Sunday Service: Christianity, A Different View - February 8, 2015

Christianity, A Different View

Reverend Tom Capo

Preached on 2/8/2015

Before the sermon, I offer this prayer or meditation.  It is selections from the The Thunder: Perfect Mind.  In December 1945, local farmers in Nag Hamadi, Egypt found a sealed earthenware jar containing thirteen leather-bound papyrus codices, together with pages torn from another book.  It is believed that the documents found at Nag Hamadi were texts used by various sects of early Christians, but the texts had been deemed heretical once the church began to formalize the books of the Christian New Testament.  The Thunder: Perfect Mind was contained in those thirteen leather-bound papyrus codices.

I invite you to open your mind, heart, and spirit to these words:

I was sent forth from the power,

and I have come to those who reflect upon me, 

and I have been found among those who seek after me. 

Look upon me, you who reflect upon me,

and you hearers, hear me. 

You who are waiting for me, take me to yourselves. 

And do not banish me from your sight.

And do not make your voice hate me, nor your hearing…

For I am the first and the last.

I am the honored one and the scorned one.

I am the whore and the holy one.

I am the wife and the virgin.

I am <the mother> and the daughter.

I am the members of my mother.

I am the barren one

and many are her sons. 

I am she whose wedding is great,

and I have not taken a husband. 

I am the midwife and she who does not bear.

I am the solace of my labor pains.

I am the bride and the bridegroom,

and it is my husband who begot me. 

I am the mother of my father

and the sister of my husband 

and he is my offspring… 

I am the silence that is incomprehensible

and the idea whose remembrance is frequent. 

I am the voice whose sound is manifold

and the word whose appearance is multiple. 

I am the utterance of my name…

For I am knowledge and ignorance.

I am shame and boldness.

I am shameless; I am ashamed.

I am strength and I am fear.

I am war and peace.

Give heed to me…

Hear me, you hearers

and learn of my words, you who know me. 

I am the hearing that is attainable to everything;

I am the speech that cannot be grasped. 

I am the name of the sound

and the sound of the name. 

I am the sign of the letter

and the designation of the division.

Blessed Be…Amen

Sermon

One of the symbols of early Christianity was not a cross; it was an ankor.  This symbol was used to encourage hope in a time of persecution, and held its meaning from the Hebrew scripture: “We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure.” 

As we begin our journey I thought I would start with this from the Gospel of Thomas, an early Christian text, “Jesus said: “Let the one who seeks continue seeking until he finds.  And when that one finds he will be disturbed, and once that one is disturbed he will become awed, and will rule as a king over the all.”  

We are all seekers here; that it the very essence of our faith, to seek truth and meaning individually and collectively, to share with one another and be enriched and disturbed by one another.  To look more closely at ourselves, each other, and the universe around us, and be awed by what we see.  We will find that life is not static, belief is not static, the universe is not static. If we believe in the divine, perhaps we will find even the divine is not static.  We are all co-creators, integral parts of the beauty and wonder that surrounds us.  

Sunday Service: The Path of Buddhism - January 11th, 2015

Editor's Note:  Along with a congregational service on Buddhism, our Religious Education programming is devoting time to learning more about this major world religion.  Youth in their Sunday classes will spend time this year on the religion, its tenets and practices - and adults are welcome to attend the five-week course led by Rev. Tom starting January 18th.  Details available HERE

