Beliefs – What Are They? What Good Are They?

What Do We Do With Them?

A worship service for four voices by Mike Mallory
Presented at the Evergreen Unitarian Universalist Fellowship
On 5/2/10

Individual Candle Lighting ♥

Music for Gathering – Susan

Jim – Native American Flute

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5X5A2NTyBjQ

Donna
We speak of the interdependent web of existence.

Marilyn
Yet we rarely hear of the spider that spins that web.

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 Mike

Ts’its’tsi’nako, Thought-Woman,
is sitting in her room
and whatever she thinks about
appears.

She thought of her sister’s,

Nau’ts’ity’i and I’tcts’ity’i,
and together they created the Universe
this world
and the four worlds below.

Thought-Woman, the spider,

named things and
as she named them
they appeared.

She is sitting in her room

thinking of a worship service

we are presenting the worship service

she is thinking.

Barbara
This incantation arises out of the beliefs of the Laguna people of West-Central New
Mexico.

Prelude – Jim

Barbara
Please join us in reading the Declaration contained in the order of service.

All
Love is the spirit of this fellowship
And service is its law.
This is our great covenant:
To dwell together in peace,
To seek truth in love,
And to help one another.

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 Mike
This morning we are going to look at beliefs. They are ubiquitous, powerful and fallible.

Donna
Every decision we make is nested in a tangle of beliefs.

Barbara
Every belief is suspended in an interdependent web of other beliefs.

Marilyn
We are surrounded by beliefs: our own and those of others. But, what do we mean by
the word “belief?”

Mike
Let me offer a pragmatic working definition of “belief.”

Barbara
First, try to imagine yourself back in 4th grade geography class. Remember those
Plaster of Paris topographical maps?

Mike
A “belief” may be thought of as an interlocking section of a map. A map of your reality.

Donna
Interlocking in the sense that one belief fits with others so that the overall map amounts
to a “world-view.”

Mike
Beliefs or map features become confirmed or rejected depending on how well they
account for your personal experience of reality.

Donna
Beliefs provide a sense of coherence and consistency to our experience.

Marilyn
In this view, “beliefs” are accepted descriptions of reality.

Barbara
Extending the mapping metaphor, beliefs constitute a flat description of reality.

Donna
But our reality also contains content that is value or emotionally laden. Think of these
elements as adding topography to the map.

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 Marilyn
Perhaps those things you find attractive rise like a hill or mountain.

Barbara
Meaning may be thought of as the infrastructure: roads, utilities or shipping lanes that
connect the disparate areas of reality.

Mike
Before we get into the plate-tectonics of differing beliefs, let’s just say that beliefs are
descriptions or models of reality. And, the beliefs we adopt inform our view of the world.
Beliefs co-create our reality. When Ts’its’tsi’nako thinks of things they appear.

Donna
There will be three readings this morning from the series “This I Believe” currently
produced by NPR.

Barbara
The first reading from the series was writing by Chameli Waiba from a rural village in
Nepal. She was a child bride at 15 and was unable to attend school before her
marriage. She went to school as an adult and learned to read when she was twenty-
one years and now works for social and environmental causes, including miro-finance.

Donna

(audio at http://www.publicradioexchange.com/pieces/35858-this-i-believe-
chameli-waiba )

I believe in the alphabet, because it has the power to change life.

I realized the power concealed in the alphabet on the very first day I joined the adult
literacy class. For the first time, I was introduced to letters that stood for my name. In
discovering the Nepali alphabet, I discovered I was Cha-me-li and not Cha-mi-li, as
everyone used to call me. It felt like magic. A little loop of “e” for “i” changed my name!

If three letters could change my name, how much would I be able to transform my life if I
understood all the letters?

Before learning how to write, my life was always stagnant. I had the pain of child
marriage, my husband did not support me, abject poverty was my way of life, and I
didn’t have any skill or courage to do anything. But I saw that the number of people
learning to read and write was growing—and their lives were improving. I then realized it
was neither wealth nor beauty that I lacked, but letters.

As my new knowledge of words boosted my confidence and courage, I made a

resolution: my sisters and brothers should be given education.

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The village school was on the other side of the river and children would be cut off from
going to school during monsoon season. I wanted to erect a bridge over the river. In the
beginning the villagers did not help. Some even mocked the idea. But finally we got
support, materials were collected, volunteer laborers were available, and the bridge was
finally constructed.

