Lessons from living 63 years, lessons from being a Unitarian Universalist for more than half of my life and lessons from serving this wonderful congregation will form the basis of this sermon. I cannot divorce these lessons from current events, but it is my intention to be more theological than political.

My first theological discovery came as a child: That the world is a safe place, where people are trustworthy, and even bad events are capable of resolution. That basic trust grew out of a family that held strong moral values. My parents lived authentically, acted with integrity, were scrupulously honest, loved us unfailingly, and were generous with both apologies and forgiveness. As I grew, I built upon that trust in my relations with others, reaching out with the affection and respect I anticipated in return. Our environments create who we become and we create our environments by our actions.

Was my family perfect? Of course not! I bear a scar on my head inflicted by a tricycle wheel thrown at me by one of my brothers in a pitched battle in the living room. He only threw the wheel when he ran out of books. The scars my brothers bear from me are less physical and therefore harder to recover from, more in the nature of being made to feel inadequate by their "goody-goody two-shoes" sister.

Growing up, I learned loyalty to a large, extended family with whom we gathered on important occasions at one or the other grandmother's home. I learned about being part of a community through my father's role as headmaster of an independent school. We attended every basketball game when the team was going to the state championships in Missouri.

Religious instruction began with simple bedtime prayers and a grace of thanksgiving at dinner. Church attendance was unquestioned. And when Sunday school palled, we were welcome to attend the services with our parents. Confirmation in the Episcopal Church at age 14 ushered in a deeply religious period of my life. I read the Bible from cover to cover -- not understanding most of it, but committed to passing every word before my eyes. My mother and I went to early morning Communion on horse show Sundays, not wanting to miss religious observance for our passionate engagement with horses.

College meant a departure from organized religion, except for required chapel, and a few abortive attempts to connect with a campus religious group. Young adulthood found me seeking a center in New York City, and the church provided one: I did youth work with young girls on Saturday mornings at Grace Episcopal Church; I sang in the choir at Trinity Episcopal in Princeton. But attending church didn't provide the nurture I sought. I tried a brief career as a social worker, knowing that being of service was central to my core.

Religious and personal searching came together when I met Carl Haag, and together we found the Princeton Unitarian church. I realized the ethical Christianity with which I had grown up blended with the Principles of this new and exciting faith. And the larger community I needed welcomed us in with open arms. I had come home.

Marriage and motherhood were the culmination of personal meaning for me. We intentionally decided that I would stay at home and that Carl would stay employed. This arrangement permitted me to volunteer my energies with children through scouting, with youth through the juvenile courts, with adults through our church.

I had wonderful times -- and awful times -- as a parent of children at home. The learnings of love, commitment, patience and tolerance were hard won. Most important of all was learning the value of humor. I'd like to read you some learnings gleaned by another mother from her children. I wish I could claim them as my own, but just enjoy:

* A king-size waterbed holds enough water to fill a 2,000-square-foot house 4 inches deep.

* If you hook a dog leash over a ceiling fan, the motor is not strong enough to rotate a 42-pound boy wearing Batman underwear and a Superman cape. It is strong enough, however, if tied to a paint can, to spread paint on all four walls of a 20-by- 20-foot room.

And my bar-none favorite:

* If you spray hairspray on dust bunnies and run over them with roller blades, they can ignite.

In 63 years, I have learned something about aging. I have watched my parents become increasingly frail, experienced the transition from being parented to parenting them, and finally encountered the hard lessons of losing them to death. With good health, I may have 30 or 40 more years to live, but am faced with the certain knowledge that I am now closer to the end of my life than to its beginning. This knowledge does not provoke sadness, but rather the hope that some wisdom has been gleaned along the way. I have gained some humility. Things are seldom what they seem, and it's worth finding out what is behind an expression, an action, or hurtful words. I have learned that becoming fixated on one item can blind you to all else, so it is necessary to stand back, take a larger view, remembering that time heals all wounds -- or is it "Time wounds all heels"?

Thirty-eight years as a Unitarian Universalist has provided a lifetime of religious growth and learning. Carl and I became Unitarian Universalists only four years after those denominations merged. It was just over 30 years since the Humanist Manifesto was promulgated. The wild and wooly '60s were in full swing -- "Hair," flower power, the civil rights movement, ecology was a relatively new word in our vocabulary, Vietnam was heating up.

