Last summer, UU Minister Joan Kahn-Schneider spoke at the UU church in Hendersonville on the subject of humor, and the need for us to be able to laugh. It was a joyous service, filled with humor that encouraged us to enjoy the humor in life, both in the world and in ourselves.

Since that time, our world has changed. September 11th and the War on Terrorism have made us aware of how serious and uncertain life is. Couple that with the reason I am here this morning -- as a candidate to be your half-time minister -- and it becomes very easy for us to get really serious, and lose all track of our sense of humor.

We had dinner with Joan and her husband Charlie this week, and I remembered that sermon. Why did it leave such an impression? After all, life is serious, and I take my faith seriously. I realized however, (and it's a simple concept that still seems difficult for us UUs to pull off), is that often we need to take our faith more seriously and take ourselves less seriously. Perhaps even more than before September 11th, it seems to me that it is vital to my spiritual, mental and emotional health, that I take my UU faith seriously. At the same time I need to do whatever I can to maintain my perspective and my sense of humor.

Now, having said that, explaining what it means and how to do it opens up a whole can of worms. After all, life is serious and dangerous business. As the old cliché points out, none of us will get out of it alive.

Perhaps the First Question that comes to mind is: "Is there really a UU Faith to take seriously?" I think the answer needs to be both yes and no. There have been many attempts to say what UUs believe. Our hymnal is full of them, and like most UUs, as I go through and read the various hymns and readings, there are some I agree with, and others I don't. Most of us are familiar with the UU Association covenant that appears in the front of this hymnal, and with the statement of the various sources from which our tradition is drawn. As basic as this covenant seems to Unitarian Universalism today, we need to remind ourselves that it was approved by the General Assembly not unanimously, but by a contested majority vote. This desire to discuss and to differ on almost everything has lead some people to quip that we UUs would rather discuss heaven than go there

The covenant, which many of us carry with us, certainly outlines what the majority of UUs would say is the core of what we, together, believe. But is it what most people would describe as the UU faith? Perhaps not. We are a non-creedal faith, after all, and no one is asked to accept our covenant on face value. However, it probably fits within the definition that the writer of the Biblical epistle to the Hebrews uses when he says faith is "the evidence of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen."

There have been numerous attempts to summarize the UU faith -- George Marshall in his book "Challenge of a Liberal Faith" devotes an entire chapter to it. He quotes Thomas Paine's "Age of Reason," Harry Emerson Fosdick, Theodore Sorensen (UU layman who was JFK's special assistant), Alfred North Whitehead and A. Powell Davies, all of whom struggled, to some extent with the question of a liberal faith. Marshall finds more of what he believes in the words of Confucius, for example, than in the teachings of Lao Tze.

In general, UUs tend to see matters of faith as being so complex and precious that it is intensely personal, and dependent on each individual. It seems to me that it is both the strength and the weakness of UU faith that it is so intensely personal. In the face of those who are often very sure that what they and their church believe is the absolute truth, we are often reluctant to let people know what we believe. Some say we believe in nothing (Garrison Keeler's jokes).

Partially because of what I thougt was the enigmatic nature of Unitarian Universalism, I was one of those who never wanted to be a UU. (15 years - Port Townsend & Eileen/FUC.) Since becoming a UU, however, I have come to agree with Edith Hunter, UU educator, who wrote:

"'Many of us religious liberals have not given sufficient thought to what we believe. . . . we have no finished faith, once revealed . . . Are we in danger then of going to the opposite extreme -- of being hopelessly vague about what we believe?" Hunter goes on to suggest that the way to understand what we believe is to examine our own lives, our values, attitudes, convictions, practices.

I admit to an extreme bias here. I think that it is important to know what we believe, to be willing to share it with others, and to do our best to live by it I really don't think it's true that UUs can believe "anything we want." I agree with those who say that if we don't stand for something, we stand for nothing.

Rabbi Joseph Levine once said that the God of the Jews is the sum total of what all Jews everywhere believe God is. Whether or not you find this statement problematic, it does seem to me that the Unitarian Universalist faith is what each of us as UUs believes, and the sum total of what all of us believe. Similarly, the UU faith here in the Catawba Valley can be found in this community, in what members of this community believe, and in the cutting edge of spiritual growth that influences the sum of those beliefs.

But, if the UU faith is whatever I believe, and whatever all of us believe, what in the world does it mean to take it seriously? Is it a ridiculous question -- how can we take seriously a faith that is constantly in flux, making the question itself an oxymoron? On the other hand, if it is personal to each of us, isn't it a given that we all take it as seriously as we need to? Is the idea of taking UU faith seriously, then, both an oxymoron and a given?

There are UUs who, with a straight face, will tell you they are total skeptics -- they don't believe in anything. And how can you take the idea of faith seriously if you believe in nothing? There are UUs who will say that taking our faith seriously is silly, that even putting faith and seriousness in the same sentence is an oxymoron. After all, it doesn't matter what we believe, and why should we take seriously something we can't prove to be true?.

Logicians, scientists, philosophers, writers and ministers wiser than I have declared over and over that we human beings will worship something, that it matters what we believe. Even though we are a community that values deeds over creeds, it seem clear that taking our faith, our beliefs, seriously is extremely important as a framework for our deeds.

