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Sermons by Rev. Don W. Vaughn -Foerster

On Saying "Religious" Words that Mean Something
Rev. Don W. Vaughn -Foerster
Unitarian Universalist Church of Sarasota, FL
October 15, 2006

"Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee", the first hymn we sang this morning is, I think, one of the most beautiful and arousing pieces of religious music ever written. In its creation, Beethoven has done much to make religious meaning expressive for generations of people. But that's mostly true, today at least, about the music. As to the words, they tend to convey less and less meaning as the modern mind evolves in non-theistic, atheistic, degenderized directions.

However, there is poetic beauty to the words of this hymn. The concepts of "melting" sadness and being filled with "gladness" and "joy" and "triumphing" over strife can still be deeply meaningful to the person who believes existence to hold glorious mystery within it - as many (including even secularists and scientists) do. But many people no longer see real meaning in such words and phrases as "clouds of sin" or "immortal gladness" or in the anthropomorphic picture of divinity to which these words refer. The words of this hymn no longer symbolize reality for the modern mind. Rather than being taken for what they literally mean, the power of these words for many today depends upon their aesthetic appeal, the reminiscence they provoke, and the great music to which they are historically linked.

Actually, this is true of a good bit of our effort to express ourselves religiously. The words we use, the songs we sing, and the symbols we hold up tend to rely more on their emotional appeal and the reminiscences they arouse than on whether they say that which is truly in our minds and hearts.

As a result, we find it hard to communicate in religious terms. Even UUs find it hard. There are many words we use -- or refuse to use -- that exemplify this problem. There are red flag words that some of us think we have to use because they seem to get close to what we mean and no other words seem adequate. But, these are the words that either turn others off so that they will not hear what we mean or set them off on a harangue because they object to what they think we mean. Here are some: sin, sacred, soul; guilt, God, salvation; prayer, sacred, repentance; revelation, righteousness, transcendence. Here are some others: reason, self reliance, intellect; evolution, science, existentialism; agnosticism, atheism, humanism. All of these words (plus many others) turn someone off or set them off. You can make your own list.

And yet, without these words, the language left to us seems cold, impersonal, and empty. The problem isn't whether we mean what we say but whether we understand the tools with which we try to say what we mean. This problem is as old as human beings. A short verse by Sir Thomas Wyatt states this modern and ancient problem. In the early 1500s, Wyatt wrote:

Throughout the world if it were thought fair
Words enough a man shall find:
They be good cheap, they cost right nought,
Their substance is but only wind. .
But well to say and so to mean
That sweet accord is seldom seen.

What happens is that, along with the red flag words we use, too often what we say does not truly match what we mean and we end up speaking words that only buzz the air. You know what a buzzword is. It is when breath vibrates the vocal cords and a sound comes out without conveying any real meaning -- a word whose "substance is but only wind", as the poem puts it. A buzzword only sounds authoritative or technical or meaningful. Any of the words I've mentioned so far can be a buzzword if it is used to convey concepts that are still fuzzy in our minds. Sir Thomas Wyatt may have had such words in mind when he wrote his poem.

But beyond Wyatt's "well to say and so to mean" is another perhaps more insidious word usage, which occurs when we treat words as magical incantations. Some folks seem to think that simply saying some words makes them real. That mindset is quite like what once happened in a high school English class. The teacher was stressing the importance of a large vocabulary and said "Use a word ten times and it's yours for life." And, faintly from the back of the room came the sound of a young girl chanting: "Fred. Fred. Fred. Fred. Fred..." Too often in their minds, when people say God or resurrection or humanism or evolution, it's as if these words were the very things to which these words only refer. It's as if using them establishes as fact the existence of the things for which they stand. Magic.