It was exciting to join a religious community that professed God as a unity. I had never understood the Trinity, especially the Holy Ghost; and I was much more comfortable with Jesus as an ethical and moral teacher. The Princeton church was founded as a Unitarian church, so we did not hear much about our Universalist roots. I found myself explaining Universalism to a newcomer as the universality of religious truths found in all faiths. I still find meaning in that statement, but it took graduate theological study and knowing Dave Bumbaugh to grasp the fuller significance of universal salvation.

We were living life at a somewhat slower pace, providing time for intensive adult religious growth experiences. There were T-groups, intensive, self-led sensitivity training groups. The parish minister led a 10-week course called "Building Your Own Theology." The minister of religious education led parenting courses, based on books such as by Children: The Challenge and Parents as Resident Theologians. And a young friend died tragically in an automobile accident, a life- changing event that underlined for me the imperative to live every day as though it were your last.

I served the Princeton church in many capacities: membership committee, spring auction co-chair, women's alliance participant, RE teacher, initiator of their first Coming of Age program, RE committee member and chair, intergenerational worship leader (part of the group that created the three-part holiday service), and pastoral care associate. I alternated my passive need being fed by worship with my active need for teaching in the children's program. I learned from the inside out what made a religious community tick.

In the '80s, inspired by Dr. Helen Caldicott's passionate articulation of the dangers of nuclear holocaust, I became active in the peace movement, through the local Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament, the Beyond War organization, and finally as an employee of the Nuclear Dialogue Project. My faith had taught me that we are one world and that our covenant requires us to work for that world to be one of justice, liberty and peace for all.

The Nuclear Dialogue Project was founded, by a Quaker, on the belief that through dialogue and greater understanding, better solutions could be found. She had learned that many peacemakers were as militant in their peacemaking as any army general was in war, and as unwilling to entertain alternate positions. The dialogue project brought together people from the peace movement and members of the military-industrial establishment for dialogue.

We were searching for a space in the middle -- a third option, which would participate in neither negative energy, that of war nor that of opposition to war. Rich Volk raised my awareness of this just last Sunday, saying he was reluctant to participate in the peace vigil because he did not want to lend his energy to oppositional thinking. He went because his son, Adam, convinced him to attend.

My involvement in the Unitarian church in Princeton and in peace activities coalesced in the decision to enter the ministry. What an explosion of learning and growing that touched off. First I needed to find a religious education program to lead, and Summit entrusted its precious children to my care. Together we grew, experimented to find out what worked, supported and challenged each other. And I launched into the course work that led to an MDiv and ordination as a minister of religious education.

I learned about administration of an RE program; I studied Christian history, took Bible courses, world religions courses, theology and social ministry. I was challenged as part of a small Unitarian Universalist minority at Drew Seminary to speak my faith with understanding and confidence. One of my favorite epiphanies occurred in a theology class when we had to write a paper about the Trinity. As I wrestled with God the Father, which had become for me indwelling love, and God the Son, who had become for me rabbi, teacher, I realized that the Holy Ghost, which had mystified my teenage mind, had become, as an adult, my central spiritual truth: the Spirit of Life. This evanescent presence, known not directly but through its effects, this meaning behind synergy, when the whole is equal to more than the sum of its parts, this mystery beyond all mysteries to which all faiths point has become for me religious truth.

What have I learned in 13 years of service to the Unitarian Church in Summit? Oh, so much! I have learned about the commitment to religious education. In the spring of 1990, there were very few young families in the congregation, but the annual meeting, consisting mostly of gray-haired folks, voted the funds to hire a DRE. I have learned about generosity of spirit. Members of this community outdo themselves in volunteering to make this institution run, to enrich it with beauty, to create a welcoming spirit of fellowship, and to endow it with rich learning experiences for children, youth and adults. My experience is that when people are asked to help out, they do everything possible to fit one more thing into their tight schedules -- and when they simply cannot, they feel badly about not living up to the expectations of a generous congregation. I have learned about courage from this community, individuals taking on a teaching assignment when they really didn't think they could teach and discovering how enriching the experience could be. I have learned humility from this congregation; you don't believe you know it all and are willing to call on staff and outside experts to help you through the rough spots. I have learned acceptance from this congregation, watching adults and children make spaces for people and welcome their differences into community and celebrate these differences as strengths.

