Mother’s Day May 11th, 2008, Love is a Verb, Ashley Lasbury

By nature I am a story teller. A teller of tales. Like my height, some are tall. Some, like my youngest child, are short. Often times, like all of my children, they are funny. But all are real. They are a way for me to speak my truth and find the humor in my everyday life. This morning I would like to share with you the story of how I learned to love. And by love, I do not mean the feeling of being in love. Of our cultures popular definition of love. But my journey to the realization that Love is a Verb. And if a verb, by definition, is an action, then it only makes sense that love is an act of will requiring effort. And a choice.

As with any good story, we must start at the beginning. In this case, that would be the choice that my husband and I made to start a family. You see, I had known since I was a teenager that I did not want to have any children. I am the eldest of 5 daughters and felt that I had already done a life times worth of child care by the time I was a young woman. Yet it’s a woman prerogative to chance her mind and in time our first daughter was born. To this very day I am astounded that they let us take her home from the hospital. We had not a clue how to care for the small human being in our arms. She came with no operating instructions. No warranty. She spoke a language we did not understand. It amazes me that we have managed to keep her alive for almost 16 years.

What I was not prepared for was the love. I had loved the idea of her for many, many months. Yet, when she was placed in my arms and I looked into her eyes, I was lost. I fell in love. At the time I had planned to return to work but soon realized that I did not want to miss a moment of her growing up. I made the choice to become a stay at home mom. A choice I was lucky to have the option to make as many women do not.

Time passed and we decided that if one was fun, two would be even more so. As I carried my second daughter under my heart I did fret. In the middle of the night, when our fears tend to bubble to the surface of our consciousness, I worried. How could I love another child as completely as I loved my first? Would there be room in my heart? Yet, when my green eyed girl was placed, screaming, into my arms, I once again lost my heart. And even though she is a very different person from her sister, I fell as deeply in love that second time as I had the first. And I learned that my heart is not a room of finite space but as big as the whole outdoors. There was infinite room.

So, life was good. My daughters were growing. They were easy, biddable children. Not perfect, but real and funny and stubborn and smart. By the time my second was three years old I had grown confident in my mothering skills. I would even go so far as to say arrogant. I knew what I was doing and I loved my life. In those years it dawned on me that mothering; the growing and teaching and guiding of children, was what I was meant to do. It challenged me on so many different levels. Forced me to stretch, search and grow. They were teaching me as much, if not more, than I was teaching them. And, best of all, it was fun. We were all having fun.

So much fun that we decided to have another child. Yes, going from man to man defense to zone was going to be a challenge, but we both liked challenges. And there were no late night fears this time. I knew the capacity of my heart. I had assumed that I would have another daughter. Her name was going to be Isabel. But my personal God, she has a wicked sense of humor. When the midwife placed my new child into my arms and I had wiped the tears of joy away enough to see, the first words out of my mouth were “what is that between her legs?” Much to my wonder and chagrin, I was the mother of a son. And he was perfect in every way. Falling in love with him was as easy and natural as a summer sunset.

I must take a moment to speak of my son. He is a wonder and a joy. But he is also a very challenging soul. I often say to him that God brought us together for a reason. He is meant to teach me patience and wisdom and I am to teach him how to be a great man. If I can keep him alive until then. He often drives me to distraction. He has humbled me as a mother. Early on he knocked me off of my pedestal and has kept me on the ground ever since. Kept me grounded. He has taught me that what I don’t know about parenting far exceeds what I do know. He has forced me to stretch and grow in ways that were often painful. He made me realize that love was not the feeling. Love was something much, much more.

Those years after he was born were difficult. I had been home, full time, for 7 years. The joy I found in mothering was beginning to be tarnished by the day to day drudgery of caring for my family. The constant rounds of laundry, dishes, cooking, cleaning, errands and basic bodily care of small children, all while living with the inevitable fatigue of night feedings and waking, began to wear me down. I had signed up to be a mother but what I needed was a wife. It was the mindless repetitive nature of the work that dulled my spirit. The routine and the sameness of each day, which is so important to children but can be so hard to live as an adult, was at times mind numbing I was restless and increasing unhappy. The fun was harder to find, the laughter less frequent.

