"Creative Interchange: Impossible Dream?"

A sermon by Dave Weissbard

delivered at

The Unitarian Universalist Church

Rockford, Illinois

10/23/2005

Greetings to the Imprisoned Citizens of the United States. We are Unitarian Jihad. There is only God, unless there is more than one God. The vote of our God subcommittee is 10-8 in favor of one God, with two abstentions. Brother Flaming Sword of Moderation noted the possibility of there being no God at all, and his objection was noted with love by the secretary.

Greetings to the Imprisoned Citizens of the United States! Too long has your attention been waylaid by the bright baubles of extremist thought. Too long have fundamentalist yahoos of all religions (except Buddhism -- 14-5 vote, no abstentions, fundamentalism subcommittee) made your head hurt. Too long have you been buffeted by angry people who think that God talks to them. You have a right to your moderation! You have the power to be calm! We will use the IED of truth to explode the SUV of dogmatic expression!

People of the United States, why is everyone yelling at you??? Whatever happened to ... you know, everything? Why is the news dominated by nutballs saying that the Ten Commandments have to be tattooed inside the eyelids of every American, or that Allah has told them to kill Americans in order to rid the world of Satan, or that Yahweh has instructed them to go live wherever they feel like, or that Shiva thinks bombing mosques is a great idea? Sister Immaculate Dagger of Peace notes for the record that we mean no disrespect to Jews, Muslims, Christians or Hindus. Referred back to the committee of the whole for further discussion.

We are Unitarian Jihad. We are everywhere. We have not been born again, nor have we sworn a blood oath. We do not think that God cares what we read, what we eat or whom we sleep with. Brother Neutron Bomb of Serenity notes for the record that he does not have a moral code but is nevertheless a good person, and Unexalted Leader Garrote of Forgiveness stipulates that Brother Neutron Bomb of Serenity is a good person, and this is to be reflected in the minutes.

Beware! Unless you people shut up and begin acting like grown-ups with brains enough to understand the difference between political belief and personal faith, the Unitarian Jihad will begin a series of terrorist-like actions. We will take over television studios, kidnap so-called commentators and broadcast calm, well-reasoned discussions of the issues of the day. We will not try for "balance" by hiring fruitcakes; we will try for balance by hiring non-ideologues who have carefully thought through the issues.

We are Unitarian Jihad. We will appear in public places and require people to shake hands with each other. (Sister Hand Grenade of Love suggested that we institute a terror regime of mandatory hugging, but her motion was not formally introduced because of lack of a quorum.) We will require all lobbyists, spokesmen and campaign managers to dress like trout in public. Televangelists will be forced to take jobs as Xerox repair specialists. Demagogues of all stripes will be required to read Proust out loud in prisons.

We are Unitarian Jihad, and our motto is: "Sincerity is not enough." We have heard from enough sincere people to last a lifetime already. Just because you believe it's true doesn't make it true. Just because your motives are pure doesn't mean you are not doing harm. Get a dog, or comfort someone in a nursing home, or just feed the birds in the park. Play basketball. Lighten up. The world is not out to get you, except in the sense that the world is out to get everyone.

Brother Gatling Gun of Patience notes that he's pretty sure the world is out to get him because everyone laughs when he says he is a Unitarian. There were murmurs of assent around the room, and someone suggested that we buy some Congress members and really stick it to the Baptists. But this was deemed against Revolutionary Principles, and Brother Gatling Gun of Patience was remanded to the Sunday Flowers and Banners committee.

People of the United States! We are Unitarian Jihad! We can strike without warning. Pockets of reasonableness and harmony will appear as if from nowhere! Nice people will run the government again! There will be coffee and cookies in the Gandhi Room after the revolution.

The fourth principle of the Unitarian Universalist Association, of which this congregation is a member, is the affirmation and promotion of "A Free and Disciplined Search for Truth and Meaning." That says a great deal about who we are. Most religious communities are based not on a search, but on the acceptance of what they agree is a revealed "truth and meaning." Most religious bodies have a creedal statement of that truth and meaning to which one must subscribe if one wishes to be a member. One searches only until one discovers that this religion embodies "The Truth." This truth has generally been supernaturally revealed by the ultimate power of the universe to a prophet in ancient times. Any other version of the truth is viewed as either inadequate, or a seductive lie.

