Reading Our Lives

As I head north on Galisteo to my casita, sometimes several times a day, my attention is drawn to the small sign at the edge of the Unitarian Universalist Church campus. “My country is the world, and my religion is to do good.” Thomas Paine said that, and I like it. That was back in August and September, and I just assumed that it was a statement of what the UUC stands for and therefore permanent. When I returned to Santa Fe in mid October, I discovered that the sign had changed to words that ring equally true—“It is in our lives and not from our words that our religion must be read.” That’s Thomas Jefferson.

Recently while searching online at the downtown library, trying to find a DVD to check out, I dredged my mind for every popular film I could think of from the last few years, none of which I had seen during the theater run. As circumstance would have it, everything was either checked out, “in process” or some other state of being that I don’t recall. Finally, I went to the check out desk for the media department and asked, “Where are the DVDs shelved? Maybe I can find something there because every title I type in is unavailable.” Nothing caught my eye as I scanned the sparsely populated shelves. Then I spied Ken Burns’s piece on Thomas Jefferson.

A trip to the library isn’t necessary to find more information than you care to know about polar bears. The same is true, of course, for Thomas Jefferson. The internet—Wikipedia is my favorite—sits out there waiting to catch us up on the facts of our history that many of us have either forgotten, or maybe never really learned to begin with. I wonder how much a typical American with a high school diploma remembers about Thomas Jefferson. Although Jefferson was the third president of the United States, he chose not to include that accomplishment in an epitaph “written by him with an insistence that only his words and ‘not a word more’ be inscribed”:

HERE WAS BURIED THOMAS JEFFERSON
AUTHOR OF THE DECLARATION OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE
OF THE STATUTE OF VIRGINIA FOR RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
AND FATHER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA

According to Wikipedia, “when President John F. Kennedy welcomed forty-nine Nobel Prize winners to the White House in 1962 he said, ‘I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent and of human knowledge that has ever been gathered together at the White House—with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.’”[2] April 29, 1962 dinner honoring 49 Nobel Laureates (Simpson’s Contemporary Quotations, 1988, from Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: John F. Kennedy, 1962, p. 347).

Jefferson was raised in the Church of England, what became the Episcopal Church in the United States in 1789. However, he is generally known to have been a Deist. The religious philosophy of Deism derives the existence and nature of God from reason and personal experience, in contrast to theism, which characterizes Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and which relies on revelation in sacred scriptures or the testimony of other people.

According to Wikipedia, Jefferson was considered a polymath, the Greek term for a person with encyclopedic, broad, or varied knowledge or learning. Among his many talents and accomplishment are counted horticulturist, statesman, architect, archaeologist, paleontologist, author, inventor and founder of the University of Virginia. My head spins to consider that a single human being could be so gifted. What sticks in my mind today, though, and for the last two weeks since returning to Santa Fe, is that sign on the edge of the campus of the Unitarian Universalist Church, “It is in our lives and not from our words that our religion must be read.” And I can’t forget the words of Mr. Paine: “My country is the world, and my religion is to do good.”

Over the centuries wars have been fought, are being fought, lives lost or otherwise destroyed, all in the name of someone’s God. All we have to do today is click on cable TV, pick up a news magazine, spend time among the flock of our religion of choice, or listen to one of the politicians who boasts the God-given rights of his religion. We are likely to witness something elitist, separatist, judgmental or unfriendly in character. It might not happen in the pulpit, but it will happen. It might even be something as simple as failing to make a stranger or newcomer in church feel welcome.

As part of worship in the Episcopal Church, we exchange the Peace near the end of the liturgy. “God’s peace,” or “the peace of the Lord”, we say, extending our hand to our neighbor. Generally, people acknowledge those seated around them, but sometimes they make a special effort to move up the aisle, or to someone seated in another part of the sanctuary. In the small central Texas mission church where I worshiped for a few years recently, we pretty much made the rounds, shaking hands, but mostly hugging one another in God’s name. That was nice. What is more standard in larger churches though is a formal shaking of hands, except for those with whom you feel a particular closeness. It’s hugs for them. I’ve even heard people say that some don’t like the exchanging of the Peace. Maybe it’s too “new age”.

Last week I had a strange experience. I decided at the beginning of the week to make a calendar that included events at the church where I worship, including Morning Prayer on Friday. Seated and ready to participate, only three people present, the woman in charge welcomed me to St. Bede’s. I replied that I had been attending St. Bede’s for two months, sitting right across the aisle from her. As I recall, I had shaken her hand at least once during the Peace, maybe caught her eye and nodded my head as my lips moved, “God’s Peace”. I don’t think she knew what to say. It has been my experience at several churches over the last three years that people generally flock to their friends and family after the final hymn. At St. Bede’s, where I sit on the back row, and then stand to listen to the organist’s Postlude after worship ends, a few people have nodded at me, said “good morning” or offered their hand as they passed by. I’m still waiting for someone to come up to me and say, “would you like to have a cup of coffee?” Secretly, I think, “I am the new kid on the block”. Maybe someone is waiting for me to do the same. After all, it is God’s house, and it belongs to me as well, even if I am a stranger in a strange land. It is in what we do that our religion is read.

Reading Our Lives—Santa Fe, New Mexico (October 26, 2007)
R. Harold Hollis