The Path of Buddhism

By Reverend Tom Capo

Preached on 1/11/2015

How many of you know the story of Siddhartha Gautama or as he came to be known, the Buddha?  Well, just so we start in the same place, let me tell you the Cliff Notes version of his life.  His father was a king, who believed that Siddhartha would either become a great king or a great religious leader, and since he wanted his son to become a great king, he kept his son secluded on their castle grounds.  One day Siddhartha went outside the grounds, and saw old people, sad people, and sick people.  He was greatly moved by this exposure.  So he left the castle and started studying with great spiritual teachers and tried many spiritual practices to find how one might cope with the problems of this life.  Eventually, he found himself sitting under a Bodhi tree meditating, and he realized, that is, he became enlightened, that there was a path to deal with suffering in the world.  He realized that there will always be suffering; our lives have ups and downs—that is the way life is.  And suffering is not intended to convey a negative view of the world or of life.   Tibetan Buddhist monk, Pema Chodron (choe drun), wrote: “When we resist change, it’s called suffering. But when we can completely let go and not struggle against it, when we can embrace the groundlessness of our situation and relax into its dynamic quality, that’s called enlightenment, or awakening to our true nature, to our fundamental goodness.”  In order to deal with suffering, one needs to have a down-to-earth, reasonable understanding of suffering, and see the world as it is—not as we want it to be.  In other words one day or another there will be suffering in your life—so it is best to learn to cope with suffering without letting it control you.

Sunday Service: Food and Religion - November 23st, 2014

Food and Religion

By Reverend Tom Capo

Preached on November 23, 2014

    What is the significance of food as it relates to spirituality or religious tradition?  In Steve’s story, little Carrie travels to different homes looking for her brother, but instead finds various cultural dishes made with rice.  Just like Carrie, I spent much of last week exploring the ways in which various religions include food in their rituals and traditions.  In this journey from virtual house to house, I was surprised by what I feasted upon.

    Our journey starts with the Sikh religious home. The Golden Temple Complex is the Central worship place for Sikhs around the world, and it is in Punjab, India.  The Sikhs are serving a free communal meal known as Langar.  The concept of `Langar' is a very old tradition of great importance for the Sikhs.  This tradition was started by the first Sikh Guru, Guru Nanak. It was designed to uphold the principle of equality between all people regardless of religion, caste, color, creed, age, gender or social status.  This was a revolutionary concept in the caste-ordered society of 16th century India where Sikhism began. In addition to the ideals of equality, the tradition of Langar expresses the ethics of sharing, community, inclusiveness and oneness of all humankind.

    Let’s now head to the Christian religious home.  I grew up Catholic and I felt I had some knowledge of this religion and food.  Communion.  The little wafer and a sip of wine that is given out in remembrance of Jesus Christ.   According to the Catholic faith, this wafer and wine is transubstantiated, actually becomes, the body and blood of Jesus Christ.  In Protestant Christian traditions, this wafer and wine is either though to be consubstantiated, that is, becoming the body and blood of Christ while still being wafer and wine, or is thought of more metaphorically, not actually changing.  The wafer and wine are used to remember Jesus, his wisdom and life.  But what is interesting to me is that this tradition of bread and wine didn’t really become part of the worship service in the Catholic Church until the time of Constantine around 313 CE.  

Sunday Service: Those Who Are Homeless - October 12th, 2014

Those Who Are Homeless

Reverend Tom

10/12/2014

I have had many experiences with homeless people.  As I share some of them with you, I ask you to reflect on your experiences with people who are homeless.  

I was one of the initiators of a homeless emergency shelter program in Cedar Rapids called Family Promise.  I felt this was a vital program; it provides shelter for three intact families—meaning the father and male teenagers could join the rest of the family in the shelter, which is not the case in most homeless shelters—these three families would stay within church buildings at night and a day shelter during the day, if they were not at work or in school.  However, it wasn’t until I actually spent time with one homeless family in this program that I came to understand how being homeless profoundly affects a person.  I mean I knew from what I had read and what others had said to me, but my friends that is very different from actually spending time with someone who is homeless.  I brought a meal to a mother, her preteen daughter, and 6 year old son.  As we ate she talked about how she had a job but did not make enough money to buy a vehicle or rent an apartment.  She was trying to get a better job, and had hopes of leaving the Family Promise program very soon.  Her daughter was very quiet as we ate together, and after the meal found a corner in the church building to sit and read.  Her son was a ball of energy.  He wanted to play and had no-one to play with.  So I spent an hour or so throwing a ball around a large community room with him.  He seemed to really have a great time.  But having so much energy was taxing on his mother, who at times, demonstrated an abruptness with her son that showed the pervasive exhaustion that being homeless can cause.  I understood on a visceral level how this young woman craved someone to affirm her worth and dignity.  As she first entered the room for dinner, her depression weighed so heavily on her shoulders that she walked hunched over and her eyes were downcast.  After some time in conversation, with me, though it could have been anyone who would listen to her, her eyes brightened, her body seemed to gain some strength, and she eventually relaxed enough to lean against the table as we talked as if we had known each other for years.  

