Unitarian Universalist Church at Washington Crossing

Like you, I have been overwhelmed by the total tailspin of the United States’ and world economies this week. We had become accustomed to the low grade slide on the stock market, the lack of loan possibility, the bad business reports from companies, the increase of foreclosures and the increasing rates of unemployment. But, you might say, the “expletive deleted” sure hit the fan this week. First it was Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae followed by Lehman Brothers and our neighboring Merrill Lynch being bought up at a bargain basement sale. Then AIG went from private hands to a governmental agency. It is probably the only thing to do, but it seems that when it comes to corporations this government believes in a policy of privatizing profits and socializing losses.

Enough said about economics for now. Clearly, as your minister, I do not claim economics as my area of expertise. But the tumultuous economic rollercoaster ride this week has us all trying to better understand the avalanche of bad economic events. What causes an economic or a natural avalanche? On a mountain slope, a single snowflake drops and nothing happens. When snowflakes continue to fall, over and over, suddenly a mighty avalanche seems to happen out of nowhere. Cultural change, be it economic, political or social, happens the same way.

In 1300 AD the people in the medieval world would have scoffed at anyone who said that their world was about to radically change. But events started happening like snow flakes falling: there was the Hundred Years War, followed by the Black Death, and the Roman Catholic schism with two opposing popes fighting for power. Then the printing press was invented, Christian Constantinople fell to Mohammed II, the Spanish Inquisition started, Christopher Columbus took a voyage west and an uppity German monk by the name of Martin Luther nailed ninety-five problems that he had with Catholicism to his church door.

What about the snowflakes of events that are taking place today? They are falling even more rapidly. Think about the sequence of a few relatively recent events, the rise in not only the use of the internet, but blogging, U-Tube, 24 hour TV “news” and commentary programs. There was 9/11, the start of our war in Afghanistan 7 years ago, in Iraq 5 years ago, Hurricane Katrina and more recently Gustov and Ike, and now the financial crisis that swirls around us.

I am not predicting the end times of Armageddon. I do not believe in that sort of thing. These major cultural shifts have repeatedly taken place down through time. Much like the tectonic plates slowly shifting below the earth’s surface have and will continue to cause earthquakes. Much as the snowfall in the mountains slowly builds up and causes avalanches.

The world we have known and thought we understood is changing. I hope that we, as a society, are waking up to the fact that the bed we are sleeping on is on fire. Like during the time of the medieval world, patterns today are breaking down and building up in new and different ways. Cultural, political and economic change is defiantly in the air.

Believe it or not, I am not bringing this stuff up to frighten you. Rather, I think we can actually find some comfort in being able to gain a bigger perspective on what is happening. Even if we do not like what we see, we are better able to understand and meet the changes and impending challenges that we are facing.

Small changes take place over many years in society. They build up until a tipping point is reached and then – the avalanche. We can run around crying, “The sky is falling, The sky is falling,” like Chicken Little, or we can grasp what is happening, adjust our lives and our culture so we can better accept and deal with a changing world. That is where being a Cultural Creative comes in.

Most people do not understand the term Cultural Creative. Dr. Paul Ray, a sociologist, and his wife Dr. Sherry Ruth Anderson, a research psychologist, coined this term nine years ago when they published a book by that name. Joan Borysenko wrote about this work, “There is a quiet revolution of values afoot in America with the potential to change the planet. Ray and Anderson have done a splendid job defining and interviewing the cultural creative revolutionaries, astounding us with the good news that we are not lone voices crying in the wilderness, but a vanguard of hope over fifty million strong.”

CC’s are a sub culture of people who have become flexible and creative as respects cultural change. CC’s are hopeful people reacting creatively to change. CC’s are people at the cutting edge, able to lead us through the various cultural changes we face. They are people who respond innovatively when encountering change. They are people willing to help shape a new kind of culture emerging here in the United States and around the world. This new culture needs to be adaptive and creative at meeting the challenges and the possibilities of the 21st century.

This summer I had the privilege of spending a week with Paul Ray. I was invited to help facilitate at an Intensive Seminar with the Wisdom University that Paul lead. Paul had just completed a massive new study of our American culture this spring. He shared his latest survey results with us. He indicates that there are now about sixty million CC’s in America. After hearing him, I firmly believe that we as congregation and Unitarian Universalists in general are primarily Cultural Creatives.

Paul says that one of the truly unfortunately facts about CC’s is that they/we lack any awareness of ourselves as a large creative and powerful subculture. CC’s are already creating a new culture. Unfortunately, we assume we consist of a few lone individuals. Paul Ray is trying to wake us up to the fact that we are not alone. Sixty million is a large percentage of the populace. With that knowledge, maybe we will be more willing to speak up more frankly in public settings. With that knowledge, maybe we will be more willing to act more directly to help shape a new way of life.

