Finding a Faith You Can Live With

It seems there comes a time in everyone’s life when you find yourself really interested in something that never, ever interested you before. Right now for my wife, Julia, and I—proud parents of a seven-month-old baby boy—that something is, of course, poop. I knew that this would be part of parenting, but I had no idea how fascinating the subject would actually be. What’s more, I never would have thought I’d be so willing to talk about it with others. Of course, I’m not alone here. There’s a book called The Tao of Poop by Vivian Glyck from Shambhala Publications. It seems that there are a lot of lessons to be learned from not only poop, but from all the messiness that comes with raising a child. "Parenting," Glyck writes, "is the ultimate spiritual practice." In order to survive the chaos of parenthood and find enjoyment in it, she explains, we must evolve and become wiser each day.

Words of wisdom from The Tao of Poop. But this isn’t the first time I’ve found myself surprised by my interest in a subject that previously seemed unbelievably mundane. You may have noticed that I’m one of those fashionable older fathers with a young child, so I’ve already had to deal with another huge paradigm shift in my thinking, this one around retirement. I’m sure that my twenty-something self would be absolutely aghast at my forty-something self’s interest in CDs and IRAs and mutual funds. Even my thirty-something self might find it amusing that I actually know the formula for figuring the bond-to-equity ratio of one’s portfolio based on current age and years until retirement. Heck, I’m still a little stunned with that bit of knowledge. The point is life’s full of these kinds of changes in consciousness. And Vivian Glyck’s advice applies equally to all of them: in order to survive, we must evolve and become wiser each day.

Now for subjects like parenting and retirement, there’s plenty of help out there. When Julia and I announced that we were going to have a baby, friends and family responded with a deluge of books on parenting. And when the first glimmer of interest in retirement appeared in my mind, I had no trouble finding books on how to start making plans for my golden years. When it comes to parenting, there’s a lot of different advice out there, ranging from the Strict Father Morality of James Dobson-types, to the Nurturant Parent Morality of folks like Unitarian Universalist Bill Doherty. When it comes to planning for retirement, however, experts pretty much agree on one thing: Take full advantage of the defined-contribution plans offered by your employer. They lower your taxable income, and they’re tax-deferred, so there’s more money for compound growth. And, in many cases, employers may offer matching contributions.

But this a sermon isn’t about parenting, or retirement. It’s about faith. And while both parenting and planning for one’s financial future may be thought of as acts of faith, that’s not the kind of faith I’m talking about here. I’m talking about the kind of faith Ralph Waldo Emerson had in mind when he asked in his essay “Nature,” “Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe?” It’s the kind of faith the historian of religion Wilfred Cantwell Smith described as “a quiet confidence and joy which enables one to feel at home in the universe.” I’m talking about the kind of faith about which Unitarian theologian James Luther Adams remarked, “an unexamined faith is not worth having, for it can be true only by accident. A faith worth having is a faith worth discussing and testing."

Personally, I’m not sure how well we do that sort of discussing and testing of faith in our congregations. It’s been my experience that many of us are more likely to feel comfortable talking about sex or money or even poop than we are discussing and testing our personal faith. Indeed, I’ve known several people who, near the end of their lives, found themselves with deep and profound questions about their relation to the universe; wonderful, intelligent people who were longtime members of Unitarian Universalist congregations who just never got around to examining whether or not they truly felt at home in the universe. And I have to say, it’s a sad and even frightening thing to witness. How do you help someone who knows that she or he has very little time left, but who suddenly feels compelled to reexamine life’s most basic questions?

So I’d like to make a bold statement here. When we think about planning for our retirement, we need to pay as much attention to our spiritual wellbeing as we (hopefully) pay to our financial wellbeing. And just as there’s a single bit of financial advice that has precedent over all the others (take full advantage of the defined-contribution plans offered by your employer), so is there a single bit of spiritual advice that I believe needs to be taken seriously: take full advantage of the faith development opportunities offered by your congregation. And just as we are encouraged to begin participating in those defined-contribution plans as early as possible in order to reap the full financial benefits, I believe we need to begin participating in those faith development opportunities as early as possible so we can reap the full spiritual benefits.

And as long as I’m making bold statements, here’s another. Just as some employers have better contribution plans than others, some religious traditions and congregations have better faith development plans. In this regard, I believe that Unitarian Universalism is one of the best places to work out one’s salvation (which has as its root the Latin word salvus, which means whole and safe). We offer something that many other religious traditions can’t even begin to offer: the chance to “evolve and become wiser each day,” the opportunity to “discuss and test one’s faith”—one’s sense of “feeling at home in the universe”—in religious community which is committed to diversity and inclusive pluralism. And when it comes to lifespan development—emotional, intellectual, and spiritual—the kind of diversity we offer is a huge plus.

So, how does one invest spiritually in one’s community of faith? Once upon a time (the 1950s, to be precise), investing in one’s congregation meant adopting what Princeton sociologist Robert Wuthnow calls a “dwelling spirituality,” which “emphasizes habitation: God occupies a definite place in the universe and creates a sacred space where humans too can dwell; to inhabit sacred space is to know its territory and to feel secure.” Many of us come out of traditions that embraced this sort of spirituality. For us, it represented a spirituality of authority and conformity, of dogma and creed. We found this sort of spirituality too confining. It’s like the pension plans from the same era. Everyone’s eggs were put in one basket, so if the company you worked for moved away or went bankrupt, so did the future you hoped for. In religious terms, if our belief in the kind of God who dwelled with us in such a congregation became untenable, so did the promise of salvation, of wholeness and security.

