Grammar and Spirituality

Hurrah for the Intransitive Verb!

First Delivered at the UU Church of Brevard

Sunday, September 13, 2009 

 

This particular sermon owes a huge debt of gratitude to the Rev. David Usher. In researching my topic I found a sermon he wrote and delivered in February 2009 that provided a terrific outline for what I wanted to say. He should receive due credit for the strengths of this sermon while I accept full responsibility for its flaws. His original sermon is Transitive or Intransitive? No copyright infringement is intended, I simply found his sermon structure brilliant and perfect for the task at hand.

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Just this past week I received a visit from two charming and very polite young men—Mormon missionaries making the annual trek through my neighborhood. I had every intention of ignoring the doorbell, not because of who they were as I have no difficulty whatsoever in speaking with missionaries, but rather because I had yet to shower, apply makeup or put on clothing that was not ripped and bleach stained. On the other hand, maybe that would be a good way to scare them off. Polite young men that they were, they didn’t even flinch at my appearance.

Not wishing to prolong their exposure to the heat, humidity and directly blazing sunlight, and earnestly needing to return to my housework and homeschooling endeavors, I greeted them with, “Hello, I’m a minister at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Melbourne, so you might not want to waste your time with me.” They were utterly undaunted. In fact, they appeared mildly fascinated and immediately asked me what Unitarians were and what we believed. It is situations like these that demand UUs keep on their toes. Remember that elevator speech I have encouraged you to be able to rattle off. Now is the time.

I trotted out my “Unitarian Universalism is a liberal religion with Judeo-Christian roots. It has no creed and requires no statement of faith for membership. It affirms the worth of human beings, advocates freedom of belief and the search for advancing truth, and tries to provide a warm, open, supportive community for people who believe that ethical living is the supreme witness of religion.” Say that ten times really fast. That should send them on their way, right?

“So ma’am. What are your beliefs about Jesus.”

Oh boy!

I responded, “Although there is a paucity of historical evidence, I am willing to give the benefit of the doubt and belief there probably was an itinerate Jewish rabbi in early first century Palestine who preached apocalyptic Judaism.”

 I received a relatively blank look as a response.

“He was a divinely inspired teacher of spiritual wisdom.”

Enlightened eyes greeted me with that one.

“Oh, so you don’t consider him the savior.”

Now we’re there.

“No, I don’t. But that’s because I don’t accept there is anything we particularly need saving from.”

Not inclined to follow that thread of conversation, the other elder asked me if I had read the Book of Mormon. I told him I had, which lead him to ask me what I thought of it. Now the first thought that occurred to me, I am very ashamed to admit, was exceptionally disrespectful. But instead of letting that roll off my tongue, I managed to bring forth my diplomatic side and simply told him that while I found it interesting, I did not experience it as personally compelling or spiritually enlightening. There are times a diplomatic truth is better than a gut reaction containing a needlessly pithy remark no matter how witty you think it may be.

He accepted my answer with grace, paused a moment…here it comes. “You do believe in God, don’t you?” There it is.

I told him that while there are numerous Unitarian Universalists who believe in God or indeed, in gods. You know the old joke. How many Gods to UUs believe in? One…more or less. I personally am a humanist and therefore, no, I do not believe in God as they probably envision the divine. I could see that rattling around the brain for a bit before the inevitable came out. “You’re a minister who doesn’t believe in God, right?”

“Yes.”

“You preach and lead worship services, right?”

“Yes.”

Here we go.

“If you don’t mind me asking, ma’am, why—I mean, what are you worshipping?”

And this is what brings me to spirituality and grammar. Hurrah for the intransitive verb!

For those who do hold an image of God as an entity, an actual being, indeed an anthropomorphized one, it makes perfect sense that worship would be a transitive verb requiring an object of worship or to whom worship is directed, especially if this conception of the divine brings to mind royalty. We are probably all familiar with the metaphor of God as a divine monarch. Handel’s Messiah reaches glorious heights when we sing of the “King of Kings.” When we imagine God as a king, we are not really thinking so much of constitutional monarchies, but absolute ones with the kind of power that is executed on a whim.

Well, maybe I shouldn’t have used the word executed. But that really is the type of decision-making we mean. When someone holds his life in your hands, you truly have something to fear. What is the response to such fear? Keep the king happy. Make sure he is confident of your every loyalty. Bring him gifts, tell him how wonderful he is. Definitely do not get on his bad side. The wisdom of the king’s decisions is not remotely relevant, only his unquestioned authority to make them matters. I don’t suppose anyone in here can imagine any contemporary examples of secular leaders wielding such unbridled power that craven sycophancy appears to be the only way advisors, reporters, and followers can survive. I'd be tempted to say more, but I don't want the IRS knocking on our door.

