UU Sources 6: Spiritual Teachings of Earth-Centered Traditions
Rev. Mark Hayes
April 8, 2001

     Today we come to the last of our series of six services designed to consider the various sources of our Unitarian Universalist Living Tradition.  In earlier weeks we have looked at direct experience of transcending mystery and wonder, words and deeds of prophetic women and men, wisdom from the world’s religions, Jewish and Christian teachings, and humanist teachings.  Today we wrap things up with a look at spiritual teachings of Earth-centered traditions which celebrate the sacred circle of life and instruct us to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature.

     You will notice that many of our readings and songs this morning have already affirmed and celebrated those rhythms of nature and that sacred circle of life.  Some are ancient and some are modern, but all draw from those traditions that have honored and embedded themselves in the natural rhythms, the ebb and flow, that characterize our experience of life on this planet.

     In fact, earth-centered spirituality goes way back.  Many of the earliest known creation myths involved either Mother Earth, or Father Sky, or both.  In Polynesian, Egyptian, Yoruba, Yuma, and Greek mythology, among others, the universe evolves from a union of the opposite qualities of sky and earth, the heights of thought and the depths of matter.

     Through the millennia, earth-centered traditions have ranged from simple to complex, from tribal to universal.  But always they have tapped the same awesome power – the power of creation.  Man, woman, fire, food, sun, rain, stars, thunder, lightning, floods, volcanoes – all inspired fear, awe, and worship.  Even in an age of science, reductionism, and rational explanation, there is something about the direct experience of nature that defies rational analysis.  That’s not to say that such experiences are irrational – rather they are transrational, tapping into aspects of ultimate reality that are beyond our cognitive grasp and understanding.

     “Earth-centered traditions” was not added to our list of officially recognized sources until the General Assembly of 1995.  However, its influence on Unitarianism has been around at least since the time of the nineteenth-century Transcendentalists – people like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, and Henry David Thoreau.  You may recall that I also credited the Transcendentalists with the emphasis on direct experience as a source of religious truth.  But you may also recall that I mentioned that for them, there were two major sources of religious knowledge – direct intuitional experience of the divine, and the world of nature.  Just read Walden if you want to understand the importance of nature in shaping the theological vision of the Transcendentalists.  Nature was a more direct revelation of the divine than anything anyone could ever write, no matter how inspired they were.  In the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The earth laughs in flowers.”

     Despite the Transcendentalists’ honoring and affirming earth and nature, it was more recent Unitarian Universalist history that brought recognition of this spiritual source.  In particular it was the rise of Paganism within Unitarian Universalism within the past twenty  years or so.  Paganism here refers to a whole range of goddess-based and earth-centered spiritual paths.  The earliest known organized UU Pagan worship was at the 1980 UU Continental Feminist Theology Convocation in East Lansing, Michigan, sponsored by the Continental Women and Religion Committee.  One feature of that Convocation was the first Water Communion, similar to what we and many congregations use to celebrate the start of a new church year.

     The first known UU Pagan organizing effort was at the 1985 General Assembly, which led to the creation of CUUPS, the Covenant of Unitarian Universalist Pagans.  That group was accepted as an Independent Affiliate of the Unitarian Universalist Association in 1988.  CUUPS now has chapters in about sixty UU congregations across the continent.  Their purpose is to provide a community focus for earth-centered Unitarian Universalists in the host congregation; an earth-centered resource for that congregation; and a gateway to Unitarian Universalism for the larger Pagan community.

 In the past ten years, Unitarian Universalist Paganism has achieved two major accomplishments.  The first was in 1993, with the inclusion of significant earth-centered content in our new hymnal, Singing the Living Tradition.  And the second was the adoption by the 1995 General Assembly of “spiritual teachings of earth-centered traditions” as the sixth source of our Living Tradition.  Another indication of the influence of Paganism in our movement is the popularity of Adult Education curricula such as Cakes for the Queen of Heaven and Rise Up and Call Her Name.

     And so, for those whose spirituality is primarily and explicitly earth-centered or Pagan, there is a place in Unitarian Universalism.  Just as there is a place for those who identify primarily as Humanist, or Christian, or Buddhist.  But the contribution of earth-centered spirituality to our tradition goes beyond that – beyond providing a home for a religious minority.

     For me, one of the primary contributions is the affirmation of a local context in which to embed our lives.  We are not only on the earth, but are also of the earth.  We are made of the same stuff as all that surrounds us.  Finding ourselves amidst all of our companions of creation, and measuring our own rhythms against the rhythms of nature all about us, we can find a sense of time and place.  And we can find in our earthly surroundings the sources of sacredness, of holiness.

     Our sense of being located in time grows out of our experience of the rhythms of life and nature.  We find ourselves not only observers, but also participants in the music of the spheres.  Ernesto Cardenal writes:
 

     Earth-centered traditions teach us that life is essentially cyclical, not linear.  This reminds me that the journey of my life through time is not a simple linear path that starts at birth and moves inexorably forward in a straight line until it reaches its end at death.  My individual life does have a beginning and, presumably, an end.  But in between those two bookends, there are many twists and turns and, yes, cycles.
 The built-in cycles and rhythms of nature provide the beat for my march through life.  The revolving of the earth gives me a new beginning every twenty-four hours.  The orbiting of the earth around the sun gives me a new year, a new set of seasons, every 365 days.  And if I pay attention, there are many more rhythmic components of that music of the spheres to which I dance my way through life.  Day/night; high tide/low tide; full moon/new moon; seed/plant/fruit/seed.  Round and round we go.

     I have, in the past, described my spiritual journey as a spiral, circling around repeatedly through the same territories, but at ever new levels of experience and understanding.  I often return to T. S. Eliot’s words, that “the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”

     And where is that place?  Right here on planet earth.  It is here in our earthly home that we find sacred, holy ground.  It has always been so. A couple of days ago there was an article in the Centre Daily Times about Machu Pichu, the ancient Inca settlement in the Andes Mountains.  According to writer Kathleen O’Toole, “Historians believe that ... religion probably played a part in selecting the location [of Machu Pichu].  The Incas believed that the earth was alive and they worshipped many gods in nature.  Snow-capped mountain peaks were especially sacred because they represented a dependable source of water in an area prone to droughts.”

     And we not only find sacred ground; we also make sacred ground.  My colleague Rebecca Edmiston-Lange, in one of her calls to worship, writes: “Come in.  Come into this place which we make holy by our presence... Come into this place where we can touch and be touched, heal and be healed, forgive and be forgiven... Come into this place.  Together we make it a holy place.”

    Some who gaze at the famous photograph of earth taken from space experience the sense of the whole planet as a living organism, as an instance of the wonder and sacredness of life.  In his poem, “Only a Little Planet,” Lawrence Collins writes:
 

 
     I began, in my opening words this morning, with an affirmation of the Four Directions and their corresponding elements of Air, Fire, Water, and Earth.  I close now with another recognition of those elements.  This comes from a “Communion of the Four Elements” by Rev. Christa Heiden Landon.
 

 So may it be.