Now I cannot express my satisfaction seeing children running to school over that bridge.
It is a bridge of iron, a bridge of letters, a bridge of community.

I am now heading five women’s micro-saving groups. Ten or 20 rupees that used to be
spent buying petty cosmetic items have been collected into a fund of 300,000 rupees.
We want to run permanent literacy classes for women and open a library.

All this is the result of my knowing the alphabet, even though I learned it late. Letters
have immense power. They have magic. The greatest thing in the world is the alphabet.
That is my belief.

Welcome and Announcements (By a Board Member – The announcements to

included the following :)

Our minister is not in the pulpit this morning. Instead, someone apparently gave Mike
Mallory the go-ahead to produce an “alternative service”. Please remember that the
views expressed in this service do not necessarily represent the opinions of The
Evergreen Fellowship, its Board of Trustees, Evergreen members, the other readers
and tomorrow may not even express the views of Mike Mallory.

Call to Worship and Chalice Lighting

Mike
The call to worship is from the Sufi poet Rumi –

(Marilyn, Barbara and Donna light chalice)

Beyond our ideas of right-doing and wrong-doing,

there is a field. I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase 'each other'
doesn't make sense any more.

Chalice Response

Rise up, O flame, by thy light glowing,

show to us beauty, vision and joy.

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Chapter 2: The Power of Beliefs

Barbara
In this post 9/11 world no one can doubt the power of beliefs.

Mike
Beliefs have the ability to drag martyrdom and other self-destructive acts into the realm
of the reasonable.
Donna
Beliefs have power: the power to comfort us in times of adversity,

Barbara
The power to provoke fear, contempt or hate toward entire groups, classes or races of
people,

Donna
Beliefs have the power to alter the course of our lives as we seek situations compatible
with our beliefs and avoid others.

Marilyn
The next reading from “This I believe” is from Penn Jillette the talkative half of the magic
act Penn and Teller.

(audio at http://www.publicradioexchange.com/pieces/10799-this-i-believe-penn-
jillette )
Barbara
I believe that there is no God. I’m beyond atheism. Atheism is not believing in God. Not
believing in God is easy.

But, this “This I Believe” thing seems to demand something more personal, some leap
of faith that helps one see life’s big picture, some rules to live by. So, I’m saying, “This I
believe: I believe there is no God.”

Having taken that step, it informs every moment of my life. I’m not greedy. I have love,
blue skies, rainbows and Hallmark cards, and that has to be enough. It has to be
enough, but it’s everything in the world and everything in the world is plenty for me. It
seems just rude to beg the invisible for more. Just the love of my family that raised me
and the family I’m raising now is enough that I don’t need heaven. I won the huge
genetic lottery and I get joy every day.

Believing there’s no God means I can’t really be forgiven except by kindness and faulty
memories. That’s good; it makes me want to be more thoughtful. I have to try to treat
people right the first time around.

Without God, we can agree on reality, and I can keep learning where I’m wrong. We can
all keep adjusting, so we can really communicate. So, believing there is no God lets me
be proven wrong and that’s always fun. It means I’m learning something.

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Believing there is no God means the suffering I’ve seen in my family, and indeed all the
suffering in the world, isn’t caused by an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent force that
isn’t bothered to help or is just testing us, but rather something we all may be able to
help others with in the future. No God means the possibility of less suffering in the
future.

Believing there is no God gives me more room for belief in family, people, love, truth,
beauty, sex, Jell-O and all the other things I can prove and that make this life the best
life I will ever have.

Chapter 3: The formation of beliefs

Mike
There is this naïve image that somewhere around the time we are sophomores in
college we sit down and reason through available beliefs, finally settling on the most
rational options.

Barbara
Rather, we are handed, in a process called “learning,” complex interrelated clusters of
beliefs known as “worldviews” by our parents or other authority figures in our childhood.

Donna
It may be more accurate to say that we discover, rather than choose our beliefs.

Marilyn
Let us provide an example.

Donna
Mike Mallory believes he is an animist and we will recount the story, which led to this
realization.

Marilyn
One day several years ago Mike began to wonder if he held any religious belief. He
assembled a list of traditional beliefs and went through them one by one.

Donna
At each entry he would ask himself –

Mike
Do I believe this?

Barbara
He held up Christianity.

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 Donna
He does not believe in Christianity.

Barbara
He held up Judaism and Islam.

Donna
He does not have these beliefs. He does not believe in any God.

