"The Human Longing for Intimacy and Ultimacy"

August 19, 2001

Wildflower Church (UU) – South Austin

by

Nathan L. Stone, Ph.D., minister

The longer I live and the older I get --- the more I find myself wanting to strip things down to their essence.

We are told, for example, that Moses brought ten commandments down from the mountain. It wasn’t long, so I’m told, until Jewish tradition had expanded those ten commandments into 600-plus rules, applications, and interpretations. Today, I am told, we have hundreds of thousands of pages of laws to promote the civility first outlined in those basic, ten commandments.

I like the fact that Jesus shrunk those ten commandments into two: "Love God . . . and love your neighbor as yourself."

My fantasy is that when Moses went up that hill --- the Mystery on the mountain (the One whose name is, "I am what I am," or "I will be what I will be," or . . . my favorite interpretation of "I am" --- "Moses when the people ask you who you talked to tell them, ‘It’s-none- of-your-damn-business, told you . . .’") --- my guess is that that Mystery simply told Moses, "Tell them to be nice to each other!" Then Moses or oral tradition doctored it up into a neat package of ten religious sounding guidelines.

I prefer things stripped down to their essence: "Be nice to each other!" Period. "Treat one another with respect." Period.

So, no wonder I liked what our UU growth consultant, Jonalu Johnstone, told our Waco Fellowship earlier this spring: "People come to church --- people come to religious community because they want intimacy and ultimacy." That’s the essence. It’s snappy. It’s easy to remember. It’s to the point.

I think she is exactly right. In the final analysis people seek religious community because they are looking for intimacy and ultimacy.

I cannot explain it but I think that it is basic to human nature to long for some sense of ultimacy. Something that represents "the farthest possible extent of analysis" (the dictionary definition of "ultimacy") --- which, at least for the moment, gives meaning to my existence. Something that serves as a foundational idea, concept, or reality that gives me some sense of security, connectedness, and rootedness.

If you can’t find it you make it up --- because our mortal nature longs for some ultimate "something." Remember William Golding’s "The Lord of the Flies?" It has now been made into a movie. (Actually there have been two movies made). Here is the story of a group of boys from an upscale English school who crash-land on a remote island. The boys are well educated and cultured. But suddenly, in their new environment they become very primitive. One of the very first things they do is to find a source of ultimacy. Their source of ultimacy is that mysterious "thing" they see high on the mountain. It isn’t long until they’re making dead-animal offerings to that "thing" on the mountain. Never mind that it turns out to be the parachute of the dead pilot. Something big and ultimate is up there . . . out there. That mystery provides them with a sense of awe and wonder and maybe comfort.

There is something in the human spirit that longs for ultimacy. I believe that even when someone proclaims atheism --- that stance, that proclamation is still part of a search for ultimacy.

By the way, I heard a new one recently. This person said to me, "I’ve decided I’m an ‘apa-theist.’" "What’s that?" I said. "I believe in God," he said, "but I just don’t care. I’m apathetic about God! Get it?" I liked that. I hadn’t heard that one before.

In my view the name of that Ultimate-whatever does not matter. In fact, one of my favorite hymns in our hymnal is the one by the British writer, Brian Wren. The text ends up being very Christian --- but I love the title: "God of Many Names." (Singing the Living Tradition; Beacon Press: Boston; The Unitarian Universalist Association; 1993; No.198)

It took me 60 years to find it but I finally found what I consider to be the best theology of Ultimacy. It comes from the literature of Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon. I belong to both groups.