Sunday Service: How Do We Love Another - September 14th, 2014

How Do We Love One Another

9/14/2014

Reverend Tom Capo

I often use the phrase “Beloved Community.”  Do you wonder what I mean by that?  Have you ever asked yourself “how do I act if I am part of a beloved community?”  I’m curious about what each of us means by this term.  I believe we are all on the same page with community—a group of people gathered together for a purpose.  But what about beloved?  Are we talking about infatuation, puppy love, conditional love, parental love, soul-mate love, divine or spiritual love, patriotism (love of country), tough love, self-love?  No matter how many definitions or synonyms you might find—and there are a lot—chances are none of them completely captures the full meaning of love.

I have come to believe what the great psychoanalyst Erich Fromm says about love: “Love is a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise. If love were only a feeling, there would be no basis for the promise to love each other forever. A feeling comes and it may go. How can I judge that it will stay forever, when my act does not involve judgment and decision.”  In other words my friends, love is not a feeling.  Although it is so very easy to assume that it is.  Really, love causes a feeling; love is a decision you make, and decisions you continue to make, in order to create an experience that is described as love.  

Sunday Sermon: Where Are We Going - August 17th, 2014

“Where Are We Going” 

By Reverend Tom Capo

8/17/2014

Here is a future of Unitarian Universalism: Chalice Man and his Friend, the Flame, save people from fundamentalist beliefs and spread the message of Unitarian Universalism to all those in need of our free faith telling everyone that they meet about a faith home where people can responsibly search for truth and meaning without creeds or dogmas.

Actually, this probably isn’t the future of Unitarian Universalism.  But what is? 

Life with addiction, mental illness and stigma

DUUC Editor's Note: Our fellow congregant,Ruth Elliott, has graciously shared with us her family's journey of addiction, mental illness and facing the stigma that goes with each. Ruth previously shared this story with our congregation and we appreciate her sharing it again here.

It started about 9 years ago with a handwriting tutor.  In grade three Graham’s handwriting was terrible. I found him a handwriting tutor and drove him there three times a week until we realized it wasn’t having any effect on his handwriting. Over the next year it became clear it was something more than sloppy penmanship, it was like his brain was going way too fast for his hand to keep up. I found him a psychologist, had him tested and to absolutely no one’s surprise he was diagnosed with ADHD, and so started a long and inglorious period where I became an expert on 504 education plans, communicating with teachers, school social workers, and psychologists. I learned everything I could about the –constantly changing - prescribed medications and while I was at it I tweaked his already pretty healthy diet in an effort to improve his concentration and focus. At some point he told me he was seeing colors that weren't there, I had his eyes checked – all normal, and chocked it up to an intelligent and creative kid’s imagination.

If you like it, you should put a ring on it....

facebook note by Beyoncé

.... or how painting social media red has shown America's support for marriage equality.

"Mawage. Mawage is wot bwings us togeder tooday. Mawage, that bwessed awangment, that dweam wifin a dweam...And wuv, tru wuv, will fowow you foweva...." The Impressive Clergyman, Princess Bride

Seeing RED

this one's mine

percentage of Facebook Marriage Equality profile pict

Take a look around any social media site and you will see pink and red Equality symbols everywhere. It is a newly created version of the Human Rights Campaign symbol, which is a blue square with yellow equal sign. The new logo, initially created by  Anastasia Khoo, takes that symbol and changes the colours to Red and Pink for love. People got really creative with the concept, George Takei picked it up, and then it went Viral. 

some of the creative marriage equality symbols

While the Supreme Court deliberates on Defence of Marriage Act (DOMA) and Prop 8, millions (approximately 2.7million on Facebook alone) of people are showing their support for marriage equality. 

