church, catechism, and youth group, I was taught that the answer to Jake's problem was a belief in an abstractly perfect and loving God. A God who would, in some conceptual future, right all the wrongs in the world, who would make a world where no child would die long before his parents because of a disease. Where death and its effects no longer had any power. But this God was not real, at the very least not real enough to change the disease that would take Jake's life. What was real was our friendship. What is concrete is that Jake was God for me, and I was for him.

Our Unitarian ancestors took great pains to hand this insight on to future generations. The Racovian Catechism, one of the earliest articulations of Unitarian Theology, puts it quite plainly: "The divine Nature doth itself constitute a Person."1 Michael Servitus, often heralded as the father of Unitarianism, says it this way: "God is able to share the fullness of deity with human beings and to give him a name which is above every name."2

Today, I see that my friend Jake was wise beyond his years. He could see the paltry, boring, and mundane varnish on my abstractly perfect God. He wanted the ambiguous, interesting, and profound God embodied in his daily experience. His life was far more interesting than any God I could witness to at the time. He didn't want out of his life to some perfected future; he wanted to live more deeply, more connected, and he brought me along for the ride. My days with Jake were some of my life's most fun and carefree times. Even though I never converted Jake to my way of seeing things, I was also God for Jake.

When we got older, Jake's mom told me how much I had meant to their family and Jake. I never saw Jake as someone with a disease. I knew about it, and we talked about it sometimes, but it didn't matter to me. I liked Jake and spent time with him because he was my friend. As we got older, his mom let me in on a truth that had escaped me: Jake's having a friend like me was rare for him because I didn't see him as someone with a disease. She said this was a profound blessing to him and his family.

Would that I could wrap this story up in a perfect bow and tell you how Jake and I remained best friends until the day he died. This, too, would be too neat and tidy for the ambiguity of a world, a God, worth living in. As we got older, Jake and I drifted apart. His disease made life harder for him, and I began to grow and change into my adolescence. I don't even remember the last time I saw him. I have felt shame about this from time to time. But this, too, I've come to realize, is the ever-unfolding, sometimes beautiful, sometimes devastating nature of living in God-ness. Our lives are not made up of perfect endings or happily-ever-after's. They are as ambiguous, strange, and marvelous as the world we see all around us. Jake is always with me, reminding me that the concrete God, the marvelously ambiguous, always unfolding web of life, is the better part, not harps and clouds.

Today, Jake and our Unitarian Universalist ancestors give voice to an experience that many of my patients nearing the end of their lives discover, there is no need to fear. We do not require abstract beliefs in harps and clouds to feel deep within our hearts that all things will be well. I remember nearing the end of a hike with my youngest son, Oliver. He was exhausted and crying for the end of the trail to come. To encourage him a long, I began to sing a song from my heart, "Don't you worry, Little Child, it's gonna be okay." It's an affirmation-a mantra if you will-that against all odds, when things certainly don't feel okay, when things are not okay, when fascism rises to bring despair and hopelessness harming the most vulnerable among us, our Unitarian Universalist tradition calls us to rise up and act and have hope. Like our friends in Minneapolis. Not blind from toxic positivity, but wide awake to a deep knowing that there is so much they cannot touch. We act, and while we act, we sing to ourselves, to our children, to our inner children, sometimes in spite of a good reason, "Don't you worry little child, it's gonna be okay."

Song: Little Child
by Kyle Turver

Do you ever speak to God?
Have you ever wondered where your life comes from?
What does God feel like to you?
Does she cause you to look inward
Or beyond your point of view?
Is she a burning in your chest?
Or like trying something new?
You've got your whole life
To think it over

Don't you worry, little child, it's gonna be okay
Although time keeps on slippin' away
Let me tell you somethin' it's a brand-new day
Don't you worry, little child, it's gonna be okay

Today, I am going to use words and songs like signposts to point to something that is wordless. To whats more. I am inviting us to explore the unseen, unheard, intangible essence of life. It is what our reading today describes as the Tao. Stated so beautifully there, no other words are needed. And yet, here we are, desiring to hear. Desiring to taste and see. Desiring to receive. Tao is a way, a path, a journey. Never a destination. May this sermon be likewise! Come on a little journey through my words and songs. May they point beyond themselves and resonate with the wordlessness in you. May we get lost together and see where we might be found.

---

According to an old Hindu legend, there was once a time when all human beings were Gods, but they so abused their divinity that Brahma, the chief God, decided to take it away from them and hide it in a place where it could never be found. To find the best spot, however, he needed to hold a council of the Gods to help him decide.