We don’t, or at least I hope we don’t, accept this as a justified approach to government. I would imagine most of us rest a bit uneasy at the thought of such unbridled power. When our Founding Fathers drafted our constitution they made sure we wouldn’t have either a king or even a branch of government that functioned as an absolute monarch. A king expects to be treated like a king and his subjects are required to treat him with all due respect, servitude and loyalty whether he deserves it or not.

As I have worked through my own personal spiritual journey, I increasingly found the metaphor of a Divine Monarch unpalatable. I grew uncomfortable with a celestial King with the omnipotence to determine my life at a whim. The prayers I was taught as a child began to sound childish in my ears and in my heart. I realized I was begging and whining. I found myself pleading with a jealous and tyrannical monarch who was supposed to love me unconditionally, but could just as easily put me in my place if I crossed the wrong line. Worship began to feel like appeasement to me, and I did not experience it as spiritually fulfilling at all.

The pattern of the worship services I attended as a child and young adult went something like this:

Let’s get the flattery out of the way. In the words of the immortal Rev. Geraldine Grainger, “God is Great, God is Good, God is King of the Neighborhood, Yeah God!” And we had the audacity to assume that God, being like us, is vain and haughty and appreciates such unadulterated fawning. He laps it up. Now that we’ve got him softened up we can get to the point. Stuff. We want stuff. We want that job we interviewed for, rain for the crops, our cousin’s tumor to shrink, and let’s face it. We want Aston Villa to beat the snot out of Birmingham City in the Brummie Derby. Well, maybe not everybody in this room. Maybe some of you are focused on the likes of the New England Patriots, New York Yankees or Chicago Bulls. But you know what I mean. For the record, while Aston Villa did not beat the snot out of Birmingham City this morning, they did win so I must assume God wears claret and blue.

I know full well I am stretching the point by describing God and worship in such irreverent terms and I truly hope I am not offending anyone with these pithy descriptions. However, I do believe it accurately reflects exactly how many people view worship, and I am being completely sincere in how I experienced worship myself—keeping God happy. Worship as reverence, appeasement and mediation. In this respect, worship is a transitive verb. It requires an object. Transitive verbs always take a direct object or a subject complement. In other words, they need words or phrases that receive the object of the action. The direct object always answers the question “What or “Who?”

            What or who is being worshipped? Answer, God.

            Most of you know I identify myself as a religious humanist, so clearly my understanding of God does not involve a Divine Monarch, or any sort of supernatural entity for that matter. My view of the divine is quite different and therefore, my view of worship is quite different.

One of the amusing things, that I personally find charming actually, about being a minister, is that when people find out what I do they immediately tell me whether or not they go to church. Those who do not attend church are quick to follow up with the affirmative assertion, and quite honestly I am sure, “but, I do believe in God.” The irony tickles me to say the least. They believe in God, but do not go to church while I do not believe in God, but do attend church. Which brings us full circle to the question I was asked earlier this week, “If you don’t mind me asking, ma’am, why—I mean, what are you worshipping?”

The young man was perfectly within his rights to ask me that question and I find it to be a perfectly valid question, if a grammatically illogical one. I too went through a period of attempting to determine what exactly I was worshipping and have had humanist friends challenge my use of what they consider religiously loaded sacramental language. You will notice in our order of service we do not begin with opening words, but rather a call to worship.  I think we are perfectly justified in doing so, because I consider worship an intransitive verb. Quite simply it’s a verb that does not take a direct object. For example, I can say that I sleep every night. I may sleep on a bed, in a bedroom, throughout the night, though not really, not at my age. I can sleep poorly or well. But those aren’t direct objects, they are prepositional phrases and adverbs to describe where and how I am sleeping. A few more examples of intransitive verbs are cough, arrive, leave, disappear, laugh, cry, and die.

My personal belief is that worship is at its most spiritually mature when it ceases be a transitive verb and becomes an intransitive one.

