Ring Your Bell

RING YOUR BELL
October 11, 2009
Rev. David Robins
 
READING
 
For many decades, scientists have assumed that human beings are wired for aggression and conflict, with a minimum but important wiring for altruism and cooperation. When religion lifts up non-violence and love as primary motive forces, even in the face of violence, it is not only countercultural but counter to what is thought to be our basic nature. After all, the part of our brain that flares up with emotions, to protect, defend or attack, the amygdale, is probably the oldest part of our brain.
        But the amygdale is only one part of our brain. The brain is also wired for what some people call “God.” You might call it cosmic consciousness, or joy, or enthusiasm, or love. In a sense, humanity is in an eons old learning curve on surviving with both the amygdale and the God-wiring.
How steep is your learning curve?
Are you a slow learner or a fast learner?
I have been a slow learner all my life. Every once in a while, some material comes along that helps my learning curve move in the direction of religious values and principles. King’s and Ghandi’s non-violent practice. Schweitzer’s reverence for life. Feminist theology and the breathing of new life into religious language. Earth centered faiths. Pushing me into new religious territory this year has been the Non-Violent Communication study and practice. It feels like having an instruction manual for human communication, and human transformation.
        But, I am a slow learner, so the non-violent group is looking to make new opportunities to learn and practice non-violent communication.
        Two and a half years ago, when the search committee met with me over lunch one day, they asked if I was willing to take a leap of faith. I decided that my life had been, up to that point, lacking in leaps of faith, and so, yes, I was willing to live by leaps of faith. The non-violent communication teaches how to take leaps of faith based upon one’s grounded needs, feeling and compassion.
PRAYER
        Gracious spirit, have mercy upon your slow learners. We must have something to offer to evolutionary advances. Guide us in our leaps of faith, trusting, not that we will always land on our feet, but that it is in the leap that we know true freedom, love and compassion. Amen.
SERMON
Consider the church bell. It rings on the hour. It reminds us what time it is even when we cannot see a clock. When you work or live near down town, it is part of your everyday and your every night. In 1825, when this building was constructed, there were no wristwatches to tell you the time. A few pocket watches. No mobile phones or computers to tell you the time. There was the bell in the community church, which is what we were, before we became the Unitarian Universalist Church. We were the town clock and the town bell, calling people to worship, to meals, to meetings, to work.
        Pete Seeger wrote a song called, “If I Had a Hammer”. One of the stanzas reads:
“If I had a bell,
I’d ring it in the morning
I’d ring it in the evening
All over this land
I’d ring out danger
I’d ring out warning
I’d ring out the love between my brothers and sisters
All over this land.”
        Seeger calls it a “bell of freedom”. In his song he encourages people to sing out for justice, to sing out for love and to sing out for freedom. I have always considered this Pete Seeger song to be one the patriotic songs of our country. The words inspire me in thought, word and deed.
        Our UU faith calls you, to listen for the bell of freedom. For some of us, a religious bell comes from the transcendent or God. For all of us, a religious bell is shaped and molded by our experiences and intuitions, by our values and our ethics.
 A bell is fashioned out of the substance of your character. A bell is fashioned from hard-won wisdom and learnings. Fashion your bell out of the best alloys of your mental and emotional resources. Fashion your bell from the principles and truths of your faith. Our faith invites you to listen more closely to your bell. Our faith invites you to let your bell call to your soul. Our faith invites you to ring your bell. Our faith invites you to work out your salvation from the tones of your bell.
        Bells call people together for worship. Bells bring children and workers home for dinner. Bells locate animals. Bells tell us what time it is. Bells warn us. Bells celebrate momentous events, such as weddings, or victories, and to mark somber events such as funerals. Bells call children to school. Bells are used in creating music.
        Bells gather us together, and call us to attend to what is important. Let me suggest, that something like a bell sounds in your mind when you feel gathered together…all connected…arranged whole. A bell sounds when you feel love and loving. A bell sounds in the presence of beauty. A bell sounds when you are in awe, wonder, joy, peace of mind. The bell gathers you all together. Its sound brings you into the cathedral of your mind and heart, and vibrates with all that is good and lovely around you.
        Let me suggest that your inner bell also sounds when you are alerted to danger, or injustice, or falsehood.
        Listen for the integrity of your bell. Listen for what it is telling you. Its sounds have a code to unravel. The sound of your bell beckons to you and gathers you, like a church bell might gather people together.
        The sound of your bell is sacred sound. The sound of your bell will tell you your direction and your passion.
        I know a person whose bell rings when discouragement creeps into their thoughts. This person imagines a door closing on discouragement as a way to keep it at bay until a practical means comes along to deal with that particular discouraging situation.
        There is another person who hears a bell being rung by the suffering of earth and its creatures. The bell alerts them to reach out, to change, to speak up. 
        A few weeks ago a business person came to give me an estimate on a job. When that businessperson discovered their client was a minister, they began to talk about how their faith had been crushed by the sudden death of a close and beloved family member. That businessperson was angry at God, they said, and with their church for telling them that God needed the deceased person in heaven, and that the death was part of God’s plan. This businessperson was not ready to give up on God, but they were ready to give up on their church. This person’s bell rang a warning that their church’s theology was bad theology and that they had to work out their own salvation. Grief is natural, but bad theology had caused grief to become unwelcome in their spiritual house, and the church’s image of God, became their enemy. My message was simple….the Universalists rang the bell of spiritual freedom of a loving God, who needs no sacrifices or deaths to be satisfied. This love is a loving spiritual presence that comforts, encourages, inspires, heals….but does not cause death and suffering, nor can it prevent death and suffering. Saying that God has a plan for everything and everyone, is comforting until suffering arrives at our spiritual door. The Universalist God is like a bell that calls to the hurting spirit to enter a sanctuary of encompassing love until the healing has made us whole. This spiritual bell cannot change things, it cannot direct events. It can call to us, to gather ourselves together. 
        The Unitarians say that we are endowed with reason, for some a gift from God. Use your reason like an invisible hand, pulling on the bell’s rope to ring…following its sound in logical order to the purpose of the bell’s call.
It is encounters like this that remind me how precious is our spiritual freedom. It is encounters such as this when the spiritual freedom that you have chosen as a Unitarian Universalist can be a saving bell for someone.
A bell that can ring encouragement in the face of discouragement.
A bell that can ring love in the face of despair and anger.
 A bell that can ring understanding in the face of a suffering soul.
A bell that can ring hope in the face of despair and confusion.
A bell that can ring kindness in the face of suffering.
A bell that can ring out comfort for someone who may feel as though they are in hell.
A bell that can ring hope when hope is hard to find.
A bell to ring justice in the land of the unjust.
A bell to ring peace in the land of war.
A bell to ring truth in the land of falsehood.
It does a spirit good. Yours and theirs.
        If you have a bell, ring it in the morning. Ring it in the evening. Ring out all over the land.
 