You all know people who take their faith seriously in a way you probably don't want to emulate. Some of them can be quite obnoxious about it. But I'd like to share an example of a friend -- not a UU -- who takes her faith seriously in a very real way. (Donna) She became a Buddhist at a time in her life when the message of Buddhism was exactly what she needed. The crisis has passed, but she still takes her Buddhist faith seriously. She studies it, practices it, and does her best to live it. She draws strength from a faith community, and when she finds and appropriate occasion, she talks about it (albeit quietly and somewhat reluctantly, not wanting to impose or proselytize).

It seems to me that the only way to take UU faith seriously is to take what we personally believe seriously. We need to study, to practice and to live our faith -- and then, as human beings, participating in life, in community, be humble enough and open enough to listen to and learn from what others believe.

(1) Taking our faith seriously means that we need to pay attention, to be conscious of how our faith is changing and growing as we change and grow. We will need to recognize the delicate balance between what we believe today and what we will come to believe tomorrow, and practice living on that edge.

I believe that one of the reasons that fundamentalism in all its forms and in every religion grows is the uncertainty of life. People flocked to houses of worship after September 11. Humans seem to need to cling to something, to hold on to what they perceive is lasting truth. Even UUs can forget our own fallibility and confuse our current beliefs with absolute truth? When we close our minds to change and shut our ears to what others believe, UUs, religious liberals of any stripe, can become what I call a "liberal" fundamentalist. To me the person who claims to have been born again and still lives like hell, or alternatively makes life hell for others whose beliefs are different, is no worse a hypocrite than people who claim to believe in the inherent worth and dignity of all life and then proceed to pass judgment on and criticize all who differ from them.

Our faith requires that we accept change, and continually seek to grow.

(2) Taking our faith seriously is not the same as taking ourselves seriously. We need to be able to accept, and to laugh at, our own human foibles. If we don't, we can totally lose our sense of humor, and thus damage our abilities to be fulfilled as human beings. Someone Eileen and I know (CF) wanted so much to be thought of as a religious leader, to be "a heavy Quaker," that he ended up sacrificing home, family, everything -- as so far as we know, never achieved his goal..

In taking our faith seriously, we need to remember not to take ourselves too seriously -- to be reminded of the prayer in our hymnal (#496, by Harry Meserve) - "From arrogance, pompousness, and from thinking ourselves more important than we are, may some saving sense of humor liberate us. For allowing ourselves to ridicule the faith of others, may we be forgiven. . . ."

If Socrates was right that "the unexamined life is not worth living," then surely the reverse has a ring of truth about it -- the examined life is worth living. The payoff for taking our faith seriously is the opportunity it gives us to grow, to be alive. Faith to live, to face life, to give to those who are important to us.

Taking our faith seriously means understanding the foundation on which we live -- H. N Wieman (The Source of Human Good) "(Faith) is the act of deciding to live in the way required by the source of human good, . . . " (Repeat this)

Taking our faith seriously helps us see and hear the world better. It gives us the framework in which, as the old Jewish saying goes, we "Become an ear to hear what the Universe is saying." (from the Maggid of Mezritch)

Taking our faith seriously gives us the points of departure that enable us to recognize new truth, and to return again and again, as the chant says, to the land of our own soul. Or, as T. S. Eliot put it (from "Little Gidding"), " . . . We shall not cease from exploration -- and the end of all our exploring -- will be to arrive where we started -- and know the place for the first time. . . ."

Faith is a key to hope. Back to the passage in Hebrews - evidence of things hoped for, conviction of things not seen." Today, after September 11, and in the midst of a recession, faith allows us to risk living, to risk loving, to risk embarrassment and even death -- and in this risk to find that we are alive and kicking. I believe that to refuse to risk is to risk never living. Finally -- if faith is an act, a decision, a commitment, it is important because there is so much to do.

Denise Levertov begins her poem "Beginners" a quote:

From too much love of living,
Hope and desire set free,
Even the weariest river
Winds somewhere to the sea --

Then she writes:

But we have only begun
to love the earth.
We have only begun
to imagine the fullness of life.
How could we tire of hope?
-- so much is in bud.
How could desire fail?
-- we have only begun
to imagine justice and mercy,
only begun to envision
how it might be
to live as siblings with beast and flower,
not as oppressors.
Surely our river
cannot already be hastening
into the sea of nonbeing?
Surely it cannot
drag, in the silt,
all that is innocent?
Not yet, not yet --
there is too much broken
that must be mended.
too much hurt we have done to each other
that cannot yet be forgiven.
We have only begun to know
the power that is in us if we would join
our solitudes in the communion of struggle.
So much is unfolding that must
complete its gesture,
so much is in bud.

"So much is in bud." What a challenge to the future of UUCCV. Yes, our world changed on 9/11, and this change seems to me to be a golden opportunity. This congregation can be a voice to the larger community on justice, fairness, tolerance and diversity. We church can demonstrate how diversity in faith can strengthen community, how openness to others and to change can make a stronger world. How? At least in part, by studying, practicing and living what we believe -- and by loving and listening to those whose beliefs are different than our own.

Last year, I asked a two new UUs why they had come to be a part of the congregation they had joined. "Well," they told me, "we moved to this community with a commitment to get involved, to do everything we could to make a contribution. And everywhere we went, at every meeting we attended, in every organization at work to change the community for the better, we found that UUs were involved. We joined because they, like us, had a commitment to this community."

With apologies to Denise Levertov:

We have only begun to know the power that is in us if we would join our solitudes, our faith, in the communion of struggle. So much is unfolding that must complete its gesture, so much is in bud.

Shalom, Peace, Blessed be.