How Open the Hearts, How Open the Minds?
a sermon preached by Rev. Khleber M. Van Zandt V at First
Unitarian Church of Alton, September 30, 2007
The banner that’s hanging on the railing out in front of the church this morning says, “The Church of Open Hearts and Open Minds, First Unitarian Church of Alton.” I wonder: is that an announcement of the truth? Or is it a cynical advertisement from the mind of some marketing guru that is meant to attract those least able to fend off the high-pressure sales pitch lurking just inside those red doors? Gosh, now that you put it that way, I certainly hope it’s the former. The other sign out front, what we know as the wayside pulpit, this morning says something about a free and responsible search for truth. So maybe we can search for the truth today, and see about whether these open hearts and open minds really exist, or if we need to repaint the banner to say something nearer the truth.
“Open hearts and open minds”: The first thing I notice is the duality: heart and mind. The Romans said we thought with our hearts, but we’re not Romans. I think most people in our post-Enlightenment, science-oriented culture would say that we think with our brains AND that we feel with our brains, that all the functions of control reside up here in our heads, in our brain tissue. So what is this heart and mind thing?
It is poetry to say we feel with our hearts - I can’t imagine my heart muscle itself having much to do with my laughter or my tears. Maybe it’s also poetry to say that we think with our minds, because the difference between thinking and feeling is not as distinct as all that. Surely your thoughts influence your feelings, and your feelings influence your thoughts, to such an extent that thinking and feeling become inseparable and to speak of them as separate entities sets up a false dichotomy.
Confusing enough? All this is to say that the idiomatic ‘hearts and minds’ may mean different things to different people, and the meaning may be culturally embedded, and the meaning may change over time.
Here’s what I mean - today, in this place - by the phrase “open hearts and open minds”: I mean simply that people with open hearts care for others and that people with open minds are open to new ideas. And I have some questions: Can we in this church be said to have open hearts and/or open minds? Can we be said to care for others, and are we open to new ideas? Perhaps the place to start would be to search our historical record - the stories that have come down to us about our history here in Alton. There are a couple of sources for that, but you should be aware that the people who wrote those histories have passed on, we can have no real ongoing dialogue with them personally, and so we may have to interpret those stories for ourselves. Let’s see what we can find.
In A History of the First Unitarian Church, Alton, Illinois, 1836-1986 written by beloved member, the late Lottie Forcade, there is a wonderful quote from a sermon by the first minister of this congregation, the Rev. Charles Andrew Farley, a graduate of Harvard Divinity School. When Rev. Farley arrived in 1836, he quickly became a friend of the abolitionist publisher, Elijah Lovejoy, and when Lovejoy was murdered by a pro-slavery mob here in 1837, Farley - who had also been threatened - left town to return to the East Coast. Here is that quote:
“Do you now ask, ‘Which is the true church?’ I answer: not the Episcopal church, not the Presbyterian church, not the Baptist church, not the Methodist church, not the Unitarian church, but the good in all these churches. All who live under the light of nature or under the more blessed light of revelation. The child of the Ganges, who worships the glorious river and finds healing in its waters; he who adores the Sun in its Majesty; he who cries out for the Great Father and whose dying eyes are lit up with the hope of hunting again in the spirit land; all, all are the children of God. All are members of the Church Universal, of that vast temple which the broad skies cover and the broad earth sustains and whose doors are open to the illimitable heaven.”
Pretty good preaching, I must say. Not terribly remarkable theologically, until you remember that the Rev. Farley was speaking in 1836. Here in Alton in 1836, Farley honors those who “live under the light of nature” - sometime before Ralph Waldo Emerson brought the natural theology of Transcendentalism to wider popular notice. Here in Alton in 1836, Farley speaks of the truth of other world religions - before Emerson and Thoreau and Fuller and the other Transcendentalists began ordering copies of Hindu and other sacred texts from overseas. Here in Alton in 1836, Farley expressed the notion that the truth is not in the doctrines of any particular religion but is, rather, the underlying principle beneath all - more than ten years before Theodore Parker’s sermon “The Transient and the Permanent in Christianity” did something similar for a national audience.
It is quite amazing that a person out here on the frontier, a minister in this pulpit, would be uttering such thoughts before the guiding lights of American Unitarianism. Yes, Farley still uses the masculine gender to denote all of humanity - that won’t change for a century and a half. And yes, Farley uses the Christian idiom to express a universality, but he’s not saying that others are wrong - he’s using the language of his people to say that all people are sacred, all are part of what he calls the true church. If that’s not open minded, then I don’t know what is.
Please notice one more thing: Rev. Farley from this pulpit includes as children of God those who “cry out for the Great Father, hoping to hunt again in the spirit land,” an inclusion of Native Americans that I doubt you’d find in much American sermonizing of the day. Again, simply amazing.