"Let's bury it deep in the earth," said the Gods.
Brahma answered, "No, that will not do, because humans will dig into the earth and find it."
The Gods replied, "Okay, let's sink it in the deepest ocean then."
But Brahma said, "No, not there, for they will learn to dive, and they will find it."
Then the gods said, "What about the highest mountain top, out in the farthest corner of the earth?"

But again Brahma replied, "No, that will not do either, because they will eventually climb every mountain, scale every peak, search every hidden cave and once again find and take up their divinity."

The rest of the Gods were exasperated. They threw up their arms in surrender. "There is no place!" they hollered. "The humans will proliferate, and they will find it anywhere we put it."

Brahma was quiet for a time. He thought long and deep. Finally, he looked up at the rest of the Gods, a knowing twinkle in his eye. "Here is what we shall do," he said. "We will hide their divinity deep down in the one place they will surely never look - the very center of their own being."

The rest of the Gods rejoiced. Of course! It was the perfect place! They all formally agreed on it, and the deed was done.

Ages passed, and since that time, humans have been on a desperate and unending search, travelling every corner of the planet, digging, diving, climbing, and exploring - searching for the one thing they know they've lost, and just can't seem to find.

Song: Come on Home

In my role as a chaplain, there is a question I often ask my patients. It is an age-old question, yet one we rarely stop to consider. It resonates below our conscious lives. It breaks through the day-to-day noise in moments of stillness, or of suffering. It comes as a formless feeling, a curiosity, a sense wonder. It is active when you look at the sky and feel the magnitude of existence next to the smallness of your body. It is tapping on your shoulder when you lose someone near to you and wonder if you will ever see them again. It is a question that is always with us.

Before a beloved individual, suffering from the burdens of cancer, treatment, and often, fear of death, I ask:
"Do you believe you are more than a body?"

I find it fascinating that no one has ever responded with an outright "no." They respond with their own qualifications and understandings of what this question evokes in them, but I have yet to get an outright, "No, I am just this body." Like the old Hindu tale, maybe we keep looking for something that was always exactly what we already are. We journey through our whole lives looking up mountains and below seas to find that which is already the very essence of our being.

And so, before this congregation today I ask:
Do you?
Are you more than a body?

Song: Be Here Now

The now is a portal beyond the body. The spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle helped me see this. He says that nothing ever happened in the past nor in the future. Everything that has ever happened, takes place in the now. When we are considering that which is more than the body, the only place to start is Now because everything else is not real, it is memory and imagination, stories we tell ourselves. The ancients called this maya, delusion, ego.

We can't even approach this with words, for they too are concepts and thought forms. We must move beyond thought into the realm of presence.

Let's try an experiment. I invite you to observe yourself. Are you here in this moment or is your mind sending you elsewhere, to worries about the past or fears about the future? Is your mind wandering to what you will eat after service, or the things you must get done today? This is not a positive or a negative, I am only asking you to be aware of yourself not to change anything.

Let's take 90 seconds of silence. During this time be the watcher of your mind. Begin by paying attention to your breath. Watch it come in and out. Ask yourself, who is doing the watching? When a thought comes, try not to attach to it, instead be the observer of the thought. Do not judge or condemn, simply witness.

Silence for 90 seconds
Be Here Now Reprise
Who is the watcher? Can the mind be both the thinker and the watcher? Eckhart Tolle says:

"So when you listen to a thought, you are aware not only of the thought but also of yourself as the witness of the thought. A new dimension of consciousness has come in. As you listen to the thought, you feel a conscious presence-your deeper self-behind or underneath the thought, as it were. The thought loses its power over you and quickly subsides because you are no longer energizing the mind through identification with it. This is the beginning of the end of involuntary and compulsive thinking."

Now hear again part of our reading from the Tao Te Ching: "Confront it, and you won't see its face. Follow it, and you can't find an end. Perceive its ancient subtle heart, however, and you become master of the moment. Know what came before time and the beginning of wisdom is yours."

And what is before time? Simply this moment. Before the human mind began to parse out this instant from the ones before and after it there was only the now. And thus, it follows, that even though we can remember the past, albeit poorly, and imagine the future, also poorly, the now is the actualization of the truth that you are more than the body. Might it be that you exist eternally in this moment and always have?

Jesus says: "Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?"

What he means is: see how they are not controlled by their minds, their fears, their regrets. They do not concern themselves with anything more than this moment and yet they have all they need, and they are happy.

