by William E. Hartung
Service at UUCSS on February 21, 1999
Who are you; Where are you, What are you doing now
Who are you;
Where are you;
What are you doing now?I am earth, the body of us all;
I am here and there and everywhere;
I am the womb of plants and trees;
I am the source of buildings.Who are you;
Where are you;
What are you doing now?I am the water in us all;
I am here and there and everywhere;
I am the transformer of all things;
I am the fluid medium of life.Who are you;
Where are you;
What are you doing now?I am air and space;
I am here and there and everywhere;
I am the invisible, the unseen;
I am the breath of life.--William E. Hartung
Hymn: "We Laugh We Cry" # 354
May this light warm our hearts with love and caring
And guide us in the ways of truth.
As we gather here for worship,
We pledge ourselves to the endless search for truth:
To the right of each to believe as mind, heart, and conscience dictate,
To accept the responsibilities this freedom commands;
And to implement our belief
In the essential worth and dignity of every human being.
Since what we choose is what we are
And what we love we yet shall be,
The goal may ever shine afar
The will to win it makes us free.
--William DeWitt Hyde
Offertory:
Sharing of Joys and Concerns
A Time for Remembrance
Prayer and Meditation
Come out of the dark earth
Here where the minerals
Glow in their stone cells
Deeper than seed or birth.Come into the pure air
Above all heaviness
Of storm and cloud to this
Light-possessed atmosphere.Come into, out of, under
The earth, the wave, the air.Love, touch us everywhere
With primeval candor.--May Sarton
Anthem:
| I'm speaking about Personal Salvation because
I want to share with you my interest in it. I'm interested Personal Salvation
because I want to save myself from hell. But the hell from which I want to
save myself is not the everlasting one that I imagined when I was a Catholic.
The hell from which I wish to save myself today is the one of which Rev.
Scott Alexander spoke, the hell of the here and now and the hell of my own
personal failures.
You might ask how can I call the here and now of everyday life a hell. I suggest that driving on the Beltway is often called hell. "It's hell," seems a common description of commuting to work. I can identify with this description because when I am on the Beltway, it sometimes seems like a hellish situation. My sense of it is that everyone is lodged safely in their own little self-powered metal box, and what they are trying to do is to fight their way to the front. And, since everyone else is trying to do the same thing everyone is angry with everyone else for getting in his or her way. This sense that the commute to work or the Beltway is like a hell is improved when the traffic is so heavy that everyone is just crawling along. Everyone is on an emotional edge. Tempers flare. OPTIONAL: [Then there are those devils who believe that they have some special right to travel down the merge lanes and push their way into traffic beyond the end of the merge zone or drive down the emergency lane. The people already in the travel lanes are snuggling up to the bumper of the car in front of them to keep the unwanted intruder out.] OPTIONAL: [The hellish nature of the Beltway is manifest even when the traffic is quite light. For it is at these times that the devils, who want to scorch everyone else, take the opportunity of some open spaces to roar past everyone else and weave in and out of all the lanes, including the merge lanes. These devils seem to exhibit maniacal pleasure at making everyone else uncomfortable. Their devilish behavior is also a temptation to others. One devil zooms by and suddenly a driver, who would otherwise be more circumspect, succumbs to the temptation and joins in this devilish dance.] I don't need to dwell on this kind of hell [any more]. I think that you have the idea. The world that we live in is filled with various kinds of situations, which can at times, seem to us like hell. It could be a wait in a line for a checkout clerk or a traffic jam on a highway. But isn't it also true that we have all experienced a situation that would, under normal circumstances be a hell, but, in that one instance, was no problem at all. --- Let me tell you what happened to me just last year. I was on a vacation in Maine. We had successfully arrived and settled ourselves in. The weather was beautiful and we already knew that the people were friendly. We were looking forward to a wonderful vacation. We went shopping and we found that the line was very long. The clerk was new on the job and unsure of what he is doing. It looked like a long wait. Having nothing else to do, I struck up a casual conversation with my neighbor in line. The wait in line was no problem; I didn't even notice it. Lucile had to remind me that I should move forward. What might have been hell back home is no hell at all here on vacation. What is so different? The external differences are only minor. The real message is that this hell of waiting in line is a self-created