An Ode To My Socks
The Rev. Dr. Matthew Johnson-Doyle
December 26th, 2010


Reading: An Ode To My Socks by Pablo Neruda

Message: An Ode To My Socks

Note: The sermon is an oral event. This manuscript may not reflect the exact spoken words. If you want to hear what was actually said, you can listen to sermon visit our website at www.uurockford.org. © Matthew Johnson-Doyle, 2010.

It was Antoine de Saint Exupéry who said that we live
not by things but by the meaning of things.
And it was Jesus of Nazareth,
quoting Deuteronomy,
who told the devil, who was tempting him:
we do not live by bread alone.
The Buddha asked us to give up attachment,
and the Tao Te Ching reminds us that
“to make use of what is here,
you must make use of what is not.”
The society of friends teaching us to sing:
it is a gift to be simple.

I could cite example after example.
Religious prophets, mystics, authors and activities
across centuries and cultures,
all with a variation on a single claim:
stuff kills.

An addiction to things,
to material wealth,
to greed,
this addiction is deadly to the spiritual life.

This message has been a regular staple of my preaching too.
I’ve oft preached against consumerism and individualism.
We gather stuff to try and fill those empty places,
to make ourselves feel more important and whole,
but of course,
it doesn’t really work.
Stuff isn’t the medicine we need to cure our spiritual ills.

But this is a more complicated question
than such advice would let on.
For one, I received, yesterday, some really lovely gifts –
heartfelt, beautiful, precious.
Genuine tokens of affection.
I bet you did too.
And I’m happy to add those things to my collection of things I care about.

When my wife and I – and then only one child, one year old,
moved to Rockford two years ago, we had, according to the moving company, 220 things.

When they unloaded here,
I checked off the “bingo sheet” –
they bring in a box, and call off a number –
158! And I check it off on the list.
220 things.
Each box was counted only once,
and we had stuff in our cars,
so it was a bit more than that.

There is some romantic impulse
which makes me chaff at this.
Part of me wishes to be free of things,
to be able to just go,
explore, see the world,
with one small bag and nothing else.

There is a fiction character - -
an unofficial private detective,
who owns nothing but the clothes on his back,
a fold-up toothbrush and an ATM card.
When his clothes wear out,
he goes into a thrift store,
buys new ones,
and throws away the old.

Something about this appeals to me.
I suppose there is something in each of us that wishes for this:
in some, it might be stronger than in others.
In some it is so strong that they actually do it:
monks who own nothing but their robes,
hermits,
travelers of the world.
Some do it involuntarily, too,
this must be acknowledged:
a combination of poverty, metal illness, and / or addiction
keeps folks homeless,
nothing but a plastic bag.
This is not the romantic notion that appeals to me,
but it might be a finer line that we sometimes suppose.

On the other hand,
I would be sad to be separated from my stuff.
A lot of those 220 things are books, of course:
a librarian and a minister – we have a lot of books.
And I held onto them,
though I could get many at the library
if I wanted to read them again.
A lot of it is very utilitarian:
beds and dressers and dishes and the like.
The things that make a life.
Of course, a bunch of it was for our one-year-old.
It is astonishing how someone so little can have so many things.

And, many of the things we have were gifts from others.
Given over the years,
or when we got married,
or when the baby was born,
Christmas gifts and birthday gifts.

We have not kept all the gifts we have ever been given –
some, unfortunately, were not really us,
not really useful,
given perfunctorily,
received the same way.
But some gifts were given with love and care.
We value these things a great deal.

We live not by things but the meaning of things,
but the meanings of things matter a great deal.

A gift given with love,
something hand-made like a pair of woolen socks,
something that reminds us,
that gives us a sense of identity,
these gifts, these things, they do have meaning.
Beauty is twice beauty
when it is a pair of woolen socks in winter.

But these things are for use:
we ought resist the temptation
to put them in glass jars.

There are some deep philosophical questions here.
Some religious liberals bend more towards the mystical vein:
They concur with that phrase:
Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter.
This school of thought—
philosophers call it idealism –
is embraced by the likes of Plato and Hegel,
it puts spirit first and nature second.

But other religious liberals find themselves
in what philosophers call the materialist school –
note please this is not the same as the materialism of culture,
the consumerism and status-symbol possession of goods.
Philosophical materialism puts priority on nature, then spirit.
It is the way of Aristotle and Karl Marx.

If you are a liberal Christian, you are probably an idealist –
but if you are a liberal Pagan, you are probably a materialist.
Neruda, by the way, was a committed Marxist and therefore a materialist.

There is something to be learned from both these schools.
I have preached more from the idealism view,
the anti-consumerist stance,
because the idolatry of our times, and our place –
the beginning of the 21st century in suburban America –
the idolatry here is stuff.
We are too likely to give too much energy to things,
junk, sometimes,
which crowds out the rest of our lives.

