First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis

Spiritual Maturity

I have to admit, it sounds like the opening line of some elaborate theological joke; "The rabbi, the priest, and the imam decide to go to Jerusalem together…" There is something almost archetypal about the journey I am about to undertake with eleven of my interfaith senior clergy colleagues, to visit Israel, Palestine, the holy lands – whatever you in conscience would call that fraught corner of the globe where so much of our culture’s religious history lies embedded in the soil and illuminated on the horizons. I have never been to this part of the world myself, and of the twelve of us, I am probably the one to whom the place itself is least significant. For me, the earth is holy, all of it; no one piece more than any other. And I find myself in agreement with our sage Thoreau, who wrote that he had "traveled widely in Concord, Massachusetts" – in the end, the treasures of wisdom are usually found to lie buried in our own backyards; we need not seek them afar.

All this predilection notwithstanding, early this coming Tuesday morning, I will be at the airport, suitcase and passport in hand, for a seven day tour that we hope will encompass Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Tiberius, a glimpse of Tel Aviv, and a series of encounters with people of various faiths and convictions about the contemporary challenges in the middle east. On the one hand, I do not expect that this adventure will achieve any tangible breakthrough in the intractable conflict that shadows that place, and in a small but noticeable way, shadows even our collegiality with one another as spiritual leaders in the downtown Minneapolis community. But at the same time, I see this trip that we are taking together as one tiny, fragile gesture of witness; a proclamation and demonstration to the world that such things can happen, that people of intelligence, good will, and deeply grounded religious commitment, can engage one another in our differences, with respect, integrity, curiosity, and sustained mutual affection. It doesn’t solve anything, our relatively privileged, American, professional friendship; we are in no position to wax self-righteous about what is merely our collective good fortune. But if there is to be any hope for humanity’s global future, in that city of incompatible divine promises, or anywhere else on the planet, what we are together, my colleagues and I, and what we are trying to become, has to be possible. This trip is our challenge to ourselves and to each other, to see whether we can deepen that sense of connection, and mutual endeavor, and appreciation for one another’s spiritual heritages, even in the presence of some of humankind’s oldest and most painful tensions.

What makes it possible for us to embark upon this adventure together is in my view a happy coincidence of a certain kind of faith perspective, one that crosses the lines of all orthodoxies, and make us accessible to a conversation with those different from us. That conversation arises out of the recognition that our professional responsibilities as senior leaders of religious institutions have far more commonalities than differences. We all struggle with budgets, staff issues, volunteers, buildings, pastoral tragedies, political dynamics, denominational responsibilities, concern for the needy and marginalized, the challenges of preaching, the limits of our time. It is incredibly comforting to be with other people who face the same demands that confront each of us day in and day out; we learn from each other, we help each other, and if all else fails, we sympathize with each other. But beyond that common task lies another recognition, that we are not only spiritual leaders, but spiritual people in our own right; that for the most part, each of us was called to this vocation because we as individuals longed to live and work out of a deep and growing commitment to what is holy in life. Scott Colglazier, who was briefly the president of United Theological Seminary here in the Twin Cities, once observed to our group that there are two ways of being religious, both of which are found in every tradition and theological point of view. There is, he said, the religion of answers, and there is the religion of journey. The religion of answers believes in arriving at some incontrovertible vision of truth, which it then advocates and defends against all challenge; faith being measured by the purity and energy of one’s adherence to those answers, whatever heritage they may represent. By contrast, the religion of journey considers faith to be a forever unfinished, evolving approach to life’s deepest questions, that constantly calls us to wider sympathy and understanding, believing that there is always more for all of us to learn, and that diversity of ideas, stories, and ritual vocabularies is an important resource in that process.

Now there are evangelical Christians who have a journey interpretation of their faith in Jesus, and there are humanists who consider themselves to have a collection of established answers that are not to be improved by exposure to any other ideas. Whether you have an answer religion or a journey religion is a function of the way in which you understand and practice your tradition, not which tradition it is. Happily for us, the clergy of the downtown interfaith group all seem to share a journey approach to our religious lives and leadership. At the same time that we are knowledgeable and committed Muslims, Jews, Catholics, Protestants, or Humanists as the case may be, we all recognize the integrity and meaningfulness of other ways; we all honor the contributions that a variety of theological and historical perspectives have to offer our community. I do not take this for granted; it might easily have been otherwise. If any of us was a dogmatic representative of rigid theological doctrine, the sense of connection that has grown up amongst us either would not exist at all, or it would have a very different character. As it is, we can take this geographical journey together because we share another kind of pilgrimage; because we are each engaged in a lifelong journey of faith, the goal of which in some important sense is the same for all of us. It is the nature of that goal which I want to begin to explore this morning; I don’t in any way suppose that we’ll finish with this topic today, but here at the beginning of a new year, on the eve of this remarkable international adventure, seems like an appropriate moment to consider what it is that draws us forward on a common journey of faith, and how we might know what its destination would be, and what progress for any of us might look like.

