Abandoning Reason

January 6, 2002

My friend Keith likes to tell this story about his niece, Samantha:

[When she was three years old,] I learned that Samantha had taken to playing with a tent pole stick. She called the tent pole stick Robert. She and Robert spent a great deal of time together. They played in the backyard together, were tucked in at night together, and watched the Wizard of Oz together.

One day Samantha announced that she and Robert were going to Oz to see the wizard to ask for a new Barbie head-presumably for Robert, but no one thought to ask. My sister did say to her daughter, "That sounds like fun. Is Robert a friend of yours?"

Samantha paused for a moment and looked at Robert whom she had in her hand. Then she looked at her mother. Then she looked at Robert. Then she looked at her mother with an expression that would best be described as withering and said, "Robert is a stick."

And with that she and Robert left the kitchen and headed for Oz, leaving my sister speechless in the kitchen.

My friend Keith, having been an elementary school teacher for a number of years, has quite a bit of wisdom about children. So it was only natural that his sister, Samantha's mother, should ask Keith for advice in dealing with the whole Robert issue. Keith, in all his wisdom, thought for a moment, and said, "I think you should get your own tent pole stick."

I'm really not here this morning to suggest that we seek relationships with camping supplies-or any other kind of inanimate object, for that matter. What I wanted to do by telling this story is lift up the uncanny way that young children can so easily suspend logic. We have much to learn from that. They are intelligent little beings.

Unitarian Universalism has long been praised-or accused, depending on your viewpoint-of being a rational religion. We tend to intellectualize our religion and describe ourselves in terms of what we don't believe. "Well, I don't believe in heaven and hell, and I don't believe in the Trinity, and I don't believe in God," some of us say when asked what a Unitarian Universalist is. We pride ourselves in using reason to find our own truths. In fact, the three values we have historically emphasized as defining our religion are freedom, reason, and tolerance.

Along with most other Unitarian Universalists, I am a lover of reason. I appreciate that I can use my intellect to sort out what rings true for me and that I am not expected to believe a creed that someone tells me is true. I love the questioning and the questioning that is inherent in this tradition. I like that we speak our minds. In fact, one of my favorite pastimes-this is nerdy, I know-is to read the letters to the editor of the UU World and mutter untoward comments at those UUs whose very strong opinions are different from my own. Don't you love that? That's the best!

If it is largely the value of reason that makes me choose Unitarian Universalism as my religion, however, then it is also true that it is the abandonment of reason that makes me choose religion at all. For having faith is all about having the willingness to loosen a grip on what we know for certain to be true. And by rejecting beliefs simply because they don't make intellectual sense, I think we miss out.

One of the aforementioned letter writers to the UU World recently took issue with the fact that our UUA president, the Rev. William Sinkford, used the word "faith" so many times in his column. This man identified himself as a "UUU"-an uncomfortable Unitarian Universalist. I wonder what it is about this word faith that makes some UUs uncomfortable. Does it make us seem less intelligent? Religiously conservative?

As a religious professional, and as someone who has been quite active in our denomination for a number of years, I have on numerous occasions been asked about my personal theology. "I am a theist," is always my unwavering reply. "I believe in God." To be perfectly candid with you, I haven't the foggiest notion what I mean by that! I can't begin to wrap my brain around the concept of God. Reason tells me that God does not exist… it's far too mysterious and infinite and far too removed from the flesh and bone of my day-to-day existence. Logic tells me that we're born to our parents, we're nurtured or mistreated, we live our lives the best we can, sometimes we make the world a better place and sometimes we mess up, and sometimes we really mess up, and then we die. There's no proof that there's anything more to life than that. Yet here I am, having faith that there is something more.

Now, lest I seem to suggest that we abandon reason completely, I will say that I think we are best served by engaging in a healthy balance of reason and the suspension of it. An Anglican priest, Kenneth Leech, writes that, "True faith can only grow and mature if it includes the elements of paradox and creative doubt. Such doubt is not the enemy of faith but an essential element of it. For faith in God does not bring the false peace of answered questions and resolved paradoxes."

Of course there is a difference between blind faith and true faith. Blind faith is more or less a belief in something because we don't like the alternative, or a belief in something because someone tells us it's so. True faith in anything comes to us because we have caught glimpses of its existence. My own faith that there is a god, some kind of god, for instance, is sustained by the fact that there is music, that people have the gift to create mandolins and oboes, to sing beautiful harmonies, to write symphonies. My faith is sustained when I see film footage of mother elephants caring for their young. My faith is sustained whenever I see my son do his crazy dancing. Until I had a child, I never understood what parents meant when they said that your children don't belong to you… they belong to something much bigger. I understand, now.

