Call to Worship: We gather this morning, as we do at every meeting, as a covenanted people, recognizing that we are privileged to serve the larger movement of Unitarian Universalism; doing our work and conducting ourselves with the awareness that we are a faith-based Commission in service to a faith-based community. We gather this morning with the particular awareness that if we are to we seek together the core of our faith, each of us needs an opportunity to nurture and celebrate our lives of faith. In that spirit I invite us to worship together.

(Light the Chalice)

Hymn # 12 O Life That Maketh All Things New

A reading from Mary Oliver:

I'd seen their hoof prints in the deep needles
and knew they ended the long night under the pines,
walking like two mute and beautiful women toward the deeper woods,
so I got up in the dark and went there.
They came slowly down the hill
and looked at me sitting under the blue trees,
shyly they stepped closer and stared from under their thick lashes
and even nibbled some damp tassels of weeds.
This is not a poem about a dream, though it could be.
This is a poem about the world that is ours, or could be.
Finally one of them - I swear it! - would have come to my arms.
But the other stamped sharp hoof in the pine needles
like the tap of sanity,
and they went off together through the trees.
When I woke I was alone,
I was thinking;
so this is how you swim inward,
so this is how you swim outward,
so this is how you pray.

And a reading from The Language of the Heart by A. Powell Davies

Prayer, as I see it, need not conform to any system of doctrine; nor should it be expected that the content of any one prayer be consistent with that of others. The closer prayer is to life, the less likely is it that what is expressed at one time will be consistent with what is expressed at others. And it is to life above all that prayer should stay close. Circumstances change; so do moods and emotional conditions. At one time, there may be triumphant faith; at another deep dejection. Prayer should arise from whatever we really feel, directed towards mastery of our lives through growing insight and guided by our moral nature.

It is neither desirable nor possible that prayer be literalistic in construction or constrained to abide by the strict rules of logic. It is the language of the heart, akin to poetry. Its concern is not with exact description, as that of prose so often is, but with reality itself and with the power to evoke our spiritual resources. Prayer goes on where other language leaves off: It has to do with what is least known and yet most deeply felt. The truth it touches is too great for logical precision and is corroborated not by argument but in experience. Nevertheless, prayer of all things should never be careless. It should carry integrity to its highest intensity.

Everyone prays, although not everyone admits it. Even a curse is a kind of prayer – a prayer inverted. Under the strain of difficult conditions, or in sever loss or bereavement, or when emotionally moved by a scene of great beauty – as at many other times when we are deeply stirred – there is something within us that cries out for expression. Though we cannot understand the mystery of the world about us, we feel its kinship with the mystery within us. This mystery, too, we do not understand but we know it in our own aliveness. Something there is that will not allow it to be silent; it speaks out in our own voices.

This is the beginning of prayer and it is natural to us. Beyond it lie all the possibilities that many have been eager to cultivate and which others have been willing to neglect – or even to disdain.

Whether you are one who has cultivated, or neglected, or disdained the practice of prayer, I invite you now to join together with me in a time of deep and silent reflection – prayer or meditation as it is most meaningful to you.

Hymn #391 Voice Still and Small

Sermon: Learning How To Pray

Although I was raised and religiously educated in the Unitarian Universalist faith, my first lessons on prayer came not from Sunday School but from Mimi, my Lutheran grandmother. She taught me a formula for prayer that I later rejected as stilted and meaningless, but it was helpful to a small child seeking spiritual solace, and getting precious little guidance in that department from her own religious education. (Unfortunately for me, the religious education philosophy of the 1950’s and 60’s in our faith had fallen under the spell of science and reason to the detriment of cultivating a sense of mystery or awe.) Mimi's formula had four steps. First you tell God about all the things you are grateful for. Then you tell Him (yes, for Mimi God was definitely masculine) all the things you have done that you are sorry for, and ask forgiveness. Then you ask God to bless all the people you love and care about, and anybody who needs help. Finally, you can ask God for things you really, really want. My relationship with Mimi's God, and Mimi's form of prayer, finally broke down around that last item. I would faithfully say my prayers: gratitude, confession, and invocation of blessing. And I would always end my prayer with the same respectful request. Since that request was never granted, after a while it became clear to me, a rational, intelligent Unitarian Universalist child, that God was not listening. "Who needs that," I thought, and washed my hands of the whole God/prayer business.

In his spiritual autobiography Markings, Dag Hammarskjold tell us "God does not die on the day when we cease to believe in a personal deity, but we die on the day when our lives cease to be illumined by the steady radiance, renewed daily, of a wonder, the source of which is beyond all reason." As UU's we may sometimes feel the absence of that sense of wonder. We are religious people who place the use of reason squarely in the center of our faith. Can we also claim an experience that is beyond all reason? I think so. There is a difference between that which is unreasonable - which makes no sense, abrogates the laws of nature, betrays our minds and hearts - and that which is beyond reason. Beyond reason – that is where wonder dwells - in the realm of the spiritual, a realm that UU's increasingly want to explore.

In our statement of Principles and Purposes, we claims as the first source of our living tradition "Direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces which create and uphold life." That statement reflects the legacy of the transcendentalists - those 19th century spiritual forebears who made the outrageous claim that one could experience the holy directly - in nature, in solitary contemplation, in music, even in human conversation - rather than exclusively through orthodox spiritual disciplines. But the transcendentalists did not advocate abandoning spiritual discipline for intellectual exercise. On the contrary, they advocated the cultivation of the soul – William Ellery Channing’s term - through whatever practice brought the individual into awareness of the experience of transcendence.