Wuthnow describes another kind of spirituality in his book After Heaven: Spirituality in America Since the 1950s. He calls it “seeking spirituality.” Rather than the old-time religion of dwelling-oriented spirituality, seeking-oriented spirituality is New Age. People search for experiences of the transcendent in a diverse spiritual market place, handling “a hundred items and put[ting] them down,” like the spiritual window-shoppers in Rumi’s poem. Attending a community of faith may still be an option for these seekers, but they rarely, if ever, are cradle-to-grave members of a single congregation or even a single tradition. Ultimately, they see their congregation not as a home, but as “a supplier of spiritual goods and services.” The problem with this kind of spirituality is that we may be spending so much of our capital seeking spiritual fulfillment now that we’re missing the chance to truly invest in something that can produce dividends for life.

Fortunately, Wuthnow offers a third alternative, a spirituality that combines the best of both dwelling and seeking, a spirituality that can offer both a spiritual home and a spiritual journey. He calls it “practice-oriented spirituality,” and as I said earlier, I think that liberal religious communities of faith such as those found in the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations are some of the best places to engage in this sort of spirituality. Wuthnow defines practice as “engaging intentionally in activities that deepen [one’s] relationship to the sacred.” Wuthnow says that such practice is intentional, disciplined, and long term; that it involves self-reflection and discernment; it is interlaced with daily life; it has a social dimension; it is guided by rules; it leads to a life of service; and it is rewarding.

These traits describe, I believe, what many of us would love to find in a religious community, a community that we want to participate in not because our tradition tells us we must, but because we find it so rewarding, so life-affirming, so spiritually satisfying that we couldn’t imagine our lives without it. Ah, but there’s a rub. Such communities exist only when we create them, when we invest in them. And just like investing financially for our retirement, the more we invest spiritually in our communities of faith today, the bigger the divide later in life. And as I mentioned earlier, I believe Unitarian Universalist congregations can produce a higher yield—as long as we invest in them wisely. Here’s why.

In his book To Re-Enchant the World: A Philosophy of Unitarian Universalism, Richard Grigg, professor and chair of the department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut, suggests that our congregations offer those of us who invest in them something quite amazing. In Grigg’s words,

The world around us has become ever more secularized, ever more disenfranchised. Mystery and sacrality seem to be in eclipse. As traditional institutional religions slowly wither, however, individual seekers are making innumerable attempts to connect with the sacred, but their lone efforts bear little fruit. Unless my spiritual worldview is reinforced by other persons, unless it possesses inter-subjective validity, it will not be fully real to me. Unitarian Universalism accomplishes the extraordinary task for its members of re-enchanting the world: by bringing sundry individual quests together in a single community where the whole body of seekers affirms the quest of each member, and the requisite inter-subjective validity is provided.

What better place, then, to engage in Wuthnow’s practice-oriented spirituality than in such a community? When I first read Grigg’s book, I intuited that this was true. But it is, after all, a philosophy of Unitarian Universalism, and philosophies come and go. What I wanted to see was some scientific evidence for the benefits of “bringing sundry individual quests together in a single community.” Which brings me to human development expert Richard M. Lerner, whose presidential address to the Society for the Study of Human Development bears this impressive title: “Diversity in IndividualfgContext Relations as the Basis for Positive Development Across the Life Span: A Developmental Systems Perspective for Theory, Research, and Application.” Pretty impressive, huh? Well it impressed me, so I thought I’d see if it might add some validity to the claims Grigg made.

It does. According to Lerner, “diversity is a fundamental asset of human development.” It “is both a strength of individuals and an asset for planning and promoting means to improve the human condition.” By exposing ourselves to a wide variety of individual beliefs and diverse developmental paths, we can better see the possibilities for our own belief systems and our own developmental trajectories. Ultimately, we may even be exposed to people who offer us hope for the future, both individually and collectively.

And here is where I’d like to leave you: with the possibility of this faith tradition, specifically, this faith community, yielding compound spiritual dividends throughout your life span. Think, for a moment, about all the ways you currently make being engaged in this congregation part of your spiritual practice, especially the ways that allow you to nurture and be nurtured. Now I want you to consider the following traits of those who are finishing well, that is, people who are nearing the end of their lives still fully engaged in discussing and testing their faith:

o       They have a perspective which enables them to focus.

o       They enjoy "an original relation to the universe" (to use Emerson's words) and experience repeated times of inner renewal.

o       They are disciplined in important areas of life.

o       They maintain a positive learning attitude all their lives.

o       They have a network of meaningful relationships and several important mentors during their lifetime.

Can you imagine how the lifespan faith development programs of this congregation might help you in with these traits? Are you fully engaged in those opportunities? And if you feel there’s something missing, can you imagine what you might need to do in order to make it happen? Perhaps start some huge, foolish project that would benefit both yourself and others?

One final thought, another quote from the eminently quotable Ralph Waldo Emerson: “It is one of the most beautiful compensations of life that no woman or man can sincerely try to help another without helping her or himself.” We're all in this together—this life, this community, this congregation. And everything you do to help others along their journey, their path, their developmental trajectory comes back to you as a spiritual dividend in the form this “most beautiful compensation of life.”

--The Rev. Phillip Lund