• Home
• Visitor center
  • Frequent questions
  • Social opportunities
• Sunday mornings
  • Upcoming Services
  • Announcements
  • Contact archive
  • Sermon archive
  • Music program
• Our church
  • UUCS Columnists
  • Church Calendar
  • Directions
  • Our Art Gallery
  • History of our
        Architecture
  • Brief History of our
        Congregation
  • Board Matters
  • Church Documents
• Our people
  • Minister and staff
  • Our current congregation
  • Board of trustees
  • Photo gallery
• Our groups
  • Chalice Groups
  • Committees
  • Social activities
  • Social justice
• Learning
  • Lifespan Education
  • Religious Education
  • Adult programs
  • Freethinkers
• About UU
  • Our principles
  • UU history
  • Famous Unitarians
• Contact us

Sermons by Rev. Don W. Vaughn-Foerster

The Sunday Pew and the Yellow Brick Road
Rev. Don W. Vaughn -Foerster
Unitarian Universalist Church of Sarasota, FL
January 14, 2007

How many of you came this morning expecting to hear a presentation on interpersonal relationships? I would ask how many stayed away because of that expectation but those folks are not here to tell us about it. Nor can they tell us whether they would be here if they had known I was going to talk about stuff from The Wizard of Oz in relation to what happens in Sunday services. It seems that the newsletter advertised this Sunday's topic and next Sunday's topic in reverse order. It seems I mixed up the dates.

There is, however, a silver lining in this cloud of communicative confusion; at least, there is for me. It demonstrates a bit of what I want to talk about today. It highlights the role of expectations and the way expectations may or may not be met on a given Sunday morning.

Regarding expectations, many of us arrive here hopefully expecting that what we may have experienced on TV, in news media, movies, family get-togethers, and especially in other religious settings will not happen here. Many of us have had enough of religious dogmatism. We have been turned off by the superficiality of gullible faith and maudlin sentimentality. The unctuous expression of interest in us (growing from someone else's feelings of guilt or inferiority) began to wear. We have become weary of demeaning prejudices and holier-than-thou judgmentalism. We have come to want something more real and near at hand than ostentatious preening before some emotionally postulated divinity. We need something more respectful of our personal integrity than arbitrary authoritarianism.

So, when we come into this room, we come with other expectations. Some of our expectations are unclear, but others are clear enough. We expect something to happen that will be meaningful to us - something perhaps even inspiring. We expect to see friends or to make new ones. We arrive here with at least a modicum of faith in good outcomes, or else we would not come.

We come here certainly expecting to find something different from the rest of the orthodox Christian or Jewish oriented community - or any other world religion community. If we are humanist, we expect something of a secularized approach to religion that emphasizes the human capacity to deal positively and effectively with life. If we are theist or Unitarian Christian, we expect a dedication to ethics and things of the spirit that helps us transcend day-to-day muddling through. If we are earth centered or nature centered, we expect to be enveloped by a deep respect for the infinite value of the web of life on this planet and of human participation in that web. If we are mystics or New Agers we expect openness toward our new efforts at a transcendental spirituality that meld oriental and occidental approaches to religion.

And, in most UU congregations, nowadays, we find all these things, although in different emphases and varying proportions. But this is getting to what I want to talk about today. What we quite often find is something of a mix-master approach to religion - an approach that is more of a mushed together smorgasbord than a balanced meal. We come with sincere expectations that, in many ways, are rewarded - if we can sort out that which applies to us personally from the religious amalgam that is often slanted away from us in subtle ways. However, this is a trick that only an accomplished "smorgasbord-ian" can bring off - to create a new term for the determned "diversit-arian."

This morning I will not attempt to a thoroughgoing treatise on the nature and content of worship and the celebration of life. There are too many philosophical and theological factors and too much to know about the psychological dynamics of how elements of the service may be fitted together for desired outcomes. Besides, I doubt that you want me to identify a series of alternative liturgies and how religious liberals may use them. However, I do want to highlight some aspects of what we, individually, expect when we come here on Sunday morning.

To do this, I want to approach the subject from the standpoint of temperament. When I say "temperament" I am speaking of our emotional mode of response - our habitual inclinations, the mindsets with which we encounter one another. Since Plato (and before), human beings have been thought to be of four basic kinds: the artistic, the sensible, the intuitive, and the reasoning, to use Plato's designations. Today we can draw on the Myers-Briggs Type Inventory (the MBTI), which identifies sixteen possible personality types, four of which seem to be basic, giving the nod to such luminaries as Ezekiel, Hippocrates, Aristotle, Iranaeus, Galen, and Paracelsus who, also, divided people into four different types. The way these four types are designated has changed over the years but a prominent current nomenclature is: Rational, Idealist, Artisan, and Guardian. [I find them at least as reliable as astrological terminology. But to be honest, they have undergone considerable testing in psychological circles and surely should be more reliable.]