Some of us have a very clear and specific sense of a God or Higher Power. Others have no idea who or what this Power may be, but try to keep our minds open to the possibility that more information will be revealed in time. For some, a Higher Power is the God of our religious upbringing. Others prefer to identify a very different God, one who is more personal, loving, gentle, and beneficent than the God we knew in the past. We may find a Power greater than ourselves in natural law, universal love, beauty, a mountain or a thunderstorm or the many wonders of nature, creativity, and any number of other sources. Some of us continue to use the collective wisdom of our Al-Anon group as a Higher Power, noting that wonderful insights and changes take place when we avail ourselves of that wisdom. The God of our understanding may be male or female, an inanimate object, disembodied spirit, or force of nature. (How Al-Anon Works for Families and Friends of Alcoholics; Al-Anon Family Group Headquarters, Inc.: Virginia Beach, Virginia; 1995; p.49)

Spirituality doesn’t have to imply a particular philosophy or moral code; it simply means that there is a Power greater than ourselves upon which we can come to rely. Whether we call this a Higher Power, God, good orderly direction, Allah, the universe, or another name, it is vital to our recovery that we come to believe in a Power greater than ourselves. (Courage to Change: One Day at a Time in Al-Anon II; Al-Anon Family Group Headquarters: Virginia Beach, Virginia; 1992; p.211)

That, folks, is good, honest, theology.

Sometimes I think that some of us Unitarian Universalists (like myself!) --- in our attempt to overcome a lot of bad and negative childhood religion, in our attempt to be broad, tolerant, and free-thinking, we go light or silent on Ultimacy. I think we do that to our detriment --- both as individuals and as a congregation. And we do it to the detriment of those who come to us searching and longing.

I think it is important to hold up our Ultimates --- through singing and ritual and silence and prayer. Even disagreeing and arguing about what we consider foundational is a way of holding up Ultimacy . . . a way of fine-tuning our understanding.

Maybe what I’m really saying is that I need Ultimacy. I want Ultimacy. I seek a religious community because I need to connect with God --- as I understand God. Not as someone else insists I must understand God.

But what about this thing called Intimacy?

Well . . . I asked the Internet and what do you think I got? Porn sites. Lots and lots of porn sites. Too bad that the popular notion of intimacy is either physically sexual or something that includes all that touchy-feely stuff.

Among other things the dictionary defines intimacy as that which is marked by close association, acquaintance, or familiarity; that which is characteristic of one’s deepest nature.

Human beings need intimacy. Dean Ornish is known for being the doctor who promotes the low-fat diet. But Dr. Ornish has also written a book entitled, Love and Survival: The Scientific Basis for the Healing Power of Intimacy (HarperCollins; 1998).

Ornish makes the point that isolation is what makes us sick and often causes premature death. Commenting on Ornish’s book, Sam Dunn writes in "Men’s Fitness" magazine:

One of the best insights into intimacy came to me in an email from my friend, Eric Sutton, an attorney in San Antonio. What makes this insight even more meaningful is that Eric tends to be a loner --- a guy who would tend to shun intimacy:

. . . Although I derive pleasure out of thinking about my friends and what they are doing and what we have done in the past, what I really want is to experience them in my presence. When they are not around I am forced to experience them in my head, but what I really want is to experience them in my presence. I want to be able to reach out and touch them, to see them smile, to listen to them laugh.

In one of my seminars on abused and neglected kids a neuro-psychiatrist talked to us about this baby whose mother went back to work and left her kid with a cousin babysitter whom she trusted. She left her baby with her everyday. When she picked the kid up the baby never really cried, screamed, or really acted up; just wanted to sleep and was docile. She thought this must just be one of those kids that people report as being so easy to deal with; she took the kid to a pediatrician after awhile; and the doctor didn’t detect anything wrong physically. This went on for months. One day she got off early and went to the cousin’s house to pick up the kid; no one was there. She went into the kid’s room and he was in the dark all-alone. The house was empty. When the cousin came home she confessed that months before she had taken a job she really wanted and left everyday as soon as the baby was dropped off. She made it home to feed and clean the baby before the mom showed up. The kid had adjusted to hour after hour of lying in the crib with no human contact. No matter how much he cried no one was there to pick him up.