When I first conceived of this sermon I did what anyone would do in the Information Age, I Googled a variety of search strings on the topic. I stumbled upon a sermon that captured precisely what I had been attempting to put pen to paper. I will admit I experienced a conflicting emotional response. I was torn between disappointment to learn I had not had a novel idea after all, and experiencing great relief to have found an excellent resource. A little too excellent really since I found myself all but plagiarizing his work. With all due deference to a valued Unitarian colleague who does not know me from Adam’s house cat, I offer my apologies to the Reverend David Usher for nicking his work. I have used his structure shamelessly through a sizable portion of this sermon and would like to quote him directly now.

In an address given at the Unitarian congregation at Manchester College Oxford Society in February of this year, he said, “Worship is the act of reminding myself of values the world would otherwise make me forget. Worship is the act of spiritual discipline which, at its best and when it is most effective, keeps my soul healthy and alive. Keeping a soul healthy and alive requires work and attention. It does not just happen. Like other aspects of ourselves, if we want to be able to do something, we have to practice. We might have the potential to do something, but we have to practice.”

He makes a vital point. Worship is not something you engage in once and master. If that were the case, why bother with maintaining a congregation as the core of a vibrant religious community? Would it be necessary to do this week after week, year after year if all we had to do was experience worship once in a lifetime to gain its benefits and master its purpose? I know that Beckham did not become a world class footballer the first time he dribbled down a pitch. Yo Yo Ma did not master the cello the first time he drew his bow across his instrument. We certainly cannot become fluent in a second language by reading a single book.

What do you think would happen if I auditioned for the Brevard Symphony Orchestra, or you tried out for the Miami Dolphins? We’d be ill equipped to say the very least. Fools most definitely. So someone who does not regularly engage in worship should not be surprised when life throws up its unexpected challenges and he or she is unequipped with the spiritual resources necessary to cope. Worship is both an activity and an experience. Again, “Worship is the act of reminding myself of values the world would otherwise make me forget.”

Consider a few of the intransitive verbs I mentioned above. Sleep for example. I have to sleep for myself. No one can sleep for me, however much that might alleviate my need for more time in which to get things done. I have to be the one doing the sleeping. If I don’t sleep, I suffer the consequences. Then again, with my relationship responsibilities, I have a duty to be well rested for those who rely upon me doing my best and being a generally likeable person. I become rather inefficient and decidedly unlikeable when I’m short of sleep. Like sleep, no one can engage in worship on your behalf. You have to embrace that discipline and own that responsibility.

What about these intransitive verbs—laugh, cry, leave, arrive. These are all things we have to do ourselves. No one can laugh for us, cry on our behalf, leave in our stead or arrive in our place. Consider this as well. These are all activities that are far more meaningful when we share them with others. Sure we can watch a funny movie by ourselves and laugh uproariously. But doesn’t it feel different when we’re sharing hilarious memories and laughing among friends? There are times when we seek solitude to cry, but what about the need for comfort that can only be filled by another human being? It’s a lot easier to arrive somewhere new or leave a cherished place if we have someone else with whom to experience the transition. Worship is the same way. I think Rev. Usher might forgive me for altering his definition a little when I put it in the plural and say that worship is also the act of reminding ourselves of values the world would otherwise make us forget. It is an act of remembrance and provides us with a means of accessing the spirituality so needed by our souls. We Unitarian Universalists do not have ceremonies that are particularly resplendent with grandiose ritualism, but they are meaningful. Our services allow us to retreat from a daily routine, congregate communally, and indeed worship.

According to depth psychologist, Thomas Moore, our soul is the seat of our deepest emotions. It can benefit greatly from the gifts of a vivid spiritual life and can suffer when it is deprived of them. Unitarian Universalism is sometimes criticized for being too cerebral and not aesthetic enough, but:

Worship is intellectual. We have a responsibility to seek truth and meaning, but this must consist of beliefs which make sense. Your beliefs have to help you explain the world and your place in it or they will absolutely fail you in times of true crisis.

Worship is emotional. You must allow yourself the time, energy and freedom to express the full range of your emotional life, from fear and anger to relief and joy.

Worship is aesthetic. In worship we experience beauty. We dedicate ourselves to the appreciation of the wonder of creation—the glorious natural world in which we live and the boundless human creativity that is our shared potential.

Worship is relational. In worship we learn to trust and share that which we hold most dear with the people we cherish. We take what is sacredly private and make it communally public. We celebrate the presence of others. Others who are seeking, hurting, rejoicing, wondering, evaluating….

