Outstretched Wings of the Spirit--Day Thirty-seven

The Thirty-seventh Day
(Thursday, April 11, 2019)

Loyalty to a Higher and Richer God

“The chief political function of religion in the difficult and dangerous times of social reconstruction is to provide us with an object of loyalty which is vastly higher and richer than any specific objective. The great danger in such times is that we will focus all our passion and all our loyalty on some definite goal. Such goals we must have, and we must strive for them with all our powers. But a noble religion enables us to pour out our passion and energy for this specific objective not as an end but as a metaphor of that which is infinitely higher. . . .

“When we have a mastering devotion to the unfathomable and unexplored riches of the wholeness of God, we are able to pause worshipfully to recover lost perspective. We can take note of ignored interest. We can discern the inevitable tragedy of all limited human endeavor. Most important of all, we can do this in such a way that energy for action is increased rather than diminished by this worshipful recovery of the higher vision. We are able to be objective in our survey and treatment of all the factors in each concrete situation. In the midst of confusion, hate and passion, we will not become wither demonic or despairing, either fiendish or futilitarian.” (Wieman & Wieman)

Our greatest human failing is the tendency to give our all for limited, human objectives—to build the family company and fill the family coffers, to put one’s own city or country above all else; to forget that in God’s Being-Becoming we are all bound together, so that if one is hurt all are ultimately hurt, and if one rejoices, all ultimately shall rejoice. It is not easy, but God’s command is to give ourselves for the well-being of the whole. (Donald Szantho Harrington)

Prayer

God of all, help us to be more deeply aware of the bonds that bind us to all men and women everywhere and to all the generations past, whose victories are summarized in us, and all who are to come who must receive their world from us. Help us to pass on this world to those who will come after us as a more harmonious place. Amen.

Hymn

Hail the hero workers of the mighty past!
Those whose labor builded all the things that last.
Thoughts of wisest meaning; deeds of noblest right;
Patient toil in weakness; battles in the night.

Hail then, noble workers, builders of the past,
All whose lives have blest us with the gains that last.

Hail ye, hero workers, who today do hear
Duty’s myriad voices sounding high and clear;
Ye who quick responding, haste ye to your task,
Be it grand or simple, ye forget to ask.

Hail then, noble workers, builders of the past,
All whose lives have blest us with the gains that last.

Hail ye, hero workers, ye who yet shall come,
When to this world’s calling all our lips are dumb!
Ye shall build more nobly if our work is true
And we pass life’s treasure on from old to new.

Hail then, noble workers, builders of the past,
All whose lives have blest us with the gains that last.

—Anna Garlin Spencer (Hymns of the Spirit, no. 330)

Donald Szantho Harrington wrote the Lenten meditation manual Outstretched Wings of the Spirit: On Being Intelligently and Devotedly Religiousbased on the theology of Henry Nelson Wieman and Regina Westcott Wieman. It was published by the Unitarian Universalist Association in 1980.