There is this guy I know who has written a book about religion, and I think it’s going to sell pretty well. It’s got a big-time publisher, good references on the jacket by the likes of William Sloan Coffin and Harvey Cox, and a cover to stop you in your tracks – there beneath the title, Finding Your Religion, is a color drawing of the Doonesbury character, the Rev. Scot Sloan, announcing that the book’s introduction was written by Garry Trudeau, the creator of the Doonesbury comic strip.

By now, in the wake of a lot of attention that the book and its author have received in the press and on the radio, many of you know why Scot Sloan is there in his clerical collar on the cover of the book, but I’ll take a moment to fill the rest of you in. The author of the book is the Rev. Scotty McLennan, and in one way, he is Scot Sloan.

In another way, he’s not. Scot Sloan’s character is somewhat based on the Presbyterian minister William Sloan Coffin, who was a chaplain at Yale when Garry Trudeau was a student there. But part of Scot Sloan’s personality, and all of his appearance, are based on Scotty McLennan, who was Garry Trudeau’s college roommate.

So for the last thirty years or so, Scotty McLennan has been able to look at the comics in the paper on many days, and there he is, in a way, at least there is someone who looks just like him, and a minister, too, as is Scotty.

That is how I know Scotty McLennan myself: because he is a colleague in our local chapter of UU ministers, and because we serve together on the Board of the UU Urban Ministry. Before he joined us on the Board, he worked for the UU Urban Ministry as one of its ministers-at-large, conducting a legal ministry in Dorchester, since he is also a lawyer. For the last fifteen years he has been the Chaplain of Tufts University, as well as a lecturer at the Harvard Business School.

This is his first book. Its full title is, Finding Your Religion: When the Faith You Grew Up with Has Lost Its Meaning. To the subject, Scotty brings his experience as a university chaplain, who both teaches courses in religion and counsels people at that stage in life when one’s original religious convictions are often shaken or discarded. He also brings his own personal experience, and the stories of many people who found their religious paths later in their lives.

The image of religious paths is one of two that recur in the book. The other is that of the mountain up which all these paths are heading. The book begins, “The mountain beckons. This book is intended for spiritual exploration. It is full of stories of seekers on the spiritual mountain….

“I’ve come to feel like a mountain guide,” he says. “There is a spiritual mountain that all of us (or at least a lot of us) are trying to climb. There are many paths up that mountain – many paths that can reach the top, although very few people actually get to the summit of this very high mountain. Those paths may be rough or smooth, steep or easy, boring or colorful, tiring or exhilarating. Yet, they are all on the spiritual mountain, and, ultimately, they all converge at the very top, as mystics of all religions have told us.

“Most of us aren’t mystics, though, and for us the point is to enjoy the journey – to find fulfillment in our pilgrimage on the mountain itself…. I love the mountain,” he says. [1,2-3]

It is a strong metaphor, rich with implications that the book explores. It is also a metaphor that will leave some people uneasy. I don’t want to get drawn too deeply into the argument, but there are those who dispute the universalism Scotty believes in. For them, culture is so powerful a differentiating force that people in different religions aren’t going up the same mountain but up different mountains, or they are on paths that wander through different woods, each almost incomprehensible to those on other paths.

Scotty’s view is one more in keeping with our own UU tradition. It’s not that he doesn’t see the differences between various religions – few people have studied and experienced them more than he. But he sides with Wilfred Cantwell Smith, who “sees an emerging consciousness around the world that we are all heirs to the entire religious history of the human race…. Smith points out how particular groups have always participated in the religious evolution of other traditions.” [136]

Scotty calls these trail crossings, and he’s all for them. He notes that “there are traditions that conscientiously search out trail crossings. Travelers on those paths often spend a lot of time lingering at the intersections. Mine, the Unitarian Universalist, is a good example…. We draw from many sources, including not only Jewish, Christian, and Humanist teachings but also wisdom from all of the world’s religions. As our statement [of Principles and Purposes] says, we are ‘grateful for the religious pluralism which enriches and ennobles our faith.’” [123]

Scotty thinks people of all traditions are becoming more aware of the connections between them. “It’s likely we can now begin participating more self-consciously in one another’s traditions. At minimum, we can speak of the unity of humankind’s religious history, seeing that all religious traditions are interconnected in having grown out of, having been influenced by, or having interacted with others….. Obviously, … people haven’t been religious in the same way. In fact, religious life has been extremely varied. Yet, it’s becoming more clear that the major religious traditions can be understood only in terms of a context in which the others form a part.” [136-7]

