Storied Selves
I have to begin by telling you a story.
It’s a true story about two farmers, two men. It’s December, 1945. The farmers lived in Egypt and on this particular day were less than 10 miles from the city called Nag Hammadi, which sits on the west bank of the Nile in upper Egypt.
It was late afternoon and they were digging up the rich earth from near the base of a cliff. They filled the saddlebags from their camels in order to carry the loads back to their community.
They’d been at it for hours - the sun was present and strong heating up the sand surface around where they worked. And just as they were about to call it a day, their final scoops of earth revealed a buried jar.
The clay jar, about two feet in height, looked to be sealed tightly, intentionally, by a blackish substance present around the lid. As you might be too in such a moment - the farmers were captured by curiosity.
But for these men at this time and in their culture - they were also fearful. Such an effort to keep the jar permanently closed made them think there might be an unwanted spirit inside. But, they were also tugged by the possibility that the jar could be filled with gold.
What to do.
Persuaded by curiosity, one of farmers grabbed a mattock, his hand axe made of a wooden handle and a double-pointed iron head - and he cracked open the clay jar.
Its contents flew out because they had been packed so tightly inside. And the farmers found themselves surrounded by pieces and piles of papyrus.
Thousands of years ago - at least as far back as 4,000 years ago - ancient Egyptians dried and used the fleshy inside of the water plant named papyrus to, in part, share story & wisdom through language and image. It’s the root of the word, paper, in english.
As I shared at the beginning, this is a true story. The names of these two farmers are Muhammed and Khalifah ‘Ali of the al-Samman clan.
That afternoon in 1946, they hoped for gold, they feared the release of an unwanted spirit, and what they got instead were pages and pages - of stories. But whose stories? From when?
Over 50 stories were discovered - many, previously completely unknown - and, it turns out, that most - were early Christian texts that hadn’t made it into the Bible. The Gospel of Truth, The Sophia of Jesus Christ, The Gospel of Thomas, The Thunder: Perfect Mind - which we heard a little bit of today - and many others.
Some were fragments, some were complete. But, they were all early Christian writings - many dating back to the 1st century Common Era - which is the exact same time we date the bulk of the texts canonized in the actual New Testament.
“For I am the first and the last
I am she who is honored and she who is mocked
I am she whose wedding is extravagant and didn’t have a husband”
When I first read these words in seminary from “The Thunder: Perfect Mind” I thought my brain was going to explode. Not only because the speaker's voice floods us with what might seem like contradictions that pull at the mind, but because the speaker’s powerful declarative voice was so often female!
When I heard it spoken for the first time I felt as if I was hearing a contemporary spoken word poem.
Being raised Catholic and then a part of a protestant Christian church in my youth, this was unlike any Christian text I had been exposed to.
A few years before I heard the powerful voice of this text for the first time - so a few years before I entered seminary - I had my first experience at a Unitarian Universalist church.
And, like many of you, I felt such relief that Sunday morning when the songs and the message had little to no mention of Jesus or God.
At that moment in my young adult life, most words and stories that had any Christian scent activated me in some way. They activated a surge of emotion and often grew defensive and angry.
As soon as someone uttered a Christian-scented word - a voice inside of me would roll up her sleeves, and ball her fists to argue or have an arm raised out to keep distance.
The word: “Jesus” - No.
It was almost instantaneous.
“God” - No
“Worship” - No
“Prayer” - No no
“Communion” - No No No
Maybe this stance resonates with some of you.
I had worked hard to claim my separation from my Christian past. I knew what Christianity was, I thought, and I didn’t want to have anything to do with it.
So, when a professor and Methodist minister introduced me to “The Thunder: Perfect Mind” and began to fill in the actual human history that went into the formation of the Bible - so many sealed stories I had that defined Christianity - got shaken up and loosened. With this new information, new stories, new relationships with liberal Christian professors and colleagues, I had to reopen that closed book about my Christian past.