Inspiration, life changing ideas; often come from the most unlikely places. When I needed it most but did not even know I was looking, a new way to live presented itself. It came from a cooking magazine, of all places. Cook’s illustrated to be exact. The editor, Christopher Kimball, starts each issue with a lovely piece of writing. One weekend, while at my Mom’s for a little R & R, I picked up an issue and started to read. He wrote about his love of cooking. For me, cooking had always been just another chore. If I could not get it on the table in 20 minutes, I didn’t cook it. The least amount of time spent in my kitchen, the better. But this man was writing about cooking the love he felt for his family into each and every meal he prepared.

It began to occur to me that if I could cook love into the food I fed my family that maybe; just maybe, this could work for other chores. Could I fold love into the laundry? Wash the dishes with love? Could I rethink how I walked the days of my life by seeing what I did with my hands and my body in this new light? It took time. It also took mindfulness. And, to be honest, it was done in fits and starts. But whenever I feel myself slipping back into the dullness I remind myself that everything that I do for my family I can choose to do with love. Is an act of love. Well, maybe not cleaning the bathrooms. I’m still working on that one.

Once again, I had my feet on the ground. Life became lighter. There was more laughter and more fun. You know where I’m going with this, don’t you? You see, someone was still missing. My husband and I talked long and hard about having another child. The reasons not to were all valid. The con list was long. One thing kept coming up, though. Someone was missing. For both or us. For all of us. So we decided to leap into the unknown one more time. Against all of the odds. My age. Our family finances. Our mutual sanity. One more time. One more child.

Our little girl was born 6 years ago. She slid into the world surrounded by her siblings, her three aunts and her father. She arrived in a rush and once she was in my arms and I had kissed her salty brow, I thought to myself, “We are all finally here. Let the party begin.” And of course, as with all of the others, I fell in love. Madly in love.

To be totally honest, the next two years were very challenging. It was hard work. But no one ever promised me that parenting was going to be easy. People often ask me what it is like to have four children and I always give the same answer: Loud. It is just plain loud. There seems to be someone always screaming. Screaming with joy. Or laughter. Pain or anger. Just plain loud.

The only thing that stands out about that time after my last child was born is that those two years passed in a flash. If pressed I would not be able to tell you even one good story from that time. I was too tired and too busy. But then something happened that profoundly changed my life. My husband and I separated. And a year later we were divorced. Please know that my ex husband and the father of my children is a good man, a good father and still my friend. All things that I can say now with truth.

Obviously, divorce was not in the life plan that I had written for myself. We do not always have a choice about the path we are going to walk in this life. Bad things happen. Unfair things. Terrible things. But even though we do not always get to choose the path we walk, we do get to choose HOW we walk the path. That is the true measure of a man or a woman. How we choose to live in the face of the unexpected. Once again, at a time when I was lost but not looking for inspiration, a book fell into my hands. An oldie but a goodie. Scott Peck’s The Road Less Traveled. Things happen for a reason and I was meant to read that book at that point in my life.

Not only did it confirm that I had to do the hard work of suffering. That I had to walk in the darkness, for how ever long it took, if I was ever again to truly walk in the light, but it expanded my concept of love. Yes, I knew that I could love with acts of my body and of my hands. But Peck took that to the next logical step. To love with my entire being. My mind. My soul. My spirit. But this loving could not be done without effort and will. Loving, true loving, is work.

It meant that listening became an act of love. Now I know that this isn’t true of any of you listening to me today, but do you realize that we often listen with only a fraction of our true capacity? Maybe 15%. I know that I can drive a car, listen to the news on NPR, write a grocery list in my mind and listen to a child tell me about her day. Yes, I can. But not well. And not with 100% of my being. My children now know that if they really need me to listen that they need to tell me. It oft times has to wait, but when the time is right I can now listen with every cell of my body. This is an act of love and requires enormous effort.

