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“Those Were The Days?”
Rev. Dr. Jim Culver
Sermon at UUSP on February 19, 2012
To the reader: This sermon was only part of a service of worship with many components working together,
all of which were designed to be experienced in a community context. In our "free pulpit" tradition, its
concepts are intended not as truths to receive, but as spurs to your own thought and faith.
RESPONSIVE READING
ONE: Nostalgia is a file that removes the rough edges from the good old days.
ALL: The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is a return
to the idealized past.
ONE: Nothing is more responsible for the good old days than a bad memory.
ALL: Sometimes when we recall the good old days, we’re really thinking of the
bad young days.
ONE: Enjoy yourself. These are the good old days you’re going to miss in the years
ahead.
ALL: Nostalgia is like a grammar lesson: you find the present tense, but the
past perfect.
ONE: I haven’t experienced my good old days yet.
ALL: If you're yearning for the good old days, just turn off the air conditioning
ONE: Who wants to live with one foot in the past just for the sake of nostalgia?
ALL: Our time is forever now!
READINGS
Our readings this morning speak to the good old days. Of our three
readings, the first two are printed in the programs.
The good old days were never that good, believe me. The good new days are today.
Our greatest songs are still unsung. ~ Hubert H. Humphrey
Old friends pass away, new friends appear. It is just like the days. An old day
passes, a new day arrives. The important thing is to make it meaningful: a meaningful
friend — or a meaningful day. ~ Dalai Lama
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Our third reading is actually the theme song “Those Were The Days”
from the 1970’s TV show All In The Family. Here to sing at UUSP this morning
are Edith and Archie Bunker.
BOY, THE WAY GLENN MILLER PLAYED,
SONGS THAT MADE THE HIT PARADE.
GUYS LIKE US WE HAD IT MADE. THOSE WERE THE DAYS.
AND YOU KNEW WHO YOU WERE THEN,
GIRLS WERE GIRLS AND MEN WERE MEN.
MISTER, WE COULD USE A MAN LIKE HERBERT HOOVER
AGAIN. DIDN’T NEED NO WELFARE STATES,
EVERYBODY PULLED HIS WEIGHT,
GEE, OUR OLD LASALLE RAN GREAT.
THOSE WERE THE DAYS.
SERMON
THIS MORNING’S THEMES
Those were the days? Why do we fondly recall events back in the day?
Was life truly better in the good old days of our country? Does our Unitarian
Universalist faith point to a better way to live than to cling to the past and strive
for the future? This morning, let’s briefly explore these questions together,
which will require examinations of our nation’s Founders, of gratitude, and of a
Buddhist element within our UU faith.
FOR OUR GUESTS
For our guests here today, please allow me a moment to provide a
framework on which to listen to this sermon shared by a minister who just
changed out of an Edith Bunker costume.
Here at UUSP, we accept - we
celebrate - that what we “know” is always partial and incomplete; and it will
always be. We know that the core teachings of all faiths hold much more in
common than their violent verbal and physical disagreements would indicate.
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This is why we Unitarian Universalists hold no creed of faith with which we all
must agree. We know that whatever creed we might come up with would
inevitably be inadequate. We understand that we are not weak and childlike,
incapable of rising up to meet the many challenges life brings. We have inherent
dignity and worth, qualities that naturally inspire us to speak our truth in love
and to assist the cause of justice. It helps us nurture and develop the potential
that life has given us. Not to give us the answers to life’s questions, but to give us
a loving community in which to follow our own conscience, help us come into
the integrity of our own answers. Not to protect us from the realities of suffering,
but to move us to engage problems and do our best to make a difference in the
world. Unitarian Universalism is a faith in the abundance of human potential to
create unique lives of wisdom derived from trusting our own deepest
experiences. So, with that framework, let’s do the work of today and ask, was
life truly better in the good old days?
WHY DO WE FONDLY RECALL EVENTS BACK IN THE DAY?
Why do we fondly recall events that happened back in the day? To begin
addressing that first question, here’s a quote that may resonate with many of us
here this morning.
Our youth today love luxury. They have bad manners and
contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love play in place of
exercise; they contradict their parents, gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers.
That quotation, from Socrates, was first spoken some 2,500 years ago.
Gutzon Borglum, the sculptor who created the Mount Rushmore
Memorial, was once asked if he considered his work perfect in detail. “Not yet,”
he replied. “The nose of Washington is an inch too long. It’s better that way,
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though. It’ll erode to be right in about 10,000 years.”
