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By John T. Crestwell, Jr.
December 3, 2004
For the UUA Ministerial
Fellowship Committee
Good morning. I stand before each of you today, so that you may gage
whether or not I am worthy of being a part of a long history of
intellectuals and liberal thinkers in what we call the “Free
Church.”
I stand before such a distinguished panel, hoping to impress upon
you my deep and earnest desire to follow the path of Emerson,
Parker, Priestly, Davies, Eaton and King, among others; and it is
the path of ministry. It is a call, a “still small voice” inside,
that has been pricking my consciousness for a long time. I believe I
am ready to be credentialed as a Unitarian Universalist Minister.
And if you will honor me with a “yes” I will honor our faith and the
legacy of those who have gone before. And I will work to move our
ideal of promoting the worth and dignity of all humanity forward;
and I will do it with all of my heart, soul, mind and strength.
But you know, there is something much bigger here than this moment
of critical analysis. If we look at our world, we are living in a
very challenging and even frustrating time. We are living in a very
fractionalized and disjointed America due to war and the policies of
our administration… We are in this comfortable place, but in reality
there are people dying in a very distant land everyday in a war that
I am uncertain as to whether it is for a just cause. I am saddened
because there are children crying because they have lost their
parents; there are people suffering from ideological clashes from
Western and Eastern powers that are bent on making manifest their
idea of what life should be. Some call it a struggle between good
and evil. Some call it a “clash of civilizations”, or “modern
tribalism” whatever you call it, it is infecting the whole world.
Somehow, we all need to raise our level of consciousness and move
beyond the Black and White, beyond the dichotomy, beyond the good
and evil, step out of this purgatorial cycle of name calling, racial
bigotry, and basic primitive tribalism, so that we can find release
or “moksha” and make manifest the new heavens and new earth reality
where the beloved community is real not some utopian fancy.
I mentioned tribalism… Tribalism is defined as a strong loyalty to
ones own tribe, party or group. My thought is that the problem is
when there is TOO-STRONG a loyalty to a party or group. And your
loyalty is so obsessively strong that you sacrifice your human right
to think and analyze and rationalize. The herd mentality takes over.
You get caught up in the dichotomy. You get caught up because you
are afraid of being outside the tribe. As Freud said, creating your
own path could lead to a neurotic personality. So, we stick with the
tribe, sometimes obsessively, whether we are voting for a candidate
or supporting a religion. The pressure to belong and choose is
always with us and happens all the time—in our families; it happens
to kids in school; it happens in gangs. It is a peer pressure that
never goes away unless we become “the master of our fate and the
captain of our soul!” My thought is that we must never surrender our
rational thinking to the passions of the tribe, and this is my first
point today. You see the passions of the tribe or group or party can
cause you/us to sacrifice our humanity if we aren’t careful. I have
to ask myself all the time: “Can I see another’s woe and not be in
sorrow too? Can I see another’s grief and not seek for kind relief.
Can I see a falling tear, and not feel my sorrow’s share? No, no
never can it be—never, never can it be!” No… Somehow the voice of
reason and the heart of love must take center-stage, so that we can
move beyond the dichotomy that creates the “us against them
mentality” instead of the “we are together reality.” Dr. King said
well we must seek to create a people oriented society not a thing
oriented society
.
And you know, when I think of the Unitarian Universalist message,
historically, I hear polyphony—many sounds through the years, but
the message is quite the same---freedom. Freedom from cramping
dogmas, freedom from superstition, freedom to think, freedom to rise
above the primitive passions, freedom to be free, freedom for all
people no matter their race, sex or gender, freedom to LIVE! Freedom
to move beyond the dichotomy! That is my second point. We are free…
This was the essence of King John Sigismond’s edict, the “Diet of
Torda” in 1568. It made religious tolerance law but more than that,
it said that freedom of conscience must be a priority in the
religious experience. In early America after the Revolutionary War,
our forbearers, the early Congregationalists, established religions
that were without the pomp and circumstance of Rome. For them,
humans could have a direct relationship with God and Christ and did
not need a pope or bishop to get them to the divine. They too were
calling for freedom. And their call was a precursor to the
Transcendentalist movement, where you hear the same call for freedom
from the likes of Emerson and Channing and Parker who believed, not
just in the need for biblical criticism and rational thinking, but
ultimately that personal experience of the Divine which transcends
the critical and dogmatic and moves us to what the Gnostics might
call “gnosis” or a inner knowledge of the outer reality, this is at
the heart of what religion really is. The freedom though is found
beyond the dichotomy. This follows the teachings of the Asian
philosophies quite closely. These people were in touch with
something, they where in touch with the spirit of freedom!