Let’s leap forward a hundred years. In the history of the Alton church written in 1936 by the Rev. Wallace Robbins for the 100th anniversary of the congregation, the Rev. Robbins shares this: “Most of the members have come from other churches and have had to learn the meaning of the free spirit and a free spirit’s discipline from the church… Recruits came desiring freedom for themselves and learned only by patient and arduous teaching to desire that freedom for others.”
If Rev. Robbins intended ‘free spirit’ to mean anything like an open mind, then he seems to be saying that most people came here without such a thing and only learned it over time, apparently, he feels, with extreme effort on someone’s part, presumably the minister’s. This is a rather harsh assessment of new members that I cannot share in this day and time.
Rev. Robbins apparently aspires toward cultivating a congregation of free-spirited, open-minded persons, but laments the unformed (in his opinion) people who show up to join the movement. From my experience in the orientation classes here, the people who come honestly desiring to walk with us on the journey already have an understanding of the responsibility that freedom demands. In fact, that may be a key to why it is more and more difficult to find a seat on Sunday mornings - perhaps there were more people in the population seventy-five or a hundred years ago searching only for personal freedom: freedom was not by any means a given in the first half of the twentieth century. But now, it seems there are more people coming to us already knowing that individual freedom implies a responsibility to others; it seems people are trying to find a community that understands that as well as they do. In other words, rather than simply seeking a refuge for personal freedom and open-mindedness, perhaps more people these days are looking to enhance the connection between personal freedom and responsibility to the community, which is in fact the link between an open mind and an open heart. People do not join with us on the journey because they believe there is no longer any work to be done, but because they know there is much work to be done on both the personal and communal levels and they know they can’t do it all by themselves.
Taking another leap of about fifty years, I want to make note of a particularly bright spot in our history. The women’s alliance of this church is known as the Anna D’s, named after Mrs. Anna D. Sparks, a long-time lay leader and treasurer of the congregation around the turn of the century (that’s the nineteenth to the twentieth century). Lottie Forcade’s history includes this paragraph about the Anna D’s in the period 1976 to 1986, about twenty to thirty years ago:
“The Anna D. Sparks Alliance continued their support of the church during this decade. They also continued community service by sponsoring public CPR training classes, preparing and serving three public luncheons for the Pastor’s Association, yearly contributions to local charities and the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, and outfitting a needy young girl each Christmas. This young girl is selected by Illinois Family Services and her identity is not revealed even to the Anna D’s. To support these projects and others, they continue to operate a bridge tournament which began in October, 1956, with sixteen couples playing twice a month from October to June. This tournament has grown through these twenty-nine years from 32 players to 162 in 1986 and owes much of its success to Dot Hull who organizes them and works out all the many, many details each year. The Anna D’s also have a money-making luncheon each year in the fall and a ‘thank you’ luncheon in the spring for the bridge players when the bridge scores are announced.”
Sounds like the Anna D’s could have single-handedly kept the traditions of open-heartedness and open-mindedness alive in this congregation. These women were not just free spirits sitting around congratulating themselves or complaining about the issues of the day. They were open-minded and open-hearted as well; that is, they took their responsibilities to others seriously and understood that they could be the agents of change that was needed in the community.
So. We have stories that indicate our past history is full of open hearts and open minds. But what about our present? What stories can you think of that would illustrate for a visitor that this church is made up of people with open hearts who care for others and people with open minds who are open to new ideas? For my own part, I see that there are baskets in the foyer where you can give food items and household goods to people who need them. I know we give every other offering to a deserving local or national social justice or religious organization. I remember that we sent people to the Gulf Coast to work on housing that was destroyed by hurricanes Katrina and Rita. I know we try to be a public voice for the rights of the oppressed, we seek alliances with other groups in sympathy with our goals, and we work for a cleaner environment with others in our city and community. These are things of which I’m immediately aware; perhaps you’ve thought of other stories and other work we’re doing.
And yet, I’m left with questions. I can’t reach into each of you and plumb your minds and hearts, but I can to some extent examine my own interior. Too often, I find myself struggling - too often I find myself getting angry at pet peeves like litter or useless noise, cursing under my breath at drivers who don’t drive like I want them to, tying myself in knots over things both large and small that are in the end inconsequential. As much as I want to be open-minded, I am deeply embedded in the culture that surrounds us, even to the point of sometimes not being able to think outside the proverbial box. And as much as I want to be open-hearted some days I find myself, instead, petty and self-serving. I do not always act as the person I aspire to be; I do not always act as the person I believe myself to be; some days I fall very short. Then, all I can do is to learn from my mistakes, pledge to do better, ask forgiveness, and try again.
If the banner on the front of the church announces this as a church of open hearts and open minds, I hope it will be read not solely as an announcement of past glory, but as an admission that these are our longings and our aspirations. And if we don’t always live up to the values of our mission statement, we should learn from our mistakes, pledge to do better, ask forgiveness, and try again.
Sometimes we fall short of the glory, and like all humanity need forgiveness and compassion. Let us be open to it.
So may it be.
Return to First Unitarian Church of
Alton - Selected Sermons Page