"Only connect!" reads the prologue to E.M. Forster's Howard's End. Here we are, on another magnificent summer Sunday morning, gathering to worship, gathering to connect with the blessings of this hour within us, about us, beyond us. Yet in the course of our day-to-days, we get bogged down. We get frustrated. We wonder at times if there is anyone or anything there that hears us as we pray or just complain to a silent presence that we want so much to endow with a good set of ears and maybe even a large lap.
This was definitely the case with my friend, Ron Sundermann. Ron is one of those folks who comes to life again through e-mail. Not that he hasn't been there all these years, but e-mail facilitates a form of resurrection. All that need happen is for one friend to let another friend know that you're alive and well and before you know it, you're in touch with a voice from your past that you didn't know for sure was still out there. So I've enjoyed the pure fun of corresponding with this old friend. I believe he stood next to me in our kindergarten class picture. Here he is a full-grown adult, with a wife and children and grandchildren and a successful career as a teacher and a businessperson and a choir member at his local church-a Lutheran church in a large midwestern town.
It was only a few weeks ago when I received a certain e-mail from Ron and asked his permission to quote him. "Sure," he replied, "as long as you spell my name right-two N's at the end of Sundermann!
It had been a veritable rockslide of frustrations for my friend, so he vented:
"I need God's phone number, and I figured that you might have it. I'd ask the Lutheran cleric at the church whose choir lets me in, but he'd probably say I would learn it if I showed up more and contributed more, or at least paid attention. All of those conditions I can not abide.
But I have a complaint.
It is this:
The world has ganged up on me.
1) The power steering pump in my new car went bad. The dealership ordered the wrong one. My car has been in sick bay for a week
2) A termite nest was discovered eating up a decorative thing my mom and my wife created beside the house. A termite inspector's services are now necessary. They are well paid for their work.
3) I developed some kind of impingement in my elbow that's created annoying complications in my arm. It has not badly affected my golf swing., but it is uncomfortable. I don't like discomfort.
4) To treat this discomfort, my internist got me an appointment with a specialist two months AGO for July 28. I could die before I see him.
5) The air conditioner at my son's house five blocks away got hit by lighteningand there will be a dispute with the insurance company over how much they should pay. This means I will end up paying something, because when [my son, the] Future Doctor Sundermann, runs low on money, the next person to run low is me.
6) My lawn has chickweed in it and I can't kill it. The grass is dead but the chickweed lives on.
I see myself as the modern equivalent of Job. I fully understand that Job had boils and the insects and a rash, but one has to put things into a modern context. It's like a reverse inflation. .[Plain old] inconvenience has experienced a DEFLATION, so what was once a boil is now a pain in one's elbow. What was once [a plague of insects] eating one's crops is now a malfunction in one's car. See what I mean? Relatively speaking, considering the comforts of our lives now vs. Job's, I am in the same shape he was.
And as I recall, Job got no sympathy from God. "Where were you when I created the universe?" Well, I don't want to hafta put up with that, but I figured that just as major corporations have struggled to improve customer service, God (being out ahead of this sort of thing) would have become more customer oriented over the past few centuries.
So I am prepared to appeal to Higher Powers. I figure God owes me.[and] I thought you'd have her phone number.
Sorry Ron, I can't even get her name right! But you have inspired me. There's e-mail. There's the INTERNET. There's the World Wide Web. And I went in search of God, with some heavy-duty assistance from Rosemary here. Who out there, I mused, might have an e-mail address or a website purporting divine inspiration? Why not continue my own "free and responsible search for truth and meaning" in the manner to which so many of us have become accustomed to searching? Through those huffing and puffing search engines that produce epiphany after epiphany.
If you search for God on the World Wide Web, you discover that there is a movement afoot-timely perhaps-to privatize God. I am happy to report that its success is finite, but what I found makes commentary irresistible. GOD.org is a website owned by BillFishCo LLC, further described as Growth Out of Depravity. When you key in www.GOD.org, the message appears: "Coming soon. A site for all." How comforting! They're Universalists! BillFishCo LLC was not alone in succumbing to the temptation to leverage GOD as an acronym. GOD.edu is owned by George O. Dodge University, but there's nothing there-a university without walls and void of content. Groves Online Delivery is the owner of www.GOD.com. Once again, there is nothing there, but it is a site being courted. A group called Manhattan Studios tried to buy GOD.com, but was unsuccessful. What a relief to know that God cannot be bought altogether.
Manhattan Studios is not deterred. There are other fish in the sea. They have gathered into their nets the likes of: FAITHCITY.com, RELIGION.net, TELEFAITH.com, INTERFAITH.com-even MYRABBI.com, MYPRIEST.com, and PREACHERS.com. They are the primary perpetrators of the move to seize the keys to the kingdom on the Web. Who they are remains a mystery-an integral dimension of any religious search.