Point one: We must never surrender our rational mind and heart of
love to the out of control passions of the tribe… Point two: We must
see that freedom is at the core of what religion must profess and
that it is found when we move beyond the dichotomy.
Lastly, our history compels us; it compels me to be a voice crying
out in the wilderness. We have a long legacy of prophets who would
not sacrifice on the altar of principle the human right of life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Now, I must say, as I move
toward the end of this message, that when you look at America based
on the Electoral College, you see a map of red and blue states and
the media would have us believe that this means there is a clear
dividing line in the country that is mostly north and south, with a
few red Midwest and western states, as if we are living in the Civil
War era again. But I believe this is not true. This is a constructed
mediated reality. And these spin masters with endless bank accounts
tell us that the world is being run by Evangelical Fundamentalist
Christians and one particular political party only, which is not
true. It is quite exaggerated and I think it is being done to keep
everyday folk like us fighting with each other over the bits and
pieces, while the rich get richer and the world continues to be
separate and unequal. Just look at the disparity in income and
poverty level of those we call the First and Third World and that
will tell you the story. And many want us to believe that our
President has a “mandate” or an authoritative order, because of the
election, to continue war. And we are also being fed the idea that
one party is right and moral and the other one is wrong and immoral.
We are being forced in a way to “choose this day whom we shall
serve”—America or the enemy. This is wrong!
I want to say to you in
the spirit of King, Fahs, Eaton, Davies, Jefferson, and Murray that
I choose something above the tribal, above the societies and clubs
and racial loyalties, and political parties and religious
institutions, and governments. I choose to edify the goodness and
virtue of humanity and to work toward creating a world of love and
peace. I choose the universal brotherhood and sisterhood of all
creation which calls me to listen to my conscience not my tribe if
it compromises the universal truth of love and respect for all. That
is my measuring stick. If something you ask of me does not promote a
peaceful mutuality and the common good, I’m not for it! If truth
crushed to earth rises, as the Unitarian William Cullen Bryant said,
then hate crushed to earth rises as well! We’ve got to learn the
lesson that Ghandi and King and so many others have tried to share
with us. Violence is not the answer. Religious hate is not the
answer; and racial superiority is not the answer.
The solution is we must reinvest in building the spirit of humanity,
not the spirit of hate. Reinvest in people not in things. Then we
won’t be able to “study war no more”. We won’t be so irrational but
cognizant that we are all children of the universe.
We must create a new paradigm based upon the words of Emerson who
wrote: “All violence, all that is dreary and repels, is not power,
but the absence of power,” I add,the absence of humanity and the
absence of love. And Martin King said it well, “Hatred and
bitterness can never cure the disease of fear; only love can do
that. Hatred paralyses life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life;
love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illumines it.” And of
course the words attributed to Jesus, “Peter, put down your sword.”
Yet thousands of years later, as Joseph Campbell said once, “Peter
has not stopped raising his sword.” Unfortunately, to see this
reality, we must look beyond the dual, beyond the dichotomy, that
tends to make us quite judgmental, and look at the individual who is
a child of God, a creation of that creative sustaining Force.
And so, I am here today asking you to let me be a part of our great
tradition. I have come here to receive the credentials that will
allow me to represent our fine legacy. I am not here to fill a
quota, but here because I believe in our principles; and I am here
to answer a call that is deep within me, and again, I can impress
upon you my earnest desire to serve.
I close with the words of Paul L. Dunbar who, in his day, not long
after the Emancipation of Blacks, saw religion and America as not
living up to its highest ideals. He wrote a most provocative poem
titled Religion. It reads:
“I AM NO PRIEST OF CROOKS NOR CREEDS. FOR HUMAN WANTS AND HUMAN
NEEDS
MEAN MORE TO ME THAN PROPHETS DEEDS. AND HUMAN TEARS AND HUMAN CARES
AFFECT ME MORE THAN HUMAN PRAYERS. GO! CEASE YOUR WAIL LUGUBRIOUS
SAINT.
YOU FRET HIGH HEAVEN WITH YOUR COMPLAINT. IS THIS THE CHRISTIANS JOY
YOU PAINT?
IS THIS THE CHRISTIANS BOASTED BLISS? AVAILS, YOUR FAITH NO MORE
THAN THIS?
TAKE UP YOUR ARMS, COME OUT WITH ME. LET HEAVEN ALONE, HUMANITY
NEEDS MORE
AND HEAVEN LESS FROM THEE. WITH PITY FOR MANKIND (Humankind) LOOK
ROUND.
HELP THEM TO RISE AND HEAVEN IS FOUND!”
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