I learned that this so-called untouchable canonized Bible was actually assembled through a very human process - involving power and personality.
Over generations and hundreds of years - groups and councils of men in positions of power made decisions about which stories to include in the New Testament and which ones to leave out.
We know that many of the stories - those two farmers found -circulated throughout Christian communities in the ancient world right alongside the stories that ultimately did get chosen to be bound in the final copy.
And it so happens, many stories with central female characters or voices were excluded. I can’t help but wonder what would have been different if The Thunder: Perfect Mind had been chosen as one of the texts - one of the stories - included in the New Testament.
I share all of this with you for a few reasons - and it’s not because I have some campaign to get you excited about the Bible - or even Christianity, but rather to raise the question - what are the stories at work in our lives that shape our identities. What are the stories we tell about our pasts that shape our present?
Each of us has so many stories that shape and mold who we are, our sense of identity. Stories about our personalities, our childhoods, our families - that each give us a sense of definition.
Mary generously shared part of her story with us this morning. And specifically her journey of weaving her religious past into her religious present. And it’s part of my own story doing this same work that I share with you this morning.
For the past five weeks I’ve facilitated a class with a small group of committed folks, including Mary, called “Owning Your Religious Past.”
The curriculum for the course was originally designed in the 1980s. It was in response to the reality that many Unitarian Universalists came into the tradition from other religions. Some bringing tender, loving memories and others bringing unresolved feelings.
Over the years, the curriculum changed as the make-up of our communities changed. It expanded to recognize that whether we are formerly Christian, Jewish, lifelong Unitarian Universalist, unchurched, or any number of other possibilities, we all have “religious pasts” - in the sense of having defining traditions, frameworks, or stories that shaped how we learned to make meaning in the world.
And the vision of this course is that when we bring attention and awareness to the impact and influence of our religious pasts - if we have places to tell our stories and share these memories - then we begin to weave our many selves into wholeness in the present.
We begin to see our path as an ever-unfolding continuum filled with many threads and textures rather than a sequence of unrelated chapters.
Throughout the class we imagined the physical spaces of our childhood religious institutions, the people who populated those places. We drew timelines to begin to visualize how all of our chapters fit together. We wondered what else was happening in our lives when we experienced pointed moments of change in our religious identities over the years.
And so my invitation to you this morning, on the brink of the Christmas season full of chosen & unchosen reminders of perhaps joyful and challenging memories - is to bring attention to the stories that define your religious past.
I invite you to name these stories - for yourself or with others - and to wonder about how they are at work in your life. To wonder how these stories are life-giving for you in the present, but also to wonder how they might be limiting.
I shared with you that, for me, something significant shifted in my own journey toward owning my religious past when I heard the powerful female voice of today’s reading thunder into the present. But that’s just one moment of many moments on the journey - that is messy and non-linear and complicated. And my story is not your story, and your story is not your neighbors story.
The word “owning” here does not imply an outcome. It is not an invitation to land or to get to a particular place. Rather, it is an invitation into a process, a process that you get to steer.
Owning is a call to awareness. To become aware of how, for you, the stories you are conscious of about your religious past and also the stories that linger in the shadows of your awareness - impact your present religious identity or spiritual journey. (Owning is a call to look at how these stories are working well for you and how they might not be working well for you.)
I remember the first time I heard someone offer the welcome at the beginning of a UU service. Much like here, this person said, “No matter who or how you love, you are welcome here.”
No matter who you love? I remember thinking - earnestly. Did I hear that right?
To hear those words spoken from the power of the pulpit in a physical space that looked much like my childhood churches - felt like healing waters for my wounded spirit.
My spirit who had learned that if you want to be on a faith journey you could love some people and not others.
This tradition welcomed me, said that all of me is worthy. And in response to that hospitality - that welcoming of my whole self - it charges me - charges us - to know ourselves.
As a part of our welcoming words said every Sunday we include, “we are accepted as we are and invited into our best becoming.”
