I want to thank all of you for graciously inviting me to be a part of this worship experience this morning. In particular, thanks to Mary Rothschild for issuing the invitation. I first met Mary a few years ago when I took her wonderful course in Women’s Studies at ASU called "Women’s Voices, Women’s Lives".

When I told someone at my church that I was speaking here today, she looked puzzled and asked: "What do you preach to Unitarian Universalists?" I replied: "Anything you want!" I am thrilled to have this opportunity. I have long admired the UU tradition as the epitome of tolerance -- a grand attempt to bring many names -- to explore, encompass and embrace sounds of many spiritual tongues. Religions are a lot like languages -- giving slightly different expression to the same underlying reality. Of course, tolerance and a love of diversity do not abound in most religions. As George Carlin said: "Those French people -- they’ve got a different word for everything!

About fifteen years ago I was blessed to be the pastor of a Methodist church that is particularly diverse. St John’s of Baltimore City was one of the first Sanctuary churches for Central American refugees on the East Coast. It is also a Reconciling Congregation which means that it takes a public stand in opposition to the official position of the United Methodist Church which says that the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teachings. I had the joy of performing several Holy Unions while I was the pastor there. It was a most interesting congregation to serve -- so far on the edge of Methodism it is in constant danger of falling off! One Sunday I had prepared what I thought was an inspirational message based on the beautiful passage in Deuteronomy about choosing life. But the lectionary or assigned scripture reading from the Gospels that day was Jesus’ teaching on divorce. So when both scriptures were read and I proceeded to preach on Deuteronomy, somebody stopped me and said, "Hey, you can’t get away with that. I think we should really examine that passage on divorce." Before I said another word, someone chimed in with "I don’t think Jesus ever said that!" and the spontaneous dialogue sermon began!!! But the best example of St. John’s truly liberal spirit was when the District Superintendent was coming for a visit one Sunday morning. We were having communion and assisting me was a Ph.D. student at Hopkins. Peter was a sociologist. He held the loaf and I the cup and as the folks filed by (including the superintendent), Peter said to each: "Some people believe this is the body of Christ."

Those were fun days, but periodically I needed to escape the din of the city -- my parsonage was a hundred year old row house -- three stories, five bedrooms -- perfect for a pastor, his wife and three kids. I was single at the time. The #27 bus stopped in my dining room before proceeding down St. Paul Street to the inner harbor. So every few months I would go to a monastery in the peaceful countryside near Berryville, Virgina. Often I would fast -- a wonderful spiritual discipline that results in a unique openness born of emptiness. It also produces a profound sense of connection -- on a gut level if you will -- with those who live with hunger as a constant state of being. And, from a practical standpoint, it frees up a lot of time -- time one would normally spend thinking about and dealing with food. So perhaps it was a combination of factors that resulted in the simple yet pivotal experience I had one morning. It was early March, but the ground had felt frozen solid under my feet each day as I walked in the morning and in the evening. On the last day, as I stepped out of my little hermitage and on to the ground, my foot sunk into the ground with the first thaw of spring. In that moment, I had the sensation that the essence of the universe is joy. It was just a fleeting glimpse, but it left a lasting impression. And it is why my soul resonates with the words of Eckardt Tolle in his recent book The Power of Now. In it he speaks of our addiction to the thinking mind. He writes:

"To be identified with your mind is to be trapped in time: the compulsion to live almost exclusively through memory and anticipation. This creates an endless preoccupation with past and future and an unwillingness to honor and acknowledge the present moment and allow it to be. The compulsion arises because the past gives you an identity and the future holds the promise of salvation, of fulfillment in whatever form. Both are illusions." -- Tolle, Practicing the Power of Now, p. 31

Tolle is not advocating disregard for the past or suggesting that we abdicate responsibility for our futures. The thinking mind, that works so efficiently in analyzing and planning, Tolle likens to a tool -- a tool that one picks up, uses as needed and then lays down again. It seems that most of us, most of the time, have our hot little fists in a white knuckled grip hammering everything to death: "Why did I say that!" "I can’t believe she did that!" "I should have, could have, would have..." "What if, what if, what if?"