Remembering is also an act of love. Remembering the little things that we are told. The friend that is sad. The child that had a boo-boo yesterday. The parent that had a bad day. One of my sisters recently called me when I was at the end of one of my black days. Yes, they still happen. Just not as frequently and they do not last as long, thank god. But she called and I talked and I wept. And she listened. That was her first act of love towards me. The second was when she called me the next day, in the middle of her busy day, to ask if I was feeling better. The remembering was as important as the listening.

Telling truth is an act of love. It takes effort and can be painful but it is an act of love. And if we expect our children to be truthful we ourselves must speak truth to them.

I think that one of the greatest and hardest acts of love is forgiveness. Not just of others but of ourselves. When we can’t or don’t forgive it is as if we carry around a sack of rocks. We can choose to carry the rocks, certainly. But wouldn’t it be easier, make us lighter, if we could put the sack down? The forgiveness is as much if not more a blessing to us then to the one who has transgressed. Forgiveness can be given weeks, years or decades after the transgression occurred. The person that needs to be forgiven may not even still be with us. But the work needs to be done if we are to act with love.

My children often fight. At times about the silliest things. Yes, it is true. They are not the little angels that they appear to be in church. When the harsh words fly or the fists lash out, feelings and bodies get hurt. When the dust has settled then they all know that there is still work to be done. Introspection is called for. Responsibility needs to be accepted. Apologies offered. And the final step, the hardest step of all. Forgiveness must be asked for. And given. Freely. With love. As an act of love to the other. If I teach my children nothing else in our time together, this is the one most important thing I hope to teach them. How deal with conflict in a healthy manner. A loving manner.

I know exactly what some of my children would be thinking right about now. “But, Mom, you don’t always listen to me. Or remember. As a matter of fact, you forget…a lot!” Yes, my dears, I do. But as I often tell them, I am an imperfect, human woman. And what I have been talking about today is an ideal. An ideal is a bright, shining idea. One we strive to reach. Like that perfect image of the snowman in your mind before you start building it. Or that image of the perfectly round pancake. You may not always achieve your vision, but that doesn’t stop you from trying over and over again. So, no, I may not always listen, remember or even tell truth, but I am always trying. Striving towards the ideal.

Scott Peck writes, “Love is not simply giving, it is the act of judicious giving and judicious withholding as well. It is judicious praising and judicious criticizing. It is judicious arguing, struggling, confronting, criticizing, pushing and pulling in addition to comforting. It is leadership. The word judicious means requiring judgment, and judgment requires more then instinct, it requires thoughtful and often painful decision-making.”Even though I fell in love with all of my children I now know that was but the tip of the iceberg. The instinct. That is what keeps us from chucking the screaming infant out of the window when we are tired. True loving is something else entirely.

So, love is a verb. It is the doing, more then the words “I Love You” that is the proof of our hearts. It is the doing in the face of the mundane, the day to day, the routine of our daily lives. It is the little things we do for the ones we love. It is acting with love even when we do not feel loving. (repeat) We have a choice every moment of every day how we are going to walk the paths of our lives. Loving these children with my mind, soul and body is not always easy. But I never walk my path alone. Good, kind people, family and friends alike, walk next to me. And of course, we do reap what we sow. And so I know that I am deeply and profoundly loved as well.

April 20, 2008, Green Sanctuary, Betsy Whitman

Today we celebrate the earth. There is so much to be said about the state of the earth and about our responsibilities, irresponsibilities for it but we haven’t much time. We haven’t much time….Today after coffee hour, we will meet to move on our task in becoming a green sanctuary certified church.

What lovely words “green sanctuary”. A sacred place where living beings gather and find health, nourishment, renewal — a place where the interdependence of all living beings (the ladybug and the zebra, the daisy and the bumblebee, the polar bear and the camel, the sugar maple and the blue heron, to name a few of our relations), the interdependence of life is acknowledged, honored, protected, kept safe, nourished……

When people first gathered together to celebrate and honor the spirit of life, they gathered in places they felt brought them particularly close to the life of the earth. Remember this….

