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Somewhere West of Dedham

Revs. Beverly and David Bumbaugh
The Unitarian Church in Summit NJ USA
October 26, 1997

The title of this sermon refers to an old story told about Unitarians. To understand the reference, you must know that Dedham is a small Boston suburb. It seems that there was once a little Unitarian lady who had occasion to travel to Chicago. She made careful plans for the trip, put her affairs in order, and set off. When she returned, she was asked how she liked Chicago. She replied that Chicago was nice--it wasn't Boston, but it was nice. She was asked about her trip, what route did she take to Chicago. "Oh," she replied, "we went by way of Dedham." This, you see, was back in the days when Unitarians believed in the fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man and the neighborhood of Boston. This sermon is about what happened to Unitarianism somewhere west of Dedham.

Following the Civil War a group of denominational leaders, led by Rev. Mr. Henry Whitney Bellows, of New York, resolved to reinvigorate the movement by creating a national organization of churches. (The American Unitarian Association had been founded in 1825 as an organization of individuals, not of churches, it's purpose being to extend the movement through books and pamphlets and an occasional missionary to the American frontier.) The meeting convened in New York City in 1865 for the purpose of adopting a constitution and establishing a course of action for the "National Conference of Unitarian Churches... ." Four hundred delegates represented two hundred churches.

Protest erupted before they ever got to the vote that would establishment the new national body--protests making it very clear that the challenges of "Parkerism," which had been eclipsed by the Civil war could no longer be avoided. References in the proposed preamble to "disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ" and to the "Kingdom of his Son" seemed to the radicals to be far too restrictive and far too close to a creed. Realizing that the purpose of the meeting was going to be lost in debate, the managers of the convention urged that the constitution be adopted as a means for launching the National Conference, and that a later meeting would address the issues surrounding the preamble. The constitution was duly adopted and the National Conference selected Syracuse, New York, in 1866, for its first meeting.

In Syracuse, the radicals, or "Parkerites" attempted to amend the preamble to make it more inclusive only to be confronted by a well-organized phalanx of conservatives who insisted that having once adopted a constitution affirming the Christian nature of Unitarianism, and the Lordship of Jesus as the Son of God, any change would represent a deliberate repudiation of the Christian origin of the movement and the faith of the majority of Unitarians. After bitter debate, efforts to amend the constitution were solidly defeated.

The radicals, including a large number of the youngest and brightest ministers, left Syracuse feeling they had been betrayed. The following year, they organized themselves into a national body called "The Free Religious Association." Like the AUA, the FRA was an organization of individuals. Most of the ministers who affiliated with the FRA retained their connection with the National Conference, though their level of involvement and support was understandably minimal. The major accomplishment of the new group was to make visible the growing support for a more radical vision of religion emerging within Unitarianism.

Startled by the number and quality of ministers aligning themselves with the FRA, leaders of the National Conference sought some way to accommodate the radicals. But all attempts at softening the Christian voice within the national movement only roused the ire of the conservatives, who threatened to withhold financial support if such efforts succeeded. And so it stood in the East. Unitarianism was a divided denomination though it would not shatter into permanent schism. The real threat to denominational unity seemed to arise in the Western Unitarian Conference.

The Western Conference, older than the National Conference by some 13 years, had been established for the purpose of serving Unitarian Churches in the West--that is, everything west of New York State. With fewer than a dozen churches in that vast area, the Western Conference developed an institutional and intellectual culture markedly more independent and less rigid than was typical of Eastern Unitarianism.

Almost from the beginning, echoes of the controversy over Theodore Parker could be heard in the west. At the first meeting of the Western Conference an effort was made to define Unitarianism in such a way as to preclude the radical theology of the Parkerites. But the distances involved and the need to co-operate with liberal spirits of whatever label undercut efforts at theological conformity. And the western settlers' impatience with tradition made for a sympathetic hearing of the radical views of young ministers.