“This doesn’t mean that Christians will cease to be Christians or Buddhists to be Buddhists. We can hope, though, … especially as the information revolution truly creates a global village … that they’ll understand the dynamic concept of a Christian strand or a Buddhist strand with its own unique color, interwoven in the common religious tapestry of the world. Then, while still maintaining their own integrity, they may be able to participate in what is ultimately the only true community – the worldwide and history-long community of humankind.” [137]

The worldwide community of humankind, the common religious tapestry of the world, the one spiritual mountain up which all religious paths proceed – Scotty is the most unrepentant of universalists, even as he cherishes the differences between the several paths. He wants everyone to become ever more aware of how varied our religions are, and be able to learn from them all on the trail crossings on the mountain.

We may even chose to switch paths for a while, the way people have more and more often of late, growing up a Methodist, becoming a Buddhist for a time, and then a Jew. Scotty’s book contains many such accounts. But for Scotty, it is important that you be on a path, that you be part of a religion, as we are here.

Since he is a university chaplain, you can imagine how often Scotty hears people say, “I’m spiritual, but I’m not religious.” [12] He’s not having it. “It is my experience,” he says, “that the spiritual mountain is best climbed along marked trails and paths…. It is through established religion that we encounter much of what is called ‘spirituality,’ and spirituality can best be developed along one of their paths. [13] “…There are good reasons trails have been worn on a mountainside: they help the hiker progress without unnecessary obstacles and injury, they lead to points of interest, they facilitate camaraderie among fellow travelers, and the many feet that have gone before have kept the trails maintained for the next generation of venturers.” [14]

In fact, Scotty gave a talk in Cambridge last month on Spirituality and Religion. A member of First Parish, Marguerite Robbins, was there, and I’m indebted to her for her notes, from which I’m about to quote, and for our subsequent conversation. On that occasion, Scotty said “he believes spirituality without religion does not have spiritual depth. He gave four reasons for this: religion is a repository of streams of inspiration, religion provides disciplines such as prayer, religion supports people at [certain] stages of their spiritual development, and religion provides spiritual community” – and as Scotty says in the book, “Community is a very important part of a full spiritual life.” [212]

He has a whole chapter on “joining,” one of a series of chapters that make up most of the book, chapters to help one’s journey by pointing out the importance of thinking, experiencing, walking, joining, crossing, sitting, suffering, and rejoicing:

the importance of thinking about one’s life in deep ways, and about religion; he recommends Jung;
the importance of experiencing the world with all our senses open, for “religion grows from the heart as much as from the head, and it cries out to fuse body and mind”[54]; he cites Emerson, Thoreau, and Zen Buddhism;
the importance of walking, getting on with it, starting up some religious path;
the importance of joining, including in religiously inspired political action and community service [which may be where] the value of spiritual traveling companions comes alive most clearly [113];
the importance of crossing, of course;
the importance of sitting in prayer or meditation;
the importance of suffering and its opportunity “for personal deepening, for closer relations with family and friends, for a deeper connection with what Paul Tillich called ‘the Ground of our being’” [6];
and the importance of rejoicing, “singing and dancing, eating and drinking together, and enjoying life in all its wonder” [6]; humor, too.

All of these are important parts of one’s religious journey at any point along the path, and I encourage you to buy the book and refer to these chapters as up the mountain you seek to go. But no doubt some of you have been wondering where it is Scotty thinks these paths are all heading. It is to the spiritual mountaintop, achieved for any length of time by only a few mystics in every tradition: Buddha, Jesus, Muhammed, Moses, Ghandi, Rumi, St. Theresa of Avila, Mother Teresa, the Dalai Lama -- those who “have a direct awareness of the oneness of all existence.” [27]

“… All … forms of paradox … disappear into undivided unity…. God is felt to be in everything, and everything seems to exist in God. As a result, they possess a universalizing compassion and a vision of universal community beyond all forms of tribalism.” [27]

“As I’ve heard from the great mystical guides,” says Scotty, “it can be very cold and breath-taking up there. Few people are able to stay there long.” [3] “The great religious masters have learned how to live at the summit, braving the cold at the cusp of life and death in order to breathe ultimacy and see into eternity. The rest of us at best are trekkers much further down on the mountain.” [210]

