I've just heard the extremely sad and shocking news of the death of Unitarian Minister Art Lester. It shocked me even more as I was emailing him a few days ago as he spontaneously emailed me thanking me for my book and offering to send me a copy of his latest one (pictured above).
I already feel like I've missed the opportunity to get to know him better, as he's the kind of person I would really have liked to have been a mentor as he always seemed wise and spiritually rooted, in a mischievous, not-taking-himself-too-seriously way (which is a good sign of spiritual maturity I think).
He ended his email with, "I attach a portion of a sermon I’ll be giving at the Paris Fellowship next month. It’s my 29th service over the past 27 years and possibly my last. I wouldn’t normally bore a colleague with my scribbles, but I think you might like this one."
I do. I do like this one. And as he now won't deliver this at Paris Fellowship I thought it was worth sharing here. Thank you Art. Rest in peace in the arms of the Beloved.
Excerpt from “Love, Factually”
…Maybe what’s wrong is that we really already know that to set out on a spiritual path is a dangerous undertaking. As the great ones of every tradition have told us—not excluding Jesus, who even the most hard-bitten of humanists would have to admit is “our guy.” As they’ve all said, each in their own way, that the road to heaven requires the abandonment of all other concerns. Do you want life? Then throw it away. Do you crave greatness? Then learn to serve others before yourself. Want a nice designer coat? Give it to the first beggar of the morning. As Meher Baba said, the love of the truth involves giving up health, wealth, reputation, even life itself. Truth is radioactive; it cannot be fooled around with. It is about love.
Now I’m going to talk about God for a minute. Just relax. You know me well enough to know that I don’t mean that old tyrant that used to hurl lightning bolts and pore over a checklist of your sins. If you like, you can interpolate: call it “ultimate concern,” “ground of being” or the True Self. I don’t mind; I don’t think God does, either. I just want to make sure that you know what I mean when I say it. Personally, I believe it’s a lovely word, and easy to spell, too. #
You’ve been in love, haven’t you? Go back there for just a second and remember how you were. Does your lover live in another place? You pay no attention to phone bills and train fares; you prefer being broke to being separated. Every nuance of each line of every letter contains a hint. The thorns of jealousy prick you. Songs on the radio transport you. A sort of obsession afflicts you, and if you have it really bad, you may think you see your beloved’s face in every crowd.
It is this restlessness born of love that can make us uneasy with comfortable religion. Love is impatient with posturing and rationalisation, with thin words and empty rituals. It is the universal solvent that explains everything by its very existence and at the same time makes everything else unimportant. Even religion.
If you didn’t know me better, you might think I was asking you to fall in love with God, wouldn’t you? You’d think I was asking you to set aside your reason and your careful approach to life and get emotional about your faith. But that wouldn’t be very Unitarian of me, would it? Or would it?
Most of us would feel that God is too vague a concept to fall in love with. We’re struggling with belief, for goodness’ sake, let alone love. But the mystics will tell us that all love is one: the love of a spouse or lover, the love of home and family, the lust for sexual gratification; yes, even gravity itself are all forms, finer and coarser, of one thing. We all have it. They will tell us how this love for one’s true self, for the source of our being, lies dormant in each of us, ready for a single gesture to put itself in motion. And they will also tell you how God is constantly, as it were, dropping His handkerchief, giving signs of love which we are too self-obsessed to notice.
These little love notes aren’t necessarily things like burning bushes or appearances of angels. They are composed of the most ordinary things that are somehow illuminated by a faculty that lies dormant within us all. I think of it as a love muscle, an ability to open oneself to signs of holiness, that needs exercise and recognition. It is up to us to let our love flow, in rain or sweet summer nights, holding the hand of a loved one, a child or pensioner, in seeing in a sunset not just trapped dust motes in the atmosphere, but a divine lightshow arrayed for us.
If you were to receive an actual love note from an anonymous source—what used to be called a billet-doux—would you be content to just let it go, drop it in a drawer, maybe? Or would the very strangeness of the sentiment be allowed to ripple through your daily life until the mystery of the sender was revealed? As Meher Baba also said, love is contagious; those who do not have it catch it from those who do.” It goes on that way, spreading from heart to heart, until it fills all the spaces between people. It is irresistible and cannot help but touch even the hardest heart.
All our lives we have probably heard this statement: God is love. That means that the reverse is true: Love is God.
You see, it’s not really about proof. The triumphant best-selling atheists fall all over themselves talking about God not appearing in telescopes or laboratory slides. They make of the rational, scientific approach the single criterion of meaning. If you can’t prove it, analyse it, weigh and measure it, it doesn’t exist.
In those terms, love is nothing more than a by-product of evolution, formed through chemical reactions in a big, grey organ—the brain. The so-called “selfish gene” cooked it up to ensure its own continued existence. So, if you feel exalted, ready to chuck yourself in front of a train for someone you love, that’s just a mechanistic ticking over of a survival strategy, nothing more. If you get a little love note that comes unbidden from a source far beyond your ability to understand, don’t get all excited about it. It’s merely a product of oxytocin or endorphins or some other brain chemical that the humourless guys in the lab coats CAN measure.
But maybe we know better. Maybe the braying apostles of mere evolution have overlooked something. Maybe they haven’t taken the lessons of quantum mechanics to heart. How light can be both a particle and a wave, depending on how you look at it. How tiny objects, it seems, can be in two places at the same time. How something can be true and false at the same time. And how maybe they’ve never been in love.
The little love notes come, as Whitman says, “punctually for ever and ever”. If we confused Unitarians have one gift to offer the world, I believe it is this: we can be as perplexed and full of doubt as any best-selling atheist, but still keep our eyes peeled and our hearts open for messages from beyond this unfinished world of mere science. To do that we need to let our love flow.
I have a confession to make. I might as well make it here, with you members of my second congregation. I’m getting near the end of a long career as a preacher, and maybe a long career as a human, too. In all those 35 years I have been careful to squeeze whatever truth was in me through a fine filter, so that my words didn’t offend or confuse the people who have been kind enough to hear me. But I’m weary of being clever. I’m weary of avoiding trigger words like God, and grace, and even faith. So, I want to roll them all up and place them in one simple four-letter word. You know what that is. It is that which brings you from your peaceful Sunday to this place. It is what selected you to be here, as you select a ripe fruit in the market, having been squeezed and hefted in an invisible hand. It is what I’m feeling right now, in this moment. I would be surprised to hear you weren’t.
So, today, I won’t say AMEN as I usually do at the end of a sermon. I’ll simply say this:
Love.
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