Our ancestors gathered in groves of trees, growing tall up out of Earth’s body — where the birds wove their songs in with the chants and prayers of the human animals. Remember this…

Our ancestors gathered in caves, where their small human lights flickered against the vast, moist darkness that is inside Earth’s body. Remember this…

Our ancestors gathered on hills and mountains drawing nearer to the stars and the breath of Earth all around them. Remember this…

Our ancestors gathered at springs, and the sources of rivers, where the waters of life seep out of the body of Earth and help make possible for all green things to grow. Remember this…

And all these places were sanctuaries, places where our ancestors met together to make holy their lives, to weave together their living and their experiences — the sorrows and troubles, the joys and happiness of our being.

Our ancestors took parts of these earth sanctuaries and used them to build sanctuaries wherever they roamed, green sanctuaries made out of trees, bricks and granite, even here as we look around our church, the walls, the ceiling, our pews all made out of the body of the earth. Here we still light a flame to honor and awaken the spirit and we still hold ceremonies to honor the waters of life. Look around and see our own green sanctuary here…..

— we build individual sanctuaries, our homes, gathering stone, wood, water, light… each of us striving to make our homes a safe harbor where we can return again and again and be daily renewed.

And our bodies, our very bodies, with their strong standing bones, and our flowing juices coursing around, our hearts beating deep inside the cavern of our chests, our bodies too are green sanctuaries, made up from the earth’s body and inhabited with the sacred spirit of our own individual lives.

And each of these sanctuaries, our earth, our church, our homes, our bodies are all connected, interdependent, The green health of each part depends on the green health of the others, all strands of the greater web of the universe.

When we draw close to that tender sacredness we feel with the earth, we feel also our fears for the earth’s health, our health.

I call on you to join together, to take the small but very important steps in helping to heal our big green and blue earth.

I invite you to come up to the front of the church and plant a seed to that end. Come plant your wishes, your hopes, your desires for the Earth’s green health. Come plant a seed for healing changes, for beginnings as we embark on our journey in becoming a stronger green sanctuary, a place where the earth, our big green and blue sanctuary is honored, protected, renewed.

February 24, 2008, No Good Deed Goes Unpunished
Conscience and Unenforceable Obligations, Richard S. Gilbert

There is a story of the Maine couple, who after a good night’s sleep, rose early to prepare for a new day. The wife proceeded to the kitchen to make breakfast, and the husband went outdoors to savor the beautiful morning. The sky was clear and blue, and the sun shone brightly. It was Maine weather at its best. Shortly, the husband returned to the kitchen and said to his wife: “Well, Mary, we are really going to have to pay for this.”This story reminds me of the pathetic fallacy in literature, which attributes a kind of moral character to impersonal nature, as if the great natural order balances good and evil in human life, quite apart from our deserving. The apparent price for enjoying a good day was the inevitability that we would be somehow punished. This rather intriguing view of things is a fitting introduction to a consideration of the late Rev. William Sloan Coffin’s provocative words, “No good deed goes unpunished.”

“Do a good deed daily” was a mantra drummed into me during my Boy Scout days. It was not a bad slogan in a way; we ought to do good deeds. One of the dangers, however, was that I might think if I did one good deed early in the morning, I’d be off the hook for the rest of the day. Or it might suggest that virtue is somehow a matter of accumulating a certain number of good deeds, like merit badges. I recall the story of two Boy Scouts walking down the street, presumably looking for someone to help. One says to the other, “I can think of at least a half-dozen good deeds we could do if we got paid for them.”How, then, should we understand Coffin’s cynical mantra, “No good deed goes unpunished.”¹ What did he mean by that? Is it simply a corollary of the famous epigram: “Nice guys finish last”² ? Is it merely hyperbole? After all, some good deeds are rewarded.

I think Coffin was doing battle with a biblical dogma that still has much currency in our land – the belief that there is a direct correlation between virtue and reward, vice and punishment. Conventional wisdom assumes that virtue will be rewarded and vice punished. People who work hard will flourish and those who don’t will fail. It is part and parcel of the Protestant work ethic, now simply the work ethic, stripped of religious meaning.

That ethic dates back to the Hebrew biblical tradition. I recall my bible professor’s lecture on the Pentateuch – the first five books of the bible. He summarized a set of ethical laws – the Deuteronomic Code – with the words, “do good and prosper.” This was the message from the religious leaders of the time to keep their followers in line. Prosperity automatically follows goodness. Honesty is the best policy. Why? Because honesty pays.