Memory tends to be like that. We erode the imperfections of the past into
a coherent whole, integrate even the difficult memories, and move forward. We
all do this. Even Socrates apparently fell into that trap. Oh for the good old days
of ancient Greece. We all have stories of ourselves and the events we
experienced that occurred back in the day. Our memories are built on these
stories that are part fact and part fiction. It’s not so much that we retrieve
memories. It’s more as though we reweave memories.
Memory remains one of the great mysteries of consciousness. How do
birds travel thousands of miles every year and apparently stop at the same
points each year on their trek? How do they remember? How do new
generations of birds know to continue the same route? When our Liz was
younger, she loved the Disney movie Finding Nemo. Do you remember Marlin
and Nemo the clownfish? After clownfish hatch, they spend 10 to 12 days in the
open sea, carried out by currents. They then attempt to miraculously find their
way back to the reefs where they were born. Scientists suggest that they sniff for
leaves that fall into the sea from rainforests near their coral reef homes. Memory
fills their senses and brings them home.
Do you ever find yourself somewhere and sense that you have been there
before but don’t know how you know? Or do you have moments of déjà vu and
wonder where in your memory the experience is coming from? I’ve always
chuckled at line that the White Queen says to Alice in Through the Looking
Glass, “It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards.” Maybe memory
doesn’t always work backwards. Maybe the point where memories collide in
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both past and future directions is called a dream. Dreams appear to be the brain’s
way of consolidating memories, of collating a complex and confusing
combination of experiences wherein people and places out of context are fitted
into imaginative future scenarios. Dreams and memories connect you to your
deeper self. Deep down you have a memory of who you are at your essence, an
essence that the anxieties and traumas of life have partially robbed from your
conscious mind. Within the context of this morning’s question, we admit that
memories remove the rough edges from the good old days. I love that line from
our earlier Responsive Reading…nostalgia is like a grammar lesson: you find the
present tense, but the past perfect.
WAS LIFE BETTER IN THE GOOD OLD DAYS OF OUR COUNTRY?
This was certainly true in the sitcom household of TV characters Edith and
Archie Bunker.
For the Bunkers, life was better in the good old days of our
country…whether this was due to their memories with the rough edges
removed or to Archie’s comedic inability to see beyond the end of his nose.
Those were the days…girls were girls and men were men…didn’t need no welfare
states….everybody pulled his weight. Some of All In The Family’s most hilarious
moments occurred during long monologues delivered by Archie in an attempt
to educate his liberal college educated son in law. In one favorite scene, Archie
pontificates that the Founding Fathers did not mean to write that all men were
created equal. They meant all white men were created equal. Unfortunately,
regarding the viewpoint of our country’s Founders, Archie Bunker was right.
Back in the day, our leaders of the 1770’s forged a nation that did not strive for
equality between then masters and slaves or whites and Native Americans.
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Archie Bunker himself would have been on the outside looking in, as the
creators of our Constitution also did not seek equality between the property
holders and the working class or poor. Further, half of the people in the colonies
were not even mentioned in the Declaration of Independence nor in the
Constitution. This 50% would have included Edith Bunker. The women of early
America were invisible.
DOES OUR FAITH POINT TO A BETTER WAY?
Does our Unitarian Universalist faith point to a better way to live than to
cling to past memories of the good old days? Does our unique brand of faith call us
to live in a manner that is both religious and socially just? As is the case with
most issues in our faith, the work is yours and yours alone to do for you. UUs
do not adhere to one common “how to” book. To break free of the chains of the
past without jumping into the anxieties of the future, you must live in the
present moment by tapping into your intuition, your own deepest personal
experiences
I believe that this is what Buddhist traditions refer to when we hear
phrases such as “I am here now doing dishes,” bringing into your everyday
experience a quality of depth, of flow. Be present. Live in this moment. Be now.
As Emily Dickenson wrote, “Forever is composed of nows.” Give up your
expectations and your desire to control, and surrender to this moment. This
behavior asks us to follow our own course, not patterned after memories or
histories. We have something in us, about us, what some call God and many
other names…our original nature. We’re born with that original nature, yet
accommodate to the patterns and habits of our family and country by creating a
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persona, a mask we show the world.
Yet even when we’ve grown up,
everything we do has a slight imprint of our original, unique nature and deeper
character.
For me and my understanding as a Unitarian Universalist, that force
comes from within, from your own deepest experiences. That force may be felt
as your intuition.