perception. I will go further and say that all hells, all kinds of hells are self-created, including the infamous drive to work. Oh no! You say. This cannot be. There really are hells out there. Oh yes, I say; if there are any hells, they exist only in our perception. There are no hells out there other than the one's we create for ourselves. I know for certain that how I view it determines how a situation appears to me; I can see a heaven or a hell depending on who I am being. And, my point of view is of my choosing. This potential makes anything possible. --- Someone who is good with words put it this way: "When you are being a hammer, all you will see in nails." Another way of saying this is that when I am angry, I will find reasons and justifications for my anger. For example, many years ago, for my own health, I had to give up getting angry. One specific example I felt I could change was when I had to wait in line. I learned that I could simply unhook myself from emotional issues surrounding being in a line, whether it was a line of cars or people. I found that I could bring understanding to the situation by noticing that I was really stuck in this position and that I had already done all that I could do and worrying and getting angry would not change the situation to even the slightest degree. I could fantasize about replacing the wheels on my car with giant legs so that I could simply "walk" over all the other vehicles. But the reality was that I was stuck so I might as well quit fussing. Also, I have learned to strike up conversations with my neighbors in line. (Of course this works better in checkout lines than it does on the Beltway.) By accepting the reality of the situation and letting go of wishful thinking, I save myself from a hell that I could have created for myself. This is one part of what I call personal salvation. This is quite different from calling upon some silver haired old man on a gold throne to "save me." It is also quite different from wishful thinking. "If only this would all go away!" An example of wishful thinking might be when cars stop at a traffic light and then start to creep forward, even though the light is still red. I suppose that the drivers must be thinking that it will change soon. The reality is quite different, and they know this. But because they want their wish to come true they will continue to creep forward. It is as though they believe that by creeping forward they will somehow influence the operation of the traffic light. What a fantasy! Of course, when it doesn't change quickly enough for them, they get angry. Some drivers get so upset that the go right through the red light. More fantasy. More self-created hell. There is no check with reality. The reality is that a timer, which is not some malevolent force, controls the stoplight. --- Another hell into which I often slip is self-depreciation and self-doubt. This seems to be very common and pervasive in our society. When I am in this hell, I get so weighed down and powerless I feel like I can't get up off of my knees. When I am in the grip of this hell it helps me to recall this saying: "Pain is real. Suffering is a choice." This is powerful for me because it points to the role I play in my experience. I can choose to see only the hole in the donut or, I can see the donut. I can unhook from the emotion when I can get in touch with the pain I feel and let go of the story of my suffering. When I was a Catholic I believed that my salvation was up to me because I had to choose to avoid "mortal" sin and seek the grace of salvation from God. (I then understood the word God to refer to a personal being that was omniscient, omnipresent, and all-powerful.) However, when I left the Catholic belief system, I was left with the clear reality that there is no personal savior "out there" God, Jesus, or anyone else. That could only mean that I was responsible. But, if I am responsible for my own salvation, how can I create it? What tools can I find to change my point of view? How do I go about taking responsibility for my point of view and, in so doing, gain the power to change it? --- In searching for tools to create my own salvation I found that a couple of words from my history as a Catholic might me relevant, like Confession and Forgiveness. But I would have to give them a new meaning. Confession is an odd thing. In some interpretations, it looks like self-condemnation. Certainly, confession of guilt can be carried to the extremes. I know that it is easy for me to slip into playing the role of a victim and in so doing draw upon the sympathy of my listeners. I want them all to say "Oh poor William." A pure, honest, selfless confession is a difficult road to walk. I can hold myself on this narrow path so long as I can hold before me the purpose of confession. The purpose of Confession, as I now see it, is to tell what I have been holding secret; to let others know a truth of which I am ashamed. This may be something I have done or failed to do. It doesn't matter whether or not others