Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Duluth 
What I Believe and Why
Helen Mongan-Rallis
Sermon to Unitarian Universalist Congregation, Duluth Minnesota, Nov. 30, 2003
When Bill Payne asked me if I would be willing to share my thoughts with you about what I believe, at first I wanted to turn tail and run. I couldn’t even articulate for myself what I believed, so how could I talk to anyone else about it – let alone a whole congregation? But then I realized that if I was ever to take the next step of my spiritual journey and explore in depth what I truly believe, I need to be pushed. It felt like the thumb tack described by Adrienne Rich (1966) in her poem From Necessities of Life (see poem at end of this sermon). This was my opportunity to re-enter the world, beginning as a small, fixed dot... piece by piece. I was the thumbtack that Bill Payne pushed into this scene – this congregation today.
After I told Bill that I would speak, Mara Hart called me to go over what I needed to do for today. She asked me if I identify myself as a Christian. I felt like the thumb tack, my hard little head protruding. I felt exposed – and yet at the same time I experienced a surge of relief and terror. I couldn’t duck this again, couldn’t hide – from Mara, from you, from myself anymore. It was like coming out all over again. The difference is that when I turned my back on heterosexuality (nearly 20 years ago now) it relatively easy. Like my coming out today, it was and a huge relief to finally find myself and to be who I really was. Like Rich’s dot, the process of preparing for today has “made me ooze” – the heat of the soul searching melting away layers of confusion, guilt, and spiritual smoke-and-mirrors created by a lifetime of religious indoctrination. I realized that by agreeing to speak here today I was going to have to come out about my beliefs-- not only to you, but also to myself. I agreed to speak today because I know that I have been running from facing these questions -- who am I and what I believe -- all my life. At different stages of my life I have given only cursory and superficial thought to these questions (even if at the time I believed I was really giving them my full attention). But I have not, until now, thought deeply about how what I believe today and about how these beliefs have been shaped very significantly by my life experiences and by who I am. So before I share with you what I believe, I must first begin with why. I realize that if we choose our faith by exercising our free minds, as William Ellery Channing (in the responsive reading -- see attached at end of this sermon) challenges us to do – then this faith comes not out of a blind allegiance to something external that we were taught, but by the complex sum of all of what has brought us to who we are today – by our experiences and by our drawing on the collected wisdom of those who have gone before us and are with us now (Channing, 1993).
I was born in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1960 -- a year before the country broke away from the British Commonwealth. I grew up in an increasingly nationalistic and violent society governed by the strict oppressive apartheid laws.
It is important for me to explain this and to give some context, because the values and beliefs I hold today are fundamentally influenced by the political context in which I was raised. From a very early age I learned first to question, then to despise, and finally to hate the apartheid system and those who imposed its laws on my country and its people. I am often asked why I did not accept and support the system like most whites did, especially because I stood to benefit so greatly from it. I think that in part this was because of my parents' beliefs in raising me as a critical thinker -- to become the Free Mind that Channing (1993) describes. They raised me to respect all people, regardless of race. Thus, even though they could not really afford it, they sent my brother and me to private schools to escape as much as was possible the government propaganda that was the lot of all children who attended public schools. Another pivotal reason for my anti-apartheid beliefs was because I was also raised in part by Maria, a Zulu woman who was employed by my parents as a nanny and housekeeper, but who was -- and still is to this day -- like a second mother to me. According not only to apartheid law but also to the teachings of the Dutch Reformed Church, black people like her were supposed to be there to serve the needs of white people and were not viewed as individuals in their own right, deserving of the same respect according to those chosen white Christians. I recall vividly from a very early age being outraged at the way Maria was treated by society, and by the way all black people were treated in South Africa. I learned when I was very young that just because something was the law, or someone in power/authority told you to do something did not make it automatically right. I learned to guard and develop my intellectual rights and powers, not contenting myself with passive acceptance of what I was told, and fighting against the usurpations of a racist society. I learned to listen for new and higher monitions of conscience.