Song: Pick A Pine Tree

What is it that we are all looking for? Searching up mountains and below seas to attain? What do the birds have that we are missing? Bliss. Happiness. This is the hidden treasure. This is formless form. This is God. We are constantly filling our barns, bank account, buildings with stuff thinking that when we have enough, know enough, do enough, become enough, fix the world or ourselves, or our parents enough? then we will be happy. Yet we are constantly thwarted because it only comes temporarily and partially. Imagine some 8 billion individuals spinning through the friction of this mad search for happiness and the dysfunction, the delusion of the world becomes clearer.

We think we have it then the winds of change kick up and reorder our lives, we suffer because we foolishly believed that it was something outside of us that made us happy. Some other time and place where we were happy. But there is no other time, there is only the eternal now. On the material plan, change is the only unchanging reality.

Song: Everything Changes

Looked at but not seen,
listened to but not heard,
grasped for but not held,
formless, soundless, intangible:
the Tao resists analysis and
defies comprehension.

Its rising is not about light,
its setting not a matter of darkness.
Unnameable, unending,
emerging continually, and
continually pouring back into nothingness,
It is formless form, unseeable image,
elusive evasive unimaginable mystery.

Confront it, and you won't see its face.
Follow it, and you can't find an end.
Perceive its ancient subtle heart, however,
and you become master of the moment.
Know what came before time,
and the beginning of wisdom is yours.

And my sincerest prayer is that it may indeed be yours.

–The Tao Te Ching of Lao Tzu #14

Edited by Brian Browne Walker

As I begin, I'd like to take a moment to speak about how I see my role as I stand in this pulpit. I am grateful for the opportunity to share with you, but, in all honest, preacher is not my favorite role. I am a minister, a chaplain, and a bit of a troubadour. I would prefer to sit at coffee with each of you, our knees facing each other, and hear what makes you come alive, what your story means to you, what feelings live in your body that make you tremble with a holy awe. What gets you out of bed in the morning? What sorrows you carry, and what makes you laugh until tears come out of your eyes.

I would rather sing you a song whose meaning you can make your own.

I am not here to tell you THE Truth, I am not here to ask you to be anything other than what you are. I am not here to give you knowledge or to ask you to accept a certain worldview. I am not even here on behalf of God, an institution, or even your own mother.

No,
I am not here to preach at you,
but I am here to provoke you.

I am here to provoke to feel,
to recognize your feelings, and to own them.
I am here to provoke you to love.
To provoke you to live deeply and fully.
To provoke you to marvel at the wonder of your life and feel sorrow at the injustice of it.
To provoke you to feel and honor your body as a conduit of
peace, justice, and truth in the world.
To provoke you to rest and know you cannot change anyone or anything.
To provoke you to connect, connect, and keep connecting.

I invite you to join me in this time of reflection just as you are, and leave nothing of your messy and beautiful life at the door. All of you is welcome here, and in my eyes all of it is holy! I have the best seat in this house because it is looking at each of you, beautiful and holy people.

And in this spirit, I offer you a poem by one of our most beloved saints, Mary Oliver, I am sure it has been offered from this pulpit mansy times and may it be so many times more:

Wild Geese

A fun fact about me: I am a big James Taylor fan. Since I was a child, his music, voice, guitar style, and lyrics weave themselves together and speak directly to my spirit. I have never been to Carolina, but I have gone there in my mind many times as James sings, I'm Gone to Carolina in my mind.

My favorite thing about James's music is it brings forward human feelings and connection. A song of his titled, Shower the People is one I have often skipped passed. It was released in the 80's during his smooth pop phase. This style never appealed much to me. But recently the song caught me.

He sings, "Shower the people you love with love, show them the way that you feel. Things are gonna be much better if you only will."

As a chaplain, one of the biggest sources of pain that I encounter is disconnection. People yearning to be able to tell a loved one how much they mean to them. People full of regret for the loss of relationship that has transpired. People who want to know if anyone cares enough to show up. To show or tell people the way we feel can feel so difficult, but I have seen first-hand the wisdom James speaks of when he sing: things are gonna be much better if you only will." Because speaking our feelings creates an instant context for connection.

These experiences of disconnection have a name: it is spiritual pain and no matter our belief system, we have all felt it. If you have ever been through the loss of a loved one you will know that this is very real pain.

If love is an action word, then love often looks like listening to the spiritual pain of another. To truly hear it and not try to fix it or minimize it is one of the greatest gifts we can give each other. And it's something every one of us can do. We can shower people with love just by hearing them.

We experience spiritual pain in other, less obvious ways.

