by Jan Carlsson-Bull

April 14, 2002

It’s sooo good to breathe spring. Central Park is simply bursting at its seams. Our All Souls garden out front is carpeted with the dappled hues of pansies. The garden I tend is not quite a garden right now, with leaves still to be raked and soil waiting to be turned, but in spite of my neglect, the redolence of the season rises there too. And soon, soon we’ll breathe in that most wondrous of all scents–the fragrance of lilacs.

But not in Iowa, no not in Iowa. In that state in our nation’s heartland, the home of my younger years, another aroma is rolling across the hills–and yes, there are hills. Just this week, my old friend from high school, Ron Sundermann, e-mailed me about the conundrum over pigs. Briefly, there’s a livestock bill in the Iowa legislature to do something about the toxic impact on the environment unleashed by hog feeding operations that keep the livestock in tightly cramped quarters. That legislation is being rewritten by corporate farmers with vested interests in maintaining the most up-to-date techniques for raising livestock, and those techniques include these confinement feeding operations. The debate is on. Competition or restraint? Profits or toxic proliferation? Not to mention the plight of pigs already doomed in their pens.

Enter a mountain lion. Yes, you heard it right, a mountain lion. In my own hometown of Carroll, a woman jogging around Swan Lake State Park ran almost smack dab into a mountain lion. Fortunately, he was blasé and walked off. But he’s hanging out around town, napping on the sidewalks. Where did he come from? Speculation is rampant. My friend, Ron, suggests he "came to feed off all the hogs being raised in confinement feeding operations. We once had the fox and the hen house," he quips, "now we have the mountain lion and the pig barn."

It’s surreal, the state of this state, the state of our world. How do we understand it? How do we tend to it? How do we act on it, informed by a faith whose theological discourse is not quite cohesive, a faith with no creedal glue to hold it together? Now what do I mean by that?

Well, put ten Unitarian Universalists in a room, and it’s possible to establish ten churches, and if a newcomer walked in, this poor innocent might quickly surmise she was at an interfaith conference. One of my heroes in the realm of liberal religion is William Sloane Coffin, who remarked that "Unitarian Universalists have such a thick ethic and such a thin theology." (Richard Gilbert, The Prophetic Imperative, 67)

It’s true. "Deeds not creeds" leaves us theologically challenged. I belong to a community of faith, I presume to be a minister in a community of faith, that is indeed creedless. Yet we’re not quite incredulous. We ask our young people to work with adult mentors throughout the year and develop their credos–their "I believes." We recite every Sunday a Bond of Union, holding up the "freedom of the truth," and the "service of all," even the "worship of God" which in some of our congregations would guarantee all-out revolt. We consider ourselves home in a community of faith where doubt is Grand Central Station.

We are blessed with a paradox–a dubious paradox, perhaps a dubious blessing, but we’re dubious anyway, so we may as well be consistent.

Deeds not creeds. It jumps right out of the New Testament. Of course it jumps out of a maverick book of the New Testament, but somehow, that book crashed the party that established the canon and made it in. In the second chapter of James, we read:

Now it’s not just faith and works. We’re Unitarian Universalists. We pride ourselves on digging deeper. What kind of works are we talking about? If we could get off the hook of living our faith with works that are limited to a few used clothes for the clothing drive or a few jars of applesauce for the food pantry or an overnight stay in a neighborhood shelter–welcome and vital as those clothes and that applesauce and that shelter are–we would be anxiety free as far our faith/works life is concerned. But if we dig deeper, we strike the mother lode. And that mother lode is power.

If Isaiah is right and we’re called to bring good news to the afflicted, proclaim liberty for the captives, and raise up ruined cities, including our own, we’re dealing with power. Amos and Micah and Jonah and Daniel confronted systems of power. Prophethood doesn’t come easy. It’s faith working at its most grueling. No wonder prophets are a troubled lot. No wonder they end up overboard and in unfriendly places like lions dens. Of course Daniel made it out. Maybe we should call up a Daniel to head out to Iowa.

