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Many of you have seen the Andrew Wyeth painting of "Christina's World." It shows a crippled young girl struggling up a hillside toward a bleak-looking house at the top, presumably her home. This painting tells us that this is indeed Christina's world - that her life is confined to that one small world that we see. We are saddened by the painting, for all of us here this morning live in a world that is far larger than Christina's. In fact, most of us live in more than one world.
It was only a generation or two ago that people, usually well-to-do men, would speak of themselves as "living in two different worlds and trying to get the best of both." This usually meant having one foot in the business or professional world, the other in the world of family and social life. "The best of both worlds!" - to live with one's feet in two worlds, getting the best from both, was to them both a source of pride and a sign of accomplishment.
For others, less successful by the standards of society, living in two worlds could mean something quite different - perhaps a job in a cotton mill or a filling station; and home, a small clapboard bungalow or a second floor apartment. For such folks, there would have been little of any talk of "living in two different worlds and trying to get the best of both," even if that was what they were really doing, with the best not seeming very good. While I was growing up I had friends from both these sets of worlds, with our own family falling somewhere halfway in-between.
With our own family, geography played an important part. For reasons far too complicated to go into, I grew up with one foot in the world of a small village in North Carolina, the other foot in the world of a small village in upstate New York. Different as they were, both culturally and geographically, these worlds of my boyhood had one thing in common - they were all essentially "WASP" worlds - white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant worlds - white dominated and male dominated.
I feel sure that those of you who grew up in the 1930s have your own unique stories to tell about the worlds of your youth, but whether they were white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant or something quite different color-wise, ethnic-wise or religion-wise; whether in Wilmington or Smithfield, or Brooklyn, or New Hampshire, or wherever, many of you of my own generation, or your parents' generation, grew up in fairly homogeneous communities - communities made up of people living with their feet in those twin worlds of work and home and trying to get the best that they could from both.
During the last few decades, however, things have changed so dramatically that most of us today find ourselves with our feet, not in two worlds at once, but in several worlds. One of my oldest friends married a German woman whom he met while serving in the army during the Second World War - they alternate between the worlds of Munich and Utica, New York. One of our daughters is married to a Roman Catholic Hungarian and lives with one foot in the world of the Hungarian Community of New York City, the other in the multi-cultural city of Yonkers, plus the twin worlds of home and a demanding job. Some of my ministerial friends have more than toe-holds in the worlds of Transylvanian villages, the Khasi Hills of Northeast India, and the Philippine Islands.
Many of you, members of this congregation, in addition to those twin worlds of home and work, undoubtedly keep feet in the worlds of other cultures and places. Some of you may live in the worlds of inter-faith, inter-ethnic or inter-racial partnerships and families, and others of you in the intergenerational families with, perhaps, their own differing worlds. And almost all of us live with one foot in the world of "snail mail" and newsprint, with the other foot in that of e-mail and the World Wide Web. With the process of globalization going on all around us at an ever-accelerating pace, it can be said that, whatever our age, we are living, all of us, in a time of fundamental transition, with one foot in the old world, one foot in the new.
Some transitions go so slowly that we can move through then with our feet side by side. For example, the villages of my childhood have changed so slowly that I need an old photograph or an old diary entry or a chat with an old-timer to remind me that the villages of my grandparents' day - and indeed my boyhood - were parts of a world that has vanished completely. By contrast, a city like Grozny, the Chechen capital, has been destroyed so quickly that its world vanished all at once, leaving only a pile of rubble on which to put one's feet.
The same can be said for human life. The changes of middle age can take place so slowly as to go almost unnoticed, and it takes a major crisis, like a heart attack, or a stroke, or the sudden loss of one's mate to make us realize that the old world has gone and a new world has been entered. Yet there are also transitions in life when we do live with our feet in two worlds at the same time - for example, during puberty, when we live with one foot still in childhood, the other in adulthood. Or during a time of gradually phasing out of our job as we move toward retirement, one foot in the world of work, the other in the world of retirement. Or, once in retirement, gradually transitioning out of a life of physical activity into the sedentary life of old age. That's the phase I seem to be in right now. A few Sundays ago I asked the captain of our church softball team, if he'd shift me from third base to second base for the upcoming season - that peg from second to first is a lot shorter than the one from third to first! Who knows just where I'll be playing the season after that - probably relegated to being the first base coach! During these times of transition it's not always easy to get the best of both worlds.
