Visiting The Wizard - First Unitarian Universalist Church of Stockton

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Apr 28, 2013... to Harry Potter's Hogwarts School, to Deepak Chopra's books, to the history ... of the Lone Ranger (perhaps even another wizard figure with his ... to comfort us as well as challenge and/or inspire us, in a way that, well, can ...
Visiting The Wizard Rev. Arthur G. Severance Interim Minister First Unitarian Universalist Church Stockton, California April 28, 2013 I recently heard the wonderful little story about the child who's trying to learn the Lord's Prayer, and one night as they knelt by their bed, these words came out: "Our Father, who are in heaven :How do you know my name?" Welcome to Oz, to Camelot, to Harry Potter’s Hogwarts School, to Deepak Chopra's books, to the history and anthropology of different cultural religious approaches to men and women of certain power, especially healing, to the world of Science Fiction and Fantasy, to pewter wizards holding orbs of crystal. Indeed, some might say that Jesus might pass as a wizard as well, certainly as a healer, guru, and so forth. Welcome to the music of "The Sorcerer’s Apprentice," who for those of us formed by the movies and characters of Walt Disney (certainly a wizard himself) will forever think of Mickey Mouse as that apprentice in the scary sequence when Mickey uses powers that are beyond his control and almost drowns. Like trying not to think of the Lone Ranger (perhaps even another wizard figure with his magical silver bullets) when we hear the 1812 William Tell Overture, It’s almost impossible to hear "The Sorcerer’s Apprentice" without thinking of Mickey. Visiting the Wizard, we never quite know what to expect; we only know that he or she has a special power, often a magical power to protect us from harm, perhaps to heal us of our varied hurts-spiritual and /or physical/ and/or mental. We only know that we desperately need the wizard, perhaps to impart wisdom, perhaps to give us strength to defeat an enemy, perhaps to give us selfish power to enrich ourselves-on Wall Street perhaps, or control something or someone. Or perhaps we call the wizard an angel and look at the recent resurgence in belief in and books on angels, heavenly beings to protect us from harm. Not only do we wish for some sort of magical or divine protection but we want an easy and quick fix of it. Isn’t it ironic that in this new millennium in a time of great discoveries and knowledge of science, medicine, and the universe, where more and more people have college degrees and our country has become one of the most educated and advanced societies in the world, (OK perhaps just the most educated), that we are seeing a sudden bonanza in the study of angels, and of all the corresponding spin offs-angel shirts, pictures, statues, pins, books, courses, what have you. There is now a separate book section on angelology and lest I offend any one here, perfectly sane rational UU’s even talk of guardian angels. All sorts of wizardry abounds! We Unitarian Universalists have a checkered history with ministers, a tension between worshipping and demonizing! Of believing that they are no different than anyone else, yet, finessing that we may feel the need for the minister to comfort us as well as challenge and/or inspire us, in a way that, well, can only be described as spiritual even religious, even for those who say they don't believe in that sort of stuff. But often we’re not really sure if we are what is usually described as "religious." I have a confession to make. Neither am I. Sometimes I feel that ministry is like being the Wizard of OZ, where we are given authority because of the illusion of religion. It's like the story about a junior high music teacher who had just organized a band in her school. The principal was so proud of the music teacher's efforts that without consulting her he decided that the band should give a concert for the entire school. The music teacher wasn't so sure her young musicians were ready to give a concert, so she tried to talk the principal out of holding the concert, to no avail. Just before the concert was ready to begin, as the music teacher stood on the podium, she leaned forward and whispered to her nervous musicians, "If you're not sure of your part, just pretend to play." And with that, she stepped back, lifted her baton and with a great flourish brought it down. Lo and behold, nothing happened! The band brought forth a resounding silence.