Eastern Unitarians thought it foolish to build walls against Parker's infidelity in the east while funding missionary activities in the west which seemed infected by the same infidelity. Repeatedly leaders of the AUA sought to stop the slide into radicalism in the West, all the while engendering resentment among churches and leaders in the west, who felt they knew better than the easterners what was needed and what would work in their communities. Endeavors to make certain that funds raised in the east were not used to support radicals in the west increased. And resentment in the west redoubled. Officials from the east suggested in subtle and not-so-subtle ways that Unitarianism would fail to achieve its promise in the west if it did not affirm its basis as a Christian faith. So discouraged was the Western Conference that it did not bother to organize an annual meeting in 1871.

The following year, a group of young ministers, determined to revive the Western Conference, called a meeting at Meadville, Pennsylvania. Among the leaders of the meeting was a man who would dominate the conference for the next decade and more. He was Jenkin Lloyd Jones.

A son of Welsh immigrants who had settled on the Wisconsin frontier in the early 1840's, Jones' formal schooling was meager at best, but the home he grew up in had a healthy respect for religion and for learning. He read every book which came his way and he dreamed of a college career someday.

With the outbreak of the Civil War, Jones enlisted in a Wisconsin Artillery Battalion--partly because he believed in the Union cause, and partly because he wanted to forestall the enlistment of his married brother. After his discharge from the army, he returned to the family farm; but a year later, having confessed his dream of becoming a Unitarian minister and with little more than his parent's blessing, he enrolled in Meadville Theological School.

The school Jones entered was in transition. It had a reputation as a bastion of conservative thinking-- six years before, in 1860, a student had been expelled for expressing the conviction that it was possible to accept Darwin's theory of evolution without being an atheist and for accepting the conclusion drawn by German scholars that the author of the Gospel of John was not an eyewitness to the events he described. The school was openly committed to crushing radical thought. When Jones enrolled, however, the school was adjusting to a new president who, while personally conservative, was more tolerant of alternative views and introduced a sympathetic study of world religions into the school's curriculum and stressed social ethics as a primary focus of ministry.

Watching from western Pennsylvania as the National Conference was born in New York, Jones and his fellow students, were aware of the theological turmoil involved in its birth. Themselves products of the frontier and destined for churches in the Western Conference, their sympathies were reinforced on the side of the radicals, as they studied together and engaged each other in conversation and debate.

In the summer of 1870 Jenkin Lloyd Jones graduated from Meadville, attended the annual meeting of the Western Unitarian Conference, and married Susan Barber; in the fall, he was ordained and began his ministerial career. At the First Independent Society of Liberal Christians in Janesville, Wisconsin, his ministry took root. He established a Sunday School, but finding the materials prepared by the Unitarians in the east too confining, he began the creation and publication of his own Sunday school materials focused on moral teachings rather than Bible and doctrine. Soon his materials were being used by other churches. Soon his materials were being used by other churches as well. Jones also established a "Mutual Improvement Club" intending to encourage home study and fellowship. I both efforts Jones betrayed his conviction that religion was more a matter of ethics and morality than it was of dogma.

At the Western Conference meeting of 1872 the churches found themselves beset by the problems created by the eastern churches to ensure that their missionary monies were not being used to support radical ministers or congregations. Jones proposed that "It would be much better for the West if the Association dropped it entirely and we were obliged to raise our missionary funds ourselves!" In response, the delegates passed a resolution that its well-being henceforth depended upon taking charge of its own work and raising its own money--in many ways this was their declaration of independence from the eastern Unitarian establishment. Three years later, in 1875, the Conference directed its churches to send their missionary money to the Western Conference rather than to the AUA; and it created the position of Missionary Secretary and hired Jenkin Jones of Janesville to fill that post on a part-time basis, thus sharing him with his Wisconsin congregation.