So I invite you to count up the number of worlds that you have your feet in - the worlds into which you put your time and thought and energy: The worlds of work and family? Of the places you once lived and to which you are still connected? The worlds of your racial, ethnic or religious heritage? Of your work, present and past? Your own homes? Your parents? Your children's? Your own transitions? Perhaps even some secret worlds? The totals will vary from person to person, and all of us leave some of our old worlds behind - I left the world of the U.S. Marine Corps behind the day I got my discharge papers, but after more than a decade of retirement I'm still in the process of leaving the world of the ministry behind - I'd lived in it too long and too intimately. But if we do count up the number of worlds we are now living in, many of us may find that we are, in fact, living in, or at least have a toe-hold in, many worlds. For myself, I end up with sic or eight, depending on how I counted them!
It was not so very long ago that my wife Ann's grand-daddy would look up from whatever he was reading and comment, "They say there are great things in store for us" - then invariably he would add, "Don't expect to see them myself." Well, if Ann's grand-daddy had lived to be a hundred, or a hundred and ten, he would have seen some of them himself, would undoubtedly have had his doubts as to how great some of them really were, and he surely would have felt overwhelmed by the increasing speed with which they keep on appearing - just as I suspect many of us do! A song title from a few years ago keeps coming back to me: "Stop the world and let me off!" Or perhaps better these days, "Stop the worlds and let me off!" There is, however, no "Stop" button to press!
So how can we possibly do it, this living in many worlds at once? Well, for starters, common sense tells us that, out of some primal instinct for self-preservation, we need to be very intentional about setting boundaries for ourselves, setting priorities as to how we ration our time and energy among our many worlds, perhaps even be willing to let some of those worlds go. Then as we go down to a deeper level, we may discover some answers, albeit partial ones, by looking at our free faith, by looking at our Unitarian Universalism, and seeing what we can find there.
A few months ago I was asked to make a presentation to a group of ministerial colleagues in answer to the question, "What is the unique core of Unitarian Universalism?" It turned out to be a challenging task, but in the end I came out with something like this: Throughout our movement's long history, extending back to Michael Servetus and Francis David in the 16th century; and moving forward through the times of John Murray in the 18th century; Hosea Ballou, William Ellery Channing, and Olympia Brown in the 19th; Clarence Skinner, Sophia Fahs and James Luther Adams in the 20th; right on up to the present day, the unique core of Unitarian Universalism has been and continues to be, this: A strong, vibrant center of free, critical thinking - not just any critical thinking, but that which involve wrestling with basic religious questions as this core moves through time. Basic religious questions like these:
Why are we here? Is there a purpose behind the universe?
What or who is God? What are our responsibilities - to ourselves, to each other, to society, to the earth, to the universe, to God? What, if anything, survives our death?
What is sacred? What, who, how do we worship?
How do we relate to our past? And we could add others.
What keeps emerging out of this core of intellectual ferment, taking place freely at the interface between past and future, are partial answers - theologies, if you will - that enable us to move ahead with some better understanding of who we are, why we are, what we are called to be doing, where we have come from, and where we are heading.
How can we possibly live with feet in many worlds at once? It follows that we should be able to find some partial answers by looking at what has emerged out of that unique core of ours. Let us look, then, at our current statement of UU Principles - those seven Principles that you as a congregation, along with all the other congregations of our Association, have covenanted to affirm and promote. If we look through this statement, we see that one of the Principles, "A free and responsible search for truth and meaning," describes quite well what I believe goes on right there at the core of our free faith.
Another of our Principles, "Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part," constitutes at least the beginning of an answer to our basic questions about the universe and our place within it. But central to our question we are considering here this morning is the Principle affirming and promoting "The goal of world community with peace, liberty and justice for all."
So here we are, on the one hand addressing the task of living with our feet in many worlds, and on the other hand promoting the goal of world community - the goal of living with our feet in one world.