This is the question which fascinated James Fowler in his ground-breaking research on the stages of faith development. For the goal of the faith journey is not to arrive at a set of permanent truths and answers, but rather to develop the qualities of what I would call spiritual maturity. It is obvious to anyone who has any historical or international awareness that there is something that the world’s most acknowledged spiritual leaders have in common; some attributes that characterize the Gandhis and Dalai Lamas and Mother Teresas and Martin Luther Kings of the world, no matter what historical religious tradition they identify with. And of course, these qualities are not limited to those who achieve wide recognition; they exist as well in French villagers who hide Jews from the Nazis, in Rwandan hotel keepers, in neighbors and teachers and elders everywhere, who exemplify for us what it means to grow into the radical acceptance of others, self-awareness, active compassion and sacrificial love that are the highest expressions of any faith, including the faith of humanism. For those of us committed to the religion of journey, rather than the religion of answers, the goal of faith has not to do with what we know or how fervently we believe; it has to do with the kind of persons we are becoming, with how our hopes and loyalties are shaping our actions, our relationships, and the wisdom of our hearts.

Although, as Fowler points out, we are often fascinated by those special souls who exemplify spiritual maturity in an especially evident way, the real challenge for each of us is not to become renowned saints, but rather to grow up religiously to a point where our faith is a productive and positive influence in our own lives, and upon those around us. A number of years ago now, the UU student group at the University of Minnesota asked me to make a presentation for them about what I saw as the qualities of spiritual maturity. I did that one evening; we had a interesting discussion, and I tucked the list away in my files. Last spring, when the Twin Cities UUA President’s Roundtable was seeking a focus for our intercongregational discussions of theology, I pulled it out again, and we found the ideas provocative and fruitful for our faithful conversations. The first issue that came up, of course, was whether we were comfortable with the very concept of spiritual maturity; whether it was okay to think that some people might be further along on the journey than others. Now it is important to keep in mind that these qualities are not a measure of anyone’s worth as a person, any more than physical maturity, emotional maturity, or intellectual maturity determines our inherent value as human beings. Nevertheless, as the poet William Watson reminds us, there are in life things worth aspiring to; the things that are more excellent. Every point on the spiritual path has its own validity, but there is a direction to it; if we are doing it right, we progress, not toward finality and certainty, but nearer to those qualities that fascinate and inspire us when we find them in others. Over time, we become ourselves people of increasing spiritual maturity, better able, as the hymn says, to build the common good, and make our own days glad. There are an even dozen of these indicators on my list; the qualities that I think increasingly characterize people who are moving toward greater spiritual maturity. They are qualities that I strive for, that I would like for my own life to have; they are qualities that I admire and am drawn to in others. I won’t try to unpack any of them fully today; I’ll come back to consider them in more depth a few at a time in future sermons, but I want to lay them out for you this morning, and I would be very curious to know which ones you would like to hear more about. Let me know, hereafter, which of these pique your interest, or seem most important to you.

My first indicator of spiritual maturity probably won’t surprise anybody; it has to do with the ability to enter into meaningful covenant. I want to be a person who keeps my promises, who is thoughtful in commitment and faithful in loyalty. I know that my life derives shape and meaning from the covenants I keep, and I want to surround myself with people who take their promises with deep seriousness and a sense of sacredness. Those who give promises lightly, or who refuse to bind themselves with promises at all, lack an important dimension of spiritual maturity.

The second aspect of spiritual maturity for me is an attraction to beauty, mercy, and justice. I believe that the religious life has a significant aesthetic dimension, that as we expand in spiritual awareness, we become more attuned and sensitive to the loveliness of the natural world, to the creativity of artistic excellence, as well as the sense that both authentic justice and legitimate mercy make the world a more beautiful place. I want to be around people who care about what is beautiful, who share a hunger for the sensual pleasure of beauty, for all that gratifies the eye, mind and heart with resonance. To destroy beauty in any of its forms is a mark of spiritual immaturity.

