WITH FEAR AND TREMBLING: REFLECTIONS ON FAITH
February 14, 2002The Reverend Anne Felton Hines
Not too long ago, I found myself engaged in a lively conversation with my daughter, my brother and my sister-in-law; we were talking about God and Faith. I was the only Unitarian Universalist in the group, and certainly the one with the least sure "faith" in God; my brother and sister-in-law are very involved Episcopalians, and my daughter simply identifies herself as "Christian." The conversation went on past everyone's bedtime, with each of us wrestling not only with the existence of a God, but with the impact — if any -- on our lives of such a God.
Finally my brother turned to me and said, "It is true: There is no proof whether God exists or not, and one can lead a perfectly good and righteous life without that belief. But I can guarantee you that it was his faith in God that allowed Nelson Mandela to sit in prison for 27 years in South Africa, and feel no bitterness towards his captors when he was finally released."
As I recall, I became a bit defensive. "I know atheists who have been imprisoned for their political beliefs, and haven't developed bitterness," I said. My daughter turned to me calmly and said, "After 27 years?" The truth was, I couldn't come up with any example as dramatic and inspiring as that of Mandela. Indeed, all of the people who serve as models for me of perseverance and hope — Martin Luther King, Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, Sr. Helen Prejean, Elie Weisel — have had a faith in something larger than themselves that kept them from giving up, or wallowing in bitterness.
So what is it in which we put our faith — we who for the most part have discarded the all-powerful patriarchal god of our childhood? What is it that keeps us going during times of great personal challenge? What helps us avoid despair or bitterness in the long struggle for peace and justice?
In my description of today's service for your newsletter, I quoted Archie Bunker as saying, "Faith is when you believe in something that nobody in their right mind would believe in!" For many of us, that statement may have been the only time we were able to identify with Archie at all. For when many of us think of Faith, we imagine something that is embraced unquestionably without first being held up to the test of critical thought, or the light of one's own experience.
Too often, "faith" is attributed to the religious fundamentalists, who believe everything recorded in their Holy Book without question, and who will even go to war, or blow up themselves and others, to defend it. Or "faith" is referenced by someone choosing to remain with an abusive spouse or partner, citing their "faith" in God's Will, or in their partner's love and ability to change. Such a "faith" as those are usually a "blind faith," built more on ignorance, fear, or lack of self-love.
But the Protestant theologian Paul Tillich defined Faith as "participation in the subject of one's ultimate concern, with one's whole being." According to that definition, suggests Tillich, even Humanism would imply faith, for Humanism participates fully in its Ultimate Concern of the human predicament; it sees humanity as the manifesta-tion of the Divine — though most Humanists today might not use that language. In this way, Humanism requires as much faith — some would say more — as Judaism, Christianity, Islam or any other religious tradition.
I was raised in the Episcopal Church, and attended it regularly until college. I put my faith unquestionably in a fatherly God, and in Jesus as God's incarnation. When, as a young adult, I discarded that faith, I also discarded the notion that faith in anything was important. It was no longer an issue for me.
However, when I entered Seminary, and began taking my spiritual life a bit more seriously, I found myself doubting my disbelief. As I became introduced not only to theologians, but people of faith who were poets and activists as well, my images of God began expanding beyond the traditional male, all-powerful God, into a God (or Goddess) of acceptance, love, and even vulnerability.
But when I graduated from Seminary and began my ministry, I found myself too caught up in the daily tasks of parish life to give much attention to my spiritual life. And then in 1989, I went on a short Sabbatical to Pendle Hill, a Quaker retreat center in Pennsylvania. I took lots of books with me — books by Tillich, Buber, Emerson, even St. Augustine; my intent was to develop some understanding of God once and for all. My friends smiled; they said, "You can't understand God through books; you have to experience God." But I was insistent; my books gave me comfort and hope. Surely if these brilliant men could put their faith in a God, couldn't I? Wouldn't they show me the way?
