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Altruists sound like admirable people. But most of us might not want them in our family. Consider the "compulsive philanthropist" we heard about in our reading this morning. “Hey Dad!, before you give away another organ or more money, we were kind of hoping for help with a house down payment....”

Can somebody be too altruistic? Stephen Sodones, age 62, was hospitalized in critical condition last August but ultimately recovered after being bitten three times on the hand by a copperhead snake, which he was helpfully carrying to safety across a state highway.

According to a neighbor, animal-lover Sodones stops traffic to let ducks cross roads and once tried to revive a bumblebee by warming it in his hands.

Ouch. But it can, of course, be worse. This week, a professor at the University of Washington Medical School who moved to Botswana to help alleviate a shortage of doctors there, was killed when a crocodile dragged him from a dugout canoe.

The professor, 68 year old Richard Root, was on a wildlife tour in remote northeastern Botswana. He was a nationally known expert in infectious disease, and he went to the African nation to train health care workers to deal with AIDS. Botswana's rate of HIV infection is about 40 percent. Crocodile kills humanitarian professor, AP, Wednesday, March 22, 2006; Posted: 8:30 a.m. EST.

So, if you do good deeds, you can die for your trouble. Of course, we are all going to die someday anyway. Would you rather be remembered for good works? Or be remembered for something less?

I read something disturbing in the news this week. As you may know, generally speaking, I like to avoid the news because it is so depressing. If it's not a President Bush's top domestic policy adviser getting arrested for multiple cases of shop lifting, or the state legislature trying to limit birth control for women, or another anti-gay measure, it’s a story about how many more soldiers have died in Iraq to keep out gasoline costs down. If you pay a lot of attention, the news can be pretty depressing.

An essay in this month's Foreign Policy says this trend is likely to only get worse in the years ahead. This is because liberals and intellectuals all over the world have fewer children than conservatives.

With the world population boom of the last 200 years it may be difficult to wrap our minds around this.

The essay says that healthy, peaceful populations are declining, and that birthrates are falling in one country after the next, all over the world.

This dynamic helps explain the gradual drift of American culture away from secular individualism and toward religious fundamentalism. Among states that voted for President George W. Bush in 2004, fertility rates are 12 percent higher than in states that voted for Sen. John Kerry.

Does this mean that today’s enlightened but slow-breeding societies face extinction? Probably not, but [as liberal] elements in society fail to reproduce, people adhering to more traditional values inherit society by default.

Ouch. So, you want a more progressive, enlightened society? Take care of and teach more children! When it comes to kids, we are right to suspect that our deeds shout, while our creeds merely whisper.

If we want our values to survive, we need to take more civic responsibility. What leads someone to become civic minded?

Research shows 5 main factors: parental beliefs, individual personality, a sense of community, being self interested, and helper’s high.

First, our parent’s beliefs. A professor at Smith College

found that students with a parent who fought in Vietnam were much more likely to protest against the 1991 Gulf War than those whose parents were not war veterans. "Parents teach their kids [what they believe are] appropriate ways to respond to particular situations."

So, parent’s beliefs can move their children to action.

Next, comes personality. Some people find meaning in current events. Some people feel they can actually make a difference in the world, and because of that, they want to try to make a difference.

After parent’s beliefs & personality comes a sense of community

Individuals are more likely to feel a personal connection if they see themselves as part of the community affected by an issue. Millions of women embraced this sense of collective identity during the women's rights movement, for example.

Next comes being self-interested. We may act to clean up the environment or to call for an end to a war because this will benefit us. We may act for justice because we want our children or relatives to see what we are made of. Nothing wrong with that kind of altruism. What helps us can help others.

A 5^th reason people do good deeds, beyond being self-interested is because it makes us feel good. “Helper’s high” is what some people call this feeling of euphoria. Maybe you’ve experienced it yourself after an act of sacrificial service. Although very little scientific work has been done to uncover the biology of good deeds, some researchers are now suggesting that positive social contacts release feel-good hormones called endorphins.

One psychologist put it this way: "There's a helper's high: When you extend yourself to someone else, it produces an altered state of consciousness. You feel wonderful, you float on air."

Actively speaking out for others can generate this feeling, he continues. "People are totally preoccupied with themselves to the exclusion of the rest of the world. The more you can get out of yourself and reach out to others, the more meaningful and satisfying life can be."

There is a serious side effect if you choose to be civic minded & socially active. Science is now saying that it is very likely– well, how can I put this– I’ll just give it to you straight– Science is now saying that if you do good deeds you will live longer.

Deeds like driving someone to church, going shopping with an elderly neighbor, or volunteering to drive, cook, or host for Room At The Inn, right here at Eliot Chapel.

This kind of assistance is called “instrumental support”in the psychology biz. It can boost the immune system, which can lower the odds of colds and other infections.

Giving, whether it is instrumental support or emotional support, reduces mortality and promotes longevity.

Helping others reduces distress in givers, improves both mental & physical health. It gives people a sense of belonging and of mattering. It increases happiness, decreases depression. (Psychology Today: July/Aug 2003).

Okay, so those who practice liberal religion, and we here at Eliot, have a commitment to “act for social justice” as it says in our mission statement.

