The Enchantment of Becoming

A sermon by Rev. John Morehouse

Many of us know the story of the Frog Prince. A handsome prince is bewitched by a powerful sorcerer who turns him into a frog. One day a beautiful princess loses her ring down a deep well. Forlorn, she cries until the frog – this is a talking frog mind you – hops up to the princess and asks what the matter is. When the princess tells him the frog prince offers to down into the well and retrieve the ring providing that the princess kiss the frog as payment in return. The princess not at all sure about this deal, is then assured by the frog that with that kiss his spell will be broken and he will become a handsome prince. The princess agrees and down the well goes the frog, coming back with the ring. The princess kisses the frog and ‘kazam!’ the Frog turns into a prince and they live happily ever after.

Or at least that is the version most of us have heard. There are alternative endings you know. In another, more feminist telling, the frog promises to retrieve the ring and promises the princess not only a handsome prince, but a mother-in-law who will live with them and cook all his meals and wash all his clothes, and the three of them could live happily ever after. The princess decides not to kiss the frog because it is far more interesting having a talking frog, than some handsome prince who is constantly pestering her for ah, ‘favors’.

The myth of the frog prince is actually one of the oldest and most often told myth (true inside, not out) from around the world, and as Jeremy Taylor, our great Unitarian interpreter of dreams reminds me, it is a story about becoming. It is deep in symbolism. Leaving aside the profoundly disturbing sexist overtones of the story, the frog, as an amphibian, is the original changeling, the ultimate symbol of personal evolution, harking back to our own evolutionary beginnings. Born as a tadpole, dependent on a nurturing watery environment, the tadpole becomes a frog, crawling onto land, breathing both air and through water. The frog is a creature steeped in potential, to become something more, something else. The frog prince betwixt between one world and the next could very well be, as Jeremy Taylor points out, the unborn state of possibility. The frog agrees to jump down that well – and wells are the symbols for a thin place between one world and the next –and in so doing finds the treasure that lies beyond what we see and know here. The kiss, that symbol of love, is the gift of freedom, the love necessary for any of us to become what we were meant to be. It is truly an enchanting story. (Jeremy Taylor, The Living Labyrinth 1999)

How different is that from any of us? Aren’t all of us in some small way anxious to become something more than what we are? Isn’t this really what we are about here in this church – becoming something more, deeper, greater? Frogs waiting for that kiss? Think back to the first time you walked into this church. How many of you drove by for a few Sundays? How many parked and then looked at who was getting out of their cars? I think of the first time I saw this place, not like today with all you wonderful people here, but the first time I stepped out of the car with your wonderful search committee. I wondered to myself: Well, is this it? Is this the place of my becoming? I have to tell you it was a powerful moment for Frances and me. I was, naturally, enchanted by the search committee, enchanted by Southern California, enchanted by what I read and heard about you all, so full of life, so fun loving, so much a community of young and old, so full of the potential that I was yearning for, so “fine a people” as Jim Grant described you in his warm southern style. I have been enchanted by you’re honoring of the past, which is so important, as well as fueling the future. But when I walked into this hall, empty though it was something, some power stirred. I almost expected a kiss from the air to awaken me. Given the success of this pledge drive I would say we all got it! A great big kiss!

Let me ask you this: How many of you came here for the first time to join a committee? How many came looking for a place to sign over those checks? We don’t come to a church, at first, to fill the church’s need; we come at first to fill our own. We come here to become. Only in time, if we have found here a spiritual home do we follow that with commitment of time and money. When any of us come here, we come to become something new; we come hungry for transformation; we come to be fed and awakened. Perhaps it is to start anew; better than half of any newcomer comes to any church – any church – because they have lost something in their lives; lost a mate, a friend, a love, a job, a son, a daughter, lost their way, lost their faith. We all start here by being losers in some sense. But by coming here, we become something more, still losers in a certain sense, we lose our fears, our hang-ups, our anger and we start to become the potential we are. And that is why we are here to become more; more of a lover, more of a friend, more of a seeker, more of a doer of good, more and deeper in our spiritual quest. That draw, that force, is the stuff of cities, and homes and especially churches like this one, and whether we see it or not it is there and it enchants us, pulls at us and invites us to be here. Not just to be here but to grow here. I have come to believe that even as we honor our past, we are all here to find something new. We are all to a certain extent “enchanted agnostics”, searching for something greater and even more wonderful than what we have known.