But “While few of us attain these mystical states regularly, it’s been my experience that almost all of us are briefly surprised by them – blindsided, if you will – at least once or twice in our life. That means we have a window into Unity…. [leaving] no doubt that ordinary life is not the whole picture.” [207] The curtains are parted briefly and we glimpse the world where mystics live most of the time. [209]

This condition has another name in Scotty’s book: it is the stage of Unity, the sixth and ultimate stage. I have managed to get this far in the sermon without mentioning Scotty’s stages of faith development, even though it is one of the first things you will encounter in the book, and a recurrent theme. I didn’t want to put off people who are skeptical about developmental theories, schemes that claim there are stages of growth.

One of the problems with such schemes is that it’s awfully hard not to imply that each stage is better than the one before. Like others who put them forward, Scotty tries to assure us that each stage is valid and important in its own way. He acknowledges that “using a mountain-climbing metaphor for the spiritual life … might imply that it’s better to be higher up on the mountain than lower down. It’s not. There is beauty and there is truth at all stages, just as there is on all paths.” [211]

Okay, then, let me tell you quickly – too quickly – what he thinks the six stages are, and then I’ll suggest two good messages I take from Scotty’s use of them. These are “six distinct stages of spiritual development possible from birth to death.” Almost everyone moves through the first three or four. “They happen sequentially, and most of us have to reach a certain chronological age before the next stage is a possibility for us. However, there is no guarantee that we will change. That is, many of us remain happy at a particular stage throughout our lives, while others continue moving on.” [19-20] Each stage has its own view of God or ultimate reality.

So, at stage one, Magic, God is all-powerful, responsible for everything that happens. Kids usually are out of this stage by age ten, and some by age six will move into stage 2, Reality, when they get quite literal-minded. There is a Cause-and-effect God who can be influenced by our behavior. At around age twelve begins stage 3, Dependence, when young people seek a personal relationship with a Parent God. As early as sixteen, a person may enter stage 4, Independence, with a Distant God or none. Well into adult life, a person may enter stage 5, Interdependence, a rediscovery of the possibilities in once-rejected faith, a reconciliation of the tension between Dependence and Independence, an openness to ambiguity, complexity, and a Paradoxical God. And then there’s stage six, Unity, with its All-pervasive God.

Those who like such things will find those dozen pages fascinating. Some of it resonates with me, as well, including two points that Scotty himself underscores, both in the book and in lectures and discussion. One is his discussion of stages three through five. Now Dependence and Independence are both important stages of development for many people, but it’s pretty clear that Scotty has a good UU hope that people will eventually get beyond them both to the stage of Interdependence.

Indeed, his description of people at that stage would seem to fit the author himself quite well. “… Adults at the Interdependent stage are able to read scripture simultaneous at the literal, allegorical, historical, conceptual, poetic, and inspirational levels.

“Religiously, [they] are open to dialogue between different traditions because they understand that truth is multidimensional. Any particular religious symbol, myth, or ritual is necessarily limited and incomplete, bound by the follower’s personal experiences.” (Well, that’s what his many spiritual biographies demonstrate.) “This is not a purely relativistic approach, however, as it is in the Independent stage. People in the Interdependent stage know the value of picking a particular path” [26] which is the point of all the spiritual biographies and of the book itself.

Dependence and Independence may be important stages to go through, but Scotty’s on the side of people moving on, achieving a sense of religious Interdependence that simultaneously values religion and freedom, that commits one to a faith tradition while one values and learns from all others, that coaxes one into a community of faith without expecting submission to it.

And the other point about his stages is that they assume that religion is not something you get, but something that unfolds, a path that leads on to new understandings, lifelong. To help one along the way, Scotty provides a collection of readings and contacts for the next steps on one’s path, introductory works and addresses for getting involved in any of eight religions, one of which is Unitarian Universalism.

Which is to say, thanks to Scotty, there’s a book out there telling the world that some folks should get beyond their adolescent rebellion against religion; likewise, that other folks should get beyond their religious dependency; that faith is an evolving thing, as UUs have long declared; that the search for spirituality on one’s own is an easy “way to get lost, exhausted, and burned out” [13]; that religion is important; and that one religion worth looking into is the path on the spiritual mountain that the author is on himself, which is ours.

The book ends with the same words with which it began, which seem particularly appropriate as we begin a new year together: “The mountain beckons.” [214]
 

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