Our best becoming. There’s so much motion and movement in that word - becoming. We are in motion and there is no endpoint. As a living tradition, change is in the bones of our community’s body. Change is a part of our DNA.
As a free church of the open mind we get to change. We are a community of seekers - of life-long learners. We learn new things and are able to change the stories we’ve had about how we always understood something, because we learned something new.
I think this makes us really strong. Revelation is not sealed, but is ongoing for each of us and as a church and as a tradition. It’s part of what makes us so alive.
But this practice of becoming, of changing, deepening, transforming - is a practice that demands attention.
And one way we can bring attention to it is by looking at what stories feel particularly stuck in our own lives and in the life of our community.
And for many of us, the stories we have about our religious pasts are some of these stuck stories. And as a tradition, the stories we have about Christianity are also a little stuck - in the sense of feeling charged and untouchable.
There is good reason why many of us slammed the door shut on our religious pasts. For many, there is deep hurt, shame, isolation, maybe even violence in those chapters - and turning our backs to that past has been a matter of survival.
And for many of us, the memories we have from our childhood traditions are so entangled with family - and often complicated - relationships and memories.
And so, we must take care of ourselves and of each other.
This work of becoming, of bringing attention to our stories and sharing them requires care and knowing our limits.
This work of becoming asks us to deepen, it asks us to be changed, but it also invites us to nourish ourselves for the work by gathering on Sunday mornings to sing together, to share meals, to laugh.
This work of becoming, of continuing to know ourselves, is difficult. But, we do not have to do it alone. We can share what we’re learning and how we’re changing with each other, and we can look to guides who have come before.
Rev. Rebecca Parker is one such guide. Her name that might be familiar to some of you. She served as the President of Starr King School, one of two Unitarian Universalist seminaries, for 25 years. Ending her tenure in 2014.
Rev. Parker was actually first an ordained United Methodist minister who now holds dual ministerial fellowship with the Unitarian Universalist Association. And much of her work and writing, her journey of becoming, engages this specific wrestle with her religious past and the call to weave it into her present.
And she puts the work like this, “I knew that until I faced and integrated all that had happened to me, my past was going to haunt the present in a way that disrupted love.” My past was going to haunt the present in a way that disrupted love.
The source of love is infinite, which means, we can always deepen into our capacities to love and we can continue to notice and to learn about the things that disrupt our deepening into that love.
When I was hospital chaplain not that long ago, I had many opportunities to practice deepening in love. There were times when I sat at the bedside of patients who used particular Christian language that still activated me.
That young girl with the balled up fists would start to pace with energy. And when we get activated, when we feel that surge of emotion, it can clog our ears, and we struggle to listen, to really listen to the person in front of us sharing their story.
And so those moments with those patients for me became an opening - to notice, to pay attention, to be curious, to know myself better - to practice deepening in love. It didn’t always work, sometimes it was too difficult to bring awareness in those moments - but sometimes it did work.
As a living tradition, there is no stone tablet, there is no canonized book of untouchable stories. And as the people who make up this living tradition the same is true about our own lives.
When Rebecca Parker speaks of being mindful of the things from our past that disrupt love in the present, she speaks to the fact that no matter where we are in our journeys, we can always, always deepen into our capacity to love by knowing ourselves even better - and it’s likely that some of our stories will change in the process.
This church, this tradition, calls us to know ourselves so that we may live from wholeness, so that we may live from love.
As we know ourselves better, as we consciously weave together our many threads, we can feel the flow of the river that moves through us and all things - guiding our becoming.
The season is upon us. The holiday hits pandora station is officially streaming, everywhere. The huge inflatable Santa Claus, the candy cane soap dispenser have been dusted off for another year. The work parties, the family gatherings - are here.
As we move through these upcoming weeks - ripe with openings for deeper awareness - may we bring reflective attention to the stories about our religious pasts that are influencing - shaping - directing our present moments. May we share these stories, may we learn from them, and may we allow them to change.