Part of what we were indoctrinated to believe was that the white Afrikaner people in South Africa had a rightful place as usurpers of the wealth of the country, because of a covenant that the early Afrikaners made with God. Until the end of apartheid in the early 1990s, South Africa celebrated a national holiday, the Day of the Covenant, to commemorate the day in 1938 in which the Voortrekker leader made a covenant with god that if he would protect them from the Zulu people and deliver them into the Voortrekker hands, they would erect a church in his honor. This church – and the white Afrikaners -- became seen as chosen by God – and chosen above other groups, in particular the Zulu. When I learned about the meaning of this holiday in school I was outraged. For one, I could not believe and accept that any god would sanction the horrific treatment that blacks in South Africa were subject to or that he (at that stage in my life it never occurred to me that god could be anything other than a “he”) would enter into covenants with one group of his people against another. Of course it was only as an adult that I realized that just because the Boers said that they made a covenant with god didn't mean that he had any say in the matter at all or that it was his fault!. Secondly, I was appalled that a government with many from a variety of Christian faiths would continue to commemorate this appalling event and continue to believe in this covenant. Thus what began as my questioning political authority expanded to my questioning religious authorities and teachings.
This led me to question dogmatic teachings of other religions whenever they advocated supremacy of any group of people over others. I could never understand or accept that a loving god would do this, or would allow into heaven people who spent their lives brutalizing other human beings, provided that they believed in Christ and God and repented their sins.
So, as I chart for you the doomed course of my Christian faith, the next step of its fateful journey was my being sent to attend a Catholic School for the first 2 years of my life. Towards the end of my time at this school I came home from school one day and recounted to my mom and Richard, a Jewish student who was staying with us at the time what I learned about Jesus that day and how all who believed in him would go to heaven. My mom asked, "What happens if you don't believe in Jesus?" Apparently I promptly said with absolute certainty, "Then you are the child of the devil!" I don't recall the specifics of what happened to me once my mother had me alone after Richard left, but I do know that my parents pulled me from the school immediately and that I never again made the mistake of condemning someone to hell because their religious beliefs differed from mine.
I was raised as a Christian -- specifically an Anglican. My parents never forced religion on me and they never practiced any formal religion in our home (although we celebrated the commercial aspects of Easter and Christmas). However, there was no separation of church and state in schools or in the rest of society. Unless you went to the Jewish school (there was one that I know of in my city) any school that you attended was Christian (regardless of your race). Every school day for 12 years began with a school assembly in which we sang a hymn, heard a reading and a prayer, and recited the Lord's Prayer. Nobody told me I had to believe all of this. It just never occurred to anyone -- including me -- that I wouldn't or didn't. It just was what one did. In my school (an Anglican School) you could choose to formalize your Anglican beliefs in your early teens by electing to go through confirmation classes. Many of my friends did not, but many did. I never felt pressure to be confirmed, but one day I realized that I really did believe in Christ and the teachings of the church, so I chose to go through the confirmation process. My parents supported me, took me to church and picked me up, but never accompanied me or discussed my beliefs with me. I continued to attend church all through college.
It was only when I came to the United States that I really stopped attending church. I was told that Episcopalians were the same as Anglicans -- but I wanted to be sure first, so I began attending an Episcopal church with great reservation, reviewing critically and paying attention to what was said in the prayers, readings etc for the first time in my life. This led me to asking myself a lot of questions, like what difference did it make if the Anglican and Episcopal churches were the same or not? What did I actually believe was true anyway? The more I questioned, the more uncomfortable I became with some of the things I was saying (like the Apostle’s Creed). Soon I began leaving out larger and larger sections of the prayers, hymns, and so forth and remaining silent as the rest of the congregation carried on, chanting in unison what we had all been trained to say without question. I silenced myself because I realized I didn't believe a lot of the words, and I could not in good consciousness say I did (especially when the prayer began, "I believe..."). My growing awareness of feminism made me realize how sexist the portrayals were of women in scripture, and I became increasingly alienated by these. So I began to define my spirituality more and more in terms of what I was not, and by what I disagreed with, rather than by what I did believe. I finally reached the point where I felt like I was compromising not only my own integrity by continuing to attend a church in whose teachings I did not believe, but also -- and it was this that I think pushed me to sever my ties -- that I was betraying the trust of those who did believe in and attend the church. While I respected their beliefs and greatly liked and admired many of the people who attended, I felt a traitor in their midst.