We visit the wizard because we don't believe, not in God, but not in our selves, in the great power each of us has, if we can but realize it, be in relationship with our deeper and truest selves as well as others, especially the others who make us our beloved community. Sometimes the wizard is a psycho-therapist who can help us sort out who we really are, what we really want to be and do when we grow up, but what we really want is for the wizard to "cure" us. But neither psychology nor religion is magic, or I will argue is it supernatural, for what can be more than Nature, if nature is the way of the universe, the galaxy. I continue to think of the Public Television as that had these words over a picture from the Hubble telescope -"The Universe has no center, nor does it have an edge." And as I have also said, most of us believe that WE are the center of the universe! It's hard to be humble when you're a Unitarian Universalist. And perhaps I’m interested in the figure of the wizard because my name is Arthur, after all, and I am a minister, searching for love, truth, wisdom, perhaps even God (who may be in the figure of the wizard as well.) And as I get a little gray, I’m beginning to look a little wizard like as well... In an old Ziggy cartoon,-the Rodney Dangerfield of cartoon characters, Ziggy’s on a mountaintop talking to a stereotypical guru (also sometimes considered a wizard, who is saying: “Are you sure you want to know the meaning of life? There’s nothing you can do about it anyway.” A wizard may be male or female, a sorcerer or sorceress. Webster defines the word as “one skilled in magic, a very clever or skillful person, or as adj.- having magical influence or power.” Webster’s first definition of witch is wizard. Both words come from a common root of the Greek pharmakeia, meaning witchcraft in the forms of charms or remedies, forbidden in the Bible, both in the Jewish and Christian Bibles. Can anyone guess where the word pharmacy comes from? Witches, it should be noted during this women’s history month, were usually wise women who were healers and midwives and accused of some evil because of jealousy or power struggle for some other reason. The terrible witch holocaust of the middle ages up until the New England witch trials were not about wizards and witchcraft but about hysteria, prejudice, misogyny, and frequently ploys to get some kind property from older unmarried women, because either they were skilled in herbs and/or healing, or religious mystics, or followers of the old ways called paganism, that were always threatening to the status quo of the church and of males., That’s a topic for another day. So Harry Potter and his wizards is another sermon, not this one, which is more psychological and religious. Sometimes the role of the minister may seem like that to some, but we must be careful here, I think; most of who have gone through 4 years of undergraduate than a full three year 90 something credit Masters of Divinity degree don't do it to play tricks, and we certainly don't do it to become wealthy or powerful. Indeed before we can even enter into search, even after graduating from seminary, we must go before the MFC, the Ministerial Fellowship Committee, made up of ministers and lay people who are tasked to examine the candidate for ministry, looking at religious as well as psychological factors, because if there is one thing they and we ministers have in common, it is to serve Unitarian Universalists congregations, as well as the sense of the holy, which or who some call God, and some aren't sure what the right name or term is, but feel a religious dimension that calls them to ministry. There are people who get all through seminary, internships, Clinical Pastoral Education-the required training at hospital, but the MFC after careful interview and deliberation may find the candidate either not ready or not even appropriate for ministry. If one does get the OK, one enters preliminary fellowship, like a probationary time that takes at least three full years as a minister of a congregation and each year evaluated by the congregation and using an extensive evaluation form by the UUA, to check the progress, and after three positive evaluation, one is granted Final Fellowship, kind of like tenure in teaching. But one does not become a minister right away; it takes a while before one feels like they have evolved, grown into ministry. Visiting the wizard can mean visiting the medical doctor if that is what ails you, or visiting or calling your minister if you feel the need to, plain and simple. I want us to think about the wizard character in manta different ways, but definitely the minster as one of them-again, not magic, not the one behind the curtain, but the one who had dedicated his or life to serving this denomination, the idea of the sacred, or God, or the Force, or the transforming power of love, but something more than just ourselves.

Way back in 1995 the UU ministers held convocation in Hot Springs, Arkansas, not to far way from your next minister served a church in Little Rock. We were trying to figure out if there was any center to our theology, since we all seem to have a somewhat different one. Some theists argued that we must include God, we humanists wanted to find a different name, and the UU Christians wanted to include Jesus, and there were shades of pale differences as well. Almost 1/2 of the ministers of the country attended, and after a great process of soul, heart, and mind searching, after voting and discussing, we came up with a Covenant for our ministry: ""In the midst of mystery/And the enduring presence of religious community, /The creative power of transforming love,/Engages us in the beauty and tragedy of life /To awaken compassion, call us to justice,/And invite us to live in harmony with the earth. /In light of our commitment to our Unitarian Universalist faith and our responsibility to our colleagues, congregation and the world: We covenant to affirm that at the heart of our faith is a profound sense of the holy and a critical trust in the power of reason. We lift up this universal religious experience, while respecting our different religious languages and symbols, in worship, religious education, fellowship, and service." But since we were only half of the total of ministers, we had a team wordsmith that covenant and when we met that June at the General Assembly Ministry days; we established a more official, but of course, much longer covenant: (As revised by the Covenant Team, June 1995)In light of our commitment to our Unitarian Universalist faith and our responsibility to our colleagues, congregations and the world: We covenant to affirm that at the heart of our faith is a sense of the holy. We covenant to lift up this universal experience in worship, religious education, fellowship and service; to maintain trust in the power of reason, and to respect our different religious languages and symbols. We covenant to hold ourselves and each other fully accountable to our vision of ministry and to the code of professional practice of the Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association, embracing a beloved community an ethic of loving, honest, and respectful engagement. We covenant to embody what we proclaim, to relate authentically to others, to live a simple and balanced life, to encourage and to support personal spiritual practice, to model generosity and abundance, to look for hope, and to take care of ourselves. We covenant to know and honor our tradition, to articulate a clear and compelling vision, and to develop the theologies, commitments, financial resources and skills necessary to proclaim and fulfill the mission which flows from our tradition and vision. We covenant to educate ourselves about the realities of our biases, privileges and complicity in oppressive social and economic systems, to work to eliminate all oppressions, such as classism, ageism, sexism, homophobia, ableism, and especially racism, and to commit ourselves to ongoing vigilance in these tasks. We covenant to challenge ourselves, our congregation and the communities in which we serve to stay engaged with the world and to develop networks to take effective action for the sake of justice. This do we covenant with one another and with all that is holy." It is not easy, keeping this covenant, but the challenge is like a spiritual discipline. So my song “Visiting the Wizard” has had two slight revisions or additions. The verse where the Wizard answers my question-that question which haunts many of us when were young- “What Shall I do? What shall I be?”The wizard in the original verse- Well, the wizard looked up at me, And he took my twenty dollar bill./Then he answered softly, "DO AS YOU WILL." and it originally ended with the verse- And then the wizard said, / "It's time to go." And as he was disappearing, \ He said, "Now you know." As I got older I found I wanted to add something, and so instead of just saying “Do as you will, I added just 2 words and made the answer LOVE and do as you will. And then had to add a new last verse that said; Now YOU are the wizard, sitting on your own knew, and it only cost you twenty dollars just to see the you in me." We all have the potential to be the wizard in the most positive, loving, and knowing way. And I so believe that if what we do is with love, of others, self, beloved community, we will be living the answer of the meaning of life. And the Hindus, when they greet each the respectfully put their hands together prayerfully, bow slightly and say Namste, which I understand means "the divine essence within me greets the divine essence within you- together we are one." Namaste...