Forgotten is something axiomatic about words and the things words represent. Most of us are quite aware of what I am about to say, but it is a reality that even the most rigorous and careful among us can forget in the heat of emotional encounter. It is this two point principle: a map is not the territory it depicts and a word is not the thing toward which it points. To treat the word itself as somehow sacred is to cut off its power to point to the reality for which it stands. For instance, to think that the word "God" not only stands for the profound essence of existence (whatever that may be) and/or the continuing creativity present in this world but also is, in some magical way, that essence or that creativity itself is to foreclose meaningful access to the reality of that essence or that creativity. And, further, to expect only the word "God" to be used to refer to that essence or creativity interferes with, if not devalues and demeans, other valid expressions pointing to that reality.

This makes the word "God" itself into its own idol. And, that is a main reason that many among us, although we acknowledge that reality toward which the word "God" may point, will not use that word because of its idolatrous effects. And not just "God" is at stake. I have heard people use the word "evolution" in much the same literalistic, idolatrous way.

In all this, where we are likely to get confused relates to the nature of the thing toward which a word may point. There are hard, tangible objects and actions that words represent. Say "table" and you bring to mind a hard, flat object. Say "run" and you clearly know to move quickly. But, say "faith" or "hope" or "spiritual" and what do these words bring to mind? Certainly nothing hard and flat - nor even physically active. Rather these are aspirations, or states of being, or motivating ideas. To give the words that represent them a sense of hard and tangible existence disengages us from the reality of our day-to-day world. It is to consign ourselves to a circular thinking that starts with fantasy and ends in fantasy. This is quite like the drunkard who asked a man for a dollar. "Why do you beg?" the man asked. "To get money for booze," the drunkard replied with unexpected honesty. "Why do you drink?" the man inquired again. "To give me courage to beg," came the answer. This circular process is not much different from praying for faith in order to have the faith to pray, as I once was instructed to do. It is not much different from the exclamation of the spiritually beset who plead, "I believe, help me in my unbelief."

The reality is that, even as there is wine for the wino, there is faith for the faithful. Having faith is what makes a person "faithful" in the first place and trying to attain to some dogmatic definition of faith can only frustrate and paralyze one's basic, spontaneous belief in life. Not that we cannot grow in a natural faith in life that we already have, but claiming lack of faith gives us nothing to start with and, actually, no place to go. It's quite like the drunk who begs in order to get booze and gets boozed in order to beg.

Linguists and philosophers have been trying to correct this kind of circular reasoning by making language more precise. This has been attempted largely by trying to make only factual statements - factual statements being thought in this instance to be the only statements that are true. On the level of our material life -- the level of relating to things that clearly can be demonstrated to be there -- this certainly makes sense. On the horizontal plane of life on which our science, mechanics, and economic life necessarily must proceed, this must be so. Otherwise we would once again be living daily lives immersed in fantasy and magic.

However, facts and hard data are not all there is to life. There is a depth dimension to our being - a dimension where our perception of who we are, what we are, and why we are depends on inexact figures of speech: metaphors that point beyond themselves to larger gestalts of meaning -- meanings that are larger than the horizontal sum of their parts. We tend to forget that the more precise our language becomes, the more of our subjective (our depth) experience of life is left out.

What I am talking about is that area of our selves that the theologian Paul Tillich has called our ultimate concern. This is actually our religious dimension and it is a dimension of depth that impinges on every human function and act. This dimension underlies (or transcends, if you prefer) each aspect of science, art, poetry, or daily life and unites them into a whole that, while it is beyond sense perception, touches us through our feelings and intuition. It is a dimension that opens up to us only as we respond with the full force of our being, only as we are able to focus on it with a care or a concern that makes it of ultimate worth and importance to us. Not to recognize this dimension does not argue against its existence; it only demonstrates more concern with tangibles than intangibles.

This religious dimension (this dimension of depth) when acknowledged helps us get our speaking straight. To admit this dimension and to be open to it enables us to see new levels of truth that speak to us through our poetry and through that indefinable gestalt which great drama, painting, and music produce. And, on occasion, it enables us to see truths in the awesome spectacle of an infinite, active universe that even the most prosaic of scientific speaking can not ignore. Carl Sagan and his "billions and billions" of stars come to mind.