James Luther Adams, that eloquent voice of 20^th century Unitarian Universalism, had the tenacity to refer to our liberal community of faith as "the prophethood of all believers." Adams describes the prophetic liberal church as

Richard Gilbert has more to say about the prophetic church. As the longtime Senior Minister of the First Unitarian Church in Rochester, Dick speaks to us eloquently in The Prophetic Imperative.

This compulsion of conscience is what makes us accountable to our faith. We are compelled by our own conscience, individually and institutionally. What does this look like?

Gilbert speaks to a "covenant of unenforceable obligations." "We are covenanting creatures," he claims. "Our covenant is with all being," and it is "individual and social." It is "especially directed toward the deprived and the powerless….Good fortune obligates." It is part and parcel of a "reverence for life," that laudable mantra of Albert Schweitzer. "The prophetic imperative requires…the sharing of power and the special responsibility of the powerful for the powerless." (Gilbert, The Prophetic Imperative, 102-3)

Echoes of Isaiah sound. Raising up ruined cities and repairing the devastations of generations call for the prophetic fortitude of which Adams and Gilbert speak, prophetic fortitude in our city and our world.

What did we get ourselves into? Faith and works and prophethood and power. It’s a tall order. No wonder we sometimes walk up those steps outside clutching the last dregs of our morning coffee. No wonder we sign up for workshops at the last minute. No wonder we sometimes stroll covertly away from those tables downstairs where letters to our government representatives await our signatures.

As Unitarian Universalists, we might not agree on who God is or how or if God works in history. But we surely know that we live within and have some voice in the history of now. How about the power we see manifest everyday? What do we think of it? What does our good fortune–or ill fortune–suggest we perceive? How are we held accountable by our reverence for life, all life?

Sometimes we’re called to account by a prophet unaware, an op ed writer who doesn’t hold back. "For most of the 20^th century," wrote Timothy Garton Ash, in last Tuesday’s New York Times, "the defining political question was: What do you think of Russia? At the beginning of the 21^st century, it is: What do you think of America? Tell me your America," Ash continues, "and I’ll tell you who you are…. Contrary to what many Europeans think, the problem with American power is not that it is American. The problem is simply the power. It would be dangerous even for an archangel to wield so much power." (New York Times, "The Peril of Too Much Power," op ed, April 9, 2002)

Good fortune obligates. The holders of power are accountable to a reverence for life. Do we dare connect the dots between the devastations of generations, the centuries old claim to land in the Middle East, our reticence to revere life, our lust for oil, the Gulf War, the horrors of September 11, the escalating "war on terrorism?" Are we up to the challenge of plumbing the depths of how power plays out across the opposing claims on territory and the selective attribution of terrorism?

We draw from our liberal faith both comfort and affliction. Adams and Gilbert, Schweitzer and Susan B. Anthony and Olympia Brown and Theodore Parker and William Ellery Channing and so many others nudge us along with passionate proclamations and more passionate deeds. Our own aspiring pluralism gives us incentive and hope. Perhaps we can mirror what we hope for in our world, with ties that bind but don’t constrict, with credos that celebrate but don’t calcify.

We are noncreedal because our faith is dynamic.

Dig deep. Dig deep. The mother lode is there. Remember the words we spoke responsively just moments ago.

–(Denise Levertov, SLT #648)

So much is in bud. It’s springtime at All Souls. It’s springtime in New York City. It’s springtime at Ground Zero and Battery Park City and in Washington, DC and rural Pennsylvania. It’s springtime in Afghanistan. It’s springtime in the West Bank and in Jerusalem. Hope springs cyclical.

We are a congregation and participants in a community of faith that can study and scrutinize and analyze and act. We can speak truth to power as we see it. And in the precious interludes, we can bend down and notice the buds. We can lean further and smell the flowers.

With such a faith, anything is possible. Perhaps it’s even possible for a lion to lie down with a pig, with room enough for all. Amen.

Closing Words

The words of Thomas Wolfe:

–(SLT # 555)

 

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