share in this judgement of myself; for it is my self-condemnation which I must confess. You might recall the Psychologist Carl Rogers who was important in the 60's. One of the central points of his approach to psychotherapy was identification of those memories of past wrongs or misdeeds that had not been completed. Completing these unfinished stories was the work that led to present mental health. To confess is to open these unfinished issues which plague us in the here and now. Some people describe it as opening your dirty baggage. I believe that the power of confession lies in uncovering, to myself and to others, those actions and inactions for which I am holding my self responsible. The power of confession lies in letting go of the guilt and shame. "Guilt" and "Shame" are the labels over the door to the private hell into which I have placed myself. Confession is the key to unlocking the door to this terrible place. I have the only key; only I can unlock this door; and, only I can forgive myself. Yes, forgiveness. I cannot see how I could possible achieve Personal Salvation, and save myself from all of these personal hells, without the art of forgiveness. But the forgiveness I seek is not that which is granted by others, divine or human or both. I call it an art because there is no formula to follow, there is no metric by which I can judge myself. The forgiveness of which I speak is that which I grant myself. Cultivating the art of self-forgiveness is essential for my personal salvation. I forgive myself by accepting the obvious, that what is done is done and cannot be undone. I recall again and again that wonderful definition of forgiveness that my oldest son gave me: "Forgiveness is the letting go of any possibility of ever having a better past." This says that to forgive myself I must stop holding onto the fantasy that I can somehow right past wrongs. This is how I save myself from all of those self-created hells, those condemnations I visit upon myself for having failed so miserably as a father, as a parent, as a teacher and as a role model for my children. --- The hells in which we sometimes seem to find ourselves, like the traffic on the Beltway are a different challenge. For me to achieve personal salvation from these kinds of hells is the most difficult because I am so easily swept up into the anxious maelstrom. I am able to unhook from the bizarre situations I witness happening on our roads and highways when I can accept them as fact and stop there. It is when I proceed from fact to fantasy that I start down the slippery path to hell. I must constantly remind myself that I do not and cannot know what others are thinking, or what motivates them. I am certain that most of the time they don't even know what motivates them. I presume god-like powers when I believe I know their motives and then condemn them for their evil intentions. What fantasy! All the hells I have been describing are based in fantasy, my own fantasy. This is why I say that no hells exist, there is nothing "out there" which is a "hell." All of the hells I experience are the ones I create. The Beltway isn't a hell [and there really are no devils out there]. These are descriptions that arise out of my own upset; they don't exist "out there." Therefore, the only personal salvation that exists is one of which I am the author. I have the authority to author my own salvation; and I can't give that away to anyone. There are people who drive recklessly, and there are people who behave in ways that are hurtful. I cannot change their behavior. I can only change my interpretation of what they do. I can choose to see it as a problem for them, or I can choose to make their behavior a problem for me. I don't know about you but I don't need any more problems. I will let them have theirs and avoid letting their behavior impact me. I will be my own personal savior. But in the usual scheme of things, there is something that happens after you are saved. After salvation there is Heaven! If I save myself, what is my reward, what heaven do I attain? I have an answer for myself, I hope it will work for you. --- The heaven I attain through saving myself is the opportunity truly live in the here and now in full possession of all of my capacities and capabilities. If this sounds too small for you let me give you this quote from a speech given by Nelson Mandela, upon his inauguration as President of South Africa. "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. The reason I am here today speaking to you about personal salvation is that I want to share with you what I have found through the work I have done with support of this loving community. I have left the world of externally determined salvation behind me and I have joined you in the quest for our own personal salvation. Thank your for this opportunity. |
Hymn: "The ceaseless Flow of Endless Time" #350
#456
We extinguish this flame but not the light of truth, the warmth of
community,
or the fire of commitments. These we carry in our hearts until we are together.