The “do good and prosper” motto and the “no good deed goes unpunished” slogan constantly do battle in religious thinking. It is hard to imagine Jesus saying: “Take up your cross and follow me — it’ll make you feel good – you’ll be rich and happy.” And yet much of the “pop Christianity” of our time sends exactly this message. Belief in Jesus will enable you to prosper in the marketplace; to win on the football field; to triumph in the election. That theology is called “the prosperity gospel,” a dramatic contrast to the Jesus ethic in which it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God. What is it about those words that these preachers and presidents don’t understand?

When the word “sacrifice” is used call us to moral account, the number of altruists drops off precipitously.³ The language of sacrifice drops out of our vocabulary and is replaced by that of success. It won’t cost much to be a Christian – or a Unitarian Universalist. No sacrifices required.⁴ Nothing but blessings. The lessons of Jesus of Nazareth are easily forgotten.

One of the most gripping scenes in literature is the encounter of Jesus and the Grand Inquisitor in Fyodor Doestoevski’s novel The Brothers Karamazov. Set in the 15th century Spanish Inquisition, Jesus has reappeared, and is outraged at what he observes being said and done in his name. He tells the Grand Inquisitor that he intends to go out among the people and set the record straight. “Not so fast!” warns the Grand Inquisitor. “No way will I let you do that to these well-meaning people. They’ve grown up with their version of Christianity, as their parents and parents’ parents did before them. Their religious convictions provide meaning in their lives. Think how crushed they’d be if you told them that their beliefs were all wrong. . . . It would be like pulling the life jacket from a drowning man. You would deprive them of all hope. How dare you! Their religious beliefs work for them. Leave them alone.”⁵

Dogma and authority are pitted against the hard teachings of a sacrificial ethic. As the story concludes, the Grand Inquisitor condemns Jesus to death as a heretic: “I shall burn Thee for coming to hinder us. For if any one has ever deserved our fires, it is Thou. Tomorrow I shall burn thee.” As in fiction, so in history. For a lifetime of good deeds Jesus was punished by death on the cross – a sobering rebuke to the Deuteronomic school’s mantra “do good and prosper.” Doestoevski understands the “lesson” of Jesus very well.

A look at history reveal that while many have been martyred for not assenting to the creeds, no one has ever been executed for not following the Golden Rule.⁶

A more contemporary fictional illustration of how good deeds may be punished is found in Peter Sellers’ film, Heavens Above. Sellers plays the Reverend John E. Smallwood, who becomes vicar of a church in a contented English village. “The village enjoys the benevolence of the wealthy Despard family and the success of the pill it manufactures — sedative, pepper-upper and laxative combined, a perfect trinity. The vicar persuades Lady Despard to ’Go and sell that thou hast and give to the poor,’ as the Bible advises, and she freely distributes food, driving butcher, baker and candle-stick maker out of business. And when Smallwood pronounces that the trinity of Father, Son and Holy Ghost is more efficacious than the triple-actioned pill, sales go down, unemployment goes up and mob violence ensues.” The film ends with the good vicar being sent rocketing into outer space where he thinks he will be missionary to whomever might live there.⁷

Smallwood wanted to do good in the worst way, and he did — in the worst way. Without taking account of the risks inherent in his action, he blundered ahead with a literal New Testament morality which evidently doesn’t work in a modern capitalistic society. He innocently produced results that were nearly catastrophic for the very people he sought to help. We learn that it is not easy to apply the high-minded ethics of the first century to the complicated world of today. And we also learn that often, despite our best intentions, we are punished for our good deeds.

Here we have a distinction between an “ethics of conscience” and an “ethics of responsibility.” Smallwood acted out of an ethics of conscience: he affirmed a moral principle and adhered to it at all costs. We admire the Smallwoods of the world, yet despair of the harm they sometimes create. They do the wrong thing for the right reason, failing to take into account a moral analysis of the real world situation – the ethics of responsibility.