There are other kinds of faith, which also require an abandonment of reason. Those of us who have faith in the human spirit, who have true faith in the worthiness or holiness of every person, we have had to grow this faith at times when everything tells us otherwise. Time and again, we have asked ourselves how someone could commit some heinous act or another. We question the spirit of all of humanity when people carry out unspeakable acts such as those that occurred on September 11. It just isn't logical that members of a species that is inherently good could even conceive of such a thing.

But just as readily, we catch glimpses of that which gives us faith in the human spirit. We hear about the unbelievably courageous and selfless acts of rescue workers and ordinary people on that day and in its aftermath. We are conscious of the depth of real grief-not fear, or anger, but grief-felt by so many; grief for the loss of total strangers. I have no proof that human beings are inherently good; in fact, by watching the nightly news on any given day, I would reason that the complete opposite is true. But our nearly universal capacity to feel pain for people we don't even know-this gives me faith that we are good.

Anne Frank, who hid from the Nazis with her family in an Amsterdam attic for two years, wrote these words in her famous diary: "… in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart..." More than anything else about her remarkable life, this is the most inspiring to me. In the face of human atrocity, where did such strong faith come from?

Perhaps, in the end, Anne Frank knew that her faith was all that she had, and so she held onto it fast and furiously, nurtured it, let it grow. The Holocaust seems to be have been a time when many felt strong faith, even as they looked evil in the face. The Nobel Peace Prize recipient and concentration camp survivor Elie Wiesel tells a story of camp prisoners who decided to put God on trial for his failure to live up to his promise to protect them. Lawyers were appointed-one for God and one for the people, and three rabbis decided the case. After much evidence was given, and much deliberation, the verdict came in: God was found guilty. "What do we do now?" the people asked the rabbis. The answer: we must pray. And so they did.

I hear such stories and I realize how utterly untested my faith has been. In the grand scheme of things, I have lived a truly blessed life. Yet, I'm aware that at some point in my life, I may be tested by despair. I may be left one day with nothing but my faith. How will I cope at such a time? Will I be carried by a faith in God, a faith in humankind, or, like the king's advisor in the earlier story, a faith that there is a higher good in the things that happen to us? I think I need to live my life now as though my faith will be tested tomorrow.

How do I nurture my faith? I take cues from the world and run with them. I allow these cues to break through logic and reason and soften me. I occasionally stop analyzing. I am mindful of the fact that there are some things that the heart understands that the mind cannot begin to know.

Rather than trying to understand how or why birds in a flock fly in perfect formation, how they turn at precisely the same time and angle while they're seeming to float through the air-rather than trying to figure this out, I simply take in the beauty of it.

Let us all sometimes simply enjoy the vastness of a starlit sky, the elegance of a sand dollar, the kindness of a stranger who runs after us to give us a dropped glove. Perhaps there are cold, rational facts associated with these things-stars are balls of gases, the stranger was headed our way, anyway. But from time to time, we might allow ourselves to forget the facts, to be thankful for these things, and humbled by their goodness.

I invite you to step outside of the mundane details of your day and begin to see the small things, the ordinary people, as exquisite gifts. Though it seems illogical, offer thanks sometimes for mishaps and the things that they teach you, the way that they change you. Suspend the logic that tells you that your life would be better without hassles or heartache. Begin to seek what messages you can glean from them.

The poet Anne Sexton, who was besieged by emotional demons for many years, nevertheless had an unwavering faith which some credit as saving her life through many suicidal impulses throughout her life. In her poem, "Welcome Morning," she writes:

There is joy
In all:
In the hair I brush each morning,
In the Cannon towel, newly washed,
That I rub my body with each morning,
In the chapel of eggs I cook
Each morning,
In the outcry from the kettle
That heats my coffee
Each morning,
In the spoon and the chair
That cry "hello there, Anne"
Each morning,
In the godhead of the table
That I set my silver, plate, cup upon
Each morning.

All this is God,
Right here in my pea-green house
Each morning
And I mean,
Though often forget,
To give thanks,
To faint down by the kitchen table
In a prayer of rejoicing
As the holy birds at the kitchen window
Peck into their marriage of seeds.

So while I think of it,
Let me paint a thank-you on my palm
For this God, this laughter of the morning,
Lest it go unspoken.

The Joy that isn't shared, I've heard,
Dies young.

Reason would never lead one to faint to one knees to give thanks for such things. So I say to you: Abandon reason. Pleasure in beauty for beauty's sake. Share joy. Be thankful for all that you have and all that there is. Absorb the kindness of others. Seek meaning in life's challenges. And may you always have faith.

Amen.

Julie Parker-Amery