The Unitarian Universalist approach to religion is very different from this. Our spiritual ancestors are those who found the creeds of the established religions confining and wrong. Rather than developing improved creeds, they decided that any creedal statement was inherently

inadequate. The great Unitarian leader of the 19th century, William Ellery Channing, wrote:

I cannot but look on human creeds with feelings approaching contempt. . . . What are they? Skeletons, freezing abstractions, metaphysical expressions of unintelligible dogmas; and these I am to regard as the exposition of the fresh, living, infinite truth which came from Jesus! I might with equal propriety be required to hear and receive the lispings of infancy as the expressions of wisdom. . . . It has been the fault of all sects that they have been too anxious to define their religion. They have labored to circumscribe the infinite.

We envision the church not as a place where the truth is dealt out, but where questions are raised, suggestions may be offered, but where the individual is encouraged to seek the truth based on:

We do not assume that all will come to the same conclusions, but we affirm that we thrive on diversity. That process is what we stand for. It is to that which we aspire.

We are currently in the midst of a Fireside Series, four classes for people who are considering membership in this church. At the first session, one of the potential members asked if we really deliver on our claim of acceptance of diversity. He suggested that at another Unitarian Universalist Church he had observed a kind of snickering dismissal of people who came into the church with Bibles in hand.

A week later, Allen Penticoff called to tell me what he wanted me to address in the sermon for which he had purchased the right to choose the topic at last year's

auction. He questioned whether it is really possible for us to engage in meaningful conversations with people with whom we disagree about religion or politics, and that troubled him.

It seemed to me that there was an intersection of these two questions, for which there is no simple answer. I thought of the reading I shared last year about the Unitarian Jihad because of the light way it raises our radical commitment to freedom, and juxtaposes this with violent images enforcing this freedom:

the IED of truth [IED, in case it doesn't ring a bell, is a term that has emerged in Iraq for an "improvised explosive device"]; Sister Immaculate Dagger of Peace; Brother Neutron Bomb of Serenity; Sister Hand Grenade of Love. "We are Unitarian Jihad! We can strike without warning. . . There will be cookies and coffee in the Gandhi Room after the revolution."

When I checked out the Unitarian Jihad on the internet, I received my own Jihad name: "The Dagger of Courteous Debate," which seems so apropos for this sermon. [Last night, by the way, Google came up with 135,000 citations for Unitarian Jihad.]

There is a serious question here, however, which is, "Is it possible to engage in constructive dialogue with people whose religious [or socio-political] views differ from ours?" If not, is that a function of their limitation, ours, or both? Are we as open as we claim to be, or do we, as some claim, have a functional unwritten, unspoken creed which excludes those who disagree with us?

The title I gave to this sermon, "Creative Interchange: Impossible Dream?" comes from the work of Henry Nelson Wieman, one of the most the noted Unitarian theologians of the twentieth century. In his 1958 book, Man's Ultimate Commitment [the masculine noun is, of course, a function of the date and I will not mess with his pronouns], Wieman wrote of three types of religion: the religion of mental illness, the religion of conformity, and the religion of creativity.

In the religion of mental illness we find beliefs which are compulsive in the sense that they resist all modification by evidence or reason. . . . He who adopts the religion of conformity does not examine his faith critically. No valid evidence may support his beliefs and justify his religious practices. He accepts them from his associates, from the authorities recognized by his fellowship of faith, and from the prevailing tradition.

You can probably guess what the religion of creativity most resembles. In the religion of creativity, faith is based upon "knowledge gained by intellectual inquiry and tested by predicted consequences under specified conditions." At the center of this religion of creativity is a process which Wieman refers to as "Creative Interchange."

Creative interchange] occurs when the individual finds one or more persons with whom he can engage in that kind of interchange which creates in each an awareness of the original experience of the other person and at the same time a recognition of the exceeding preciousness of this original experience. . . You express your whole self and your entire mind freely and fully and deeply and truly to other persons who understand you most completely and appreciatively with joy in who you are as so expressed; and you yourself respond to others who express themselves freely and fully and deeply and truly while you understand them most completely and appreciatively for the spirits they are.

Wieman envisions much more than just the exchange of information, but that is a part of the whole. It is his conviction that, among other things:

• Human beings find satisfaction in being appreciated and understood by those whom they esteem to be significant persons.

• Creative interchange enables each individual to make a larger contribution to the pooled resources of the community.

• Creative interchange releases self-expression of the individual and thus provides for personal integrity.