Jones set about strengthening existing congregations and establishing new groups. With incredible stamina and the support of his wife, he continued to serve his own congregation while traveling thousands of miles throughout the west--often at his own expense--carrying his message of religion focused on ethical and moral living. When pulpits became vacant, Jones was in position to recommend new ministers, and he began filling the pulpits of the Western Conference with men, and women--notably the "Iowa Sisterhood," who were broad in their sympathies and impatient with doctrine and dogma.

In response, the churches in the west began to catch fire from his vision and from his energy. In small towns and large, liberals of various persuasions began to find common ground on which to unite and cooperate. Ministers of established churches, and their congregations, began to examine consciously the covenants which had brought them together, and in place after place, removed the restrictive, explicitly Christian wording, making room for a greater diversity of opinion.

Conservatives within the Western Conference, alarmed at the spread of radicalism and the steady drift away from a Christian basis, brought the matter to the annual meeting. After a long and lengthy debate the Conference finally adopted a resolution proposed by the Reverend William Channing Gannett, which said: "The Western Conference conditions its fellowship on no dogmatic tests, but welcomes all who wish to join it to help establish Truth, Righteousness and Love in the world."

This action by the Western Conference lacking any reference to God or Jesus, Bible or Christianity shocked Unitarians in the East and even stirred debate among Unitarians in England. The Eastern Unitarians responded by creating The Western Unitarian Association , a rival to the Western Conference. The churches in the west found themselves torn between the two bodies, and controversy grew. In 1887, in an effort to bridge the divisions, William Channing Gannet offered a resolution entitled THINGS COMMONLY BELIEVED AMONG US, which, over the protests of Christian Theists, was adopted by the Western Conference with the understanding that it did not bind the conscience of anyone and would not be regarded as a creed. It was a remarkable document, reading in part:

...All names that divide "religion" are to us of little consequence compared with religion itself. Whoever loves Truth and lives the Good is, in a broad sense, of our religious fellowship; whoever loves the one or lives the other better than ourselves is our teacher, whatever church or age he may belong to.

"...We believe that to love the Good and live the Good is the supreme thing in religion;

"We hold reason and conscience to be final authorities in matters of religious belief;

"We honor the Bible and all inspiring scripture, old and new;

"We revere Jesus, and all holy souls that have taught men truth and righteousness and love, as prophets of religion.

"We believe in the growing nobility of Man;

"We trust the unfolding Universe as beautiful, beneficent, unchanging Order; to know this order is truth, to obey it is right and liberty and stronger life;

"We believe that good and evil invariably carry their own recompense, no good thing being failure and no evil thing success....

"We believe that we ought to join hands and work to make the good things better and the worst good, counting nothing good for self that is not good for all.

"We believe that this self-forgetting, loyal life awakes in man the sense of union here and now with things eternal--the sense of deathlessness; and this sense is to us an earnest of the life to come.

"We worship One-in-All--that life whence suns and stars derive their orbits and the soul of man its Ought,--that Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world, giving us power to become the sons of God--that Love with which our souls commune."

Despite the best efforts of Gannett and the delegates to draw a circle which would include the disgruntled and disaffected, the statement did not prove Christian enough to satisfy the leaders of the conservative wing. The Eastern Unitarians saw in the Statement of Things Commonly Believed..., not a common ground for future cooperation, but a restatement of a radical view which was agnostic, if not atheistic at its base. The American Unitarian Association not only refused to cooperate with the Western Conference, it actively sought to discourage the participation of local churches in the work of the conference.

Despite this unpleasant atmosphere, the radicals, now called "Unity Men" or "Ethical Basis Men" continued to serve their congregations with skill and competence and maintained their support of the Western Unitarian Conference. They produced hymns, liturgical materials, religious education curricula, all based in the new and broader understanding of religion as rooted in ethical and moral living. In the process, they encountered and embraced the challenges of new scholarship, making the Theory of Evolution not the enemy of religion but a scientific support of their naturalistic, transcendentalist theology. In the developing field of Biblical Criticism, they saw not threat but an opportunity for new and greater understanding. Their concern for a moral life led them to champion women's rights, the rights of native Americans, civil-service reform, temperance, racial justice.

