Words Matter

a sermon by Stephen Meister delivered 10 Nov 2013 at First Unitarian Church of Omaha

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was

God.

It’s not often that a Unitarian Universalist sermon starts that way. And

from a self-described unbeliever, no less. I suspect many of you may have

squirmed in your seats just a little. Honestly, they weren’t the most comfortable

words for me either. But the fact that the author of the Gospel of John in the

Christian bible chose these words to open his narrative is truly striking to me. I

know that he wasn’t speaking of literal words, written or spoken; still I am struck

by the choice of this metaphor to describe what the author understands as the

source of creation and of continued divinity. Today, I want to explore the power

of words, because words matter.

Words have power. The power to inspire and the power to affflict. The

power to heal and the power to harm. The power of mercy and grace, and the

power of destruction and death. Words allow us a sense of identity. They enable

us to share our experiences. They allow us to relate to one another – to come

together in beloved community. But words can also divide us. They break us into

categories based on race, class, gender identity, sexual orientation, political

persuasion, religious affiliation, etc., etc. etc.

Sometimes it can be surprising what words can cause conflict. It may be as

simple as an argument over seemingly innocuous lyrics in a song. Or it may be

more serious. Some words will immediately turn others away, cause them to shut

down and stop listening to the rest of what you have to say. I recognize that by

opening this sermon with a verse from scripture, I may actually run that very risk

with a few folks here. I was one of those folks once. But one day I posted a quote

on facebook tagged – Jewish wisdom. A friend of mine, a Christian convert from

Hinduism, commented that the book of Proverbs was full of Jewish wisdom! And

indeed it is. Like this gem: “Gracious words are like a honeycomb, sweetness to

the soul and health to the body.” (Proverbs 16:24). And with that gentle nudge

and a little laughter, I realized that there is indeed wisdom to be found in sacred

texts and I can engage with them to find words that speak to me, though many of

them do not. But it’s not just about scripture.

Pop culture is full of examples recognizing the power of words. It’s really

nothing new in stories of witchcraft and sorcery, but the Harry Potter novels by

J.K. Rowling show us that while a proper wand is important, successful spellcraft

really depends on saying the right words in the right way or the worst kind of

unintended consequences may occur. Or reaching back to the days of my youth,

we can see it in David Lynch’s 1984 film adaptation of Frank Herbert’s messianic

sci-fi novel “Dune”. In the story, the hero, Paul, is called to fulfill his destiny by

living and fighting among the Fremen natives of the desert planet, Arrakis. As he

takes his place as their leader he has to adopt a name to be used among them.

He chooses Muad'Dib, after a constellation in the Arrakin sky which is in turn

named after a cunning desert mouse that manages to survive in this most

unforgiving environment. Among Fremen weaponry is the Weirding Module that

focus certain sounds into directed energy. When one of the warriors calls the

name of Muad’Dib while wearing the module, an enormous blast of energy occurs

prompting Paul to remark, “My name is a killing word.” This is not the kind of

word you want to throw around without real consideration and intention.

But we do this all the time, don’t we? Spit our words out before we’ve

taken the time to taste them… to consider how they’ll be received? To think

about what lasting effect they might have? How many times have you

immediately regretted something that fell out of your face and wished you could

pull it back? But you can’t. Kahlil Gibran warned us that: “Words are timeless.

You should utter them or write them with a knowledge of their timelessness.” I

would add to this that we should take care to understand the context of where

we are before we say them.

The late comic George Carlin was famous for his list of words you can’t say

on TV. Don’t worry – I’m not going to repeat them. I always told my kids there

were really no such thing as bad words, only inappropriate times and places for

them – and Grandma is always an inappropriate time and place. While some

households have a true zero tolerance policy for curse words of any type, in the

culture at large there seems to be a continuum of dirty words from the mildly

offensive to what Ralphie in “A Christmas Story” refers to as the ‘queen mother of

dirty words.’ We all have our red lines along this spectrum, but there are words

that as a society we’ve decided simply should not be said aloud so we speak of

them in code: The F-Bomb… The N-Word. Words whose sole purpose seems to

be to provoke shock or cause pain. While I fear official censorship much more

than I do these particular words, it is probably right and good that these kinds of

words have been singled out for elimination from our modern lexicon.