You’ve heard that among the factors that move people to act for social justice are: influence of our parents; our own personality; a sense of community (if we have one); acting in our self interest, and the helper’s high we can get, if we really stretch ourselves.

But if you wanted to do one thing to really help motivate your self to become more socially active than you are now, what would that one thing be? A study that included

in-depth interviews with more than a hundred humanitarians reveal a surprisingly clear answer. Though they tend to have certain things in common, every single person shared one experience in particular: "A transformative engagement with 'the other,'" according to Cheryl Keen, Ed.D.

Early in life, "These people got to know someone very well who they previously thought was very different from them," says Keen. "By working or studying or traveling together, they came to understand that the person was more like them than not."

And, that experience "jolted their idea of who they were and where they stood in the world, challenging their previously held assumptions about who was 'one of us' and who was not."

Some other things these folks shared were an understanding that some problems are very complex; that to be truly successful they were going to have to integrate their social justice work into their everyday lives, and the realization, that they could turn negative feelings of anger or ambition into motivation to go out and do something.

These do-gooders also came to the conclusion that they didn’t have to solve all the world’s problems, just that they had to begin somewhere. Psychology Today, May/Jun 1998.

You probably haven’t heard of an 18th-century American Quaker named John Woolman. After discovering that he could not put up with assisting his employer in the sale of a slave, Woolman traveled to Quaker meetings all across the colonies, and talked with people one by one about the evils of slavery.

This was not an easy sales job, because at the time, many Quakers in the colonies were slave owners. But Woolman succeeded through quiet one-on-one conversations, visiting his fellow Quakers individually, on farm after farm, for most of the 20 years of his adult life.

He didn’t criticize people or anger them, but was clear and consistent in his message, and by the year 1770 — almost 100 years before the Civil War — there was not a single Quaker in the colonies who owned a slave.

As Margaret Meade was to put it much later: “A small group of thoughtful people [can] change the world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has.”

Let’s get back to this idea of one thing you could do to really jump start your own personal social justice work. This idea of “bonding with an ‘other.’” That kind of bonding can jolt our assumptions.

I think about Eliot Chapel and it’s theological diversity. How is it that atheists & theists, and agnostics go to church together? How is it we can have a Christian Covenant group and a non-theist study group?

How can we have both in the same church? How is it that one congregation can celebrate the Jewish tradition at one time of year, the Christian tradition at other times, and Humanism at still other times?

Why would people want to do this? Because, to paraphrase Dr. Keen, we get to know people who we thought were very different from us. By worshiping & teaching & being in groups together, we come to understand that people at Eliot who seem to have very different religious beliefs than we do, turn out to be more like us than we might have thought.

The act of going to a church like Eliot is an act of trying to embrace diversity. It means even if you wince at some language or beliefs you might hear from some folks, you put up with it for the sake of your fellow congregants and for your own spiritual growth in questioning your assumptions.

The act of going to a church like Eliot is an act of trying to embrace diversity. It means to foster free religious thought; to nurture spiritual growth (both your own and other people’s) and to act for social justice. That’s what we’re all about.

And the idea is that if we can meet “the other” right here in Eliot Chapel, we’ll be better able to meet “the other” outside our walls.

We are a small group of thoughtful people. We can change the world. So. Where do we begin? There is a principle called FANAFI. This is an acronym for "Find A Need And Fill It."

Last fall, at one Sunday service, I handed out 10 envelopes during a social action “altar call.” Ten individuals took the challenge, sight unseen, to take a small resource and make something good happen with it. We will hear more about that at our annual meeting Sunday in May.

But to do FANAFI, “Find A Need And Fill It,” we have to notice the world we live in, notice something that needs attention, something we would like to be able to do something about, to change for the better. And then we can dream & plan & implement & reflect.

If you look carefully– at our Sunday bulletin, at our newsletter, at our web site, on our bulletin boards (between here and Adam’s Hall), you will find plenty of opportunities to FANAFI.

This Saturday, on the steps of Eliot Chapel there will be a rally to protest the religious right’s attempt to take away women’s access to birth control. That’s this Saturday at 10:30 am.

Next month, there is an Eliot Chapel work party to fix up little things around the chapel. There are also opportunities to plant flowers in a blighted section of town, and a chance to work with Habitat for Humanity to build houses for low-income families.

In June– if you get registered soon– you can join 3 to 4 thousand other UUs at the America’s Center downtown for workshops, worship services, lectures, and other events.

And if you want to get started with something simple, then I invite you to check out Room At The Inn. This is a program where most Thursday nights, civic minded people like yourself volunteer to be a driver, or cook in Adam’s Hall, or take home some laundry, or host the homeless right here in our church.

Why? As the writer Virginia Wolff put it 90 years ago, “One of he signs of passing youth is the birth of a sense of fellowship with other human beings as we take our place among them.”

How will you take your place?

FANAFI (Find A Need And Fill It). It may not be the easy way. But it is the UU Way. Let us wake up to the opportunities. Let us seize the day. So let it be, Amen.

Let us rise and sing: Wake Now My Senses, #298.