Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church-Unitarian Universalist

“Right Idea, Right Belief”

Rev. Leslie Takahashi Morris

October 14, 2007

Stars Story: Seeds Sowed: A Story of Mohandas Gandhi.

Narrator: Mohandas Gandhi was born in Porbandar, India on October 2, 1869.

Voice 1: His mother made sure he understood his family’s religion, ideas from the Hindu religion and the Jain religion. Those teachings were like little seeds planted inside him.

Voice 2: One teaching was the idea of karma, that one should live a clean life, pray, be disciplined, honest, have few possessions and harm no one. When he first learned these teachings, they didn’t seem to help him.

Narrator: for he was a shy boy who was afraid of many things. He was married when he was 13 as was the custom in his country and his wife, Kasturbai, used to laugh because he slept with the lights on.

Voice 1: Though his father was a member of the prince’s court and great things were expected of him, he was not a good student in high school of college.

Voice 2: Yet he felt he could do more—those seeds inside him were stirring.

Narrator: He went to London to study the law.

Voice 1: To make himself feel better in the strange country, he trained himself to behave like an English gentleman would—with fine clothes, rooms and even danced the fox trot.

Voice 2: Those seeds kept stirring, so he began trying to live a simpler life: to cook for himself, to take buses and became a vegetarian.

Narrator: After he passed his law exams, he returned to India where his shyness made it hard for him to become a successful lawyer. His brother got him a position in South Africa and so, in 1893, he and his wife, left to start again.

Voice 1: Yet South Africa was a hard place for anyone who had brown skin to be. Cruel laws divided people based on the color of their skin. He was often treated meanly and sometimes even violently by white South Africans and yet inside, he knew this was not who he was. He was determined to succeed and to concentrate and he realized that “the true practice of law is to find the better side of human nature.”

Voice 2: Those seeds, the ideas that would guide him for the rest of his life were beginning to sprout. One night he was travelling in the first-class section of the train when a white passenger insisted that he sit in the third-class part. He refused---and was thrown off the train! Soon after this, he began to believe in the force of love. He believed that “the force of love by peace always wins over violence.” He decided to root out the disease of prejudice and to never use violence against others. He and his followers worked for the rights of black and Indian people in South Africa and the rights of women. He discovered he was no longer shy or afraid of anything because he believed he was living by the law of love.

Narrator: When he returned to India, Gandhi was asked to take part in the struggle of the Indian people to rid themselves of the British, who ruled over them. He did this by encouraging people to return to simpler ways, ways that made them less dependent on those who ruled them.

Voice 2: Gandhi, with Bai’s help, taught himself to make his own cloth, Khadi, to make their own salt (even though the British government had passed laws to say only they could make salt), and to ask for the right to govern themselves. He taught them also to respond without violence and when his followers refused to do so, he stopped eating until they did.

Voice 1: On August 25, 1947, India won its independence from Britain. And yet two new countries were formed, India and Pakistan. Gandhi fought to unite the country, and yet it was not to be.

Voice 2: Because he believed that all religions could be brothers, he was hated by those who thought their religion was the only true religion.

Narrator: The man who was born into a wealthy and influential family, died with few possessions:

Voice 2: a few items used for cooking, three monkeys, three books,

Voice 1: a pocket watch and a tin bowl he had received when in jail, two pairs of sandals and his khadi.

Voice 2: Yet the seeds that had sprouted in his heart gave rise to the life that caused the people he served to call him “Mahatma” which means “great soul.”

Narrator: And here are some of Gandhi’s words that still grow and flower today from the seeds planted so long ago:

Voice 2: It is no nonviolence if we merely love those that love us. It is nonviolence only when we love those that hate us. I know how hard it is to follow this grand law of love. But are not all great and good things difficult to do?

Voice 1: Good travels at a snail’s pace. Those who want to do good are not selfish, they are not in a hurry, they know how to impregnate people with good requires a long time.

It does not require money to be neat, clean and dignified.

Voice 2: Where there is love, there is life. Hatred leads to destruction.

Voice 1: The law of love could be best understood and learned through little children.

Voice 2: To a true artist only that face is beautiful which, quite apart from its exterior, shines with a truth within the soul.

Voice 1: The only tyrant I accept in this world is the ‘still, small voice’ within.¹

Meditation: Please consider these words of Marianne Williamson:

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. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

As we enter into this period of shared silence, let us be present to whatever it is within us that is wanting to shrink and play small. Let us invite it into the nurturing, rich soil of our intentions.