It is when we stretch our sites to such keywords as "belief" and "religion" that the harvest begins. www.beliefnet.com is billed as "the source for Spirituality, Religion and Morality." It is a comprehensive site indeed. Its homepage, the first screen you see when you arrive at this website, includes a table of contents with categories such as Community, Religion, Spirituality, Morality & Culture, News, and Family & Life Events. Under Religion one finds a treasure trove from A to Z-Agnosticism to Zoroastrianism. And there we are: Unitarian Universalism, snuggling between the cosmic harmony of Taoism and the dualism of Zoroastrianism. Through links, it is a quick trip to uua.org, the website of our Unitarian Universalist Association, with a host of current data on programs, services, committees, and congregations. Continuing on, it's another short trip to allsoulsnyc.org. An intriguing, if circuitous, route home.
But we're in search mode, so off we go again. An even larger door to religion, belief, and the pantheon of the World Wide Web is to be found at www.religionnews.com. Under the heading Interfaith, there's a link to the now familiar beliefnet.com. Under this same heading, there's something called The Pluralism Project, with an "extensive collection of links to faiths underrepresented on the Internet, such asJainism." With two quick clicks, one can join The First Church of Cyberspace. You don't even need an interview with Galen, Forrest, or myself. You probably won't even be tapped on the shoulder for a task force or solicited for an Annual Campaign, but then again, who knows what can happen in cyberspace?
There are sites that seduce by name alone. The Islamic Garden wins in this arena. My favorite is accessed under the heading "Other." The site is www.infidels.org.
Now lest we think this is all faith education and frolic, there's also ample opportunity for the marketing of faith-based venom via the Web. One of the most corrosive sites is www.godhatesfags.com. This is the exact terminology! Yet at this site I discovered that we as Unitarian Universalists are in the good company of the Jewish Reform Movement, the Unity Church of Christianity, and the Metropolitan Community Church in welcoming-and I shall use optional terminology-gays and lesbians as members, ordaining gays and lesbians, and performing and blessing gay and lesbian marriages.
Those GOD.coms and their host of cousins offer a Web's-eye view of the variable strengths and frailties of humankind as we engage in our search for God, as we formulate what we think we believe, as we set forth what ultimately matters and the kaleidoscopic forms that this "what" assumes. Is it any wonder that Emerson proclaimed the "deep power in which we exist and whose beatitude is accessible to us" and a hair's breadth later declared its mystery? "For ever and ever the influx of this better and more universal self is new and unsearchable."
How like this paradox of accessibility and mystery is the encounter of Moses with the God of the burning bush. "'Do not come near,'" bellowed God to the wondrous and curious Moses. And then, as Moses sought to learn the name of that force that spoke from the burning bush that he might have credibility when he returned to his people, God spoke to him: "'I AM WHO I AM. Say this to the people of Israel, 'I AM has sent me to you.'"
The Hebrew Yahweh is an acronym for I AM WHO I AM, for the given name of God was considered by the people of Israel too holy to be spoken except in acronym form. God was rendered as Mysterious Presence, eluding approach, yet revealing a name so straightforward, so utterly simple-I AM WHO I AM-and yet deemed by the people of Israel too holy to utter.
We humans crave the full spectrum of theological mystery and yet cannot rein in the presumption that permits us to render a 21st-century form of access to GOD as a domain of high-tech commerce. What a curious lot we are!
Most of all, I believe we want and seek connection with that Driving Force of Being in all its nominal variation. We will leap over any paradox of mystery and commerce to experience that connection. We want God's phone number and more. Our day to days render us frustrated, complaining, fearful and yet aspiring to that "revelation of all nature and thought; that the Highest dwells within us"
(Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The Oversoul")
That we're stuck with each other in our spiritual search is our given. That we know this as impediment and gift is our reality. Whether we log on or not, we're connected-to the Mysterious Force, the Spirit of Life, the Ancient Wonder that we may or may not call God but that we might recognize in the most ordinary moments of our brief time here. We are surely part of that interdependent web of all existence, and we are innately curious as to what it's all about.
Perhaps it's no coincidence that Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, found a compatible home in Unitarian Universalism, given the hospitality that our community of faith extends to curiosity and the fundamental value we ascribe to inclusiveness. In his book, Weaving the Web, he reports that people ask him if he designed the web on the inclusive principles of Unitarian Universalism.
"Unitarian Universalism had no influence on the Web," he responds. "But I can see how it could have, because I did indeed design the Web around universalist (with a lowercase u) principles," and what emerged was "a weird and wonderful machine, which needed care to maintain, but could take advantage of the ingenuity, inspiration, and intuition of individuals in a special way. That, from the start, has been my goal for the World Wide Web. Hope in life," he concludes, "comes from the interconnections among all the people in the world." (Berners-Lee, Weaving the Web, 107-9)
While my Job-aspiring friend asked for God's phone number, the search that I undertook revealed myriad constellations of human ingenuity, the prospect of interconnections-for better and worse-among all the people in the world, and an ever inscrutable God who is wholly accessible and transcends us utterly.
So it seems. So perhaps it is. Amen. Copyright AllSouls 2000.