At last count, there were 13 Members of Congress that have gone red  in the fight for marriage equality, including Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, Senator Elizabeth Warren from Massachusetts, and Representative Dan Kildee of Michigan.


The Tide has Already Turned

"A recent survey by the Pew Research Center shows that nearly half of all Americans now support the legalization of same-sex marriage. The 47% approval rate is a 26-point increase than just a decade ago, and an 8-point increase in the last four years alone.

While the new Millenial voters account for some of the change, opposition to gay marriage has declined in every age group surveyed, including those over 65 years of age.

Among those older participants specifically, opposition has fallen by 18 points.

Americans under 30, who were nearly evenly divided on the issue in 2004 now approve of it by a two-to-one ratio.

There are no divisions when it comes to religion either – Protestants, Catholics, and the unaffiliated alike are also opposed to the idea in decreasing numbers." - Augusta Christensen for Lawsonary

Elected politicians who once pledged to "protect tradition" have lined up eager to announce their support of marriage equality. Republican Senator Rob Portman of Ohio said he changed his mind after learning that his son is gay. Red-state Democrats Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Jon Tester of Montana, also switched, as did Virginia’s Mark Warner. Dick Cheney became vocal about his support of marriage equality for his lesbian daughter, Mary after he was out of the White House. They joined Hillary Clinton and her husband, the former President Bill Clinton, who signed the Defense of Marriage Act into law during his 1996 re-election bid but is now calling on the Supreme Court to undo his mistake.



Add Clint Eastwood to this growing list of Republicans who support gay marriage, although I don't see him adopting a red and pink equality symbol. He told GQ in 2011 that he "doesn’t “give a f*** about who wants to get married to anybody else” and that instead of “all this bulls*** about ‘sanctity,’” we should “just give everybody the chance to have the life they want.” How very Dirty, Harry.

Anne Hathaway, whose older brother Michael is gay, received an award from the HRC in 2008, in her speech she states, “There are people who have said that I'm being brave for being openly supportive of gay marriage, gay adoption, basically of gay rights but with all due respect I humbly dissent, I’m not being brave, I’m being a decent human being....My family and I will help the good fight continue until that long awaited moment arrives, when our rights are equal and when the political limits on love have been smashed.”  More recently she donated a portion of the proceeds from her wedding photos to to non-profits advocating for marriage for same-sex couples.

I couldn't write this blog without including the song that inspired it. Rapper Macklemore and Ryan Lewis' "Same Love". The lyrics and video are both powerful and beautiful, painful and joyous. The video starts with the birth of a child, shows his childhood, adolescence, adulthood and old age, all woven within the notions of love, intolerance,  acceptance and equality. He is born to mixed race parents, a concept that reflects how similar the fight for racial equality is to the fight for marriage equality.

The tide has turned, 

and what seemed impossible only few years ago, is now inevitable.  

Marriage will win. 

America has already decided.

and it was at that age.... DUUC arrived

(In case you didn't get the reference in the title, the poem, by Pablo Neurda, is at the end)

We arrived in Naperville from a small close knit community in Ontario just over 10 years ago. My children, at the time, were 5, 7 and 9 years old (pictures above, Graham with his new shirt). In the community we moved from we knew our neighbours, all our kids' friends families, the teachers and staff at our public school,  basically everybody. Our kids moved from home to home almost seamlessly.  At the school there was just one class for each grade. Our friends and neighbours (yes, that's how it's spelled) didn't own guns, were really causal about religion and generally were liberal in their outlook. It was a nice place and a nice life, and then I found out 'we' were being transferred to the United States.