• Creative interchange opens the most promising way to resolve the conflicts between the diverse cultures which are now forced by our technological society to live in close interdependence and intimate association.

• By bringing forth new patterns for living when disaster and social change render old patterns worthless, creative interchange provides ultimate security and spiritual renewal on condition that one give himself over to it with complete devotion.

While this "Creative Interchange" that Wieman bases his theology on is a much more intense and intimate kind of exchange with others than the question Allen raised and on which this sermon is based, the fundamental point is the same. Each of us is limited in our knowledge and experience, and we are greatly enriched when we enter into genuine dialogue with other people who have different experience, different knowledge, and therefore different perspectives. Life is bland, and our "in touchness" with the universe is limited when we fail to broaden our horizons by communicating with people who have different insights than we do. Wieman never suggested this was easy, but insisted that it was worth working toward with a deep commitment because of the value of the experience. Some people never experience that kind of interchange; some are fortunate to find one or two or three people in their lifetime with whom such communication is possible.

I offer that as the ideal toward which we might aspire, but let's step back into common experience. Allen was asking about dealing with people who have significantly different value systems. We probably need to look first at people within our congregation who have similar values but some differences. How well do we really accept diversity?

While our aspiration is clear, our practice falls short. We are, after all, human. People who have a sense of having escaped to freedom tend to get nervous when they encounter in their new home, ideas reminiscent of what they left behind. They tend to become reactive. That's not ok, but it is a reality. People who feel attacked in the society at large, sometimes react passionately when they fear their sanctuary is being threatened. I upset some folk when I suggested that the authors of The Bell Curve, one of the books liberals loved to hate, had made some valid points. My sermons on abortion, while unequivocally supportive of choice, have raised hackles in some by not toeing the party line that they should be of little concern.

On the other hand, some people have been so uncomfortable about having their conventional assumptions challenged, that they have chosen to withdraw. I remember one person who could be counted on to sit here crying whenever I addressed differences between our perspective and that of the Christian majority. She deemed intollerant a sermon which, when I repeated it on Fusion, drew praise from a Protestant clergyperson who caught the program in a motel. He suggested that I demonstrated a deep understanding and appreciation of Christianity.

Engaging in conversations over our differences is not simple because we are not purely rational beings and our emotions are triggered. It is something we always need to work on. It is easy to slip into sloppy habits. What is clear is our commitment to diversity, which is indeed different from that of most other religious communities. We need to continue to improve our performance in achieving that goal.

But if we sometimes have trouble dealing with other liberals who differ from us, how can we envision the kind of dialogue that Allen was asking about with people who may not even share our basic assumptions? In these times of polarization, of red and blue states, is there any hope of transcending the boundaries?

In my searching for insight into this problem, I encountered Difficult Conversations, a book by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton and Sheila Heen of the Harvard Negotiation Project. I am tempted to suggest that it should become required reading for all people who join this church, and those who are already members. The subtitle is, "How to Discuss What Matters Most." The book deals with all kinds of difficult conversations, those within a family or a work situation, and by implication, the kind we are concerned with today.

They suggest that "each difficult conversation is really three conversations." The What Happened conversation, the Feeling Conversation, and the Identity Conversation. The authors point out that:

. . . difficult conversations are almost never about getting the facts right. They are about conflicting perceptions, interpretations, and values. . . . They are not about what is true, they are about what is important. . . . Moving away from the truth assumption frees us to shift our purpose from proving we are right to understanding the perceptions, interpretations and values of both sides.

Some people suggest that it is important for us to keep our feelings out of difficult conversations because they muddy the waters. The authors insist that it is impossible for us to keep our feelings out and that by not being aware of them, by denying their influence, we allow them to corrupt the process. They say, “Engaging in a difficult conversation without talking about feelings is like staging an opera without the music. You'll get the plot, but miss the point.”