And so I would sit up in my room at the retreat center, surrounded by these books, reading, underlining, making notes in the margins. And I would talk to other retreatants and staff members: Did they believe in God? And if so, what did they mean by that?
It was about half-way through my time at Pendle Hill that I had a very strange dream one night — a dream I had had several times while a Seminary student years earlier. In this dream, I was confronted with a door opening very slowly. I couldn't go through the door, or even see what was behind it. I could only observe around the edges, or sense, a very ominous, bright light. I awoke in utter terror, though I could not name what it was that frightened me so. And then the words of the apostle Paul in his letter to the Phillipians came to me: "Work our your faith with fear and trembling, for God is at work within you."
"Work out your faith with fear and trembling."
I realized that the times I had experienced this dream had always been when I was attempting to work out my faith; and yes, it is at such times that something is working within us — something that seems to have a life of its own, and that compels us onward. We may name this "something" God, or Love, or the Creative Force; or as Tillich called it, our "Ultimate Concern." Or we may choose to call it nothing at all. But if we take it seriously, we find that the power of it is bigger than our mere self, and that the work we do will most likely confront us with discomfort-even terror.
In his study of the stages of faith development, James Fowler describes the more highly-evolved stages as a verb, as meaning-making. He teaches us that faith has to do with what we trust, pointing out that the word "credo," which we usually translate to mean "I believe," actually means, "I trust." Belief, he suggests, is of the mind; faith and trust are of the heart. It is what we embrace fully, with awe, humility and passion. Archie Bunker may have been right, then, when he said we can't be in our right mind to have faith; but we do need to be in our right heart.
My Pendle Hill friends weren't entirely correct when they said I couldn't understand God through books; the books did help me in my quest. But it wasn't until I put away the words of the theologians, and began noticing the works of creation around me — that I began to understand the theologians' words. Ultimately, it's what we experience by listening to the silence — to the "still, small voice" within of us — that we discover what it is we trust.
The author Taylor Branch tells a story about Martin Luther King, Jr. after he'd received a threatening phone call in the middle of the night, early in the Montgomery Bus Boycott. He went into his kitchen and sat, feeling alone, and ready to give up. Apparently out loud, he prayed, saying, "I've come to a point where I can't face it alone." And from deep inside him came the words, "Stand up for justice; do what you believe is right." Taylor Branch tells us that, "The moment lacked the splendor of a vision or of a voice speaking out loud. But the moment awakened and confirmed his belief that the essence of faith is not some grand metaphysical idea, but something personal, grounded in experience — something that opens up mysteriously beyond the predicaments of human beings in their frailest and noblest moments."
Dr. King experienced a deepening of his faith in that hour when he'd begun most to doubt and to despair. Allowing such doubt to enter added depth and commitment to his faith. Tillich asserts that the faith with doubt is a faith which accepts life's insecurity, taking that insecurity into itself as an act of courage. Indeed, Anglican priest Kenneth Leech suggests that, "True faith can only grow and mature if it includes elements of paradox and creative doubt." That is what happened to Dr. King as he prayed to his God.
It was faith, really, which allowed me to go through with some major back surgery about 12 years ago — soon after my Pendle Hill retreat -- where doctors fused my spine and attached a steel rod to it. I'd done all the research on it I could, getting several medical opinions and talking with other people who had gone through the same procedure; I even persuaded my surgeons to use a different kind of rod than they'd planned to use. I knew that there was a small possibility I could die, as there is with any surgery, but that there was a greater chance I could end up paralyzed; this was surgery on my spine, after all.
As the time grew nearer, I wrestled with my growing fear. I could not put my faith in some powerful God that might choose to save me but not others. And while I had great faith in my doctors' abilities and their desire to make this work, I knew they weren't invincible — I knew things could go horribly wrong. Did I have a faith in anything that could give me the courage I needed to go through with this surgery?