Much of this energy and conviction poured itself into the World Parliament of Religions, held in Chicago in 1893. What had begun as a proposal for a conference of Christian Churches in America was transformed into a world parliament largely as a result of the work Jenkin Lloyd Jones. In many ways the Parliament embodied the approach to religion which had created the Free Religious Association and which had motivated the Ethical Basis folk. Jones' own evaluation of the Parliament was that it demonstrated the underlying unity of religion; namely, Brotherhood, Character, Reverence. He also noted "The day set apart for the discussion of the Divine Nature was the least fruitful--a rather dry day. The Parliament was most triumphant when it took God for granted."

In 1892, the Western Conference adopted a resolution which declared its purpose to be the promotion of a religion in harmony with Gannett's statement of "Things Commonly Held Among Us." At the same time, the National Conference finally amended its preamble making the basis of fellowship broader and more inclusive and affirming the autonomy of local congregations.

At the meeting of the National Conference at Saratoga, New York, in 1894, the conflict between the Western Conference and the National Conference came to an end and the Western Conference came back into full relation with the national body, though tensions between the two groups would not completely disappear for years.

Jenkin Lloyd Jones never surrendered his dream of a "Free Church of the Spirit, based on the eternal demands of the Ethical Law alone....whose purposes, aspirations and helpfulness reach out not only from Unitarians to Christians but from Christians to Jew and Pagan." He continued preaching, lecturing, editing UNITY magazine, and directing Abraham Lincoln Center, a community service institution affiliated with his congregation, All Souls Church, in Chicago. In his later years, while his congregation remained a faithful part of the Western Conference, Jones' enthusiasm increasingly focused on a new organization, The American Conference of Liberal Religion, a body comprised of Liberal Jews, Unitarians, Universalists and Ethical Culturists, the purpose of which was designed to unite "in a larger fellowship and cooperation those of us who are in sympathy with the movement toward undogmatic religion." This group dreamed of a "Church of Humanity, democratic in organization, progressive in thought, cherishing the spiritual traditions and experiences of the past but keeping itself open to all new light." Jones died in 1918, never surrendering his vision or his faith.

While Jenkin Lloyd Jones and his fellow radicals left Unitarianism fundamentally changed. At a time when conservative forces in the denomination were poised to drive "Parkerism" and all forms of "radical thought" out of the movement, Jones and his colleagues had caught the vision implicit in the teaching and example of Theodore Parker--that religion is larger than Christianity, that religion is less a matter of dogma than of deed-- the real basis of religion being ethics, not doctrine, and the goal of the church, to unite all those who seek to make the world more fair, human institutions more just, human life more sacred.

Somewhere "west of Dedham," American Unitarianism encountered Jenkin Lloyd Jones. After Jones and the Issue in the West, Unitarianism would find it impossible to retreat into the narrow confines of the Christian tradition out of which it had come; after Jones, Unitarianism found diversity a strength and moral living its goal.

The sermon in a Unitarian Universalist setting is never the last word on any subject, but rather an invitation to further dialog.

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Carol S. Haag - Walking on Fire chalice

Walking on Fire

Rev. Carol S. Haag
The Unitarian Church in Summit NJ USA
November 9, 1997

I would like to suggest that the operative term is letting go - and that one doesn't have to sit cross-legged chanting OHMM to make it happen. Worship has been said to be that which establishes a connection between the finite and the Infinite, "where the window of the moment opens to the sky of the eternal." Almost any moment can provide a link from the finite to the infinite; almost any experience can provide an opening to the eternal. A few weeks ago, Carl and I had lunch with some old friends. As we reminisced about experiences both shared and separate, what riveted my attention was their description of attending a session on fire walking. The leader was charismatic. The group was large. Over a period of hours our friends alternately listened to the leader and observed the progress of the bed of coals outside the building. Our friends had determined that they would watch while others walked barefoot over the coals. The time was deemed right, the participants ready, and the whole crowd forged down the stairs and out to the bed of hot coals, coals that would have made any backyard barbecuer prowd. One by one, they did not run, but walked, over the coals and were greeted at the far end with wet towels for their hot, but unburned feet. In the jostling at the front end, our friends found themselves unwittingly launched out on the bed of coals, they walked to the other end, and arrived astonished, but unharmed.