Even after I stopped attending church, still in my heart I believed I was a Christian -- I just didn't believe in what I called "the trappings." I've essentially ducked the question until now. Joining the UU congregation has been immensely helpful to me in my spiritual journey. When I first attended the UU church and read the statement of UU beliefs I felt like I did when I walked into a gay bar for the first time -- you mean there are really other people like me out there?!! I felt connected within a religious community for the first time in my life. It felt like I had come home.
But still, until I began preparing my comments for today, I did not -- and have never really --faced head on the question of what I truly believe. I have never truly accepted for myself that I am not a Christian. I dabbled with these thoughts when I attended some of Karen Gustafson’s sessions prior to my signing the UU book, but still I didn't go very deep in examining my beliefs. I feel a bit scared, and feel like I am a traitor, somehow, to turn my back on Christianity. Why is this? Is it because I am still recovering from a lifetime of indoctrination of being told that if you don't believe in Christ you will go to hell? Even now it feels scary and heretical to admit publicly that I do not believe that Christ was the son of God (but just that he was just a real person and inspired historical leader). The fact that I don’t believe that anyone is "the" son or daughter of god it is very scary for me. It makes me feel alone and vulnerable, no longer protected by what I have been told all my life is there for me "if I accept Christ as my savior." It's emotional and spiritual blackmail.
Until I found the UU church, I don't know that I would have had the courage to take this step, to sever my faith in Christianity. I know many of you do believe in Christ, but not in an exclusionary way that defines who is in or out. Here I feel supported to follow my own spiritual path. I wish I could say that I have felt spiritually connected being in this church. When I first came here, I searched for this feeling, and wanted to feel it when I was here, in your midst. But as I have prepared my thoughts for today, I have realized why I don’t yet feel this. I also know, however, after my preparing for today, that I will grow to feel this. Coming from the rigid teachings and formal rituals of a Christian church, I have found and at times still find the openness of belief and structure of UU traditions somewhat disconcerting. Being given -- and choosing to take -- the freedom to chart my own spiritual journey is scary and overwhelming. Sometimes I long for the old structure and formality of being told in no uncertain terms what is right and what is not.
Perhaps because of the formality and structure of the Anglican church and because these habits had been indoctrinated in me for so long, they held a certain spiritual mystique. I felt a reverence and strong spiritual presence in the Anglican church. Here, among all of you, I feel a connectedness to others than I never felt before in church -- but I do not feel a spiritual connection in this building – which I did do in the Anglican church. I can't rely on familiar symbols hanging above the altar and ritualistic rites that trigger in me a spirituality like the ringing of a bell triggered saliva flow for Pavlov's dog. In both the dog's case and mine this was brought about by conditioning, not by faith. My understanding and interpretation of UU teachings is that I must take responsibility -- for the first time in my life -- for defining my own beliefs, and that no-one else can or should define these for me. This UU congregation provides a coming together of people who share a common core of values and who provide a rich variety of perspectives to help each of us in our unique spiritual journey. But I alone must be the one to define what I believe. This is very scary --and it's also hard work.
Because of these reasons, and also deep down because I finally realize that I won’t be struck down by a bolt of lightening anymore if I don't do this work -- I confess I haven't really done the hard work needed until today. I've been stalled in the rest of the business of life, putting on hold asking and answering the hard questions about what I believe and why. I thank Bill Payne and all of you for giving me the kick in the pants that I needed by asking me to speak to day, and pushing me to take this step.