On the other end of that line of thought, however, is the idea of reclaiming

certain words, stripping them of their power to do harm, and infusing them

instead with a sense of empowerment. I entered the University of Nebraska-

Lincoln in 1987, when the Silence = Death project started in New York City as a

means to raise awareness and bring into open discussion the ravages of the AIDS

epidemic. A few years later, in response to increased violence against lesbian,

gay, bisexual and transgender people, activists from ACT UP formed Queer Nation

and the battle cry of “Were Here, We’re Queer, Get Used To It” rang out across

the nation including my campus in Lincoln. The LGBTQ community had reclaimed

the word ‘queer’ that had for so long been used as an epithet and they would

never shrink into the shadows again. Because those brave souls recognized the

power that words bring with them, we’ve since seen great strides toward greater

equality in the realm of sexual and gender identity. Not there yet – but progress

marches on. And none of it would have been possible without giving voice to

words and reclaiming them. Words do indeed have power.

Last week Rev. Frank spoke about recovering a language of reverence. It’s

something I’ve thought about for quite some time. I was raised as a Roman

Catholic but left the church in my teens. Dana grew up unchurched but culturally

Christian. Living in a society dominated by mainstream Christian culture, we

wanted our kids to have a grounding in what religion is all about without all the

dogma that neither of us believed. To that end we began attending the Unitarian

Church in Lincoln.

The children’s religious education program was top notch and I even

started getting used to singing the hymns of my youth again with all the different

UUified lyrics. But, frankly, there was a little too much God talk for us and we

never really connected with anyone so we left after a month or two. That was

almost fifteen years ago and we stayed unchurched until coming here to First

Unitarian of Omaha a little over two years ago. Since coming here I have regained

my voice in song, rekindled my enthusiasm for the important work of making this

world a better place, and been challenged to grow through some of the best

conversations I’ve ever had. Many of these conversations have been around what

I call, in the spirit of the late great George Carlin, a list of UU dirty words. Words

like… Faith… Prayer... Spirituality… God. This is a partial list, but I think if we’re

going to talk about a language of reverence, it’s a pretty good start.

You may remember the last time I stood in this pulpit I talked about my

take on the word ‘faith’. I told you that as a materialist and secular humanist I

used to cringe at the word, but had come to embrace it through an understanding

of faith not as believing in something I could not see or experience, but rather of

keeping faith -- staying true to promises I’d made in my oath as a military officer,

in my marriage vows, and in my covenant as a member of this church.

But what of these other words? What about the word ‘prayer’? We’ve

seen a very conscious decision in this congregation to forego (dare I say

abandon?) the term ‘prayer’ first for ‘meditation’, then for ‘mindfulness’.

Honestly, while I appreciate Frank’s sensitivity to those who object to the word

and even the idea of prayer, I’m personally a little disappointed with the change

as I had just become comfortable with the word again. I was fortunate enough

while traveling for work to attend services at First Unitarian Church in

Albuquerque, New Mexico. That day Rev. Angela Herrera relayed this story in her

sermon titled “What Does Prayer Do?”:

A man was looking for a parking space. He circled the block again

and again with no luck. Finally he prayed in exasperation: “Look,

God. I’ll do anything for a parking space. If you give me a space, I’ll

start going to church. I’ll pray every day and be your faithful

servant.” Just then a parking space appeared. So the man said,

“Never mind, I found one.”

Is this the kind of thing that comes to mind when you hear the word, ‘prayer’?

The ‘ask and you shall receive’ kind of prayer? But is that what prayer has to be?

Does prayer have to be directed to anyone or anything? I don’t think so. I’ve

come to understand prayer to be about something much more profound. In that

sermon, Herrera describes two aspects of human experience – the observable or

reasoning aspect of being is one. But she notes that there is also a depth aspect –

the fact that there’s more to life than meets the eye. The sense of

meaningfulness of it all. The part that moves your heart. That’s where love and

mercy and beauty live. That’s where stories get their power. The depth aspect of

life is what religion is about. Prayer is about connecting ourselves with that. In

that sense I pray as I drive toward the rising sun on my way to work. As I walk in a

natural setting or even on a city street. And, yes, when we sit in mindfulness each

Sunday morning, I pray.