What happened? For one who is as afraid of heat, as I am, such an account threatens my grasp of reality. What I know to be true: fire burns flesh was set aside for another truth: people walked through fire without being burned . How is it possible that reality understood both rationally and experientially can be displaced by a totally different reality? What is reality, anyway?

Is reality in our heads? Are we controlled by the realities we have constructed through our own thought processes and experiences? Have we the capacity to construct different realities?

Last May I accompanied the Coming of Age group on their trip to Boston. During the required visit to UUA headquarters, I wandered into the bookstore and picked up a copy of Infinity in Your Hand: A Guide for the Spiritually Curious . I don't know why I did, perhaps it was the book's cover. I consider myself a nuts and bolts person most of the time and find it hard to link my own familiar persona with the notion of being spiritual. It was a small miracle that I purchased a copy of Infinity in Your Hand.

The author, William H. Houff, a retired UU minister in Spokane, Washington, opens with a discussion of reality and an account of walking on fire . Reading this book has been transformational for me. It has put into perspective a new understanding of spirituality. It has helped me to integrate a multitude of understandings in a coherent whole. It is my intention to share some of this process with you this morning.

The Perennial Principle as described by Houff is that universal unity which all religions worthy of the name have attempted to touch, to intuit, to appreciate, to celebrate. While we Unitarian Universalists in this century have been wary of naming this infinite unity as God, we have made an approximation in describing a Web of All Existence as the all-encompassing mystery of which we are a part and in which we live and move and have our being.

Here are examples of how three of the great religions have dealt with the question of what is real :

Hindu teachings emphasize that the real world is only an illusion. Just last week I told this story to some of our Kindergarten and First graders. Svetakatu, an Indian boy, is directed by his father to place a lump of salt into a pan of water and observes it disappear. His father tells him to retreive the salt and when he cannot, asks him where the salt has gone. That salt dropped in a pan of water is a metaphor for Brahman, the eternal spirit which is everywhere but not visible to the human eye. Svetakatu's father says, "so is Brahman hidden in all the world. Brahman is spirit. Brahman is all that which is really, really true. Brahman is you, my son."

Taoism tells us, "Do not ask whether the Tao is in this or that; it is in all things." The Tao is the way; it is simply there, eternally. The familiar symbol of Taoist philosophy is the yin and the yang, perpetual interconnectedness, balance and harmony within a unity. The mystery is the natural way things are.

While much of Christian and Jewish tradition has separated God from human beings, transcendant over all creation, Jesus taught, "The father and I are one." And the medieval Chrisian mystic, Meister Eckhart, wrote, "God and I, we are one knowledge. . . . The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me."

What might be the implications for human living, with this Perennial Principle as the ultimate reality?

Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita gives choices, "Here are two ways of living. If you live for your own pleasure and profit, that very way of life will eventually make you lonely, bitter and unfilled. If you forget yourself in living for the happiness of others, you will be secure, happy, loving and loved."

Buddhism teaches that life is suffering, caused by human insistance on holding ourselves apart from the whole and becoming attached to fragments of that whole. These fragments are the five delusory Ps: possessions, power, prestige, profit, and pleasure. Letting go of these attachments constitutes the path to spiritual wholeness.

Christian teachings in Jesus' Sermon on the Mount parallel those of the Buddha; letting go of the attachments of this world is the means to salvation. To me, the most intriguing of Jesus' teachings is the instruction that, "For whoever wishes to save his life shall lose it; but whoever loses his life for my sake shall find it ." This message seems to run directly counter to our Western sense of the importance of the self, finding the self, knowing the self, being true to the self.