And then I read an article about the cellist Yo Yo Ma, who, it turns out, had had the same surgery when he was in his 20s. He, too, had wrestled with the possibility of paralysis, and as a way of coping with his fear, he developed a list of other meaningful activities he could still do if paralysis resulted. While the performance of beautiful music was his deepest love, he knew it did not define him completely, and therefore, neither would paralysis.
And so I began looking at my options; and what the experience became was a hard look at what I trusted in life — in what I put my faith. Ultimately, it came down to several things:
I had faith in the fact that my life had been good and well-lived; that while death was not a desirable outcome, it nevertheless would not have meant a wasted life.
I had faith in the presence of Love in my life —— from family, friends, and from my congregation. I knew that that love would continue, no matter what happened.
And finally, as with Yo Yo Ma, I had faith in myself, and in my ability to grow beyond any immediate crisis, with the help of companions along the way. I could not have faced the surgery — or healed so quickly, I believe — without this faith, and without my circle of support.
This doesn't mean that had the surgery been unsuccessful, I wouldn't have grieved, expressed outrage, wallowed in despair and self-pity; I'm really good at that! But had I stayed there, then I'd have to question whether my statements of faith had been truly authentic — whether I had listened with my heart — as well as my mind — to that "still, small voice" within me.
Unitarian Universalism calls us to a "free and responsible search forÉmeaning." It calls us to take seriously our faith development — to wrestle with issues of ultimate concern, and to name that which we most deeply trust in our lives, and in the universe. For naming that in which we put our faith — be that some transcendent Other, or human beings, or love — provides us not only with comfort, but with courage and strength as well. It is, in the words of UU minister Daniel Hotchkiss, the "vision that becomes our principle for action."
It was faith in something larger than themselves that propelled early Uni-tarians and Universalists, such as Faustus Socinus, Michael Servetus and George deBenneville, to persevere with their religious ideals, despite sometimes the threat of death. It was faith in something larger than herself that propelled Clara Barton to go into the battlefields of the Civil War to care for wounded soldiers. It was faith in something larger than himself that propelled Theodore Parker to hide slaves in the basement of his church, even protecting them with a gun kept in his desk. And it is faith in something larger than our individual selves which propels us toward courage in times of adversity, and healing in times of personal loss. This "something larger" does not need to be called God — but it does go deeper than simple luck.
We face a difficult world these days. Not only is it filled with violence, hatreds, and tragedies that tear us apart; but personal sorrows haunt us and those we love as well; they are a part of being alive. It behooves us, therefore, to wrestle with questions of where we put our faith — our trust — lest we fall into despair or cynicism, and remain there.
My faith development continues to evolve, probably in ways of which I'm not even aware, and with many bumps and glitches. But for today, I put my faith in that kernel of goodness with which I believe each person is born, and which we strive to manifest throughout our lifetimes.
For today, I put my faith in a Universal Breath or Spirit which binds all people to one another, as well as to Creation, in one intricate and magnificent web. More and more, I put my faith in a Presence — that God of my meager under-standing — both male and female -- which urges me to integrity, offers me sudden glimpses of truth, and with which I am co-creator of the future.
I put my faith in the power of human love — a spirit that is alive and manifested during times of great joy as well as times of intense sorrow. That Love never dies.
And finally, I put my faith in you and in me; in our ability to make wise choices; to care for and comfort one another within our religious communities and beyond; and in our commitment to making a difference in the world -- to transcending narrow visions and creating a world that is just, and free, and life-affirming.
My faith may change over time. But for today, it guides me and gives me strength; it is what pushes me to work for justice; it is what reminds me to keep my heart open to forgiveness and reconciliation.
I look forward, over the next few days — and hopefully months and years — to learning what it is you put your faith — your trust — in. Indeed, my hope is that together, as a religious community, we will continue to work out our faith, with fear and trembling, with joy and gratitude; for Love, and the Holy Breath of the Universe, is at work within us.
© 2004 Anne Felton Hines. All rights reserved.