None of these four types has only its own characteristics, which it does not share with the others. What is significant is the way they individually place emphasis on certain characteristics that make them distinct. Please remember that I'm not talking about the content of ideas but only about the way we pursue ideas. For instance, if you are an Idealist, you tend to think in terms of what is possible and to try to do what's right. If you are a Rational, you tend to think in terms of what is possible but strive to do what works. If you are a Guardian, you tend to affirm the present situation of what is and, in the name of what's right, to do whatever protects the present situation. And, if you are an Artisan, you tend to recognize what is the present situation but, rather than try to protect the present situation, you try to do what works.

The Idealists speak of what they hope for and imagine might be, and they want to act in good conscience, always trying to reach their goals without compromising their personal code of ethics. Jesus was probably an Idealist. The Rationals speak of what they want to learn and plan to accomplish and they act as efficiently as possible to achieve their objectives, brushing aside rules and conventions, if need be. Buddha was probably a Rational. The Guardians speak of what they can keep an eye on and take good care of, and in getting things done they're careful to obey the laws, follow the rules, and respect the rights of others. Moses and Confucius were probably Guardians. The Artisans speak of what they can see right in front of them and can get their hands on, and they're willing to do whatever gives them a quick, effective payoff, even if they have to bend the rules. Mohammed and St. Frances (and James Bond) were probably Artisans.

An easier and more entertaining way to keep these different types straight is to match them to the four central characters in The Wizard of Oz. Surely everybody knows this story; it has been around since the early 20th century in either book or movie form. These four, Dorothy (a tornadic refugee from Kansas), the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion all set out on a yellow brick road that is to lead them to their heart's desire. (This sounds like what people expect when they go to a Sunday service, doesn't it?) Dorothy was trying to return to the security of her lost home situation. The Scarecrow wanted to attain the ability to think which he only thought he didn't have. The Tin Man, suffering from rust and feeling nobody cared, wanted to be able to care for himself and others. The Cowardly Lion feared he had lost his courage because it made him nervous to do courageous things. If you are a Guardian type, you approach the yellow brick road to Sunday service like Dorothy looking for a home; if you're a Rational type, like the Scarecrow trying to discover his mind; if you're an Idealist type, like the Tin Man seeking to find a way to bring love and empathy into the world; and, if you're an Artisan, like the Cowardly lion, looking for the courage to respond imaginatively to the needs of the present situation.

The helpful thing about looking at human beings through the eyes of such a typology is how it underlines how much we have in common but use differently. After all, each of these characters, in varying degrees, possessed the characteristics the others sought. It also points to the root of many of our interpersonal difficulties inasmuch as what we do differently distorts our view of what we have in common. It also helps us understand that what we most earnestly seek is usually something we already have, if we will only acknowledge it. But what does this mean for our Sunday services function? How does it illuminate the dangers of a mix-master approach to religion - the dangers of creating a mushed-together smorgasbord (or an indiscriminate goulash) rather than a balanced meal?

First off, it should disabuse us of the idea that there is such a thing as a perfectly balanced Sunday service. Such a thing may exist in the minds of any one of the four types. It is only natural that an Artisan would believe the most important thing about the service is to encourage good feelings and to stimulate the imagination. And, it is only natural for a Guardian to believe that the most important thing is to protect the way things are so they will not disintegrate and swirl us somewhere over the rainbow. For the Idealist, building the service around what is hoped for would be natural, as it would be natural for a Rational to center on intellectual analysis and the pragmatic - as, you may have noticed, I tend to do.

For any one of these approaches to predominate is to place the others in an emotionally subordinate position. And being subordinated, these others are subtly reminded of their relative unimportance in the overall scheme of things. To be placed in a subordinate position is, ultimately, to begin to believe that one is not valued, no matter how much one is verbally assured to the contrary. (We do believe in diversity, don't we?!) In our guts, the proof is in the pudding. Either we get our fair share, or we don't. Either our approach to religion and life is given its deserved place in the spotlight or it isn't. If our conception of that good which we seek on Sunday is in the generation of warm feelings and the service is slanted toward what we take to be arid intellectualism, we may wonder why we came. If, on the other hand, the good we seek lies in increasing our knowledge and ascertaining new truths and the service seems slanted toward doing the good works of social justice and community building or toward expressing the good through art and song and poetry as the higher values, we, equally, may feel ourselves out of place. It's not so much what is done as how it is done.