I've watched young teens grow into young adults -- and even performed a wedding for one of them. I've watched babies grow into teenagers -- and observed them reprove adults when their behavior was out of line and speak truth to power in respectful and effective ways. I've been moved by children's powerful sharing during worship services or in developing their Coming of Age credos, and just Thursday night I was blessed by Maggie Murphy putting her fears of war into writing and reading it to me. Youth have left our program and provided guidance in matters of sexuality to dorm mates; others have provided ministry to friends in crisis. We are truly inheritors of the prophethood and priesthood of all believers.

We profess that we are all on lifelong religious journeys. I have been particularly convinced of this fact this year by two experiences. One, the 3-year-long Bible study group. I feel totally unequal to the task of leading this group; there is so much I do not know. Yet I keep trying because they keep on coming and together we question and wonder and try to figure it out and we teach one another. It is a huge bright spot in every fortnight.

The second experience was hearing the Rev. Dr. Rebecca Parker, president of Starr King School for the Ministry in Berkeley, present a series of lectures on Unitarian Universalist theology at the annual LREDA fall conference this past October. If you have attended a Rational Inquirers session since then, you have heard my attempts to spread her understanding. It was revolutionary to me to learn about a systematic theological grounding for this faith I love so much.

In particular, I discovered a rationally articulated basis for my commitment as a Unitarian Universalist to making peace. Our ecclesiology, which holds us together as religious communities, is a covenantal process called congregational polity. In the 16th-century Reformation, people experienced an oppressive alliance between church and state and covenanted to walk together to dismantle this oppressive hierarchy. The James Luther Adams reading demonstrates the importance of free associations to this day in support of the democratic process.

We as Unitarian Universalists comprise a covenantal community, and in my mind we are committed to challenge hierarchical alliances that are destructive to the health and well being of all people. The alliance that frightens me right now has multiple expressions: It is government and religious fundamentalism, it is government and global business, it is government and the military-industrial establishment. For me, our ecclesiology demands that I challenge these destructive alliances. And since I am a citizen of a democracy, I must therefore act politically to create healthier alliances.

The second part of a rationally articulated basis for my commitment as a Unitarian Universalist to making peace is our soteriology. Soteriology means what saves us, what we need to be saved from, and how to manage the risks and threats to life. Here is where our Universalist heritage speaks most clearly to me. Hosea Ballou, the second reading, countered the prevailing theories of atonement, that Christ died on the cross to atone to God for humanity's sins. Ballou taught that God's love embraces all of humanity, that the violence of the cross wasn't what saved humanity, but the model of the life Jesus lived. Ballou taught that Hell is the harm we do to one another right here on earth; and likewise, Heaven is the good we do to one another here and now. Ultimately, Ballou taught, we are saved from the risks and threats to life by love. For me, our soteriology demands that I resist the notion that violence will save us. And since I am a citizen of a democracy, I must therefore do everything in my power to prevent my government from resorting to violence to solve national and international problems.

In conversations this past Thursday, Vanessa and Bob Morris and I wrestled with the conundrum that opposition to war feeds off the energy of war -- both engage a sense of righteousness, both get the adrenaline flowing, both provide meaning and purpose to life. I have experienced all of this at peace rallies, even ones that did not turn angry. Recognizing the war energy in my own pacifism has been the most recent, powerful learning on my religious journey. That realization compels me to continue the search for a middle ground, one that acknowledges real threats to global security but does not demonize the enemy, nor make an enemy of the leadership we have.

This realization does not make me give up the commitment to resist power alliances that benefit the few and harm the many. This realization does not make me give up my commitment to salvation through love, not violence. This realization does open my heart to a larger understanding, to a greater humility about having the right answers and to a continued search for better solutions. For example:

Sojourners: Christians for Justice and Peace has proposed a six-point alternative to war. I commit to learning more about this plan and to promoting its adoption, even though war has begun.

I will explore a procedure called "Uniting for Peace" by which the U.N. General Assembly can demand an immediate ceasefire and withdrawal.

I will not give up hope. I will celebrate that "never before in the history of the world has there been such a global, visible, public, viable and open dialogue and conversation about the very legitimacy of war" (Dr. Robert Muller).

And while the war drums pound in my ears, I commit to remembering that there are children needing to be fed; there are poor needing to be housed; there are sick needing to be comforted; there are wild lands to be protected; and there are joys that need to be celebrated. May our community of faith keep strong, for none of these tasks can be done alone.

The sermon in a Unitarian Universalist setting is never the last word on any subject, but rather an invitation to further dialog.

You may want to read other visitors' comments on Rev. Carol S. Haag's "63-38-13: Confessions of an Unrepentant Liberal" .

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