Unitarian Universalists like us have the opportunity, perhaps even the obligation to become something more. I mean, where else are you encouraged to ask questions, to explore just about every spiritual and intellectual path, if not here? Really. Do you think the Methodist church has a humanist and a spiritual forum!? If there is any group of people in the process of becoming something more we are it.

But the enchantment of becoming is more than just helping yourself to the spiritual smorgasbord as delicious as that is (hi there, I am a feminist neo-pagan, Buddhist leaning agnostic!). We are really good at being widely represented, after all according to your packet you are: 8% atheist, 9% pantheist, 5% pagan, 16 % earth centered, 10 % open agnostic, not to be confused with 13% strict agnostic, 27 % mystic, 54 % humanist, and 32 % something else akin to vague theist with humanistic tendencies! That adds up, by the way, to 174 % UU!!! We are a widely diverse group but perhaps what we need more of, in our quest towards becoming – what will ultimately feed our minds and souls – would be some depth. Like the frog who dives down into the well of the unknown to retrieve the ring, we here will do well to dive more deeply.

It is a major theme of my ministry to encourage us to dive deeply into spiritual possibilities. What Gerald May calls ‘meaningful integration’ as Jim pointed out a few weeks. (As quoted in Jim Grant’s sermon 4/10/05) Meaningful integration is to dive more deeply into what we believe; to have reasons and experience for why we believe we are a humanist or a theist or a Buddhist. Diving deeply means we integrate our experience with what we hold to be true. If you are sure that God doesn’t exist than explore and understand from a philosophical sense what that means; study with me the great humanist masters, Emerson, Thoreau, Mary Shelly, Spinoza, Confusicous. If you have an inkling there is a greater power among us than learn with me what the world’s religions teach and practice in learning what that power is. If you are sure there is a God, than let us explore what that faith asks of you. Being enchanted with becoming means exploring in this safe and loving place what our beliefs really mean.

This is why I consider myself a mystic. Not some belly gazing lost soul (although there is plenty of belly to gaze upon) but rather because I have come to believe that I do not yet know what greater power or purpose there is for me or any of us but I am searching. Being a mystic means that I am seriously searching for meaning that fits reason and experience. Being a mystic is not to be confused with being mystified. I seriously study the great literature of the world in my search. I know a lot but there is always more to know. This is what a mystic does: searches for more meaning. It is a mystery unfolding daily in the people I meet, and the power of a community to love and heal and transform. Mystery is not won it is unfolded. Mystics are the more extreme form of enchanted agnostics. That open ended search is at the heart of who we are as UUs and that is why we here: to learn and explore and respect and love together.

We are here for a reason. We are here to become something more than we were when we first walked into that door. We are here to support and learn from each other, even if we don’t agree. We are here to take our faith and unite it into a community of acceptance and service. We are here to dive deeply into what we believe not just consider more options. And when we do that well – learn, grow, accept and serve – we will grow. We don’t grow for growing sake; we grow when we honor our past and fuel our future. Then we will grow in number. But much more importantly we will grow in understanding and spirit. That is why we are enchanted with becoming and that is what our ministry will be about; we are enchanted with growing into a mature church, a deeper faith, a serving congregation.