Geographically, at least, the two inevitably go together. For as more and more of us start visiting and working and living in the worlds of faraway places, and more and more of those in faraway places start visiting and working and living in our worlds, relationships are being built which in time could indeed lead to the creation of the world community which we have envisioned - that is, of course, provided collective humanity is wise enough to avoid a nuclear or environmental catastrophe. Such a world community, if achieved, would indeed be a glorious accomplishment - the implementation of a persisting, vision held down through the ages, whether voiced in humanistic terms, or as the kingdom of God, or in yet some other way!
But even though the process of globalization is accelerating rapidly, you and I, and our children - and, I suspect, our children's children and their children's children - all of us, all of them, are, not fated, but destined to live with feet in many worlds at once - destined at this point in time to take our place as players in the great drama of cosmic, human and social evolution now going on all around us - destined to be "co-creators with God," if you will! Our challenge is to make choices that lead to creation, no to destruction - to help keep that ferment at the core alive, giving fresh guidance to our own generation and those yet to come.
In all this our religious lives, our spiritual lives require particular attention. For each of us this involves paying attention to both the outer world in which we live and the private, inner world of our thoughts, our memories, our fantasies and our dreams. Let me share with you a dream that I had some thirty years ago which I still remember clearly. It is one that has helped me face one of my most important challenges of living in many worlds at once.
For some years after leaving mainline Protestantism for Unitarian Universalism, I felt some guilt over having left the faith of my forebears and some sadness at having cut myself off from my religious roots. I struggled with my feelings, but they persisted. Then one night I dreamed that I was standing high on a hill overlooking the main street of the village in upstate New York in which my ancestors had lived for five generations - one of the villages I mentioned earlier. Just below me was the big house with the Mansard roof that my great, great grandfather had built, and across the street from it was the Methodist Episcopal Church, long since torn down, that he and his wife and brothers had been instrumental in founding.
It was a beautiful sunny day and evidently a Sunday, for I could hear singing coming from inside the church. It must have been he closing hymn, for suddenly the front doors opened wide and the little congregation, as one body, emerged. They crossed the street, and I thought that surely they were going to my great, great grandparents' house, perhaps for Sunday dinner. But then, to my amazement, they bypassed the house and started coming up the hill straight toward me, the Deserter.
I became anxious, then frightened as they came nearer and nearer. It became evident that they had seen me, and I stood there, glued to the spot, awaiting their certain censure. But then a remarkable thing happened. As they grew closer I saw that they were not grim-faced, disapproving and angry, but that they had their hands outstretched in friendly greeting, their faces bright with delight at seeing me.
I woke up, realizing that my inquiring, pioneering ancestors who took their religion seriously would not have condemned me, who takes my religion seriously, for what I had done, but instead would have understood what I'd done and accepted it - and, moreover, accepted me! Ever since that dream the guilt and the sadness have been gone - I had not, after all, completely cut myself off from my religious roots, nor, in a sense, had I completely left the faith of my forebears. In short, I had accepted my destiny of living religiously with feet in two quite different worlds, that of my Judeo-Christian heritage and that of my free, open, critical thinking Unitarian Universalism - and trying to get the best of both. It's not neat, but it's o.k.
Doubtless some of you find yourselves standing, religiously, with feet in two worlds just as I do. And doubtless some of you have found, as I have, that this is all right and are trying to get the best from both of these worlds. It is possible that you, too, may have had a liberating dream - indeed, may we all dream great dreams! - but more likely you have come to this place by quite a different route. But others of you may feel like I did before I had that dream - a bit guilty and somewhat sad, for religious roots can run unexpectedly deep and strong and can be hard to either dismiss or cut off. But to live religiously with feet in two worlds, trying to get the best of both, is possible. In fact, it is part of the challenge that time has brought to us - our destiny of living with our feet in many worlds - and not only surviving, but finding some joy and fulfillment in these many worlds as we move along!
Let's end where we began, with Christina struggling up the hill toward the house at its top. One can find many meanings in a painting. Perhaps Christina's world was more than one world. Who knows what liberating dreams she might have dreamed? And who knows what she was planning to do, and who she was going to see, when she finally reached that house at the top?
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