Reasoned knowledge proceeds one step at a time from
information that we’re consciously aware of, which is only a partial sampling of
our total knowledge. Intuitive knowledge proceeds from everything we know
and everything we’ve experienced and everything we are. It lives in a flash of a
moment and derives from our deepest sources of experience, which might
explain why we often have a feeling of certainty that accompanies intuitive
knowledge. So as the old saying reminds us, trust your gut. Trust that stream of
consciousness, that intuition that transports you fully into the present moment,
allowing you to be now and act now.
Sacred writings illustrate a diversity of opinion regarding the nature of
God. Maybe you picture God as a supernatural being who created the world
and then sent his only beloved Son to enter into that world. Or, maybe you
picture God as the Source of all Life, with every moment being a new creative
event. I’ll share my own personal viewpoint with you. Again, for our guests,
this is not UU doctrine, these are merely Jim’s thoughts… at the present. I
believe that life is a creative interchange, an unfolding, making all of us cocreators of our own lives. All beings and things are the image of all other beings
and all other things; all of creation reflects your essence back to you.
Our Unitarian Universalist faith points to being in the present moment as
a better way to live than to cling to past memories of the good old days. We’re the
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“Deeds Not Creeds” people. We “do”, knowing that our “being grounded in
the present moment” is a foundation upon which an authentic passion for social
activism can be built. Yet, how do we address those deeds, that social activism
through the filter of living in the present moment? Why would tapping into our
deepest intuition, our God Within, inspire us to form a deeper understanding of
why we do what we do? How do we, as the Dalai Lama wrote, make today
meaningful?
As hard as you may try to live an independent life and keep to yourself,
your actions inevitably impact others. And as much as we must do that inner
work which is ours and only ours to do, after creating that firm foundation we
must roll up our sleeves and do that outer work that calls us to unite with all
creation in loving compassion. This is the essence of our Unitarian Universalist
7th principle of an interconnected web of all existence.
It is not a new age
discovery; it’s a rediscovery of an ancient religious truth: our interconnected web
is not something we are called to create; it’s something we are called to recognize.
We are connected to each other in a social contract, or using Unitarian
Universalist language, a social covenant. We are called to live consciously, fully
present in the moment, recognizing that we are a part of an interconnected web
of all existence. That recognition calls us to work for those social justice causes
that resonate within us. Further, our Unitarian Universalist faith encourages us
to express gratitude. Rather than make our connection to each other a matter of
obligation, allow gratitude to unite your inner feeling of thankfulness for being
to your outer efforts toward making a difference in the world.
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Gratitude is that segue from your inner being to your outer doing, from
your God Within to your taking action, from being fully present in the now to
living consciously through social activism.
Gratitude helps us to appreciate
others and to see our life as an opportunity to pay this gratitude forward, rather
than basking in the memories of an embroidered past. Gratitude brings us back
to the web of life that supports our existence, our social covenant with all beings.
Gratitude asks us to take responsibility for the suffering of others and do what
we can to ease their suffering. At the same time, gratitude reminds us to
continue to reconnect with that deepest part of us, taking time to tap into our
intuition, our own deepest personal experiences, our God Within. The more you
make your unconscious mind conscious, the more connected and compassionate
you will be.
CODA
So, those were the days? Back in the day…in the good old days. No.
Realize that the present moment is all you have. Make NOW the primary focus
of your life. Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had
chosen it. Always work with it, not against it. The more you are focused on the
good old days, the more you miss the NOW, the most precious thing there is.
The past gives you an identity and the future holds the promise of fulfillment,
yet both are illusions. Be NOW. Change the first word of the song that we heard
Archie and Edith Bunker sing earlier…THESE are the days.
Transcend
embellished memories of life back in the day in the same manner in which our
Choir transcended music during that powerful musical message. Live NOW. As
our choir sang, our sense of purpose in this present moment both as a religious
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community and as individuals must be so strong that we “we ain’t got time to
die.” Our sense of joy in this present moment to do the work of infusing our
inner values into our daily reality must be so inspiring that we all join in singing
that “when we’re feeding the poor, when we’re healing the sick, when we’re
collecting food and clothing for migrant workers, when we’re marching for
those without equal rights, when we’re giving our all, we ain’t got time to die.” I
know that we’ll live in the present, doing this work with all beings in this
interconnected web for the same reasons we do all that we do, to bring Dignity,
Meaning, Worth and Joy to all our days. Waves of love.