Barbara
He held up Buddhism.

Donna
He does not believe in Reincarnation or any afterlife for that matter.

Marilyn
He does not believe in Karma. He thinks keeping score is generally a bad idea,
whether in life, the Middle East or a marriage.

Barbara
He held up Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Shinto, Taoism, Paganism, Pantheism and
Panentheism.

Donna
No, No and No again.

Marilyn
The first religious belief to develop was animism. This is generally regarded as the
belief that inanimate objects have souls.

Donna
Mike doesn’t believe in souls, so he tossed out the last religious belief and figured that
was that.

Marilyn
But, almost as soon as he had let go of this last belief, it began to tug on him. So he
picked it up again.

Barbara
Holding this belief up to his heart and letting it sit there for a minute something
happened.

Donna
Mike Mallory realized that in the tradition of the indigenous religions of Africa, North
America and Japan, he was an animist.

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 Mike
Once formed, beliefs create their own gravity.

Marilyn
As we go through life, our adopted worldviews attract compatible beliefs, becoming
heavier and more difficult to navigate.

Donna
“Worldviews” sink their roots into every aspect of the human psyche.

Barbara
A well-developed “worldview” takes on the characteristics of an “identity” to the holder of
those beliefs.

Mike
We are told that the map is not the territory, but when it comes to beliefs it is easy to
become confused.

Marilyn
The more deeply a belief becomes lodged in our identity, the more difficult it is to
question.

Offertory Donna

Please join me in the unison response to the offertory:

This is a Fellowship of ourselves,

Its energy and resources are our energy and resources,
Its wealth is what we share,
When we contribute to the life of this community
We affirm our lives within it.

Jim Anderson plays “Hallelujah”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xR0DKOGco_o

Barbara

John Fountain is a professor of journalism at the University of Illinois and the author of
“True Vine: A Young Black Man’s Journey of Faith, Hope, and Clarity." This reading
is entitled “The God Who Embraced Me When Daddy Disappeared.”
(audio at http://www.publicradioexchange.com/pieces/10813-this-i-believe-john-
fountain )

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 Marilyn

I believe in God. Not that cosmic, intangible spirit-in-the-sky that Mama told me as a
little boy “always was and always will be.” But the God who embraced me when Daddy
disappeared from our lives — from my life at age four — the night police led him away
from our front door, down the stairs in handcuffs.

The God who warmed me when we could see our breath inside our freezing apartment,
where the gas was disconnected in the dead of another wind-whipped Chicago winter,
and there was no food, little hope and no hot water.

The God who claimed me when I felt like “no-man’s son,” amid the absence of any man
to wrap his arms around me and tell me, “everything’s going to be okay,” to speak
proudly of me, to call me son.

I believe in God, God the Father, embodied in his Son Jesus Christ. The God who
allowed me to feel His presence — whether by the warmth that filled my belly like hot
chocolate on a cold afternoon, or that voice, whenever I found myself in the tempest of
life’s storms, telling me that I was something, that I was His, and that even amid the
desertion of the man who gave me his name and DNA and little else, I might find in Him
sustenance.

I believe in God, the God who I have come to know as father, as Abba — Daddy.

I always envied boys I saw walking hand-in-hand with their fathers . As a boy, I used to
sit on the front porch watching the cars roll by, imagining that one day one would park
and the man getting out would be my daddy. But it never happened.

When I was 18, I could find no tears that Alabama winter’s evening in January 1979 as I
stood finally — face to face — with my father lying cold in a casket, his eyes sealed, his
heart no longer beating, his breath forever stilled. Killed in a car accident, he died drunk,
leaving me hobbled by the sorrow of years of fatherlessness.

It wasn’t until many years later, standing over my father’s grave for a long overdue
conversation, that my tears flowed. I told him about the man I had become. I told him
about how much I wished he had been in my life. And I realized fully that in his absence,
I had found another. Or that He — God, the Father, God, my Father — had found me.

Chapter 4: Fallibility of Beliefs

Mike
The good news is that our beliefs provide us with a map of reality. The bad news is that
the map is distorted, inaccurate and fallible.

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 Marilyn
We are hindered by numerous Cognitive biases (a more thorough list -
http://psychology.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases ) , which include: The
bandwidth effect.

Barbara
This is the tendency to believe things because many other people believe the same
thing.

