Still Searching

"Faith is not making religious sounding noises in the daytime. It is asking your inmost questions at night--and then getting up and going to work." -Mary Jean Irion

How good it is to re-gather in this worshipping community after the summer hiatus, to be back in this place where, as Garrison Keillor once said of another beloved place, "People love us, and are glad to see our faces."

Of course, some of us haven’t gone far this summer, but I always think of Thoreau’s wonderful statement: "I have traveled a good deal in Concord." Indeed, it is the interior journey that matters the most, whether we have been far or near.

This summer Sabrina and I managed to travel far and wide. In July we spent nine days in sunny Portugal, where Sabrina and her family lived for two years while she was growing up. And in August, we drove to Minnesota, where my first church was celebrating its 125th anniversary as a liberal religious presence on the prairie. A weekend trip to Maine, where I preached the installation sermon for my colleague Mark Worth in my hometown church in Castine, rounded off our summer wanderings, which as you can see constituted a pretty good tour down the Babcocks’ memory lane.

As always during such travels, I spent a lot of time thinking about the BIG questions, you know, like "why was I born? And why must I die?" And, "What am I meant to do? And what is the meaning of it all?"

As poet Wendell Berry has poignantly written in one of his elegiac poems,

. . . I have come to be
survivor of many and of much
that I love, that I won’t live to see
come again into this world.

Edna St. Vincent Millay, a fellow Mainer, perhaps said it best, in her poem "Dirge Without Music":

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts
       in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely.
       Crowned with lilies and with laurel they go; but
       I am not resigned.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains,--but the best is lost.

The answers quick and keen, the honest look,
         the laughter, the love,--
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses.
       Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom.
       I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all
       the roses in the world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

Of course, there are no really good answers to these questions, which are sometimes called ULTIMATE, and for good reason. But I like to ask them, anyway. I guess that is why I became a minister. I just can’t help it. Is there a God? Is there an afterlife? I really want to know!

But I have to tell you something, and I hope that you won’t be too disappointed with me. I still don’t know the answer. In spite of all my travels this summer, in spite of all the places I have visited this year and in past years, in spite of all of the interior journeys I have made, I’m no closer to the answer than I was when I saw you last.

Oh, I have found a few answers, with a small "a," along the way, but I have yet to discover the big one, the key to unlock it all, the one that will have it all make sense. I’m still searching.

In my experience, most people want magic, not the hard work of religion: love, compassion, insight, and understanding.

But in spite of that, I persevere. I still believe in the power of love. That seems proven, no matter what. I still believe in kindness and loyalty and humility. I still believe that it is important to lead a good life, and to try to change the world for the better, even if it is only in our little corner of it. I believe in generosity. I believe that we can make meaning even if we can’t always be sure. I still believe that war will get us nowhere, that peace must be our goal, that fear is our greatest enemy, that people are mostly good even if a few of them are really bad.

So, I welcome you back. If you’ve been here before, you know what you’re getting into. And if you are a newcomer, I need to let you know that we are not like most religions. We don’t claim to have the Answer. We don’t even claim to have most of the answers. The fact of the matter is, we don’t know if there is an answer, at least not of the large "A" kind.

And even if there is, we don’t think anyone is capable of grasping it all. If there is ultimate truth, we don’t claim to know it, because we suspect that ultimate truth is ultimately unknowable. And given all of the competing truth claims in this world, we think we are on pretty solid ground. And given all the violence and hatred which those truth claims engender, we think it is a whole lot better to be humble and to admit that we just don’t know. (Indeed, tomorrow’s 5th anniversary of the September 11 attacks is a reminder of the destructive power of absolute ideas.)

Such is our liberal religious approach to ultimate truth. But not to despair! For the last time I checked, there weren’t any Unitarian Universalists blowing themselves or anyone else up over their religious beliefs or their supposed truths. And these days, you have to admit, that is something. That is something pretty good.

What I do hope you will find here is some of those small "a" answers for getting through your life. I hope that you will find some comfort and a sense of community. I also hope that you will find some indignation and dissatisfaction about the way things are, and some willingness to do something about all that ails our troubled and troubling world.

But I hope most of all that, whether in agreement or disagreement, you might find here a spiritual home, a place to carry on the search. I hope that, like many of us, you will come to see that the questions are at least as important as the answers that we give, perhaps even more so. I hope that you might even find here some of that peace which is beyond understanding, but which most of us so desperately need as we make our way along this great but perilous pilgrimage of life.

It’s good to be back. It’s good to continue the search with you. As Wendell Berry writes in another poem,

Again, again we come and go,
changed, changing. Hands
join, unjoin in love and fear
grief and joy. The circles turn,
each giving into each, into all. Only music keeps us here,

each by all the others held.

The Rev. Harold E. Babcock