Sermon: This morning, I’d like to tell a story about us and though we have several choices for characters, let’s begin with a minister named Adin Ballou. He had ideas and beliefs that grounded his life—though they confused those around him and I suspect even members of the various Universalist and Unitarian congregations he served found some a little challenging. For instance, he believed a righteous life was possible here on this earth and he was best known for being a founder of a short-lived Utopian community called Hopedale. Think about it--a man in the mid-1800s preaching about the rights of women, of the mentally ill, and how to resist war and slavery. And then there was what he once called his “unpopular idea”—“Christian Non-Resistance.” You see, Ballou thought you should counter evil when you met it in the world, first by having your own ideas and beliefs and morals, and then, if confronted with the evil, to resist it physically if you could do so without doing harm to anyone else. Ballou died in relative obscurity and yet, like the seeds that were planted in Gandhi, Ballou scattered seeds into the winds of the world. Especially wind-borne was the idea of non-resistance.

The world may always have been a little smaller than we think, because this seed crossed the world and found Count Leo Tolstoy, who began a correspondence with Adin Ballou and even had two of Ballou’s works translated into Russian. Tolstoy was already famous when he had a crisis of faith. Ballou’s odd little idea fit with one Tolstoy treasured, to quote a title from one of his books, The Kingdom of God is Within You—in other words, that people were required for God to create good in the world. The idea of non-resistance was adopted by this writer and social reformer and his ideas grew and germinated and bore seeds.

One landed in India, as the 19^th century drew to a close, when Mohandas Gandhi discovered it. Gandhi was always clear about the debt he owed to Tolstoy—first and foremost the ideas of practicing what you preach and second, the doctrine of non-violence. With great respect, he called his first community Tolstoy Farm. In opposing oppressive power in South Africa and then in colonial India, Gandhi brought to life the ideas of right belief, right knowledge and right conduct which are at the heart of Jainism, one of the religions he inherited from his mother, and he did this by adapting Tolstoy’s right idea. Non-resistance, or non-cooperation as the word came out when Gandhi tried to translate the idea into the Urdu language, didn’t make sense to the people Gandhi led. They understood how to be servants to the British, and increasingly, they understood how their anger made them wish they could act—with violence. They didn’t understand how to be non-violent and gain their independence and yet that is what they did under Gandhi’s relentless leadership.

Though Gandhi died saddened by the way India and Pakistan were divided because people could not see that Hindus and Muslims and Jains, that people of all faiths, could live together in a united and peaceful world, his idea, non-cooperation grew and flowered—and then came the seeds.

And one came back in the United States where a man named Martin Luther King became the fertile ground for the right idea of non-cooperation which became non-violence in his use. And in his search to find more truth and more wholeness in the world, non-violence became one of his calling cards in the Civil Rights movement—also known as passive resistance. So this idea, which started with a Universalist minister, and a sort of fringe one at that, helped spark transformation around the world and ended up back on the continent it started from, more powerful than ever and still seeding change.

So why is this our story? As Unitarians and Universalists, we have a proud history that dates back to the earliest days of this nation itself, when our spiritual ancestors were among those who came looking for a place where they could freely practice their religion. In the new and fertile environment of this nation, their ideas thrived and some of our nation’s founding fathers were affected by great seed-planters like Unitarian Joseph Priestley. In the century Ballou lived, Universalism was, for a brief time, the fourth largest religion in this country. Unitarians and Universalists had a number of seminaries and colleges where the right ideas and the right beliefs they espoused could be transmitted to the leaders and opinion-makers of the next generation. These ideas and beliefs were to be acted upon—the duty of the faithful was not to think about them or believe them, but to make them real in the world. In each of our lives, some ideas and beliefs stand apart because they are our faith, in the sense that Henry Nelson Wieman defined faith—faith as action, as the idea or belief embodied.

In a world of genetically engineered plants and bigger-breasted chickens, some people seek to protect genetic diversity by protecting heritage seeds against corporate monoculture that says that people’s value is in the marketplace, that some are the righteous and others the damned, that our job as “Americans” is to make as many people like us in the name of a Christianity that has wandered far from the teachings of Jesus. As Unitarian Universalists, we face a dominant culture that threatens to reduce our religion to a mere curiosity or an empty new-age feel-good fad, and yet, we have these seeds, heritage seeds which many of us believe need to be saved and cultivated and allowed to flower and bear fruit, fruit sorely needed in this world.