I learned this when I was a young, idealistic worship director serving in politically moderate churches. During that time, I would often change the lyrics to hymns to be more inclusive. I would sometimes change gender pronouns from he to she or they. I might rewrite part of a verse that had too much hell language. One time, I changed the lyrics from "nothing but the Blood of Jesus" to "Nothing but the Love of Jesus." Yes, you are welcome to marvel at my poetic genius lol!

As you might imagine, from time to time I would receive angry emails accusing me of ruining a favorite hymn or pointing out the heresy that I had somehow propagated. In my early ministry, I ran from these people as fast and far away as I could. I was doing the right thing, who cares how they felt!

One day, my supervisor called me into his office and told me that I was not allowed to let these emails go unanswered. But he also gave me a great gift. He told me, you don't have to agree with them, or even do what they want, but you do have to listen to them. Something about that admonishment changed my whole perspective. Listen. I can do that!

I began to invite my critics to conversation. And most of the time they accepted. They came to my office or a coffeeshop with furrowed brows and crossed arms. Released from my burden of fixing them or appeasing them, I began to ask about their experience. Why was it that I ruined your favorite hymn? What does that theological idea mean to you and why does losing it make you feel angry? Who does this hymn remind you of? As they spoke, I watched their bodies change. The crossed arms slowly opened. Their posture moved from reclining backward to leaning inward. Their brows would loosen. And sometimes their eyes would fill with tears.

They would say things like:
"When I was a child, my grandmother sang this hymn to me before bed."
"It was my father's favorite hymn."
"I feel like I am losing my church."
"It was the blood of Jesus that helped me get sober."

I was moved by these stories and felt the hardness in my own heart beginning to melt. What my congregants were feeling was spiritual pain. The rightness or wrongness of my choices was immaterial, they were in pain, and when I showed them that I saw their pain, connection was the result. The experience of helping others feel heard and connected made me feel more connected to my purpose than ever before. I would leave those meetings with the sensation that I had discovered exactly what I was created to do.

The story of Marco that you heard earlier is a fictionalized autobiography of sorts. I grew up as a deep feeling kid in a household and broader culture full of people who devoted significant efforts to ignoring, numbing, or sugarcoating their feelings. I saw my quick tears and big feelings as something to be hidden, fixed, and downplayed. I saw my feelings as a defect not an asset. It was moments of care and connection that taught me the power of my feelings, my superpower was being activated. The ability to listen, connect, and empathize is what I am good at, it is what make me a minister. And as I minister, I see it as my work to help others access and speak about what they feel.

SIDE NOTE: To all you deep feelers out there, I want to pause here to tell you that you are not a problem. You are not a burden. You do not need to calm down or chill out. You do not need to be more rational. You do not need to stop being so dramatic. The world needs you to feel and feel deeply now more than ever.

Our Unitarian Universalist history, like all spiritual traditions stemming from the Enlightenment, carries an individualistic, rationalistic undercurrent. We are children of Descartes, "I think, therefore I am." And before we critique our enlightenment ancestors, as I plan to do, let me remind you that many of them gave their lives so that we can practice our faith with freedom of conscience and without dogmatic oversight. I honor them and am proud to be a part of the work that claims human intellect as a source of holy inspiration.

But I do believe they got some things wrong, or maybe they just accented what their time needed, and I think our time needs something different. The modern-day philosopher James KA Smith, says what I believe best: "We are not so much thinking things as loving things." Said another way, you are what you LOVE. Smith's work has convinced me that we are not formed so much by what we believe or think than by what we do. Our actions shape our beliefs more than our intellect.

For a long time, we have believed that if we can just get the right ideas into people's heads then we will change the world and end suffering. If we can know the right things about climate change, racism, sexism, homophobia, poverty then we can fix these problems. On one hand, knowledge gives us power to effect change, but as interconnected living things knowing the right things is not the same as doing the right things.

People are not thinking heads on a stick. We are embodied individuals, who received energy, knowledge, connection, and life not from ideas but from what we love and what we feel. It is the feelings we get from ideas that connect us to them. Our imagination connects us to what they could do for the world.

In her book Emergent Strategy, Adrianne Marie Brown reimagines how we might change the world not from our most individual tendencies but from our most interconnected. She says:

"One thing I have observed: When we are engaged in acts of love, we humans are at our best and most resilient. The love in romance that makes us want to be better people, the love of children that makes us change our whole live to meet their needs, the love of family that makes us drop everything to take care of them, the love of community that makes us work tirelessly with broken hearts. Perhaps humans' core function is to love."

Love is not a syrupy ideal. Love is not comfort. Very often, it leads us to do some very uncomfortable things.