Our consciousness is filled with this clamor. Replaying the past, rehearsing the future, we remain absent to the Now, which is, quite arguably, all there is:

"Have you ever experienced, done, thought or felt anything outside the Now? Do you think you ever will? Is it possible for anything to happen or be outside the Now? The answer is obvious, is it not? Nothing ever happened in the past; it happened in the Now. Nothing will ever happen in the future; it will happen in the Now. The essence of what I am saying here cannot be understood by the mind. The moment you grasp it, there is a shift in consciousness from mind to Being, from time to presence. Suddenly, everything feels alive, radiates energy, emanates Being." -- Tolle, Practicing the Power of Now, pp. 31-32.

We know that the category of time is culture specific. That is, the meaning of time varies from culture to culture. Toby and Fiona -- when you arrive back in the U.S. after a year in the Ivory Coast, don’t you experience the pace here as just staggering? Everyone is so BUSY! Somebody told me that the Chinese symbols for "busy" are "killing spirit."

In the U.S., if you’re walking down the street, (O.K., in the U.S. you’d be driving down the highway in your air conditioned SUV, but for the sake of argument, if you’re walking down the street) and you have a one o’clock appointment and it’s ten minutes of one and you run into a friend you haven’t seen in a while, what do you do? You exchange some quick pleasantries, explain that you are very sorry, but you have a one o’clock appointment, and off you go. In Latin America, same scenario, when you run into your friend, do you know what time it is? It’s not ten minutes of one. It’s time to greet your friend. It’s time to inquire about her children and her parents and her great aunt Elma and Aunt Elma’s pet parakeet, etc. It’s like the difference between chronos time and kairos time. Chronos: chronological, linear, tick-tock time. Kairos: the fullness of time, the kairos moment. It’s like the engineer mind and the artist mind. My engineer husband and I used to live at the base of the Superstition Mountains. One night, we walked out of our front door and the moon was just rising above the mountain. I gasped: "Look at that gorgeous full moon!" to which he replied: "Actually, it won’t be full for two more days."

I noticed on your web site that in a sermon back in April Lone made reference to one of my all-time favorite books: The Universe is a Green Dragon by Brian Swimme. Brian is actually a mathematician -- a mathematical cosmologist who is a research affiliate at the California Institute of Integral Studies where I happen to be enrolled in a program of study in the School of Consciousness. He believes that love is the activity of evoking being and enhancing life, and that this activity is basic to the entire universe:

"Drawn into existence by allurement, giving birth, then drawing others into existence -- this is the fundamental dynamism of the cosmos. In this we can see the meaning of human life and human work. The star’s own adventure captures the whole story. It is created out of the creations of the fireball, enters into its own intense creativity, and sends forth its works throughout the galaxy, enabling new orders of existence to emerge. It gives utterly everything to its task -- after its stupendous creativity, its life as a star is over in one vast explosion. But -- through the bestowal of its gifts -- elephants, rivers, eagles, ice jams, root beer floats, zebras, Elizabethan dramas, and the whole living Earth become possible. Love’s dynamism is cared into the principal being of the night sky." -- Swimme, The Universe is a Green Dragon, p. 58.

I recently sought the assistance of a 13 year old neighbor of mine for yardwork and babysitting. I had wanted to get to know these neighbors ever since I noticed a bumper sticker that says "Keep your laws off my body." I thought: "There’s a rare bird in South Tempe." So we’re walking over to my house and we’re talking about his school and Daniel says, "I think I’m the only kid in my class who believes in evolution." He said "Evolution" not "Easter bunny." And this is Tempe, 2002, not Tennessee, 1925. Public charter school. Very scary.

