New Member Sunday

a sermon delivered by the Rev. Dr. Daniel ÓConnell to the

congregation at Eliot Unitarian Chapel in St. Louis, MO on May 20, 2007

Nearly half of American women fear life as a bag lady. No kidding: 46 percent of women suffer from what is now called “Bag Lady Syndrome.” They might have good salaries, money in their purses, and decent savings– but still they are afraid that they’ll wind up broke, & forgotten.

Bag ladies. A survey last August (Washington Times, 8/23/06) of 2,000 women reveals that 90 percent of them feel financially insecure. 46% are troubled by a “tremendous fear of becoming a bag lady,” and this anxiety actually increases as incomes rise. Among those with annual incomes of more than $100,000, 48 percent of women fear a life of destitution.

Lily Tomlin. Gloria Steinem. Shirley MacLaine. Katie Couric. “All admit to having a bag lady in their anxiety closet,” writes a MSN money columnist.

What’s going on here? A Denver financial adviser writes: “Women have complicated fears about money. They fear failure, or making mistakes. They fear they are expendable.”

 Because of this, women are twice as likely as men to set aside a secret stash of money. Two-thirds of the women surveyed said that the best thing about having money is the sense of security it brings.

Men might crave the power or status that comes with money. But women like the security. I am reminded of Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs. (Material below adapted from wikipedia).

In a famous paper from 1943, the psychologist proposed a theory that says as humans fulfill basic needs, they seek to satisfy increasingly “higher” needs.

Maslow studied people like Albert Einstein rather than the mentally ill because he wanted to study mental health and not illness. His work is exemplified in a pyramid with 5 levels. The base level is wide at the bottom, and like a pyramid, it gets smaller at the top.

He has 6 basic needs, and 2 growth needs. Starting at the bottom is physiological & safety needs. There are bodily needs like breathing, drinking, eating, sleeping. There are safety needs– physical security from violence, security of money, health, loved ones.

Next up are love & social needs– to have friends and family. Then esteem needs of respect, recognition. Then there are needs for intellectual stimulation and aesthetic appreciation. This is the idea that we need beauty in our lives for more fulfillment.

Then comes a whole new level: self-actualization and self-transcendence. This is the religious or spiritual realm. People who are self-actualized can be spontaneous, creative, problem solving, have a defined moral code, and have discernment, and an ability to try and see things objectively.

Self-transcendence is the top of the triangle. Maslow believed we could get to this stage via peak experiences as a way to achieve personal growth, integration, and fulfillment. I like to think this top of the pyramid is where we aim for when we aim for spiritual depth.

But the bag lady fears remind me how easy it is to get sucked into fear. We can easily let scarcity fears over rule our spiritual needs.

Anyone can wake up in a cold sweat, terrified that we are now forgotten and destitute. Each of us can have our own frightening vision of being wiped out financially, robbed of stability and security, and condemned to a life on the streets.

If it’s not financial fear, it could be another kind. Fear that we’ll lose our good health, fear of catastrophe, fear of failure, fear of discovery, fear of dependency, and so on.

The antidote is not a tighter grip on our possessions. It’s not a better vault for our secret stash of money. It’s not a fear-driven attitude that causes us to hold back, play it safe, distrust strangers, and close ourselves off to new life possibilities.

The way to awaken from the bag lady nightmare is to choose faith over fear. If we lose our job, we can find another. If our house burns down, we can build another. The answer to fear is faith. The path to peace and security is to practice generosity and hospitality.

This can mean:

•          opening our wallets when we are asked to support a local charity.

•          opening our homes to international students.

•          opening our car doors to homeless folk to drive them here to Eliot for our Room At The Inn program.

•          giving of ourselves in ways that have absolutely nothing to do with money.

A woman who gave up one of her kidneys to a stranger says: “A person can find 20 million reasons not to do something, but there is usually one reason that sticks with you as to why you should.”

So, what is it that you are to do? Where is the Spirit of Life at work in your life … right here, right now? What is the one thing that you should be doing to put your faith into action?

Each of us is being given an opportunity to trade a nightmare of scarcity for a dream of abundance. There are many examples of people of faith who have shown us how to do this– to move from anxiety to serenity, from a life with extra fear to a life with extra faith.

And not just people like Emerson & Thoreau, but even people right here in this room.

The particular path we follow will be different for each of us. It might mean cooking for the homeless here at Eliot. It might mean working on a Habitat for Humanity project. It might mean a host of different things. In your life, you can find opportunities.

The point is to practice hospitality and generosity, in line with what is truly happening in your life.

Today we celebrate the commitment of our new members– people who are trying to practice hospitality and generosity in a new way. You can see their names listed in your order of service.

They join other, longer termed members and friends who contribute time, talent, & treasure to support themselves and their families spiritually. And they help lead the mission of Eliot Chapel, a Unitarian Universalist Community, which gathers to foster free religious thought, nurture spiritual growth, and act for social justice.

You know, if you had run into some of these people on this printed insert 4 or 5 years ago, you could have run into them at church. Some of these folks have been associated with Eliot longer than I have but didn’t get around to joining– for one reason or another– until this last year. We’re glad to have them.

But the vast majority of these folks– if you would have run into them 4 or 5 years ago, you would never have had an inkling that they would make their way to Eliot and end up getting involved. You probably would not have been able to tell just by looking at them.