Forget yourself , let go of attachments , lose yourself - these are the implications for human living drawn from the Perennial Principle.

Now a fascinating common thread, is that these teachings are largely based upon the personal revelations of one individual prophet or mystic. Religious institutions were built upon their original visions . In Houff's words, "these institutions sought . . . to communicate the prophet's peak experience to the world of nonpeakers." Ultimately it is the "nonpeakers" who take over and the institution becomes rigidified.

Are we "nonpeakers" too? Abraham Maslow once wrote that religious liberals "make no basic place in our systems for the mysterious, the unknown, the unknowable, the dangerous-to-know, or the ineffable." His concern rightly expressed the difficulty of a rational approach to religion being open to the kind of wisdom obtained through mystical experience.

At the beginning of this service we affirmed the sources upon which we draw as Unitarian Universalists. The very first one is that "direct experience of transcending mystery and wonder ," often referred to as continuous revelation. Now talk of revelation may make us a little nervous. We say we value above all else the use of reason in religion. Isn't it inconsistent to talk about reason and revelation in the same breath? Can the rational and the spiritual exist together? I believe they can.

There are rapidly growing attempts among us in the Western world to access original, spiritual experience. Gurus and their spiritual disciplines have gained a considerable cache among the educated and the elite. Many Unitarian Universalist churches are adding spiritual elements to their services, their adult religious education, and to their programming. We are no exception, for several years now there have been groups meditating together on Tuesday and Friday mornings, Sunday mornings, and this year the wonderfully varied introduction to meditative practices every Sunday evening.

The common intent in most of these processes is quieting the chatter, letting the conscious mind be at rest so that other intelligences can be perceived. Letting go of our control. In Hindu practice it is called satori. In Buddhism it is called enlightenment; in Zen, no mind; in Christianity, salvation. William Houff writes, "Spiritual growth -- Self-discovery -- takes discipline and dedication. It also takes something else: letting go and waiting. The timing of the final step is not ours to determine."

I would like to suggest that the operative term is letting go - and that one doesn't have to sit cross-legged chanting OHMM to make it happen. Worship has been said to be that which establishes a connection between the finite and the Infinite, "where the window of the moment opens to the sky of the eternal." Almost any moment can provide a link from the finite to the infinite; almost any experience can provide an opening to the eternal.

What might this look like in our daily lives: in creating homes for ourselves and for our children, in living a full working life, in dealing with frustrations, in coping with the pace of almost 21st Century life?

In looking at the implications for creating homes for ourselves and for our children, I am indebted to two congregation members: to Claudia Cohen for an article by David Denby and to Mary Van der Mude for pointing me to Mary Pipher. The Denby article details a degraded environment that devalues everything. Our children are submerged in this culture from the day they are born. Sarcasm, derision, and put-downs are the common language of intercourse. In this country, people possessed solely by the desire to sell have become far more powerful than parents tortuously working out the contradictions of authority, freedom, education, and soul-making."

In The Shelter of Each Other , Mary Pipher's central image is that of families living in houses without walls , invaded by the influx of all the wonders of modern technology, all the powers of commercialism, inundated by our culture. "Rapidly our technology is creating a new kind of human being," she writes, "one who is plugged into machines instead of relationships, one who lives in a virtual reality rather than a family." What is exciting to me about Pipher's book is her stance of optimism, her truly spiritual approach of letting go. She challenges families to examine openly and honestly what in their cultural surroundings is nurturing to their family, what supports the values they want to teach their children, which forces support their paths to physical and spiritual health and wholeness. And then she encourages them to let go of , to say "no" to, the forces that are destructive.

One family reported,"If an activity interferes with our [family] schedule, we don't do it. We don't like too much commotion. Our other rule is that if we can't do an activity as a family we're unlikely to do it. We all go to the games and recitals. We all clean the chicken house and go to the fair."