What I have described so far is more about what I don't believe. Thus what do I believe?
I find aspects of many different religions compelling, and gain strength spiritually, intellectually, and emotionally from many sources. Yet I often find myself holding back from articulating this, or even from digging deeper to learn more, for fear of committing spiritual piracy. As a white person, I realize how much privilege and power we have, and how we -- intentionally or not-- have stolen, plundered, colonized, and taken as our own from non-dominant cultures. We have taken so much from the countries and peoples we have colonized, made our choice of norms, values and beliefs the standards against which others are measured, relegating those who do not match these standards to some lower rank, and holding our power over them. We become so inwardly focused -- so ethnocentric -- that we often -- consciously or not -- deny that we have set this standard and that we have placed ourselves at the top. We do this in ways that are crushingly dehumanizing at worst, and just plain offensive and insulting as best, in many little and not so little ways.
Thus, when it comes to searching for spiritual guidance from other religions that I find very compelling (like many Native American spiritual beliefs) my guilt holds me back -- torn between seeking the spiritual enrichment from those who have gone before us and from their collected wisdom -- and by my recovering white South African colonist guilt and shame, and my newfound white American imperialist guilt and shame. I want to learn from the collected wisdom of others, but I still don’t know how to do this in a respectful way, without committing spiritual piracy.
What I do believe that there is no one god or spiritual being, but realize too that it comforts me sometimes to think of a single being in the image of a person -- male or female -- because in my very small view of the grand scheme of things I need to have an image that is concrete -- to help me connect with this spiritual entity, or force, or being.
I believe that it doesn't matter to me what we call our creator(s) -- but what does matter is that we are each free to call him or her whatever we wish, without judgment, and also without any one person or group's beliefs being seen an inherently better.
At first, once I left the Christian church, I thought I believed that there really wasn’t anything else – that I had been duped by a grand hoax imposed on my by a society too insecure to stand on its own two feet without a hidden crutch. But then I thought about how I feel when I look at the incredible perfection and beauty in the thousands of pearls of water clinging to every strand of a spider's web in the early morning dew; when I think about when I first held my newborn daughter, caressing each perfectly formed finger, and when I watched her suckle at my partner's breast the way millions of infants have done since the beginning of time; when I run barefoot at dawn along the beach on Park Point and watch the sun's first rays dance across the water, unconditionally surrounding me and everything in their path with their warm embrace; when I gaze at the night sky and see how absolutely insignificant our whole planet is and how most certainly we all are insignificant in the grand scheme of the universe. Then I realized that I truly do believe in a greater power and that I am influenced hugely by this powerful spiritual force.
What helps me put everything into perspective and connect with my spirituality is to be out in nature, alone, away from anything created by humans. When I strip away all the things by which I find it so easy to define myself -- the tangible things like family, friends, job, possessions -- as well as the intangible things like my beliefs and values, when I stop even trying to define myself and just let myself be fully present in the moment of being an insignificant part of nature -- it is then that I feel an incredible depth of spirituality and connectedness to an infinite, timeless energy force. When I do this, I realize that I believe that this force is in all of us, if we only let it in.
Douglas Wood's (1999) children's story, "Grandad's Prayers of the Earth" in many ways capture this connectedness to nature that I feel and my belief in a spirituality inherent in every living thing. I don't believe, however, that animals and other living creatures pray -- because I don't think they need to. They follow closely a cycle of living that is set out for them as part of the evolving grand scheme of the universe. The more evolved a species, the more variety there is in their patterns within their lives. But what I believe sets humans apart from all other living creatures is our consciousness and free will – The Free Mind that Channing (1993) described -- that enables us to choose and shape our destiny apart from the grand scheme of things that governs the lives of nature. And it is this consciousness and free will that leads us to need to pray, because of our awareness that the choices we have made and make divert us from the path of nature -- for better or for worse. We want to be free from the grand scheme of things to make our own choices, but we also want to be able to reach out for support (through prayer) from the creator of this grand scheme. All too often we do this only in moments of weakness or vulnerability, rather than as an integral part of our lives. I believe prayer connects us with the energy that unites us all – the energy of the creator and also to those who have gone before us. When we do this we free ourselves from the trappings of our daily existence and allow ourselves to take our place -- even if only briefly and occasionally -- as just one of the creatures of the universe, living in harmony and balance with all. And when we do, I believe we become connected to this larger whole, not only those who are present in it today, but also to those who have gone before us.