What about ‘spirituality’? I’ve heard more than once someone say

“Spirituality? I don’t even know what that is.” It is a pretty nebulous word, isn’t

it? For a long time I referred to myself as a heathen agnostic secular humanist

with the emphasis on the secular. When pressed for a label I still usually call

myself a secular humanist, but over time I’ve dropped the agnostic in favor of

atheist or more often ‘unbeliever’ and placed more emphasis on the ‘humanist’

than the ‘secular’. But I see a strict separation of the secular from the spiritual as

a false dichotomy. Spiritual to me does not mean supernatural. As a materialist I

believe that if it exists, it is by definition natural. Spirit is not something separate

or outside myself. I don’t believe it is going to depart this body upon my death.

You often hear me speak of how things like music or this community or time

spent in the presence of my best friend, Dana, feed my soul, but by soul I simply

mean that most real part of me – the very core of my being.

Last week Rev. Frank described a spiritual experience of viewing the Milky

Way while in the desert. I’ve had that experience in the sandhills of western

Nebraska and it is sublime. When I look out at the cosmos and realize that I am a

part of it and it a part of me, it is overwhelming. I feel exhilarated and utterly

calm at the same time. I don’t think I can say it any better than Jonathan Haidt

did in his book “The Happiness Hypothesis”:

Whether it is called nobility, virtue, or divinity, and whether or not

God exists, people simply do perceive sacredness, holiness, or some

ineffable goodness in others, and in nature.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama puts it this way in his book “Beyond Religion”:

[W]e are born free of religion, but we are not born free of the need

for compassion. More fundamental than religion, therefore, is our

basic human spirituality. We have an underlying human disposition

toward love, kindness and affection, irrespective of whether we have

a religious framework or not. When we nurture this most

fundamental human resource – when we set about cultivating those

inner values which we all appreciate in others – then we start to live

spiritually.”

This is a concept of spirituality that I can embrace and find comfort in.

The last word on our abbreviated list may just be the queen mother of UU

Dirty Words. G-O-D. God. The word brings so many questions to mind. Is there

a god? Gods? Just what does one mean by the word, ‘God’? And if I’m an

unbeliever as I say I am, why do I keep to the convention of capitalizing the G?! I

told you that it was at least in part due to too much ‘God Talk’ that I didn’t stick

around long in the Lincoln church. It’s still a word that I don’t use much, but not

because it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Rather, it’s because in my experience

the word often causes more confusion than clarity.

As a child I was given a very definite concept of God the Father. It never

really made complete sense to me, but there it was – a generally kindly

benefactor with a mean streak if you ticked him off, so the important thing was

not to tick him off. These days, though, if there are twelve people in a room –

most of whom will profess a belief and faith in God – you are liable to get very

different views at least in the details but perhaps even on the fundamental nature

of the deity. I for one am not surprised by this. I firmly believe that man created

God in his own image, or in the image of what man needed at the time in way of

explaining his existence and place in the universe. Today people seem very

comfortable with rearranging their concept of God, as evidenced by the

comments made by Oprah Winfrey in the earlier reading. The personified God

seems to be fading into the everythingness of pantheism. I’m still working my

way through whether I think this is a good thing or not. But I can say that while I

generally choose not to use the word, ‘God’ no longer bothers me. When used in

context to help bring out a truly useful lesson from scripture (and yes, there are

many), I even appreciate it. And rather than take any offense, I have been thrilled

to hear the odysseys of those members and friends of this congregation who

consider themselves theists. It gives me great hope that we will continue to

provide a liberal religious home to any who would join with us as they make their

free and responsible search for truth and meaning, embrace the power of words,

and work towards finding their own language of reverence.

It is in this spirit that I would like to finish these remarks with words from

the book “From Poverty to Prosperity” by James Allen – words that I find to be

powerful indeed:

“The Christian condemns the Atheist; the Atheist satirizes the Christian; the

Catholic and Protestant are ceaselessly engaged in wordy warfare, and the spirit

of strife and hatred rules where peace and love should be. “He that hateth his

brother is a murderer,” a crucifier of the divine Spirit of Love; and until you can

regard men of all religions and of no religion with the same impartial spirit, with

all freedom from dislike, and with perfect equanimity, you have yet to strive for

that Love which bestows upon its possessor freedom and salvation.”

Thank you.