How do we recognize those folks out in the public square who might be looking for us but don’t know we exist? How do we recognize fellow potential UUs?

Imagine for a moment 2 full-face photos: One of George Bush, and one of Britney Spears. How do you tell them apart? You’re thinking, “Don’t be silly! Nobody’d ever take those two for look-alikes.”

True — for most of us. But for about one in every 50 people, distinguishing faces is difficult if not impossible. These people suffer from a documented disorder called prosopagnosia, but because that’s such a mouthful, it is often referred to as “face blindness.”

Cecilia Burman, age 38, can barely describe her mother’s face and struggles even to pick out her own face in photos. She continually loses friends because when they encounter her on the street, she doesn’t recognize them, and so she ignores them.

They conclude that she’s stuck up or too self-centered to say hello, but in fact, they look like strangers to her. Prosopagnosiacs can see eyes, noses and mouths as well as anybody else, but somehow they lack the ability to put it all together.

Gaylen Howard, a 40-year-old homemaker in Boulder, Colorado, says that when she is standing in front of a mirror in a crowded restroom, she has to contort her face to pick out which one is her.

There is no known cure, but most prosopagnosiacs– like people with poor vision– learn certain coping mechanisms. They looking at things like hairstyle, body shape or by sound cues.

To avoid appearing to snub friends, some sufferers try to look as though they are lost in thought while walking. Others act friendly either toward everyone or toward no one.

I wonder if that’s how we sometimes deal with people talking about their religion. They don’t necessarily know we’re a UU. They make some comment. And we look as though we are lost in thought or act friendly toward everyone or no one.

And while it is playing it safe to avoid talking about Unitarian Universalism or your own spirituality, it means you probably won’t recognize some people who could be soul friends.

If you won’t share your views, then you exclude the good news you have found.

It is easy to “pass” in the crowd, at the mall, in a restaurant. It is easy for other people to assume you are a fellow evangelical Christian. It is easy for other people to assume you support discrimination against gays and lesbians. It is easy because if you don’t say anything, you are probably passing as someone else.

The casual passerby will never know you don’t believe in the trinity, or that you affirm an inherent capacity for worth and dignity in every person.

Most UUs are theologically quite unlike the vast majority of the population, and we blend in so well, we don’t get noticed. That can be a good thing, it can let us cross a crowded room. But sometimes it is cowardly.

I’ll never forget a wedding rehearsal dinner party for my brother years ago. My brother was marrying a woman who came firmly from the Southern Baptist tradition. While my sister in law eventually became an Episcopalian, much of her extended family at the wedding party was Southern Baptist.

My step-mother’s mother was at the party. She was a little hard of hearing. Still is. Someone made a comment about the fact that there were people in America who didn’t believe in God. My step-mother’s mother, loudly pooh-poohed that idea.

To this day, and I’m not sure why I blurted it out– My dad is an atheist. And now the room– some 75 people dressed to the nines– quickly grew quiet. My step-mother’s mother asked: Jim, is that true?

And my father replied: Yes, it is. A moment, and then conversation resumed. I was very proud of my father at that moment.

It is easy to pass, to let other people make assumptions about you, but it is not always the best way to live out your values.

Sometimes, even when we recognize a co-religionist– well, let’s just say it can be difficult to be compassionate with each other.

Most of us are familiar with Jesus quoting Leviticus (19:18) when he says “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

Loving neighbors is often hard work, so it would seem that by comparison, merely loving our fellow church members should be a snap.

In some ways, it’s harder. Doing something compassionate for someone on the other side of the planet or reaching out to a person we see only occasionally doesn’t require great emotional investment.

But when it comes to members of our spiritual community, people whom we see up close and interact with frequently, it can be a different story. Just think how hard it can be simply to give the benefit of the doubt to certain members of our families who march to the beat of their own drummers.

One pastor tells of taking a team from his church in Ohio to work on homes of low-income families in a financially depressed part of eastern Kentucky. While they were fixing one home, a minister from a nearby church stopped by and thanked the Ohio team for the work they were doing in his community.

Then, in conversation with the pastor, he mentioned that some members of his own church also wanted to participate in work camps, but he’d found that he had to take them somewhere other than their home area.

“Around here,” he said, “everybody knows everybody else. When I propose fixing up the homes of some of our neighbors, people are reluctant, saying that that person doesn’t deserve it or doesn’t really need the help. But if I take them where they don’t know anybody, my folks will pitch right in and work hard.”

Sometimes it’s really hard to really love those close at hand. Since I’ve been here at Eliot, there have been some hurt feelings and misunderstandings between some of our lay leaders, past & present.

At our annual meeting today, there is an opportunity to affirm the work of a special task force which has managed to get a lot of people on the same page for the first time regarding our Bergfried property.

We need not believe alike to love alike, said Francis David, the Unitarian preacher, who founded the Unitarian Church of Transylvania.

Because religion and ethics matter to us, we will work up some passion. But it is equally important to develop a forgiving spirit and to be willing to make peace with those within the church who have hurt us.

That way we can build an earth made fair and all her people one. We can move forward through the ages, in unbroken line, move our faithful spirits, at the call divine.

Let us rise and sing, shall we? Forward Through the Ages, #114.