The point of all this is that the way we use religious words, at times, leads to more misunderstanding than understanding - even in the sacred precincts of our secularized religion. Even we Unitarian Universalists sometimes try to give our words a concrete, tangible reality they do not possess or we expect saying the word to create that for which it stands. Often, we get into disagreement when we try collectively to focus our attention on those aspects of ourselves or of life in which we find depth and meaning. We get uptight depending on what word is used to signify such an act. For instance, the word "meditation" satisfies some, only the word "prayer" will do for others. "Ponder" or "reflect" are other favorites. Often missed in the process of debating these words is the likelihood that we are pointing to the same experience but only using different words with which to point.

This, essentially, is why I don't get particularly uptight over the traditional words in Easter cantatas or even many stately Jewish and Christian hymns. For me they are just the tools of metaphor. And metaphor is but a means of pointing to something real that is hard to say in any other way. It is by metaphor that the idea of the music of the spheres, which we can "hear" deep within ourselves, can be symbolized. It is by metaphor that the notions of sin and immortality can point to that dark side of existence for which we usually find only euphemistic words. It is by metaphor that the conviction that the human being is of profound worth and, in a profoundly worthful world, can be symbolized at the winter solstice by the metaphorical birth of a holy infant. Equally, it is by metaphor that the natural world can be seen as a proper support of human well being; and by metaphor, that the cosmos can be seen as a challenge to be and do the highest within us. It is by metaphor that we look into one another's eyes and see a world of sharing and mutual support. But, if I forget the metaphor and expect all this to be fact, I have forgotten the function of language and have lost myself in an effort to the make the map into the territory itself - to make the word into the thing. Or I have allowed someone else's fantasy to invade my mind and displace my reason. I have put myself in Humpty Dumpty's position by insisting that the words I use mean what I arbitrarily insist that they mean rather than possess a meaning on which the hearer and the listener concur.

A complete set of viable modern, nontraditional religious words and symbols on which there is general concurrence may not yet exist but we can still speak meaningfully about matters of deep religious significance. We can do so, if we keep in mind that the religious dimension is real - as real to our hearts and minds as the concrete physical world is to our hands and senses. We still have the power of metaphors to serve us. Metaphors today may not be as grand as medieval theology would like, but they are real tools, nonetheless.

So, how do we say religious words that mean something? We use the words we have -- whatever they are -- always remembering that they are only pointers toward our meaning, never allowing them to displace the substance of the message we want to convey. This means, of course, that, to speak religiously, we need to try hard to communicate with others not just from the penultimate pursuits of theories, proofs, and facts but also from the depth of our ultimate concern. If our words only stand for what we put into them, it should be no surprise that others will not know what we mean. We have to be sure that we are not expecting others to treat our verbal images as facts. We have to take the "buzz" and the "magic" out of our words so that others will hear meaning, not wind and fantasy.

Meditation

And now, let's share a few moments of silence, and reflect on the words of an ancient Chinese sage. He said, "There are some things that you can talk about, and some things that you appreciate with your heart. The more you talk, the further away you get from the meaning."

And another ancient sage said, "A bait is used to catch fish. When you have gotten the fish, you can forget about the bait. A rabbit trap is used to catch rabbits. When the rabbits are caught, you can forget about the trap. Words are used to express meaning, when you understand the meaning, you can forget about the words. Where can I find a person who forgets about words that we may talk?"

A question to ponder: How can our words be so clear in their meaning that, after the meaning is known, the words cease to matter?

Closing Words

Religion is not a special function of spiritual life, but is the dimension of depth in all of its functions - ethical, intellectual, aesthetic, emotional. To speak truly of religion (to speak true religious words) is to speak words which tell of our ethics, our knowledge, our art, and our feelings, but which tell more, too. It is to speak words, which also convey the seriousness, the ultimacy, and the depth of our being. Let us speak truly to one another. So may it be. (DV-F)