 
I close with the words of Richard Johnson, who oversaw the repairs of our church bell in 1984. “The story of our church bell begins in 1841 when it was cast by George Holbrook of East Medway Massachusetts….it never was properly hung. Early in 1984 an order was placed with the Whitechapel Bell Foundry in London, for a new headstock, with wheel and bearings, and a new counterbalanced clapper.
        David Van Strien and I drove to Boston to pick up the bell hanging expert, Linda Woodford and her 200 pounds of equipment.
 To make a long story short, two weeks of installation work and the clapper still refused to work properly. It was decided that a new clapper should be cast. After it arrived, I hauled the 125 pound clapper up the tower and got it installed. To my dismay this clapper also refused to work properly. Hill’s machine shop in Marlborough made some adjustments. John Morrison helped carry the clapper, but a cable we were using broke and trapped his hand. Fortunately he was wearing gloves and his hand was bruised but not broken. After all this, the bell still would not ring. More phone calls to the experts for advice. Adjustments made. It was the end of the day, and it was getting dark in the tower, but I made one more try. Cautiously I turned the wheel but no sound came. Another tug on the wheel in frustration tripped the action and it came alive. Tears of joy filled my eyes as I watched the bell swing one way, and the clapper the other, as it was designed to do so. Let it not be for whom the bell tolls, but joyously for all, for whom the bell RINGS!”