by Rev. Terry Davis
Delivered at Northwest Unitarian Universalist Congregation
on September 14, 2014
Some of you may know Hercule Poirot. He’s one of British novelist Agatha Christie’s most enduring characters. Over nearly 50 years, the Belgian private detective appeared in 39 of her murder mysteries, plus numerous short stories.
When Poirot finally met his fictional death, he was apparently so well-loved by so many readers, that he became the only fictional character to receive a front-page obituary in The New York Times.
Some of you were, perhaps, introduced to Poirot as I was through actor David Suchet’s portrayal of him in the PBS television series. If you’ve watched the programs, you know that Poirot is a short and egg-shaped man, with a quirky, upwardly-curling mustache. He’s punctual, persnickety and persistent. He’s always impeccably dressed, and he has impeccable manners to match.
Poirot is also a guy who stays focused. No matter how mysterious the murder or how complicated the circumstances, Poirot is relentless in his search for the truth. He doesn’t allow himself to be distracted by the outward appearances of things.
He’s not easily influenced, for example, by the weeping widow, the smug socialite, the minding-his-own-business gardener, or the scheming politician. Instead, Poirot’s goal is to get inside people’s heads. He skillfully asks the probing questions. He seeks to understand the natures and motives of his suspects, and he eventually puts the pieces together in the most surprising ways.
Poirot’s journey towards discovering the truth about the murder mysteries he’s hired to solve, it seems, is about paying keen attention to subtleties . . . and about keeping an open mind. Poirot ultimately doesn’t get thrown off course because he resists drawing a conclusion about someone or something too quickly. He gives the process the time it needs.
The investigative detective work of Hercule Poirot, I think, offer some lessons about pursing the truth that I’d like to explore with you this morning. Much like
Poirot, we are members of a faith that values a persistent and – some might say – persnickety search for the truth. In fact, one of our seven unifying principles states that Unitarian Universalists affirm and promote a free and responsible search for truth and meaning.
Like Poirot, we celebrate investigative research. We encourage deep conversations. We like to find out what’s in people’s heads and hearts. We claim to be a liberal faith where – if you respect me and I respect you – we can passionately disagree on what to believe or on what’s the best approach to help our world.
Well, that sounds great! And yet, I imagine we don’t always live up this ideal image of who we are. How can we, really? We’re human beings who bring to every situation we encounter our own unique personal experiences. We each see the world through lenses that are colored by our family histories, by our socio-economic status, and by messages delivered by countless others over the years that have entered our psyche and have shaped us.
Therefore, while we may understand ourselves as enlightened religious liberal people, we’re likely to be just like all other truth-seeking people – we bring subjective thinking to a pursuit that seems to require a high degree of objectivity.
If this is so, how then can we truly pursue a free and responsible search for truth . . . with “truth” in this context understood as universally-accepted facts, beliefs, laws or principles?
Assuming we go about our search diligently, skillfully and with every effort to keep an open mind like Detective Poirot, is it really possible to know a universal and timeless truth when we’ve landed on it? Or, can we – at best – only experience what Hindu guru Ramana Maharshi believes are temporary truths? As he puts it, “There is no Truth. There is only truth within each moment.”
In my message to you this morning, I’d like to suggest that it’s the journey towards the truth – rather than expressions of the truth – that’s universal and timeless. Unlike Detective Poirot, it’s likely not possible for us to rely on our own interpretation of people and things at all times to arrive at the Truth. Ultimately we might say that any larger truth we aspire to know is always being formed and always being revealed so long we remain in dialogue and in community with one another.
Unitarian Universalist minister Rev. Paige Getty explains it this way:
As responsible religious seekers, we recognize that we are privileged to be free, to have resources to pursue life beyond mere survival, to continually search for truth and meaning, to exist beyond the bonds of dogma and oppression, and to wrestle freely with truth and meaning as they evolve.
This privilege calls us not to be isolated and self-centered, believing that our single perspective trumps all others, but rather to be humble, to be open to the great mysteries of truth and meaning that life offers. And those mysteries may speak to us through our own intuition and experience—but also through tradition, community, conflict, nature, and relationships.
Getty argues that our liberal faith tradition “makes sacred the right and responsibility to engage in this free and responsible quest as an act of religious devotion.” Rather than telling us what the truth is, she says that, institutionally, Unitarian Universalism has left that question open.
What our faith does require of us, however, is that we go about our discovery process in a responsible way, “acknowledging that mindful people will, in every age, discover new insights.”
This morning’s children’s story was a great reminder of truth’s variable quality. It reminded us that what we may have within our grasp today is not the whole truth about something but, rather, a piece of the truth.
Consider, for instance, any polarized issue in our country today – reproductive justice, same-sex marriage, passing more gun control laws, or funding the Affordable Healthcare Act, to name a few. I believe that pieces of the truth exist on both sides of these thorny issues . . . and it’s our resistance to acknowledging this that contributes to the stalemates that prevent things from moving forward. The struggle, of course, is determining whose understanding of the truth is closer to the Truth, if there is such a thing. Which truth will prevail, why, when, and for how long?