To move towards this becoming we must do two things. First we must believe we can become something more. We must avoid what Montague called the “hardening of the spirit” that closed mindness that leads to fundamentalism of the right and the left. (Quoted in Grant) To become something more takes a faith in freedom. No one, no one, is imprisoned by their past. We are all, no matter how young at heart, able to become something more. This is written into the very fabric of our culture. To become something more we must believe we are free, like the king in our story, we are free to choose. And that freedom is well earned. In the Hebrew myth (younger of two myths, Babylonian exile) of Adam and Eve, Adam, which means earthling and Eve which means created, are given life from each other and set in a garden by their creator. There are two trees in this garden, the tree of immortality and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They are enchanted with what? – not immortality – but knowledge, the knowledge to become something else. So the snake, which represents infinity and life, offers up the fruit. Eve eats the fruit than offers it to Adam. And their eyes are opened, they have become something new. They notice that the knowledge begins with understanding the difference between beings; God as creator, man and woman. (Indeed, this makes a lot of sense mythically; after all, what is it that we demonize in another but our differences). We know the rest of the story. God comes strolling through the garden (Jack Miles), notices they are hiding and that they now have the knowledge of good and evil (Adam blames Eve, Eve blames snake, snake doesn’t have a leg to stand on) and they are banned from the garden.

This is not a story about shame and disobedience. Its about choice and separation, it’s about free will and our power to exercise it. It is a story about humanity’s coming of age, its adolescence. It’s a story about the enchantment of becoming. Before the knowledge that we were separate and capable of making choices we were ignorant, no different than the plants of the garden, a thing created. But now because we know we are different and have that freedom to choose to become what we want to become. You each have that freedom to become something more.

The myth of Adam and Eve holds a deep truth: that we have the power, earned by simply being human and mortal to become something more than we are. And that freedom is real. It is the basis of our faith as UUs and the foundation of hope. We can always become something new. And we as a church can become something more to the world we serve. To be more means we take responsibility for saving the world, even if it is just a corner.

But in order to do that we have to be able to let go of what holds us back. And that is often not easy. It is one thing to say “I have the power to get over my feelings of loneliness” quite another to just will that change into your life. That is where this church comes in. We can be the place of healing and encouragement and celebration to help us become something more. Ministry is about affirming and growing. And it takes all of us. Me as your minister, sure, I will encourage, conjure, prod, and love you into being more. I will hold your hand when you need me to, I will laugh with you and cry with you and I will urge you on. Because I am here to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. But we will do this together. All of you will be in ministry together.

And in order to let go of what holds us back we have to learn to forgive but not forget. In my ministry I have learned that forgiveness is a powerful force towards becoming. When we forgive – not forget – we are free to become something new, again. Life holds enchantment, again. We are renewed again.

In my last year as the minister of the First Unitarian Church in South Bend, IN, I was asked to officiate at a service for the organization, Families of Murdered Children. Annually, this group plants a tree in a public park and remembers children taken by murder, abuse and drunk drivers. You have to know this is one of my greatest fears; losing a child is a tragedy that even in my imagination far outweighs any of the pain I have known. I agreed and I did as good a job as I could. We wept and remembered and planted that weeping cheery tree with love and strength. At the end of the service the last family to leave a mother, father and two little girls stood up slowly. I knew them. They had lost an infant son to a drunk driver. As they stood up and turned they froze. I followed their gaze to the edge of the park where a lone man was standing. I realized that this was the driver who had killed their baby. He walked slowly forward and I watched as the father’s shoulders grew tense and he stepped up. The man stopped about 10 feet away and in a whisper just audible said to the little family just two words “I’m sorry” and with that, turned and walked away.

The family stood there for a moment and then the mother leaned into her husband and started to cry. It was as powerful a moment as I have ever witnessed. And with that they left. I left as well, and while I don’t know for certain what happened to that family, something tells me that that encounter was the kiss of life, the forgiveness needed to help them become something new again. Their life would never be the same, but the enchantment of becoming was possible.

As we explore the possibilities of being in ministry together I ask all of you to remember what brought you here to PUC in the first place. Remember and imagine with me what we might become together, with freedom, love, courage and forgiveness. Enchanted by where we have been with a vision of what might be before us. Blessings be!