One such story comes from Mark Morrison-Reed's book Darkening the Doorways. In 2000, UU minister Sharon Dittmar preached a sermon about Unitarian Universalism's mixed legacy regarding race. In the sermon she mentioned Rev. William H. G. Carter, a Black Unitarian minister in Cincinnati, Ohio, in the 1930's, who was shunned by the local Unitarian Churches and the denomination. Carter's faults in the eyes of the practically all white, 30's, Unitarian AUA denomination was expressed by Rev. Lon Ray Call, also known as one of the founders of the Fellowship Movement. He said: "Rev. Cater is a kindly man, quite intelligent. But his storefront church is in the wrong place. The neighborhood surrounding it is poor and characterized by rowdiness. . . . I do not recommend fellowship for Rev. Carter."

Translation: He is Black and his church is in a Black neighborhood.

Meanwhile, Lon Ray Call went on to plant many churches in affluent, academic, white, locations.

Well, it just so happened that Rev. Carter's granddaughter was in this service in 2000. Rev. Dittmar shared that Carter's granddaughter expressed aloud that she never thought she'd hear her grandfather's name in a Unitarian service. Dittmar describes the experience as "a moment of utter grace."

A year later, Rev. Dittmar became the settled minister at First Unitarian Church of Cincinnati and again preached the sermon. This time the congregation swarmed her after the sermon, expressing that they must do something about it. Rev. Dittmar says, "Two years later, with much planning and trepidation, we did."

What they did was organize a reconciliation service between First Unitarian Church, Northern Hills, the UUA, and the descendants of W.H.G. Carter. I don't have time to tell all of this powerful story, but, I encourage you to grab this book, and read it yourself.

The service took two years to organize not because of service logistics but because it takes time to build connections. The congregation had anxiety about apologizing for something none of them were there for, and many wondered if the Carter family would even show up. Rev. Dittmar recalls a conversation with a Black colleague she went to for advice who reflected, "In America, race is the wound that will not heal." Rev. Dittmar continues: "Race is the wound that will not heal because we have so few opportunities to sit with our keens touching and safely discuss our thoughts and feelings–all we know and live and can never possibly understand."

We are our grandmothers prayers
We are our grandfathers dreamings
We are the breath of the ancestors
We are the spirit of God

Wounds that will not heal come with constant discomfort. Any of you in this room who have chronic pain know what I am talking about. Thinking of racism as the wound that won't heal is an invitation. It should keep us unsettled and aware of the way our ancestors' prayers and dreaming's were not idyllic fictions, but complex, imperfect connections seeped in the problems of their day, just as ours are. Which is why our connections matter. Who are we connecting to? Are they only people who look and think like ourselves? How might we expand our connections, reach out to others, and listen more deeply?

In the 21st century, we are experiencing rapid change. To meet our changing world's spiritual needs, the Article II commission is asking UUs to reconsider our principles. You may have feelings about this. I encourage you to feel them, to talk about them, and to listen to others. Our principles from 1983 prioritized at position number one universal, individual inherent worth and dignity. The new Article II proposed this GA begins very differently, with interconnection, it says:

"We honor the interdependent web of all existence. We covenant to cherish Earth and all beings by creating and nurturing relationships of care and respect. With humility and reverence, we acknowledge our place in the great web of life, and we work to repair harm and damaged relationships."

Humility, repair, relationships, care, respect… These are all feelings words. To do these things and to live our faith in faithfulness to our dependence upon and interconnection with all things, I believe we are going to need to get far better acquainted with our feelings, what they lead us to do, where they make us want to run and hide, and where they make us want to shout for joy.

When we talk about our feelings, it can feel scary, because our feelings possess power. But this is power of connection. When we speak of our feelings and listen to others, the result is as much like a superpower as Marco's tears; they connect us and help us to fight for a better, more human-centered world. It makes me think of another James Taylor song where he reflects on the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King

Let us turn our thoughts today to Martin Luther King
And recognize that there are ties between us
All men and women living on the earth
Ties of hope and love of
Sister and Brotherhood

That we are bound together
By our desire to see the world become
A place in which our children
Can grow free and strong
We are bound together
By the task that stand before us
And the road that lies ahead
We are bound, and we are bound

How does that make you feel? There are no wrong answers. We are bound to our feelings as much as we are to one another, so feel them, share them . . . things are going to be much better if you only will! In the days, months, and years ahead, I invite you to hold this “How Does This Make you Feel” question as a way of connecting to the world around you and to each other.

May you bless and be blessed with the power to share, connect, and love.