I could not conclude this sermon any better than Rev. Usher. He invited his congregation to consider what worship means to them and I invite you to do the same. What does worship mean to you? Do you approach worship as a transitive verb and consider it offering reverent honor and homage to a sacred personage or object regarded as sacred. Or do you regard worship as an intransitive verb where you place yourself in an assembly of the holy, and strive to develop a soul that is healthy, aware and fully alive—spiritually prepared to successfully deal with whatever life has to offer?

Ann Fuller, September 2009

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Further Discussion

Email: Why did you choose to pick on Mormon missionaries?

AF: As indicated in the sermon, I found these young men charming, polite and delightfully inquisitive. I chose this illustration to introduce the topic simply because it was the most recent conversation I had in which the question regarding worship arose. Their faith and mission is relevant because their role and the circumstances generated the dialogue.

Email: Unitarian Universalists too often fail when it comes to tolerance for other religions. You seem pretty harsh when it comes to Christianity.

AF: In the sermon, I do not criticize a religion. Rather, I propose a novel approach to a familiar spiritual practice, one that is found in not just Christianity, but a number of the world's major religions. It is my belief that worship as "an act of reminding ourselves of values the world would otherwise make us forget" is more spiritually efficacious than appeasement and supplication. Perhaps analogous to a Buddhist master suggesting a more effective approach to meditation.

Email: I was raised Methodist and became a UU when I was an adult. I consider myself a deist now. Trying to make myself be important to God while worrying I was insignificant to him was not a good feeling. You described exactly how I felt sitting in the pews growing up. Didn't realize I'd been worshipping intransitively since becoming a UU but it sure feels a lot better. Thanks for making me see that. (Not even sure what an intransitive verb was, so thanks for the grammar lesson too.)

AF: You are most welcome! Take a moment to read Rev. Usher's sermon linked above. You' will see this perspective is not unique to just us.

Email: You seem to suggest that only humanists and atheists are spiritually mature while theists are hopelessly immature. Doesn't that alienate the theists in our congregation?

AF: The wide spectrum of personal theologies does not preclude anyone from engaging in worship in the intransitive. Monotheists, pantheists, agnostics and atheists can easily worship together in the manner described in this sermon. A belief in a God or gods is  compatible with worship in the intransitive, however, I do believe it is difficult if the conception of God is one in which God is anthropomorphized as a tyrant. The irony here is that while I have suggested another way to regard worship, it in no way alters what our Unitarian Universalist congregation is already doing. We are engaging in intransitive worship every Sunday, we just haven't taken the time to give much consideration to what exactly we are doing.

Email: Loved your delivery! This text doesn't do it justice. Are you going to put a recording up on the website?

AF: Thank you. Sadly, we experienced a battery malfunction and only the first third of the sermon was recorded. I will try to find the time to produce a "studio" recording of the sermon or make sure it is recorded in a live presentation if I deliver it to another congregation.

Email: Don't you think your attempts at humor were insensitive and disrespectful to the millions of people who do worship God?

AF: Unfortunately, some people may receive it as such, but I do hope I was clear in the sermon that I was doing so to make a point and intended no offense. I feel no disrespect for anyone who is able to gain spiritual fulfillment through traditional worship practices, I simply am not one of them. I was sharing my view of worship and realize it is an unflattering description of a sacred spiritual practice. As I was sharing a personal perspective and being honest in my own appraisal of what I experienced, I have to let my description stand as is.

Email: I find myself worshipping both transitively and intransitively, though I can't say my reverence for the gods is placating them to make them happy so my life is easier. It's more an attitude of appreciation and wonder that life is here at all. A sense of gratitude. Does that make any sense?

AF: Absolutely. In fact, it reminds me of how a nun encouraged us to engage in prayer when I attended a Catholic youth retreat while in college. Her spirituality was rooted in gratitude and a feeling of union and mutual compassion with the divine. She most definitely did not consider it appropriate to fawn over God and ask for stuff. I could feel her bristling throughout much of the liturgy. I found her spiritual guidance among the most helpful during that period of my life.

Email: What in the world is apocalyptic Judaism?

AF: I am sympathetic to the scholarship of Bart D. Ehrman, an American New Testament scholar and textual critic of early Christianities.  He argues that Jesus can be best understood as a "first-century Jewish apocalypticist." Which means Jesus "fully expected that the history of the world as he knew it was going to come to a screeching halt and that God was going to overthrow the forces of evil in a cosmic act of judgment." Literally. I highly recommend Dr. Ehrman's books as he is easily accessible for those of us without a PhD in Greek and Latin. Our Brevard County library system has many of his books and he is widely available in bookstores and at Amazon.com.

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