Steven Gould’s latest book is called: I Have Landed: The End of a Beginning in Natural History. It’s an excellent collection of essays that were published in Natural History magazine. One of the chapters is titled: "What does the Dreaded ‘E’ Word Mean, Anyway?" Evolution, from the Latin "evolvere" literally, "to unroll." Interestingly, as Gould points out, the word evolution does not even appear in Darwin’s famous work The Origin of Species published in 1859. But he does use the verbal form evolve as the very last word of the book:

"Whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved." -- Darwin, The Origin of Species.

Now, let me tell you what Brian Swimme says happened when the universe turned out humans. He understands human beings to be a self-reflexive part of the universe -- that part of the stardust able to consciously reflect on itself. Check this out:

"When we deepen our awareness of the simple truth that we are here through the creativity of the stars, we begin to feel fresh gratitude. When we reflect on the labor required for our life, reverence naturally wells up within us. Then, in the deepest regions of our hearts, we begin to embrace our own creativity. What we bestow on the world allows others to live in joy. Such a stupendous mystery! Think of it. This supreme dynamic of love, of allurement and evocation, in action since the beginning of the universe, after billions of years becomes aware of itself. Life-enhancing and being-evoking allurement knows itself, the magic of creating life and being now reflects upon its own mystery!" -- Swimme, The Universe is a Green Dragon, pp. 60-61.

Isn’t that brilliant? I did consult the Bible in preparing this sermon. Here, in the 12th Chapter of the Gospel of Luke, beginning at the 22nd verse:

"Jesus said to his disciples, 'Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing. And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? If then you are not able to do so small a thing as that, why do you worry about the rest? Consider the lilies: they neither dye their hair nor inject Botox between their eyebrows, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not adorned like one of these.'"

That last part was a paraphrase, but this is a direct quote from a fairly conservative Christian commentary: "The lilies do nothing to achieve their exquisite beauty." And about those to whom Jesus is preaching: "Their hectic running after food and drink itself produces anxiety and an inability to fully appreciate the moment at hand."

Do you feel the common ground beneath the Christian language and the language of Swimme and Tolle, and here’s Maya Angelou:

"We spend precious hours
Fearing the inevitable
It would be wise to use that time
Adoring our families
Cherishing our friends
And living our lives."

This being present to the Now, this embracing of the moment at hand...it is not only a matter of personal liberation from the relentless preoccupation of the thinking mind, freeing us for our own unique calling. It is, in fact, a matter of urgency -- a question of planetary survival. Pollution, war, oppression -- these are all outward expressions of an identification with the thinking mind. The constant striving to control, analyze, divide, accumulate, protect spring from the basic illusion that we are all separate, framented beings instead of the same, blessed stardust, scattered across the globe in myriad, magnificent forms.

If you believe in evolution, then you know that in the primate order there is astonishingly little genetic difference between the species. The chimpanzee and the human share something like over 98% of their genetic material. So is there an essential difference? Brian Swimme says, "Unique among the species, the human makes exploration, surprising discoveries, experimentation, and -- above all -- learning the central activities of life itself. This he calls "adventurous play" and says that the human form is like the child of the Earth. Do you know anyone more able to live fully in the moment than a child?

If you believe in evolution, then you know that it is still happening. We are evolving -- now. This morning we sang:

"Young, growing God, eager still to know,
Willing to be changed by what you’ve started
Quick to be delighted, singing as you go
Hail and hosanna, young, growing God"

- "Bring Many Names" by Brian Wren

I close with these words by Brian Swimme:

"Put your trust in the entire cosmic process. It has labored through twenty billion years; you are well-equipped for the job. Plunge into the work of living as surprise become aware of itself. You are the essence of surprise, the heart and core of play. Show yourself as truly as you can, and you will in that moment shine with the freedom and frolic and fecundity of creative play. Who can say? Perhaps all the other species are capable of profound playful exploration of relationships as well, only awaiting us to start the process. Perhaps the entire natural world is a tremendous party, a festival, and we the long awaited champagne." -- Swimme, The Universe is a Green Dragon, p.123.

Cheers, my friends. And blessed be!