Opening Words

(e. e. cummings)

i thank You God for most this amazing

day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees

and a blue true dream of sky, and for everything

which is natural which is infinite which is yes
 
 

Reading 1

From Huston Smith. The World’s Religions

Traditionally, when people wanted answers to life’s ultimate questions?

Smith didn’t say this, but we Unitarian Universalists don’t have these texts that answer our questions.
 
 

Reading 2

We are at the trial of Socrates in Athens, 399 BC. Socrates has already been found guilty of impiety and corrupting the young men of Athens. In other words, he has criticized the government, and the leaders don’t like it. There is no prescribed sentence for these crimes. Instead, there is now a penalty phase of the trial, and Socrates has to propose his own sentence. Then court decides between Socrates’ proposal and that of the prosecutor, which is death. The court probably would have expected him to propose exile from Athens, and they very likely would have accepted that. Socrates is speaking, as recorded by Plato:

Introduction

The last time I gave a sermon here was in 1986. It took a long time for the Worship Committee to forget that one and allow me to give another one.

My training was in physics and mathematics, not philosophy or theology. I don’t claim to be a particularly original thinker, but luckily, originality is not required for sermons.

A search on the Internet for the phrase, "Unexamined Life," resulted in thousands and thousands of documents for me to look at, some of them sermons. (Incidentally, the number one did not refer to Socrates. It was about avoiding an audit of your income tax return.)

Part 1

Socrates spent much of his time challenging common definitions and beliefs, challenging the status quo, and paid for it with his life. So did many religious martyrs over the centuries.

What got me started on the subject of this sermon was a recent book by Alain de Botton, "The Consolations of Philosophy."

He says, and I’m paraphrasing, that every society has its own ideas of what you should believe and how you should act, if you want to avoid suspicion and unpopularity. Some of these ideas take the form of laws, but others exist in a mixture of ethical and practical judgements that can be described as "common sense." If you start questioning common sense ideas, people will think you bizarre, or even dangerous. If we are not supposed to question common sense, it is because common sense is believed to be too sensible, too obviously correct, for questioning.

There’s another reason why people avoid questioning the status quo. Most of us feel that the status quo must have good reasons behind it, even if we aren’t sure exactly what they are, because these conventions have been accepted in our society for a long time. It’s hard for us to believe that our society could be gravely mistaken in its beliefs, and that we would be the only ones who noticed it.

So it takes courage to question the status quo, and Socrates had it.

Socrates said that the unexamined life is not worth living. What did he mean?

Obviously, from the context of the reading, he meant it for himself. He himself didn’t want to continue living if he couldn’t be true to himself and to his god.

What kind of examining did Socrates do?

As an example, in one of Plato’s dialogues, Socrates discusses courage with a general.

The general says that when someone stays at his post and fights the enemy, that’s courage.

Socrates says, "Well, what about a cavalry regiment that fights by successively dashing in, attacking, and retreating?"

The general says, "Oh. Well, then…" and modifies his definition.

And it goes on, and on, with the general revising his statement and Socrates finding exceptions.

The usual outcome in these exchanges is that the other person realizes that he is totally confused and not thinking clearly.

Here’s a summary of the method that Socrates used:

1. Start with a statement that seems to be common sense. As in,

We should always tell the truth.

2. Look for an exception, a situation where the statement would be wrong. As in,

A wife asks her husband, "Does this dress make me look fat?"

3. If there is an exception, the statement must be false, or at least imprecise.

It is.

4. Modify the statement to take the exception into account. As in,

We should always tell the truth, except for lies that make someone feel better.

5. Repeat the process.

(Now we would find an exception to the new statement.)

6. If we finally formulate a statement and we can’t think of an exception to it, it might be the truth. Or it might not. At any rate, the product of serious thinking should be better than our intuition or common sense.

You can do this, too, perhaps not as well as Socrates, but then he had many years of practice. Give it a try. Here are a few "common sense" statements that you might examine at your leisure.

We’ve seen Socrates’ version of the examined life.

What does the examined life mean for us? Would people rather die than live an unexamined life? For most people, obviously not, or they’d be dead by now.

Socrates was talking mostly about examining one’s life as one interacted with the state. He was talking to rich white men who had time to think about philosophy. He didn’t talk much about what people should do in "ordinary" life, which is where we spend most of our time.

What do we mean by an examined life?