The third conversation is about recognizing that frequently our self-image, our sense of who we are in the world, often feels as if it is somehow at stake in a difficult conversation. The goal of the authors is to help us move toward what they refer to as "a learning conversation," which bears more than a passing resemblance to Wieman's "Creative Interchange." The authors say:

Despite what we sometimes pretend, our initial purpose for having a difficult conversation is often to prove a point, to give them a piece of our mind, or to get them to do or be what we want. In other words, to deliver a message. Once you understand the challenge inherent in the Three Conversations and the mistakes we make in each, you are likely to find that your purpose for having a particular conversation begins to shift. You come to appreciate the complexity of the perceptions and intentions involved, the reality of the joint contribution to the problem, the central role that feelings have to play, and what the issues mean to each person's self-esteem and identity. And you find that the message delivery stance no longer makes sense. In fact, you may find that you no longer have a message to deliver, but rather some information to share and some questions to ask. Instead of wanting to persuade and get your way, you want to understand what has happened from the other person's point of view, explain your point of view, share and understand feelings, and work together to figure out a way to manage the problem going forward. In so doing, you make it more likely that the other person will be open to being persuaded, and that you will learn something that significantly changes the way you understand the problem.

In spite of the fact that the authors focus on problems to be solved, it seems evident to me that this directly addresses our question of dialogue with people who hold views different from ours. It is the authors' contention that we may be in the position of setting the context of the conversation. The way in which we approach it, or the way in which we engage in it, usually makes a significant contribution to how it proceeds.

We commonly approach such conversations with the secret confidence that we, of course, are right and our job is to convince the other that she or he just doesn't understand the situation. If we cannot shake that certainty, the conversation will be futile because it triggers defensiveness in the other and in ourselves. A learning conversation is not a teaching conversation; a dialogue requires mutuality. But both parties do not have to begin with the same openness. The authors give many examples of situations in which the openness of one party ends up disarming the other and eliciting openness from them.

It is clear that this does not always work. There are people with whom we will never have a dialogue because of their unwillingness or inability to open themselves to the possibility that we may have something worth their hearing, but I do believe that these situations can be significantly reduced.

[ I don't have time to go into greater detail about the process the authors spell out, but I commend their book to you. It is available in paperback from Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble - a dollar cheaper from the former. ]

I want to illustrate this, however, with some not entirely successful examples from my own experience to illustrate the complexity of the problem.

The first involves my first wife, Linda's, father. Art Roberts was a nice man, a banker, a Republican. His values were pretty conventional and I don't know that he could ever figure out what to do with such a radical daughter and son-in-law. At holiday meals, he inevitably set conversational traps for me, and I could almost always see them coming. I tried to avoid them, but he was very skillful in pushing my buttons and I would eventually respond passionately. He would smile a triumphant "gotcha" smile, and after some silence, the meal would continue. I could never figure out what it was he got from those exchanges nor how to avoid the traps, but it always seemed like there was something positive in it for him and frustration in it for me.

Many years ago, I had the most amazing encounter with Ron Hembree, then the minister of First Assembly. As I recall, he approached me at the point at which there was a lot of talk about abortion because the Women's Center had just been evicted from the Rockford Clinic. He suggested we get together for coffee, and I was intrigued. We met at Stash O'Neill's and spent two or three hours in what felt like the very kind of learning conversation that Stone et al describe. He appeared open and I responded similarly. I was not expecting to convert him, nor he me. The conclusion at which we arrived was an advocacy of a situation in which the Women's Center and Problem Pregnancy Counseling would exist in the same building so that all options were available. It was unbelievable. It was an inspiring experience. The following week, Hembree did a fiery anti-abortion sermon about baby-killers and they put hundreds of little crosses on the lawn of First Assembly. Feeling somewhat betrayed, I never bothered to follow up with him. The process itself still felt legitimate, even though I felt he had violated it and played me for a sucker.

Last year, prior to the election, Rockford Urban ministry set out to organize a "Deliberation Day" which was supposed to help the community engage in "civil discourse." Representatives of the Republican party were invite to participate, but they were not genuinely involved in the planning. Because they did not get to participate in the selection of the “experts,” the Republicans viewed the program as a liberal setup and ultimately did not participate. A great possibility did not come to fruition.

The final example is more immediate. A couple of weeks ago, a local social worker called me to alert me to a "town meeting" that was being held to solicit support for a resolution on the family that was going to be presented to the Rockford city council as "a guide to policy formation and public action." After some platitudinous whereases with which we would probably all agree, the resolution states:

We see a world restored in line with the intent of its Creator. We envision a culture – found both locally and universally – that upholds the marriage of a woman to a man, and a man to a woman, as the central aspiration for the young.. . .