Recently I read of an ethical dilemma that is much more real than the amazing and amusing “Heavens Above” fictional drama. Pilgrim United Church of Christ in Carlsbad, California, proudly proclaims on a marquee outside and a banner inside, “All are welcome.” Its website reads: “An Open and Affirming, Inclusive Church with a Progressive Theology and a Commitment to Social Justice.” It is much like our Unitarian Universalist Welcoming Congregation program. But in January of 2007, Mark Pliska, 53, came to church and told the congregation he had just been released from prison for molesting children, but that he sought a place to worship. He requested membership, thus throwing that liberal congregation into an ethical tailspin. Congregants wondered just how welcoming they really were. By accepting this apparently repentant man, were their children safe? The Pilgrim Church conscience would surely accept this man – “all are welcome.” But the Pilgrim Church sense of responsibility must consider the safety of its children. A true dilemma.

Pilgrim’s minister, The Rev. Madison Shockley, said: “I think what we have been through is a loss of innocence. . . . The scariest moment was when I got the feeling in the congregation about whether Mark could attend or not, and we needed more time, yet people were saying ’If he stays, I leave,’ or ’If he leaves, I leave.’”

A mother in the church who attends with her three sons was conflicted. Her oldest son, Sebastian, 9, reminded her, “I’d feel uncomfortable, but we’re supposed to let everybody come.” In the meantime, publicity over his arrival at Pilgrim led to Mr. Pliska’s eviction from his apartment and the loss of his job. He was homeless and unemployed. Yet he said he did not regret being open with the church after spending years hiding who he was. As one Unitarian Universalist minister, whose congregation dealt with two known sex offenders, said, “You can’t be all things to all people.”⁸

How would we handle that dilemma, we the people who “covenant to affirm and promote the right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large”? Hopefully, we would struggle with our conscience and share our dreams and doubts with one another. We would experience the tough tension between an ethic of conscience and an ethic of responsibility, and maybe even pray a little.

It is in the utter messiness of the human condition that we discover what our values really are. I won’t presume to resolve the dilemma of Pilgrim Church, and I don’t know how it came out. I merely raise the issue as an example of “no good deed goes unpunished;” to remind us of the strenuous quality of the ethical life. That life is far more complex than simply following any absolutist rules – obeying the Ten Commandments – doing good and automatically prospering.

It is for good reason that we affirm and promote “the right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large.” Once more we discover the inherent dialogue of individual and community. The right of conscience enables us to decide matters of importance without external coercion. Our inner integrity cannot be violated. At the same time we are always in relationship with our community, which we help shape and which in turn helps shape us.

I recall one summer evening many years ago when a Roman Catholic visitor, learning I was a minister, asked about my religion. When he learned that I neither feared hell nor sought heaven, but believed in “the importance of being good — for nothing,” he was incredulous. He said that if he didn’t fear eternal punishment or seek eternal reward there would be no telling what he would do.

He was bound to the Great Enforcer, not the moral power of “unenforceable obligations,”⁹ those inner tugs of conscience toward doing what we believe is right no matter what the outcome.

Why do we honor our marriage covenant even when we are at times unhappy? Why do we sacrifice to raise children when that seems hopelessly frustrating? Why do we keep promises even when we could get away with breaking them? Why do we obey the law even when there is little danger of being caught? Why do we involve ourselves in community service and social action when no one seems to notice and we often fail? And why have people done these things for centuries?

No external power is forcing us to meet these obligations; we are truly on our own, not coerced by the “cudgel but an inward music: the irresistible power of unarmed truth, the powerful attraction of its example,” in Boris Pasternak’s words. Character is what we are when no one is looking. Character is when we act though it will not do us any particular good. Character is when we respond to our unenforceable obligations to our neighbors. Character is when we struggle with the creative tension between an ethic of conscience and an ethic of responsibility.

What do I conclude from all this? Of course, not every good deed is punished – the phrase is rhetorical to make a point.