Alongside this appreciation of beauty goes another characteristic, which I would call the capacity for intensity and ambiguity. The spiritually mature person welcomes all the experiences of life in their fullness, even when that includes loss, grief, or suffering. It is this kind of strength that enables us, as Kenneth Patton says, to possess our sorrows as the measure of our loves; to affirm that we would rather have the vulnerability of real intimacy and connection, than to hold back from love in order to save ourselves from hurt. As I grow in my spiritual life, I become better and better able to honor the reality that life is seldom black and white, and to hold more than one idea in my mind at a time. To avoid the discomfort of ambiguity by seeking easy, simplistic answers is spiritual childishness.

Another dimension of what it means to be spiritually grown up is to live with a sense of enduring gratitude, for life itself, and for the specific gifts that make each of us unique. In spite of the disappointments and hardships that come in different forms to all of us, there are also always some unexpected, gratuitous good things; the presence of other people, fortuitous events, skills or talents that come easily, the fortunate accidents of history; all the givens of existence that we do not earn. We know from psychology that a person who intentionally expresses gratitude for any small pleasantness in their experience is by all measures happier than someone who may be objectively more privileged, but more inclined to complain than to give thanks. Such a spirit of gratitude does not require us to imagine a conscious personality to be the recipient of our thanks; indeed, part of spiritual maturity is to be able to experience and express appreciation, without a specific benefactor to manipulate. Those people who can never be satisfied that they have received their due in life are not on the path to spiritual maturity.

A fifth quality of progress in that journey, it seems to me, is the ability to use metaphor fluently. To work with the language of symbols in a powerful way, and to be able to enter into another person’s ritual vocabulary with sympathy and skill, does not mean that one’s own stories and understandings are not important, but it means that you can see the commonalities of human experience, and find your own hopes and fears, questions and rejoicings and struggles, reflected in the expressions of other traditions, and the people who practice them. This is why the great saints of every culture and era can recognize one another across the boundaries of all orthodoxy; they have come to understand that symbolic vocabulary is all about metaphor, and that all vocabularies are approximate and partial. What is most sacred and powerful in the meaning of human experience is never fully captured in any mythic imagination, but that is the only way in which it can be expressed at all. The spiritually maturing person is able to see through the metaphor to the universal truth it points to, while still cherishing the artfulness of the symbol itself.

My list goes on, with concepts taken from the world’s various religious heritages; from classical Greek philosophy, the idea of Sophrosyne, self awareness in the service of intention, and good personal boundaries; from several Native American traditions, the phrase Mitake Oyasin, literally ‘all my relatives’, lifting up a sense of connection to and responsibility for all creatures, and for the earth as a living system. From Buddhism comes Tonglen, the capacity to be present to, absorb and creatively transform suffering, both our own and others’; from Judaism the notion of Teshuva, the willingness to repent of our wrong choices and directions, to change and to turn a different way that promises greater wholeness. The concept of Islam, as submission to the realities of a world that is often other than our desires, a renouncing of denial and wishful thinking; and from the Christian mystical tradition, the discipline of Memento Mori, the on-going awareness and acceptance of death as our common destiny.

There is a great deal that could be said about every one of these ideas, and I look forward to exploring them further with you. I believe it is because we share these kinds of aspirations, for ourselves and for the congregations we lead, that our little community of Minneapolis interfaith clergy has come to hold one another in mutual esteem and affection. This is what enables us to undertake the adventure of exploring our world and our faiths together, in a way that perhaps has not happened often enough in our rapidly changing, fragmented and violent era. I know that it won’t always be comfortable for us; even the planning has begun to stretch and challenge us, and led us to discover each other in new ways. It might be easier just to retreat into our own small corners of familiar faith, but surely, if we are to become the people we yearn to be, we are called to something beyond that. Surely, if we are to build the world of kinship and compassion that we all, in our various ways, envision, we must step outside of comfort, and into the risky encounter that is the foundation of that promised land. Dearly beloved, hold us in your hearts as we go; we take you with us, I promise you, for you are the ones with whom, and on whose behalf, we hope to build a better life together; whatever spiritual growth any of us may achieve, we dedicate to you whom we serve. May peace be with you, each and all, until we are here together again.