And it goes on from there. The resolution is adapted from Allen Carlson and Paul Mero's The Natural Family: A Manifesto. Allen Carlson is, of course, the director of the Howard Center for Family, Religion and Society. The caller was urging me to attend the town meeting. I was unenthusiastic and filed the possibility on the back burner. Then, Thursday afternoon, I was called by a reporter from the Register Star for a comment - prior to the meeting. I was in the midst of preparing this sermon and I realized that in the context of what I was advocating about dialogue, I was sort of compelled to attend the meeting which was to be held at the Central Christian Church.

I went, prepared to listen to what they had to say and anticipating that I would make some statement in support of diverse families before a hostile crowd. The meeting was fascinatingly called, "Beyond the Culture War: On the Natural Family - a Manifesto." While the paper the next morning said there were about 60 people there, I counted 31 heads, plus the 6 speakers. Allen Carlson led off and all he did was cite two lengthy endorsements of his manifesto, saying little about his content. Then there was a panel of 5 speakers from diverse organizations.

The first was Michael Call, the President of the United Way of the Rock River Valley. He focused on the United Way's concern with serving families and the problems they are experiencing. I never heard him actually endorse the resolution, although his presence seemed to.

Chris Johnson of the Winnebago County Board indicated he was representing the Chairman who, he said, does endorse the resolution and is planning to have the Country Board endorse it. Johnson pointed to the rate of violence among African Americans, although he did not propose the use of bulldozers to solve it, and decried fatherless homes. But he also did not address the content of the resolution.

Next came Patricia Bainbridge representing the Roman Catholic Diocese. Her whole presentation was on the evils of contraception which is, in her eyes, responsible for all that is wrong with contemporary society, just as the Pope had warned. Contraception is a "boa constrictor" she said, using what I thought was a strangely phallic image.

Marco Lenis represented La Voz Latina and spoke in favor of Community Marriage Policies that make marriage tougher, having two parents in the home, and the central place of extended family in the Latino culture. I don't believe Marco ever explicitly addressed the resolution.

Then came a harrangue from Pastor Rod Hays of the Family Life School. He attacked the "educated classes" as the source of what is wrong with the world and said that only conversion of the nation to his kind of Christianity could save us. Given our apostasy, we need more prisons (not mentioning that we have the highest percentage of our population already incarcerated of any nation on the face of the earth.) I think he was the one who mentioned in passing the fact that mass media, like Will and Grace, have led to the greater acceptance of homosexuality, and how awful that was. Divorce, in his eyes, is bad and should be taxed to discourage it.

In the end, when there was time for questions and responses, I remained silent. The anticipated attacks on gay and lesbian families had not materialized and the range of the discussion was so broad I did not know where to tie in. What I realized later was that I might have raised the question of how anyone could claim this was "Beyond the Culture War" and not just another skirmish in it, but I don't know how that would have accomplished anything positive beyond giving me a chance to vent.

I do believe we have to express our concern to the city council lest this thing get slipped by us.

My point is this: because I was there listening and trying to tune in non-defensively to what they were saying, what came across most powerfully was the distress of the speakers and the small audience with the level of social chaos we are experiencing, and I believe we share that concern with them. Karen comes home daily from Ellis School in despair at the level of violence that permeates the conversations among the kids, and their behavior. I am pro family. That is not the issue. The issue is whether non-traditional family structures add to the problems, as Allan Carlson believes, or are an asset in addressing the problems, as I believe. It does not help to demonize Mr. Carlson, nor the panelists, nor the enthusiastic attendees at the so-called "town meeting." These people are legitimately concerned and looking for solutions. I can envision respectful "Learning Conversations" in which we try to exchange understandings, but only if we are willing to risk encountering ideas that complicate our cherished view of how the world should be and give up the fantasy that those who differ from us have nothing to say.

I believe the short answer to Allen's question is that dialogue is never easy when it involves differing perspectives, but the possibility of success requires our approaching the process with humility. Without that humility, such conversations are doomed to falling into the same old standoffs which are like the old saying about trying to teach pigs to sing: "it wastes your time and annoys the pig." With humility and genuine openness on our part, not as a strategy for conversion but as a genuine commitment, success is not guaranteed, but at least it becomes conceivable. To that degree, the solution is in our hands.

I believe the vision of "Creative Interchange" is an inspiring one. I believe all of us is smarter than any of us and the values Wieman saw coming from that process of learning are true and worthwhile values. I invite you to join me in committing to becoming better listeners as a way of increasing the depth and frequency of our experiences of creative interchange.