The point is that it is the agenda of the planners and the conducters of the service that shape these relationships. It is inevitable that, whenever one follows one's own natural inclinations of what is worthy of celebrating or worthy of worship, a kind of emotional tokenism easily occurs and, to outside, differing observers, the heart of the congregation itself seems slanted. That people whose tokens have been displayed oftentimes disappear can be explained to some extent by this phenomenon. These folks have been allowed to walk the yellow brick road, of course, but to the side and a few steps back.

The issue is what can be done to accommodate such a diversity of points of view and expectations without violating the integrity of the commonly agreed upon point of view of the larger body. Will the problem be solved by having an Idealist/Tin Man oriented service once a month, to be followed on subsequent Sundays by services oriented around the Artisan/Lion, and then the Rational/Scarecrow, and then the Guardian/Dorothy? Perhaps this would work for a while if someone of each type, who understands liturgical dynamics, would set the tone for such services. Actually, such arrangements tend to dwindle away as the planners change or become tired and distracted. I think a better approach is for those with responsibility for creating the Sunday service to pay close attention to what they are really trying to convey in relation to the context of emotional and personality diversity in which they find themselves. My experience as a Rational/Scarecrow type is that anyone, who is empathetic enough to grasp what a differing person's religious agenda is and how it is held, can find ways to bring that agenda into focus in a Sunday service. Usually, all it takes is to know that there are differences in emphasis, then to know what these differences are, and then to set about empathetically highlighting these emphases on Sunday, asking help when needed. After all, a fully developed Sunday service will, at some point, speak to the head, the heart, the hand, and the will to survive. That is, there will be something valid for the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, the Cowardly Lion, and Dorothy.

Perhaps what I am outlining this morning seems too far out in left field to be of practical use. Perhaps it doesn't seem necessary. Perhaps it seems that all I am describing is the inevitable tendency of a congregation to develop its own personality, its own type, its own feeling tone and that this is not only inevitable but good. After all, we cannot be all things to all people.

However, this issue of truly accommodating a diversity of emphases on Sunday morning is of primary importance. Perhaps it wouldn't be if we didn't proclaim so loudly to the world how important to us diversity is. It, I suspect, is one of the biggest factors in Unitarian Universalism staying at such a low numerical membership (somewhere around 260,000 members nationally at this time). At root, the difficulty has to do not with our pride in our diversity but with our casual commitment actually to express diversity on Sunday morning, especially when diversity makes us feel uncomfortable.

But, the reality is that our Sunday morning is quite like a yellow brick road leading, we hope, to our heart's desire. And we are traveling it together. When it successfully leads us where we want to go, we find within ourselves the very human qualities that we seek. The great goal of a Unitarian Universalist congregation is for everyone to walk abreast. It's time we realized that it is not just the goal that is important but also how we pursue that goal. The capacity to understand this is important in those who would lead us into the future.

Reflections
May we be aware that the primary problem, not just for UUs but for the world itself, is how to express diversity without conflict and without estranging one another. In this world, beset by contradictory black and white ideals and ideologies, this seems to be, at times, an impossible task; but, although just wanting it to happen may not make it happen, wanting it encourages us to respect others. And since it is a lack of respect that leads us to demean and dismiss one another, let us begin by wanting and respecting. So may it be.

A Tribute: Martin Luther King, Jr.

By Rev. Don W. Vaughn-Foerster
January 15, 2007

Tomorrow is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. It is good that this country takes a time every year to remember Martin Luther King, Jr. He stands as clearly as anyone ever has for the words in the Declaration of Independence that declare: "All men are created equal."

His life was a great and tragic example of what happens when a person truly believes and acts according to those words and tries to get others to do the same. He suffered the fate of those who make others see their human frailties so clearly that they must destroy the messenger rather than deal with the message. His effect was dramatic in his day and continues to have effect into our own, for people, who believe in people, remember the cogency of his words and the power of his ideas in this world that reacts so unwillingly to calls to justice and compassion.

We all have opportunities almost every day to stand for that which is most human about the human being. But few persons are given the dramatic opportunity that Martin Luther King, Jr. was given. Nor can many of us stand up to that opportunity so well. There was something more directed and more focused about the way King lived up to the challenge than most of us can manage. It is well that we remember him as a person who was able to manifest so clearly and powerfully that which is latent in us all.

In these tumultuous times, when our country seems to be slipping steadily away from the grand ideals of the Declaration of Independence, we seem vainly to be hungering for a person of the power and stature of a Martin Luther King, Jr. to focus us toward a greater conception of civil life - of humane life - than we collectively are managing. But then, the reason King was so powerful is because he was able to awaken in many people the simple humanity on which human society is built. That humanity is still within us. Tomorrow, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day should remind us that this is so and give us heart to face -- and surmount to some extent - the ills that are foisted on us and that we foist on one another.