Mary Oliver's poem about the deer in the woods is a perfect example of encountering the divine in nature. But that kind of spiritual encounter will only happen if you are open to it. In Franco Ferrucci's autobiography of God (entitled A History of God as Told By Himself) Himself talks about his frustration over the years with trying to make himself known to people who were supposed to be religious: he includes an audience with the Pope in which the Pope is persistently unaware of his presence, conversations with Christian mystics in which they consistently misunderstand his communications, and even an extended visit with Herman Melville during the writing of Moby Dick. Ferrucci’s tongue in cheek description of God's frustration at making Himself known to the professionally religious only serves to remind us that while it is true that we are occasionally surprised by grace, blessed in spite of ourselves, our spiritual depths are more likely to be plumbed when we are deliberately open to our own personal encounter with the holy.

Openness is the essential attribute that allows us to experience the transcendent. Robert Raines uses the term "falling into mystery" to describe it. Falling into mystery will mean different things to different people, but the result will always be a direct experience of transcending mystery and wonder. Prayer is one way we can fall into mystery. Once in seminary a fellow student, confused as to what UUism really was, asked me if we pray. "Some of us do, " I answered. "Well, whom do you pray to?" was her response. The kind of prayer I am talking about renders the question irrelevant.

Prayer is not a speech by one person addressed to a bigger and better and more powerful Person. Prayer is a process - a process of opening oneself to the possibility of falling into mystery. It is a process of reaching deep inside of oneself to the pools of pain and joy that defy rational description. In those pools I have found the strength to cope with losses that had initially felt unsurvivable, and the fortitude to live through days of doubt and confusion that at first seemed unbearable. In those pools I have found, to my surprise and delight, the capacity to love beyond all expectation, and the energy to pursue possibilities that I would have laughed off had reason been given the only vote. And perhaps most importantly, in those pools I have found the courage to surrender aspects of life, which I had despaired of ever controlling, and yet whose loss felt unacceptable.

But prayer is more than just a reaching inside. It is also making a connection between those interior depths to that which is outside of us - beyond us - unfathomably other. Not just swimming inward, in Mary Oliver's words, but flowing outward. Falling into mystery and trusting that something - whether you call it God or life or the good - will catch you in your free-fall, and bring you gently back to earth, standing on your feet once again.

Prayer is, in A. Powell Davies' words, the language of the heart. The language of the heart is not always the most articulate, or the most well thought out. Munch's famous picture, The Scream, is a prayer. Sometimes the only prayer you can say is "help." Prayer is not an address to a particular being; it is not a finely constructed set of words with a beginning, middle, and an end. It is not a set of instructions, or a wish list, or an accounting of sins and virtues. It is not a magical incantation. Prayer is our heart and soul expressing our deepest longings, our most profound fears, our most unspeakable joys and desires. Prayer is a communication between the heart and the very heart of mystery that is life. It is a process of allowing oneself to be open - open to illumination by that radiance, that wonder, that is beyond all reason.

Several years ago, I was living through a very difficult time. I was leaving the church I had served for the pat seven years – and the leaving was hard and painful. A good friend of mine, who had been fighting cancer for several years, was dying. And then my cat disappeared. After a Board meeting that week, I was talking about all the things that were distracting me from the business of the evening. Interestingly, I had almost the exact same conversation that with our board chair that I had with my seminary classmate years ago. "When you have a week like this, do you pray?" he asked me. "Yes," I answered. "And who do you pray to?"

Although this question came from somebody whose faith stance was diametrically opposed to that of my seminary friend, my answer was the same. Yes, I pray. But what I mean by prayer renders the "who to" question irrelevant. I did pray a lot that week. I didn't ask God to send Deana home - Deana after all, is a cat – by definition her behavior falls outside of God's providence. I didn't ask God to stop the cancer from eating my friend’s body. I did pray for the strength to get through the day and the resources to continue to attend to those things that needed my attention while my heart was with my missing cat and my dying friend.

Ironically, today the form of my prayer very often resembles the formula Mimi taught me all those years ago, but with a different understanding of the meaning of some of those words. I try to think of the things I am grateful for. Especially when I am in a funk, full of anger and sorrow and confusion, it is most helpful to try to cultivate gratitude. Step one - be grateful.

I also think about all the things I am sorry for. I know that the word confession is loaded for some of you - and I use it both with that awareness and also with the awareness that there is wisdom in every religious tradition that calls us to regular self awareness. I try to review my day - in 12 Step language I do a moral inventory - and I acknowledge the places where I have fallen short of myself, and I make note of the places where amends need to be made. Step Two - Confession.

Then I think about the people I love, the people I serve, the people in the world in need. The Quaker prayer tradition is to hold the person you are praying for in the light - not forming words that will fix them, or putting in a repair order, just holding them in loving consciousness. Step Three - Blessing.

Then, finally, I ask for what I want. I don't have a magic wish list that I deliver to the Magician. But I do have faith that I can find, either within myself, or in my connections to the world around me, the fortitude to live through what must be lived through. Sometimes my prayer is simply for the forbearance to carry myself with grace through the next day, or the next hour. And it is clear to me, a rational, Unitarian Universalist adult, that my prayer is always answered.

I close with this image offered by poet Denise Levertov.

As swimmers dare to lie face to sky and water bears them,
As hawks rest upon air and air sustains them,
so would I learn to attain free fall, and float into Creator Spirit's deep embrace,
knowing no effort earns that all-surrounding grace

Hymn #90 From All the Fret and Fever of the Day

Benediction

You pray in your distress and in your need; would that you might pray also in the fullness of your joy and in your days of abundance. For what is prayer but the expansion of yourself into the living ether? And if it is for your comfort to pour your darkness into space, it is also for your delight to pour forth the dawning of your heart. And if you cannot but weep when your soul summons you to prayer, she should spur you again and yet again, though weeping, until you shall come laughing.

And that is my prayer for each of you.

Amen