Marilyn
Confirmation bias -

Barbara
The tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one's
preconceptions -

Marilyn
Impact bias -

Donna
The tendency for people to overestimate the length or the intensity of the impact of
future feeling states -

Marilyn
Negativity bias -

Barbara
The phenomenon by which humans pay more attention to and give more weight to
negative than positive experiences -

Mike
And for those of you thinking that these tendencies do not apply to you, we have -

Marilyn
The bias blind spot -

Donna
Which is the tendency not to compensate for one's own cognitive biases -

Mike
Please rise as you are willing and able to join me in signing

Hymn Number 402 - “From You I Receive”

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Chapter 5: Beliefs in a pluralistic community

Barbara
Here we are.

Donna
Here we are all together.

Marilyn
Yet separated by differing realities -

Donna
Now is the time in our service for the sharing of the emotional topography of our realities
by expressing those joys and sorrows which are with us today. If you are called to
share this morning, please line up on either side of the sanctuary and I will light a candle
for you. When sharing, please tell us your name and speak directly into the
microphone.

Joys and Sorrows

Donna
I light one more candle representing the unexpressed joys and sorrows with us this
morning.

Mike
Let us enter a time of contemplation. I invite you during a time of silence to consider a
belief that sustains you in times of struggle.

Meditation Time

(One minute of silence followed by a Gong)

Chapter 5: Beliefs in a pluralistic community (con’t)

Donna
Mike and Dennis are going to present Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song”.

Barbara
The song is considered by some to be Marley’s seminal work. The lyrics are derived
from a speech by Pan-Africanist, Marcus Garvey.

Marilyn
Music is a powerful way to share beliefs.

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(Mike and Dennis present Redemption Song)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yXRGdZdonM

Lyrics
Old pirates, yes, they rob I;
Sold I to the merchant ships,
Minutes after they took I
From the bottomless pit.
But my hand was made strong
By the 'and of the Almighty.
We forward in this generation
Triumphantly.
Won't you help to sing
These songs of freedom? -
'Cause all I ever have:
Redemption songs;
Redemption songs.

Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery;

None but ourselves can free our minds.
Have no fear for atomic energy,
'Cause none of them can stop the time.
How long shall they kill our prophets,
While we stand aside and look? Ooh!
Some say it's just a part of it:
We've got to fulfill de book.

Won't you help to sing

These songs of freedom? -
'Cause all I ever have:
Redemption songs;
Redemption songs.

Barbara
Emotional topography is only one aspect of our reality.

Marilyn
Values, meaning and beliefs are also essential features of our experience.

Donna
In order to fully understand one another it is necessary to engage all of the features of
our experience, including: emotions, values, meaning and beliefs.

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 Marilyn
Here at Evergreen, “Joys and Sorrows” offers a forum for emotional content. Covenant
Circles invite sharing on a variety of levels. Big Questions and Food for Thought, two of
the adult programs in our program guide, encourage expression of our beliefs and
values.

Barbara
Openness to others invites our participation in opportunities to express the full range of
our being.

Mike
The sharing of differing beliefs can create tension. A different belief is often felt as a
threat.

Donna
A differing belief can appear as a challenge to your own understanding of reality.

Marilyn
The initial reaction to a differing belief is often an attempt to correct the other person’s
“mistake”.

Mike
A community such as ours, which encourages diversity, requires an alternate response.

Barbara
We can choose to hear the beliefs expressed by others as individual understandings
limited to his or her experience rather than a normative claim that others ought to
similarly believe.

Donna
Of course, when disclosing our beliefs, it is also important to express those beliefs as
part of our individual understanding and let go of the expectation that others should
believe as we do.

Marilyn
We are a community of believers and our differences should encourage, not discourage
our willingness to clearly share our beliefs with each other.

A Testament to Animism – Mike Mallory

I believe in Animism, that primordial, proto-religious recognition that all of existence

shares a sacred kinship. Mitakuye Oyasin: All My Relations. Animism is often described
as a belief that everything has a soul. My understanding of the term “soul” is so narrow
as to almost disappear, yet a delicate filament remains and it is enough to support my
belief.

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I do not believe in miracles, “miracles” that is with an “s”. I do believe in a singular
miracle: the miracle of our utterly improbable existence. “Soul” for me has nothing to
do with consciousness, self or identity. Rather, I think of soul as signifying the
relationship each object has with the Creative Source, which sustains existence.