Needless to say that part of the kid’s brain that is stimulated by intimate human contact was severely underdeveloped. An extreme attachment disorder developed; so severe that the kid had trouble identifying spatially the boundaries between where he as a person and you as a person began and ended. They had to do a whole bunch of neurological "exercises" to try and "rewire" his brain.

Without that connection we are like the baby lying in the dark, alone and left to our own devices, never engaging with another human being and developing that part of our humanity in a way that makes us all that we can be. (From Eric Sutton; personal correspondence – 06/15/01)

One of the most promising things I see happening in Unitarian Universalist circles is that there is a movement afoot to promote intimacy in our congregations. What our UU leadership is discovering is that you cannot build strong and viable congregations without offering intimacy. Good words, good sermons, good philosophy and ideology found in a single, Sunday morning event will not grow a vital and vibrant congregation.

What they’re doing is promoting small-groups within the congregation. (I’m delighted to see that Wildflower is already doing this, according to your literature). Small groups of 10 to 12 who have similar interests who will meet regularly somewhere --- anywhere --- light a candle, read a brief reading from a Unitarian Universalist source, check-in with each other (that is, each person is asked to briefly state his/her answer to a question such as: What’s on your mind today? What do you need to leave behind for a couple of hours in order to be fully present here?), deal with the focus of the meeting, and have a closing reading and extinguishing the candle.

They’re calling these "Covenant Groups" or "Friendship Groups" or "A-Groups" (for "affinity"). You could even call them "I-Groups" (for "interest"). Groups are forming here and there around a number of interests: Christianity, paganism, Buddhism, parents of teenagers, parents of young children or babies; gay and lesbian, or social issues.

A small group of people has been meeting in my home to study alternatives to the so-called war on drugs. We began by watching and discussing the movie, "Traffic." Some of us in that group are addicts or have an addict in our lives. I’m hoping that group might become a Friendship Group . . . an experiment in intimacy.

The whole idea is to provide congregations within the congregation. To provide a place for intimacy and spiritual growth. A place like the "Cheers" bar --- a place "where everybody knows your name."

What this really is, (shh, don’t tell anybody that I told you this) is the UU alternative to Protestant Sunday school. The Protestants I know are Baptists. And here’s what they learned a long time ago. The secret to reaching people is through small groups with similar interests. So, in Baptist Sunday schools they assign you to a group where everybody is close to the same age. They meet on Sunday mornings. They phone one another during the week. They find ways to deepen friendships. They learn about each other’s ups and downs --- their joys and their struggles. Sound familiar? Millstones and milestones. Celebrations and concerns. The same thing most UUs do in worship. Sunday school is a vehicle for the intimacy that is understandably often missing in a larger gathering.

Baptists looked at many churches in Europe with beautiful buildings and great preachers/orators. And they saw something very telling: they were all slowly dying.

Why? No intentional sources for intimacy.

Glenn Turner is Northeast District Minister for Unitarian Universalists. This is his take on UU congregations: "People walk in our doors seeking intimacy and spiritual growth, and we give them committee work and Sunday morning worship. Neither meets those needs well." – "Covenant Group News;" Vol.1; No.7; July 20, 1999; p.1)

If I have any dream at all for this wonderful family of congregations called Unitarian Universalists --- it is that this place would be known as that place where intimacy is everywhere. Where, our congregations, even if no one could remember, "Unitarian Universalist," visitors would say something like this: "It’s a place that meets in a school house in South Austin that’s sorta like a good bar --- where everybody knows your name!"

Intimacy doesn’t come easily. You can’t just plug it in and it works. Intimacy takes time and vulnerability. But without it we die prematurely and get sick --- both individually and as a community.

And one thing more. I’ve talked about ultimacy and intimacy like they were two separate things. But, in the final analysis, I wonder if these two are not really separate realities. Maybe real intimacy is real ultimacy. Maybe you can’t have one without the other. So that when I am close to you I am close to the Ultimate. And when I am genuinely close to the Ultimate I am driven to you.

Just a thought. What do you think?

Shalom and aloha.