Think of our modern culture going straight along its path for the past five-hundred years or so. This is the culture that replaced the ancient medieval world view. This is the culture that led to the American Revolution. This is the culture that helped shape the Unitarian and the Universalist religions.

America’s first counterculture that broke from what is called Modernism was a traditionalist small-town religious nostalgia created during the years from 1890-1930. That’s correct, Modernism came before present day Traditionalism. The Traditionalist movement was a counter cultural reaction to the dominant Modernist culture. Traditionalism was and is built on nostalgia for a world view of a simpler mythic time when small towns were deeply moral and patriotic with values evoked by Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne movies and Fourth of July parades. It was a time when most immigrants were white, and especially in the South, resistance to Modernism came in the form of Jim Crow codes and the Ku Klux Clan keeping African Americans from becoming economically and politically involved. The traditionalist counter culture in America yearns for a time when men were men, women were women and people were all god fearing Christians, preferably white, non-immigrant, straight, pro-life, hard working, patriotic Americans. Still, Modern culture kept stealing the young people away from the small towns with the lure of financial and professional success in the city – onward and upward forever.

I was part of that modernist culture. I remember talking with my Dad one day. I remember the exact spot where we were standing. It was outside near the back of our garage (the garage I helped Dad finish building years earlier as a teenager when he had cracked vertebrae in his neck). Dad said that he knew his children had to leave our small Wisconsin town, so that we could get an education and then make a good living. My parents accepted modern cultural expectations even though they had always farmed with a team of horses.

Others in American small towns and cities did not accept modern cultural expectations and many still do not. This was a group strong enough to split off of the major cultural path and establish a subculture of its own. This traditional counter culture helped individuals cope with change and enabled them to adapt to a world that no longer feels comfortable. A turmoil was taking place in small town America caused by the Civil War and urban-industrial Modernism.

Paul Ray claims there was a second major cultural split that started back in the 1960’s/70’s with a number of movements. Some were political and advocated for the poor and civil rights or were anti-nuclear, anti-Vietnam, anti-violence against women and children, pro women’s rights and pro environmental movements. Others started out more as social and consciousness raising movements such as the women’s movements, gay and lesbian liberation movements which then moved toward politics. Others dealt primarily with consciousness and cultural issues like the human potential movement, holistic health, organic foods, the psychedelic movement and other new spiritual movements.

This cultural shift slowly accumulated strength and power much like snow building up to form an avalanche. Today, Cultural Creatives are coming of age and could be ready to burst forth as a major cultural force during this time of change. Because, ready or not, our world is changing. Nobody knows for sure, but even before the past couple of weeks, 67% of Americans fear what the world will be like for our children and grandchildren. It is hard to imagine what that percentage would be after last week. Even as the hunter gathers gave way to agriculture and kingdoms gave way to empires we are headed for something new.

There are at least two major groups who try to avoid change and are willing to close their eyes and minds to what is happening and continue to live divided lives. On the one hand there are those who are ambitious to gain wealth and power so they strive to keep things as they are. On the other hand there are those who are anxious and fearful of what may lie ahead so they strive to keep things as they are. Both are willing to hide their heads and continue living divided lives.

It is the Cultural Creatives who realize they can no longer deny reality. They no longer can live divided lives and they are plunging into the task of creating a new culture. Through being open to innovation they are shaping a new culture for the 21st century. CC’s are people of all ages, races and religions, from all parts of the country and from all income levels and all ethnic groups.

Our faith community is one of the places where cultural creativity can and is taking place communally. We know that we are at a time in history where how open we are to what we are experiencing today will have a critical impact on our journey into the future. As CC’s, we can either anticipate global change and its impact on our local communities and respond in caring and compassionate ways, or we can blindly move forward in a hurry like the captain of the Titanic. We do not want to find out too late that we were moving so fast that turning away from the cultural icebergs took too long.

Cultural Creatives are coming to the point of accepting that it will never be the same as we thought it was? Once we accept that the future is not going to be the way it was in the past, then we will be able to do things differently acting in new and informed ways.

Paul Ray likens our situation to that of those who were about to enter on a great sea journey, much like emigrants leaving their homes with little to carry and knowing that their personal history and that of their parents is not going to be replicated. We are like the Hebrew people who followed Moses out of slavery and out of the land of Egypt into the desert. On such a journey, it is important to remember Harriet Tubman, who sang songs about the Israelites leaving their slavery in Egypt as she guided American slaves along the Underground Railroad to freedom. She said “I would have freed more people, if they’d known they were slaves.”

Our challenge as CC’s is to be open to the changes that are taking place all around us. Our challenge as CC’s is not to lose our heads and hearts to fear but rather to use our creativity to help preserve life, maintain hope and never forget compassion as together we move forward into the future.

September 21, 2008