Lee and I used to live in northern New Jersey, where we read the New York Times and got New York television. New York had a mayor, Ed Koch, who used to walk up to people in the city and say, "Hello, I’m the mayor, Ed Koch. How am I doing?" This may have been just smart politics, but it’s possible that he may have meant it, and that he even listened to the answers.

We, however, can ask ourselves, "How am I doing?" and mean it without worrying about ulterior motives, and we ought to. We ought to examine our lives.

Most of us don’t spend much time thinking about our lives. We’re too busy living our daily lives, with work, family, church, volunteering, carpools, church, TV, movies, soccer, church, music lessons, Do-It Day, and all that, to think about how we ought to live.

No, mainly we live the unexamined life?we just go on doing the same old stuff for the same old reasons, or for no good reasons at all. We, like the wheels of ox carts, tend to settle into the ruts of life’s road. (That’s my metaphor for the sermon.)

If I don’t examine my life, guiding my life by my own thinking, then it’s not really my own life that I’m living. It’s some generic life. It’s the status quo life.

Theologian James Luther Adams said, "An unexamined faith is not worth having, for it can be true only by accident. A faith worth having is a faith worth discussing and testing." This applies to life, too.

Examining our lives means thinking about the decisions we make; how we live depends on those decisions. We ought to think about what decisions we might make. We ought to think about what the grounds are upon which to make those decisions. This is at the heart of living, living religiously, living an ethical life.

It’s clear to me that examining how we live is at the heart of our religion. That’s not the case for the standard religions. In those religions, there are prescribed rules, set down in the sacred texts. The truth is right there in the Torah, the Bible, the Koran, and so on. If you have doubts as to the interpretation of the texts, just ask the rabbis or priests or ministers or mullahs or whoever runs your religion.

Benjamin Meyers, formerly the UU minister in Fremont, California, in one of the sermons that I found on the Internet, pointed out that

Since this is a UU church, I’m not going to tell you what to think, or how to think, or even on what grounds to base your decisions. I do suggest that you keep in mind our seven Unitarian Universalist principles. You might also examine them Socratically. You might be able to find an exception. Even these principles shouldn’t be accepted uncritically.

In thinking about this topic, I remembered "zero-based budgeting." (I am the church treasurer, after all.) In standard budgeting, such as the Board of Trustees does once a year for our church, you take last year’s budget and make small tweaks to it. In zero-based budgeting, you start afresh every time, decide on your priorities, and then decide how you would like to allocate your funds this year. You don’t just make small tweaks.

All of us have budgets, not just money, but time. We all get 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Have you ever looked at how you budget your most precious resource? Do you think about budgeting your time?

About some of our time, of course, we have little choice. Those who have paying jobs, for example, have to put in their hours at work. Well, to some degree. Try applying the Socratic process to this statement: "I have to work long hours at this demanding job so that my family can afford the lifestyle to which they have become accustomed, and so that my children can afford to go to the top colleges."

Try keeping track of your time for a few weeks. How you spend your time reflects your real priorities. They may be different from what you think they are.

How would you spend your time if you applied zero-based budgeting?

Part 3

We need to examine our lives, not just for living ethically, but for living fully.

We always have excuses for not examining our lives, for not living fully. For example,

When most religions talk about "the good life" they mean living according to the prescribed rules. When I talk about "the good life" I mean living with depth, living an interesting life, as well as living ethically. (It’s quite possible to live ethically and at the same time to live a terrible, dull, boring life.)

In an interview, Edward Gorey (the late author and illustrator) said that for a work to be interesting (he meant a work of art or literature), for a work to be interesting, it should have something unexpected in it.

It’s true of our lives, too. Try something different, something unexpected.

And pay attention.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his essay on Nature, said that if the stars only appeared for one night every thousand years, then people would marvel at them, and for generations they would tell their children and grand-children about this marvelous sight. With the city lights around here, we don’t often see the stars clearly, but still we usually ignore them.

If we pay attention, we will notice the miracle of springtime, and flowers, and new leaves. We will notice the passing of the seasons. All this happens every year, but it’s new every year. Every birth is a miracle, as is every seed that sprouts.

Scott Alexander, minister at River Road said in another of those sermons from the Internet,

"Am I living the life I really want to live?the only life I have?"

As we examine our lives and strive to live ethically and fully, we should remember that we are not alone. We have each other. We have this community. We can help each other.

So:

Be mindful of life. Examine your life.

Do something out of the ordinary, something unexpected, something interesting.

Live with love. And?Follow your bliss.

Amen.
 
 

Benediction