THE SPIRITUAL PATH WE CHOOSE:
THE PATH OF WORK
The Rev. Dr. Morris W. Hudgins
Northwest UU Congregation
October 24, 2010
Introduction
The twentieth century was a century of change for Unitarian Universalism. It began as primarily two liberal Christian denominations. Many Unitarians and Univeralists affirmed the Social Gospel of the early twentieth century. Then was the advent of what I would call a “secular humanism.” This evolved into more of a “religious humanism.” The latter half of the century experienced the merger of the Unitarians and the Universalists (1961), the emergence of women in the ministry, and the growth of more spirituality. Even The New York Times recognized this in an article. The twentieth century witnessed the affirmation of gay, lesbian and transgender ministers in our Association. Paganism was also welcomed into our Association beginning with the affirmation of the “respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part” in our Purposes and Principles.
When I began the UU ministry in 1973, my main concern was ethics. I signed the Humanist Manifesto II. Spirituality was not on my radar. This changed over the next twenty five years. I have witnessed and affirmed the wide range of spirituality that has emerged.
One of the reasons why I love Unitarian Universalism is that we affirm and promote many different religious traditions. In the coming months you will see me draw from many sources in my sermons. I often say theologically I am closest to Reform Judaism. In November when we recognize our relationship with Unitarians in Transylvania I will honor our liberal Christian roots. Today I will turn to Hinduism as I begin this series on “The Spiritual Path We Choose.”
What I like about Hinduism is the affirmation of varied spiritual paths. For you who do not like the word “spiritual” you can substitute the words “good life” for the word “spiritual.” Hinduism concludes there are many ways to lead the good life or the spiritual life. The most common is doing good deeds. A second is through work which I will focus on today. A third is knowledge. And a fourth is devotion or love of God.
Hinduism says that everyone, no matter what their status in life, can do good deeds. Doing good deeds is related to the path of work. As one writer says,
To Hindus, part of doing good deeds is to perform your duty to the best of your ability. There is a place for everyone in this life, and the place that is yours can be filled only by you. Fill it well—and on your way through this world stop often to help the people and animals. (p. 43, “The Great Religion By Which Men Live.”)
The third way to live the good life is knowledge. Some Hindus give up their earthly life, leave their home and family, go away to study and meditate. Some have a funeral service to show that they are leaving this earthly life. They may wander the countryside seeking truth. They may study yoga, practicing breathing and posture exercises. Like the Christian aesthetic, they are seeking to know God by giving up their personal identity. As the Hindu would say they become one with Atman, or soul.
The fourth way to live the good life, according to Hinduism, is by loving all living things and to love the gods. As you probably know Hinduism affirms a pantheon of gods, though there is also a god above gods—or Brahman—the god with a thousand heads.
When I was in Raleigh, North Carolina, I would take my World Religions classes to the local Hindu Temple. While we were there talking with the religious leader, individuals would come into the worship space where there were many altars. They would bow before the god of their choice and leave them a gift. It may have been a flower or food.
Through devotion to their gods the Hindu comes closer to the god likeness that is in themselves. It begins with devotion to their fellow humans and to nature. They recognize the many roles that humans play: parent, master, friend, child, mate or sweetheart. Through devotion to individuals and to their many roles, they find their true nature, and then worship Brahman directly.
My Personal Story
Today I begin with the path that was taught to me as a child. It is the path of work. In fact, in my family of origin, the path of work was supreme. Knowledge and devotion were not important, and in the eyes of some were antithetical to living the good life.
So it is right for me to begin this series talking about the path of work. There are many ways to view work. Probably the most common way to view work is as a necessary evil. We work because we have to–it is our way of making a living, earning money. Work for me, like most of you, has always been a necessity. I grew up in a large family. My mother and father worked very hard to pay for our home and provide six children at home with food and clothes.
When we got old enough all of the children were expected to work. I started working when I was eleven years on an organic vegetable farm during the spring and summer about a half-mile from home. Obviously, it wasn’t a necessity for food, but it did provide money for much of my school clothes. This was a pattern that continued through high school. I worked in a donut shop, then another vegetable farm, and finally a drug store before I graduated from high school.
The most difficult decision I had to make in high school was whether or not I would try out for the high school baseball team in the spring. I finally decided not to play baseball, because it would interfere with my work when spring planting would begin. So I worked instead. I have never regretted this decision for one moment. It gave me the opportunity to play sports because I enjoyed it. I continued to play inter-mural sports in high school, college and Divinity School. I could play sports and work.
The emphasis on work was given to me by both my mother and father. My father was a tool-and-die maker. It should never be the quantity of work that a tool-and-die maker lives by but the quality and accuracy of work.
My mother, in addition to her responsibilities at home raising six children also took care of the house and the yard. She then began working outside the home when I was in high school. She also worked in the Donut Shop and then the Drug Store. Then one day a friend recruited her to work for McDonald Douglass Corporation in the printing and collating department. Almost thirty years later she would retire from that same department, doing the same job she had started.
It was this work ethic of my mother that influenced me the most. If I hadn’t been called to the ministry, I would probably have been like my sisters and their husbands, working until my body told me I could no longer do that kind of work. Two of my brothers-in-law are now disabled. My brother-in-law said it to me directly, but I am sure it was said in the middle of my eleven years of college and graduate school, “When is he going to go to work?”
The calling of the ministry took me in a different direction but I applied the same work ethic to school. I was taught in college that knowledge was the most important thing especially for my career as a minister or teacher. So I began to emphasize knowledge, another spiritual path, according to Hinduism, as much as work. I thank my mother for supporting me in this effort. I thank the college professors who encouraged and supported me in this transition.