Doing good is not about keeping score. I believe our mandate is to do good for its own sake; to learn the importance of being good for nothing. When we are honest with ourselves we know that life is not necessarily fair – there is no eternal law written in the nature of things that renders prosperity for goodness or poverty for evil. This understanding is not really cynicism but simply a frank recognition of the “sheer randomness of our fortunes.”¹⁰

Lest we become discouraged by this hard reality, I think of a man of heroic proportions who illustrates the courage-to-be even knowing that his good deed would be punished – Pastor Martin Niemoeller, a German U-boat commander in World War I who became a pacifist in World War II. He led the Confessing Church in its resistance to Nazism while many of his colleagues collaborated.

His death in 1984 was especially poignant to me since I had spent a treasured few hours with him during my 1978 sabbatical in Germany. To him are attributed these familiar, but disturbing words: “In Germany the Nazis first came for the Communists and I did not speak up because I was not a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak up because I was not a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak up because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I did not speak up because I was not a Catholic. Then they came for me — by that time there was no one to speak up for anyone.”

Not all of us are called to be heroes or heroines. Many of our decisions to do good are clear – we know what we need to do. But on another level are actions we must take for which we will not be paid. We may be required by conscience to say and do that for which we may very well be punished. It is a hard truth, but one well worth pondering in an age of ethical weakness and easy morality.

In my Building Your Own Theology program I invite participants to write their own Ten Commandments. I do likewise. Here are ten of my considered convictions, or should we say habits to be learned by highly ethical people:

1. Walk gently upon the earth as you would be a good guest in a neighbor’s house. The cosmos does not make junk. Creation is fundamentally good.
2. Be gentle with your neighbor — none of us knows what it is like to be another. People are precious. Walk a mile in their moccasins.
3. Be gentle with yourself — aspire to be more than you are — but accept your finitude. You have a right to be here.
4. Love people, use things. Treat people as ends, not means.
5. Affirm the importance of being good for nothing. Do good for its own sake. Doing good is not about keeping score.
6. Be honest with yourself. Let the inner and the outer person be the same.
7. So act that your behavior speaks louder than your words. Deeds are more important than creeds.
8. Share with your neighbors so that everyone has enough, no one has too much and we share with maximum freedom and minimum coercion. This world is a neighborhood. All people are our neighbors.
9. And to show a little more humor than the Ten Commandments: Always be a little kinder than necessary.¹¹ “Do unto others 20% better than you would have them do unto you — 20% to correct for subjective error.”
10. Be humble and realize that loving your neighbor will require all the strength you have to give. Remember that we are all toddlers in moral as in spiritual matters.

“Love is the doctrine of this church, and service is its prayer.
This is our great covenant: To dwell together in peace;
To seek the truth in freedom, And to help one another.” Amen.

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1) Quoted by James Wall in The Christian Century, 4/13/83, p. 331 and attributed to William Sloan Coffin. 2) Leo Durocher, manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers. 3) Ibid., p. 105. 4) Ibid., p. 115. 6) Duncan Howlett. 7) See William Mueller, “Heavens Above,” The Christian Century, November 6, 1963. 8) Neela Banerjee. “Sex Offenders Test Churches’’Core Beliefs.” The New York Times. April 10, 2007. 9) Rushworth Kidder. 10) Everyday Ethics, p. 170.

THE LESSON — Author unknown

Then Jesus took his disciples up the mountain and gathered them around him.

He taught them, saying:

Blessed are the poor in spirit,

for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven;

Blessed are the meek;

Blessed are they that mourn;

Blessed are the merciful;

Blessed are they who thirst for justice;

Blessed are you when persecuted;

Blessed are you when you suffer;

Be glad and rejoice, for your reward is great in heaven,

And remember what I am telling you.

Then Simon Peter said: “Do we have to write this down?”

And Andrew said: “Are we supposed to know this?”

And James said: “Will we have a test on this?

And Phillip said: “What if we don’t know it?”

And Bartholomew said: “Do we have to turn this in?”

And John said: “The other disciples didn’t have to learn this.”

And Matthew said: “When do we get out of here?”

And Judas said: “What does this have to do with real life?”

And the other disciples likewise.

Then one of the Pharisees who was present asked to see Jesus’ lesson plan,
and inquired of Jesus of his terminal objectives in the cognitive domain — And Jesus wept.