But it is possible to go to far the other way, too:
to have an idolatry, not to spirit, but to spiritualism.
When we neglect the art of giving and receiving of gifts,
when we care not at all for the quality of things,
when we forget that we are bodies,
when we pay no attention to what we eat or how we inhabit the earth,
this is spiritualism run amok.

The synthesis of these views is a kind of incarnational theology –
the meaning of things –
that this pair of socks is an incarnation of love and care;
that things and people can be incarnations of the holy.
Nature – things and individual life –
are not ultimate, but they signify the ultimate,
they can be sacramental.
Important.
Worthy of some attention.

One of those standard parlor questions,
the ones we use to “get to know each other”
tells us how this works:

If you had to evacuate,
and all the people and animals of your life were safe,
and putting aside things like
wallets, checkbooks, papers,
what would you grab:
if you could only grab one thing,
what would it be?

For me, that’s easy:
a baby blanket, a gift of my Oma, my grandmother.
It was not hand-made,
but I’ve had it since the day I was born.
I find it hard to sleep without it.

What about you?
What would it be,
and what does that object incarnate for you?
Is it a memory?
A hope?
A connection?

I asked some friends this question.
I heard about a grandmother’s ring –
the grandmother had died before my friend had really known her,
and the ring stands therefore for the ideal of her,
the presence despite the absence.
I heard about a chess set,
made by a father for a son.

These objects carry meaning.
They are talismans,
objects of magic power.

Incarnational theology is tricky.
These are dangerous waters.

The early Christians,
most of who were Jews,
had a sense that Jesus of Nazareth was an incarnation
of God.
They had different ideas about what kind of incarnation it was,
but that didn’t matter very much in the beginning.

But a few hundred years later,
everyone was arguing of this point –
what kind of incarnation?
They were not talking about how to actually live as he taught:
with the compassion, radical love, and powerful commitment to justice
that he instructed.

No, they fought over Greek philosophical categories,
what type of substance was he?
The Emperor Constantine’s bishops settled that dispute
by inventing a new doctrine: the Trinity.
Our spiritual ancestors were the ones who lost that dispute,
and for holding a different view of the incarnation,
Unitarians were persecuted, imprisoned, and burned at the stake for centuries.
Incarnation is tricky.

Everyone agrees, basically,
that there is a holy power
and that holy power is manifest in the world we live in.
But you get much beyond that,
and you get into trouble.
Golden calves and all that jazz.

I want to try, then, to give you a sketch of a Unitarian Universalist incarnational theology.
Like any Unitarian Universalist theology,
two general principles rule this effort.

First, our theologies must always be open to diversity.
We must never fall into the trap of acting like
only one set of metaphors and images are allowed when speaking of these matters.
When we talk about spirituality,
it is the hallmark of our approach that we embrace many paths.
So when we discuss what, exactly, is being incarnated,
we have to dispense with that word: exactly.
Something ultimate and powerful.
It is known by many names,
but each name is itself partial, insufficient.
Love comes down.
For some of us, this power has personality.
For others, it doesn’t.
These differences, this pluralism, is good and necessary.
There are many ways to speak about what is ultimate,
as there must be.

Second, our religious path is about what we call “ethical religion.”
We are interested in one fundamental question:
does your religious practice help you live with more integrity?
Does it help you be more kind and loving?
Does it help you forgive?
Does it help you be open to wonder and gratitude?
Does it make you more curious and wise?
These sorts of questions are the central test of our faith.
Does it bear good fruit?

So, our incarnational theology should help us live better.
The woolen socks, reminders of love and beauty,
help one appreciate friendship.
When we see the holy in nature,
it can help us be better stewards of the earth.
When we hear the ultimate laughing in a child’s play,
or see the spirit of life in the eyes of a stranger,
it reminds us that every single person has,
as we say,
inherent worth and dignity.
When we say it is Love that “comes down” then it is love we ought to show to each other.
This is how incarnational theology ought to be.

But it can work the other way.
When we violate these two principles,
we can see the holy only in particular places and objects:
that is what we call idolatry.
And we can choose bad objects
as the incarnation of what matters to us:
we can choose race, gender, wealth, nationalism.
We can elect to find meaning in violence and power.
These are all live options,
chosen far to often.

In addition, it seems to me that a Unitarian Universalist
incarnational theology should recognize interdependence:
to see that the holy lives not just in objects
but also in the in-between,
in the dynamic relationships and ecosystems
of community and life itself.
Our sense of wonder and our sense of justice
is awakened more fully when we value the connections.

My prayer and my hope then,
for all of us,
is that we might have a robust theology of incarnation:
one that brings us together rather than divides.
One that simultaneously appreciates the valuable things,
the things that give meaning to our lives,
and sounds the warning against consumerism,
against things for things sake.
I hope we might be idealists,
seeing the great mystery beyond all,
and materialists too –
seeing the real world right before us.
I hope that our love for the real
will move us always to care and concern for this world we share.
I hope you might have beautiful woolen socks in winter,
deep and generous friendships in all seasons,
and an ever-expanding vision of incarnated love.
May it be so.