Though our ancestors came to be allowed to practice their religion in freedom, this is not just about freedom of belief. It is about claiming the beliefs that are uniquely ours and not being afraid to take them into the world. From our Unitarian heritage comes the idea that a unity exists which connects all that is of utmost importance and that we are each connected by the spark of divinity within us. That which is holy and sacred in our world is not apart from us, it is of us. And all of us have value and worth, our Universalist heritage says, because the idea of an all-embracing love is not a pipedream, it is a goal which we must make real on this earth through our actions.

Some, including some among us, hear these ideas as platitudes, just as many scoffed at Ballou’s idea, and predicted that nothing would come of them. And others will hear them and take them into their hearts in faith and transform themselves and the world through them. When you try to make them guides for living, these ideas don’t seem so simple and easy to dismiss.

If God is an all-embracing love, then you must resist evil while not committing evil—not a mindless activity at all. If the divine is unified, not divided, then we must meet evil with the understanding that it is not outside of all we hold sacred and it is not different than ourselves. With Ballou, Tolstoy, Gandhi and King, the conditions were really right for something to happen—the soil was really fertile, something needed to grow. I think we live in a time like that today. The world is getting larger and smaller at the same time. We can be overwhelmed with it, or we can be awed by it—and engaged with it as a religious people.

I know when I first walked into a Unitarian Universalist congregation as a young adult, I did not understand the amazing heritage I was being given. Did you? I did not understand the powerful message and the ways it would compel my actions in the world? Did you? I did not understand how much our world would need what this faith has to offer—a vision of a world united through human effort, and a real commitment to work to understand that all lives are to be cherished. I still understand only a little bit—and I still understand I need a strong Unitarian Universalism to keep learning more.

As Unitarian Universalists, we are the people who inherit the seeds that say that more wholeness and less human evil is possible in this life. Adin Ballou’s once-scorned idea and its journey shows our right ideas are not in vain. We are part of a larger whole. And this morning, around the country, Unitarian Universalist congregations are taking a collection to invest in some of the seeds we inherit. Chris explained very well the purposes of the funds and where they will be used. That, in some way, is the technical detail, at the heart of this is investing in the power of the ideas, the beliefs and the heritage that is ours as Unitarian Universalists and giving them the legs to walk in the world.

So here is the sobering part of our collective story: Today, we know that the majority of people who identify themselves as Unitarian Universalists do not chose to be in relationship with our congregations. Today we have only two seminaries left and last year the talk was of merging them together because neither of them had the financial resources they need to provide high quality scholarship and teaching, to do that which incubates new, right ideas and spreads them in the world. Today we have no colleges identified with our faith and little money to support the bold work that is moving toward the future we see. Today we have an abysmal record of retaining new ministers who represent the diversity of the world we seek to embrace.

“There’s A River Flowing In My Soul” is a song often used in services of healing and in rituals that help people struggling with addiction issues. I know the world needs healing—and I think sometimes that we as Unitarian Universalists have a problem with addiction. We are addicted to the idea of thinking small, we are afraid to claim the power that is within us, to take our right ideas and turn them into right beliefs by acting on them. Think about it: in membership numbers, as an Association, we are roughly the same size we were in 1961 when the Unitarians and the Universalists decided to consolidate into a single Association of Congregations.

What does it take to make an idea grow? Rev. Gordon McKeeman, past president of Starr King School for the Ministry whom we are fortunate to have as a member of our congregation here, noted in a major address at the 2004 General Assembly of Congregations that it requires being willing to stop just being independent people in independent congregations and think of ourselves as part of a united religion moving towards the fulfillment of “a cosmic story.” In the spirit of Marianne Williamson’s words, right ideas used by Nelson Mandela when he was inaugurated as president of South Africa in 1994, let us stop playing small as Unitarian Universalists. Let us imagine ourselves powerful beyond measure.

The story I want to tell today began a centuries ago in the hearts and minds of truth-loving people, people who valued right ideas and right beliefs. I don’t know how it ends, I just know that the story continues with you and with me, for we are the faithful gardeners of this age, the ones who hold the heritage seeds. Let us plant them well for those who will need their harvest. Amen.

Benediction: As Gordon McKeeman said, “By some strange cosmic coincidence, we have in our possession a saving gospel, though we are loathe to put it together. It’s an encompassing vision for the human future. It would be tragic if, in the face of the long-term trend toward a peaceful, universal and singular goal, we missed the opportunity to be a powerful voice for it.”