I went from a small college in Missouri, to Duke University Divinity School in 1968. This experience changed my calling. My world became larger. I became acquainted with different religious traditions, new ideas, and most importantly the calling to live the life so that all people can live with more abundance as one of my colleagues (Charlie Kast) says.
This led to another life-changing decision: I was serving a Methodist Church in Richmond, Virginia, a young man came up to me after the service and said: “I visited another church last Sunday and I believe they have a theology that is very similar to yours.” “Oh,” I said, “What was the church?” He said, “I attended the First Unitarian Church of Richmond.” They seem to believe very much in democracy as part of their religion. They are also open to different views of God. You describe yourself as a pantheist—God in all things. They seem to be open to different views of God.”
That conversation led to an investigation on my part. That conversation and decision led to my becoming a Unitarian Universalist minister in 1973. I first talked to the minister of the First Unitarian Church of Richmond, The Rev. Bill Gold, then with the Director of Settlement of the UUA.
One day I received a call from Bill Gold and he introduced me to Mim Turner, who was on the Search Committee for a small church in Boca Raton, Florida. It took one weekend with the committee and then on Sunday with the congregation. They offered me the position and I accepted. They received the packet from Boston. They didn’t open it, but instead returned it to Boston. Let’s keep this a secret. Don’t tell our Search Committee. It’s not the recommended process of a ministerial search.
I tell you this because Mim Turner and I became life-long friends. We kept in touch over years. I remember fondly Mim’s 100th birthday. I was asked to write a letter for the occasion. Then a year later I was asked to preach in Boca Raton, and Mim played the piano for the service. She was 101 years old. Max Coots was right when he wrote:
When lives are born or people die, when something sacred’s sensed in soil or sky, mark the time. Respond with thought or prayer or smile or grief. Let nothing living slip between the fingers of the mind, for all of these are holy things we will not, cannot, find again.
Mim died two years ago. She represents Unitarian Universalism at its best. Bill Gold said something about Mim that I will never forget. He said, she is one of those church members that you can always count on. She supported her church generously. When the church needed her she responded to the call. She lived the values that we affirm and promote. I wish you all would have known Mim Turner. I thank Mim for the role she played in encouraging me to become a Unitarian Universalist, for her support and friendship all these years, for her devotion to her church and religion.
I use my friend Mim Turner, and my mother, as examples of two people who believed that what we do everyday of our lives, the work we do, how we treat others, the organizations we support, are the most important decisions we make.
Shakers and Transcendentalists
What I am saying this morning is that the work we do is “sacred” as the Shaker use to say. Ann Lee, the founder of the Shakers, taught her followers the importance of work. She instructed them: ” Put your hands to work, and your hearts to God. . .Do all your work as though you had a thousand years to live, and as you would if you knew you must die tomorrow.” I live by this philosophy.
I can see how the Transcendentalists of the 19th century were attracted to the Shakers. Most of the Transcendentalists were Unitarians and many were attracted to the idea of communal living. Bronson Alcott, one of the Transcendentalists, became a member of Brook Farm, an experiment in communal living, then lived at the Fruitlands, a cooperative vegetarian community, started by the Shakers. Louisa May Alcott, Bronson’s daughter, was 10 years old when they moved to Fruitlands, so was influenced by the Shaker philosophy and atmosphere.
Part of this influence was her desire to work and contribute to the family income. At first this was through her work as a seamstress and a servant. It is ironic that the family survived financial disaster because of her income as a writer, especially the book, Little Women.
I use the Transcendentalists and the Shakers as an example, not because of the financial gain it produced, but because of the emphasis on work as a spiritual matter. Ralph Waldo Emerson said it this way:
It is easy to see that a greater self reliance, a new respect for the divine in humanity, must work a revolution in all the office and relations. . .As soon as we are at one with God, we will not beg. We will then see prayer in all action. The prayer of the farmer kneeling in the field to weed it, the prayer of the rower kneeling with the stroke of the oar, are true prayers heard throughout nature. . .
Work in Community
Emerson was right. There is something divine in nature. Some might call it “God’s work.” Yes, the young man was right back in 1973. I believe there is divinity all around us, including the human spirit, the work we do.
I want to add one more thing to Emerson’s truth. The divine is found in nature and in the individual human soul, but it is also found in community, the work we do together. The phrase that is often used to describe this kind of work is “the beloved community.”
Yes, the work we do is not for our own personal benefit. It is for the good of our larger beloved community. The work we do together is sacred. What I tell our new members is that I hope you will get involved in the work of the church. Join the Buddhist group. Sing in the choir. Take a class. I consider the work of the committees as the most important thing we do. I agree with Marge Piercy when she writes:
I want to be with people who submerge in the task, who go into the fields to harvest and work in a row and pass the bags along, who stand in the line and haul in their places, who are not parlor generals and field deserters but move in a common rhythm when the food must come in or the fire be put out. The work of the world is common as mud. Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust. But the thing worth doing well done has a shape that satisfied, clean and evident. Greek amphoras for wine or oil, Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums but you know they were made to be used. The pitcher cries for water to carry and a person for work that is real.
My mother did not graduate from high school, but she lived this creed, she submerged in the task. I learned recently that my sister, who has found a more orthodox religion called my mom and told her she was going to hell because she never goes to church. I believe my sister is wrong. If there is a heaven, my mother will be there when she dies. I thank her for raising me to believe in work as a path to the meaningful life. I was raised on this work ethic. It is part of my being. So may it be that we see work as a sacred act, a spiritual discipline, which is productive for our community but most importantly brings peace to our soul. Amen.