If we’re all holding just a piece of the elephant, it seems that we’ll need to put our truths together if we’re going to get a view of the entire animal. Ultimately, we may need to conclude – perhaps reluctantly so – that the whole truth . . . a big, elephant-sized truth . . . will be very different from what we can see now.
The reflection that Jay read to us this morning by Unitarian Universalist minister Rev. Gordon McKeeman lifts up another important point for us to consider. And that’s this: as we responsibly travel the road towards finding truth, we must ferret out and let go of our stereotypic thinking . . . something that may be a much more challenging prospect than we might first think.
McKeeman, in fact, describes it as the extraordinary challenge we face every ordinary day. Let’s revisit his words:
Stereotypic thinking does not impart solidity or dimensionality to an object. Quite the opposite: It dispenses with the details and eliminates the idiosyncrasies of individuals by making them a class of things, all of which have identical characteristics.[ref]Gordon McKeeman, “Truck Driver,” in Singing in the Night: Collected Meditations, Vol. 5, Mary Benard, ed. (Skinner House Books, Boston, MA: 2004), 61 [/ref]
Or, put another way, stereotypes offer dangerously easy shortcuts to understanding human complexity.
“The use of stereotypes is a major way in which we simplify our social world,” says Saul McLeod, who researches and writes about human behavior. “They reduce the amount of processing (in other words, thinking) we have to do when we meet a new person.”
Yet, while stereotypes enable may enable us to respond rapidly to situations, McKeeman points out they also are a means by which we easily dismiss another’s humanity. His previously-held belief about truck drivers being only rough and tough guys was one example of this kind of depersonalization. My guess is that we can think of much darker and more perilous ones.
As an example, I invite you to listen to the following fill-in-the-blank sentences and silently notice if a well-honed stereotype, positive or negative, comes to mind. Ready?
- Young African American men are mostly __________________________.
- Southern white men are mostly ___________________________.
- Women who make to the top in Corporate America are usually __________.
- Men who make it to the top in Corporate America are usually ___________.
- Severely overweight persons basically have no _______________________.
- Republicans don’t seem to care about ______________________________.
- Democrats don’t seem to care about _______________________________.
- Evangelical Christians are primarily interested in _____________________.
- Unitarian Universalists are primarily interested in ____________________ .
You see where this is going.
I think it’s safe to say that, whether positive or negative characterizations came to mind, none of these broad statements represent the truth, Nevertheless, as McKeeman noted in his reflection, we live with the temptation to group people into classes, apply labels to them, and mistake the label for the far more complex reality. How can we stop doing this?
In my own life, the act of patiently and persistently engaging in the process of uncovering the truth often means being willing to sit in the discomfort of uncertainty and fear. If I let go of my need to paint you with a broad brush stroke, it may mean that I’ll need to be prepared to take a look at my own complexity and my own contradictions in order to appreciate and have compassion for yours.
Letting go of stereotypes means that I’m genuinely trying to live into Unitarian Universalism’s first principle, which is to affirm the worth and dignity of every person.
So rather than condemn the Religious Right, ultra-conservative politicians, or any other group or organization that seems to hold a truth that’s diametrically opposed to mine, what’s far more challenging is look at my own truths. And, when I do, what I can tell you is that I’m a mixed bag.
For example, I’m a Unitarian Universalist, a lesbian, and I consider myself a political liberal. I’ve also voted Republican. I make the sign of the cross before I pray because, even though I abandoned my Catholic beliefs long ago, it just doesn’t feel like a prayer to me without it. I’m conflicted over some social justice matters that other liberals seem very sure about. And, I don’t drive a Prius.
What does all that say about me? How might someone else size me up by these descriptive statements?
Ultimately, abandoning our stereotypes, it seems, means abandoning our certainty about people and the world. And that, says the 17th century Marathi saint and poet Tukaram, is a good thing. He wrote:
Certainty undermines one’s power, and turns
happiness into a long shot. Certainty confines.
Dears, there is nothing in your life that will
not change – especially all your ideas of God.
Look what the insanity of righteous knowledge can do:
crusade and maim thousands
in wanting to convert that which
is already gold
into gold.
Certainty can become an illness
that creates hate and
greed.
God once said to Tuka,
“Even I am ever changing –
I am ever beyond
Myself,
what I may have once put my seal upon,
may no longer be
the greatest
Truth.”
I think what Tukaram is saying that truth lives in uncertainty . . . it lives in doubt and outside of stereotypes. Truth lives in in the process of examination and in the process of change. The truth knows no boundaries.
And, if that’s true – which I believe it is – then rather than despair that we haven’t yet arrived at the truth, let’s celebrate that we each have pieces of it. Let’s hold hope in the possibility that each of us has touched some part of the great elephant . . . and that it may be difficult, but not impossible, for us to move towards a common discovery. Only fear of the unknown will cancel out the possibility that, together, we will arrive at our Truth for this time and this place.
So, as we go from here, may we be a little less certain about ourselves. May we be willing to stand up for our piece of the truth . . . and keep an open mind about what we don’t know.
And, as we do, may we find ourselves gaining new insights about ourselves and our fellows . . . insights that will help us see that we may, in fact, all be reaching towards the same great thing.
May it be so. Amen.