Now this model may not be yours, or mine, but is enormously liberating and encouraging to hold our families as entities of worth, as having value beyond that of a consumer unit, as self-determined rather than culture-determined and helpless pawns of consumerism run rampant. What if, your family decided that being together had more inherent value than a soccer game? What if, your family went for a walk in the woods instead of, not in addition to, a walk in the mall? What if, working together to make the world a better place took precedence over working separately to buy a better car? What if, reading a story, playing a game, dancing or listening to music together was the activity of Saturday night instead of a video? What courage this would take! What spiritual discipline to let go of the messages of our culture. Is reading a book aloud a spiritual experience? I do not know. But a moment of closeness with my child is.
Well, what about the implications of letting go in the area of living a full working life, following a career, being a professional, making a difference in the world? Buckminster Fuller, the accomplished inventor, wrote about a series of miracles that occured in his life when he was able to let go of what he thought he needed or the course he felt he should be steering.

Our perception of cultural reality produces a drivenness that can be truly toxic to individual, family, and community. Many of the members of this religious community have been forced by lay-offs and downsizing to face the end of a career path and have discovered a lightness and a joy in letting go of what had seemed a career cast in stone. I am not suggesting that losing one's job is a good thing. What I am suggesting is that what one makes of that event has the possibility for spiritual growth. I am also suggesting, that one needn't wait for a pink slip to open a crack in the door of current employment to let in the light of another possible reality.

There are elements in what I have been saying that involve giving up the culture's image of the perfect life, whether it be having everything there is because it is there or climbing to the pinacle of the success ladder. There are also elements of letting go of the idea that we have to be, or even can be, in control. I find letting go in these areas challenge enough. More difficult still is letting go of attachment to results . We are told from childhood on to work hard, get good grades, achieve, accomplish, be somebody. I would like to offer a paradoxical challenge: work toward a vision with all your might but let go of the results. If the ultimate reality is a mysterious unity, and that mystery is part of us and we are part of it, then our spiritual wholeness can be gained only by letting go of our partial hold on reality and by having faith that our piece somehow fits into the larger mystery.

It is rare that we humans engage in instant and total transformation. Perhaps there are some small ways to begin. We could start with our daily rounds, concentrating fully on the task at hand. In Zen terms, "washing the dishes to wash the dishes." Letting go of the need to be somewhere else and focusing on right here, right now can be a healing act.

I invite you, right now, to experience the chair you are sitting in, listen to the sounds from within and without this space, let go of the tension in your neck and shoulders, close your eyes, take a deep breath. Just be totally here for this moment. That is all. This exercise can be replicated several times a day and can mean the difference between sanity and feeling crazed.

We can be attuned to the rituals of our lives, the small, often unnoticed repetitive acts that give shape and meaning to our days. William Houff likens ritual to "a bowl catching rainwater," "the form we put forth to catch the spiritual." He goes on to say "We must leave some part of our lives 'out of control' [letting go again] so the unexpected can happen. We must leave a hole in space and time." In our jampacked lives, it is difficult to create that "hole in time." However, there are built in opportunities, if we would but seize them. Have you ever been stuck in a traffic jam, waited for an elevator, observed the slow awakening of your computer screen? If we give ourselves permission to let go of the frustration that these delays entail and instead treat them as gifts of a "hole in time," we have spiritual moments at our finger tips daily.

The Perennial Principle is a Mysterious Oneness. The religious task is to awaken self-knowledge. The way is letting go. In our culture of success, accomplishment, and material acquisition, giving up, relinquishing, letting go feels very foreign, un-American, even irresponsible. Yet our spiritual growth lies in being able to let go of our attachments to the realities we have constructed, to let go of the cultural shoulds and oughts, to let go of the perfect life, of control, and of attachment to results. It is in letting go of all these things and in being open to the infinite that spiritual wholeness is to be found.

I am much too afraid of fire to encourage anyone to walk on hot coals, but letting go in some of the ways I have described can be just as frightening -- and I submit even more liberating.