The Downside of Spirituality - Guest Minister Rev. Meredith Garmon

My cominister Rev. Meredith Garmon delivered this sermon on September 27, 2009 at the Unitarian Univeralist Fellowship of Gainesville (audio below for listening or for downloading.  Written manuscript available upon request or for UUFG members on the website:  UUFG).  I followed his sermon with some spontaneous comments; the written excerpt follows below.

    For me the "downside of spirituality" is that our various practices often do not tell us how to deal with the pain, hurt, and suffering that exists in the  world.  If spirituality means we are to open our hearts and minds to all that is, this means that we must make meaning not just of beauty, but of tragedy, and the tragic choices each of us makes, or that our communties and species makes.  How do we do this?

    I got a glimpse how one person answers this this past weekend.  I had the honor to officiate a godparenting ceremony outdoors at Payne's Prairie State Park. Before the ceremony began a park ranger walked up with a whip on his belt, "to control gators" he replied when asked about it's function.  He watched the ceremony and at the end he said:

   "I don't know if your bible is my bible. But my bible says 'to walk circumspectly.' Out here at night walking around under the stars you never know what is around the corner - lizards, snakes, gators, bison, horses, feral pigs.  There is much that can harm you and you've got to be careful.  I mean, I don't think we can stop what's coming, the bad stuff, but we can walk carefully to ward off some of it.  And as we go, we walk under those beautiful stars."

   So maybe spirituality helps us walk open to beauty and to tragedy, and my guess is that there is so much beauty that it might just be harder to make meaning of the incredible beauty than the immense tragedy." 

    How do you hold the pain? 

    Is it worth trying to grow your awareness of interconnection, to both beauty and tragedy when you can't stop the tragedy?

    How can you grow your sense of interconnection and meaning with others?

 

Download Downside of Spirituality

(Payne's Prairie)

Begin Again in Love

This is an excerpt of a sermon delivered to the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Gainesville, September 20, 2009. 

For the full sermon, listen to it or download it at the end of this short piece.

.

(Brown Booby - photo by Aviceda)

 

What does that mean to begin again in love?  For me, love means never having to say you’re sorry.  I don’t think I’m the first to say that, or think it.  What love means to me is that we are in love with this awesome world – with God, with earth, with oceans and thunder, with family and friends.  It is being in love that leads us to make amends with others, to find ways to change our behavior and to care.

 

We don’t say we’re sorry or ask forgiveness because we or others are “bad.” That’s not the dream of our 1^st principle in Unitarian Universalism which is the inherent worth and dignity of all people.  We yearn for forgiveness because we want to be part of something special, something glorious; we want to be part of this awesome world.  If we can just awake to the beauty within that touches the beauty without we can find healing, atonement, be at one. 

 

Have you ever been held in that sweet embrace of wonder?  For me it’s swimming in fresh water spring or ocean, held in waves and flow as if in a womb or being born in beauty.  In that moment of purple eel below and brown booby flying above, everything is perfect, even my fumbling and bumbling.  In touching the source of awe and wonder, we forgive ourselves and each other.

 

Born out of awe and wonder, shorn of our ego’s pride, reborn in humble adoration, may we make our days glad together.

 

 

Download Rosh Hashanah 2009 sermon

(To download, click here.  You might need to "right click" and "save target as")

Piracy and Morality

 

 

In celebration of International Talk Like a Pirate Day I facilitated a service on Piracy and Morality at the Unitarian Univeralist Fellowship of Gainesville.  The audio recording of the sermon follows below.

 

Let me lift up the issues of piracy regarding the nonhuman aspects of our communities.  If piracy means taking what belongs to others, often from the sense that “the world owes me a living,” where in your life do you feel that we are stealing from the earth and her beings?  What if we became Universal Pirates, and not just pirates following a code of ethics that serves individual needs or smaller community needs?  What if our every action was based on an orientation to the common good, to biodiversity, to sustainability, and to animal welfare (including humans)?  In this way I’d say let’s become pirates, matey, revolutionaries who take back what belongs to us all by giving back to what belongs to no one. 

 

(Photograph from "Pirates and Parties")

Download Piracy and Morality Sermon

 

The Common Good - An Ever Living Stream

This is a homily I deliverd on August 30, 2009 for the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Gainesville.  For this Annual Ingathering and Water Communion I spoke of how we give messages to one another that have far ranging consequences.  What messages will you choose to give to life this day? 

May goodness flow with you all the days of your life.

Download Water Messages Homily

(may need to "right click" and then "save target as")