References:
- Channing. W. M. (1993). The Free Mind. Responsive reading 592. In Singing the Living Tradition. The Unitarian Universalist Association (1993). Beacon Press, Boston. MA.
- Rich, A. (1966). From the Necessities of Life. (full citation unknown)
- Wood, D. (1999). Grandad’s Prayers of the Earth. Candlewick Press, Cambridge. MA.
From Necessities of Life (1966) – Adrienne Rich
Piece by piece I seem
To re-enter the world: I first began
A small, fixed dot, still see
That old myself, a dark-blue thumbtack
Pushed into the scene,
A hard little head protruding
From the pointillists’s buzz and bloom.
After a time the dot
Begins to ooze. Certain heats
Melt it.
Now I was hurridly
Blurring into ranges
Of burnt red, burning green,
Whole biographies swam up and
Swallowed me like Jonah.
Jonah! I was Wittgenstein,
Mary Wollstonecradt, the soul
Of Louis Jouvet, dead
In a blown-up photograph.
Till, wolfer almost to shreds,
I learned to make myself
Unappetizing. Scaly as a dry bulb
Thrown into a cellar
I used myself, let nothing use me.
Like being on a private dole,
Sometime more than kneading bricks in Egypt.
What life was there, was mine,
Now and again to lay
One hand on a warm brick
And touch the sun’s ghost
With economical joy,
Now and again to name
Over the bare necessities.
So much for those days. Soon
Practice may make me middling-perfect, I’ll
Dare inhabit the world
Trenchant in motion as an eel, solid
As a cabbage-head. I have invitations:
A curl of mist steams upward
From a field, visible as my breath,
Houses along a road stand waiting
Like old women knitting, breathless
To tell their tales.
The Free Mind by William Ellery Channing
Responsive reading 592. The Unitarian Universalist Association (1993). In Singing the Living Tradition. Beacon Press, Boston. MA.
I call that mind free which masters the senses, and which recognizes its own reality and greatness:
Which passes life, not in asking what it shall eat or drink, but in hungering, thirsting, and seeking righteousness.
I call that mind free which jealously guards its intellectual rights and powers, which does not content itself with a passive or hereditary faith:
Which opens itself to light whencesoever it may come; which receives new truth as an angel from heaven.
I call that mind free which is not passively framed by outward circumstances, and is not the creature of accidental impulse:
Which discovers everywhere the radiant signatures of the infinite spirit, and in them finds help to its own spiritual enlargement.
I call that mind free which protects itself against the usurpations of society, and which does not cower to human opinion:
Which refuses to be the slave or tool of the many or of the few, and guards its empire over itself as nobler than the empire of the world.
I call that mind free which resists the bondage of habit, which does not mechanically copy the past, nor live on its old virtues:
But which listens for new and higher monitions of conscience, and rejoices to pour itself forth in fresh and higher exertions.
I call that mind free which sets no bounds to its love, which, wherever they are seen, delights in virtue and sympathizes with suffering:
Which recognizes in all human being the image of God and the rights of God’s children, and offers itself up a willing sacrifice to the cause of humankind.
I call that mind free which has cast off all fear but that of wrongdoing, and which no menace or peril can enthrall:
Which is calm in the midst of tumults, and possesses itself, though all else be lost.