The thought of moving to a country at war, a country with no gun control, a country with the death penalty, a country that was big and loud, homophobic, materialistic and dangerous, well let's just say the thought was very frightening. That I was bringing my young children into this gun loving, war mongering country was terrifying  Okay, so I might have made some gross generalizations and assumptions about 294,043,000 people (2003 US census), but that's how it felt to me at the time.

the willow tree was their favourite thing about the new house

We arrived by plane in O'Hare and drove on the interstate to Naperville, past billboards advertising gambling, drinking, strip clubs and personal injury lawyers. I wanted to cover my children's eyes. Naperville itself was big suburban community. It was, and is full of expensive homes and cars, shopping centres like I've never seen before. It is competitive, it is conservative, it is ostentatious. There were people driving around on motorcycles without helmets. I never let my kids on a bike without a helmet.

America as a country is big, loud, conservative and competitive. If the world were a house, America would be the teenager who stays locked in his room blaring the stereo  eating processed food and throwing the wrappers in the hallway and out the window.

I will not spend this whole blog slamming America, because, in this big, loud outrageous country I found some of the warmest, gentlest and kindest people I've ever known.

When we had been here about six months my youngest child, Elizabeth (I was still allowed to call her that then) wrote a note to God. By this time I was quite experienced helping Santa - wrote with big cursive letters in gold ink, and the Tooth Fairy - wrote with very tiny sparkly pink printing, respond to my children's letters. The God note was on an 8x10 piece of lined paper. It was about a paragraph long, taking up about half the page and asked the usual existential questions, where was heaven, what happened when we died, where do you live, and what's your favourite colour? The other half was for God to write a reply. She taped it, words facing out, to her bedroom window and went to bed. 

There was no good way to handle this, I had no idea what to do, also, I had no idea what colour ink God wrote in, or if God printed or wrote in cursive. I left the note blank and went to bed feeling like I'd failed some important parental test. When she got up in the morning Elizabeth went straight for the note and was very sad to see it still blank. She asked me why God didn't write back, and I had to tell her "I don't know". This was the first of many "I don't knows" that I have since said to my children. When they are young, its lovely to be seen as knowing all the answers, but as they grow up we both found out that they would have questions that I could not answer. I still can't answer the questions in her note, I don't if there is a heaven or where it would be, I don't know what happens after we die, nor do I know God's favourite colour, but suspect it is red, because Red is Best.

And it was at that age.... DUUC arrived.

Standing on the Side of Love

I had to find a community that my children could ask these questions and there would be someone there who was qualified to answer them. I looked at local churches and they did not share many of the values that I held dear. Values about the inherent worth and dignity of every person, of every person. To me that included homosexual people, people who wanted reproductive choice, people that believed science and religion were not opponents, people who questioned and thought about the nature of life, the universe, and everything. This included people who would encourage my children to grow spiritually, to think and develop their own views, people that understood the importance of not just talking about doing good, but who rolled up their collective sleeves and did good, not because they would be rewarded with an afterlife in heaven, not because they would be kept out of Hell (a place I don't believe exists), but because that's what people do for each other.

And what do you know, I found it. We have been going for 9years, and every Sunday my now teenagers insist - yes, I said insist, on going to church. Through DUUC my children have found bedrock. They have formed life long and life changing relationships. They have been told they are loved, they are important, they can accomplish great things. They have had mentors, teachers, leaders, peers and friends surround and love them, and just as important, they have been all of these things for other people. In difficult times DUUC has been a place of of Love and Acceptance, somewhere they could go when they felt that there was no where else they could go and be accepted. 

This is something I am profoundly grateful that my children have.

And you know what? I have found all those things for myself as well. Not a bad deal.

and this is us now

Poetry

And it was at that age ... Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don't know how or when,
no they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me.

I did not know what to say, my mouth
had no way
with names,
my eyes were blind,
and something started in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering
that fire,
and I wrote the first faint line,
faint, without substance, pure
nonsense,
pure wisdom
of someone who knows nothing,
and suddenly I saw
the heavens
unfastened
and open,
planets,
palpitating plantations,
shadow perforated,
riddled
with arrows, fire and flowers,
the winding night, the universe.

And I, infinitesimal being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
felt myself a pure part
of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke loose on the wind. 

Pablo Neruda