At this point you might assume that “Creative Source” is my name for “God.” But I don’t
believe in god. The notion of “God generally includes a variety of features:
consciousness, compassion, judgment, intention, favor, purposefulness, power and
knowledge, just to name a few. My “Creative Source” has none of these attributes. The
Creative Source is simple beyond imagination.

Creation is usually viewed as a top-down process. I take a more “grass roots” position.
Consciousness is a complex form that emerges out of a simpler biological system. Life
is a complex form that emerges out of a simpler organic system. Molecules are forms
that emerge out of a simpler atomic system. I believe that the basic physical stuff of
existence is an emergent form that arising out of the Creative Source, an absolutely
simple ground of being. And the science of Quantum Physics tells us that the most
basic particles are continuously coming into existence and fading away. The world is in
a continual state of becoming.

Animism is built upon a relational ontology, which is to say that everything exists in
relationship. We are not on the world; we are with the world. While traditional animism,
the original mother religion, builds this relationship by projecting human characteristics
onto the natural world, the sacred relationship of modern animism is exposed in the
deprivileging of this anthropocentric perspective. For the modern animist, it is the
shared feature of existence itself, which provides a spiritual union and kinship with all
creation. Life, consciousness and will are all contingent complexities providing diversity
and interest, but the shared vitality, which is the focus of modern animism, is our basic
instantiation mysteriously arising out of the Creative Source.

My animism is not so much a belief system as an attitude. It is, for me, the way I am in
the world. Animism is the experience of oneness with the world, an appreciation of a
shared status as a beneficiary of an endlessly unfolding creation. The animist
proclaims, “Behold, the glory of creation is upon us!” From this appreciation of oneness
springs two secondary attitudes: Gratitude for the Creative Source that continually
sustains existence and a Compassion for all beings which flows from our kinship as
mutual expressions of creation.

Animism provides me with a sense of Oneness, Compassion and Gratitude. This may
seem meager when compared with the bells and whistles offered by other religious
traditions, yet I not only find the Animistic Attitude sufficient. I find Animism to be a
bountiful response to life.

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 Marilyn
John Luther Adams, a Washington native and perhaps the greatest Unitarian theologian
of the 20th Century proclaims that ours must be a “Free Faith”.

Barbara
And the freedom to which Adams refers is the willingness to treat all statements of faith
as malleable and open to revision in the face of our changing world and growing
understanding.

Mike
The idea of the “Free Faith” accepts the fallibility of beliefs and encourages humility, a
softening of the attachments to our beliefs and the continual reexamination of our sense
of reality.

Donna
The Third Principle asks us to engage in a free and responsible search for truth and
meaning.

Mike
I take the term “responsible” in this principle as an appeal to each of us to treat the
discovery of “truth” as a serious ambition.

Marilyn
Henry Wieman another Unitarian theologian finds the divine in the “Creative
Interchange” that occurs when people share their perspectives with each other.

Barbara
As new perspectives are integrated into the community vocabulary there is a
consequent widening and deepening of the mutual understanding and mutual support of
the participants.

Donna
As we understand another’s reality though encounters with their beliefs, emotions,
values and meaning, we see universal human needs expressed in a uniquely organized
responses to the individual experience.

Mike
Creative Interchange leads to compassion as we find our own struggles mirrored in
another. We may not accept a vastly differing belief, but if we understand how it
accounts for the experience of another there may be nuances, which expand and
strengthen our own insights.

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 Donna
What about beliefs, which are racist or hateful? Am I supposed to open myself to these
messages?

Mike
The Fifth Principle stands for the right of conscience.

Barbara
I am empowered by this principle to speak out against views that I find incompatible with
a healthy community.

Marilyn
Yet, while we grant to each other the right of conscience, most occasions of discomfort
with the beliefs of others are opportunities for understanding rather than debate.

Donna
Our beliefs are an essential part of who we are. We are all believers. If we are to
understand each other, we are called to find in one another the role played by beliefs.

Marilyn
First and foremost, the engagement of differing beliefs should not be about right or
wrong, but about how they make sense of our experience.

Mike
Let me conclude by suggesting that in your encounters with each other, if you do not
know the beliefs of another person, invite those beliefs into the conversation. Beliefs
are powerful, formed in ways beyond our control and fallible, but they are also who we
are.

Mike
Please rise as you are willing and able to join me in signing

Hymn 123 “Spirit of Life”

Closing Song – Carry the Flame

Benediction

Ts’its’tsi’nako is thinking about a field beyond our ideas of right-doing and wrong-doing.
I'll meet you there.

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