The year between my graduation from seminary and when I was called to the Sanford (Maine) Unitarian Church as their parish minister, I worked for a year as a hospital chaplain. I had been familiar with the theories and psychotherapy of Viktor Frankl, but it wasn't until that year of chaplaincy that it began to make sense and became a model from which I could work. In other words, it was a kind of "ah-ha" experience - I had read everything by Frankl, but in the classroom it just didn't seem real. Yet in the hospital, working with the distressed, ill and dying, I found that Frankl was the only one who gave me what I needed - not just an explanation, but something for patients too. You see, as some of you already know, the subject of Frankl's work is meaning. Essentially he thought that meaninglessness was one of the most significant factors to a person's mental health. Without meaning, there could not be good mental health.

In addition to his impressive academic record as well as his relationship with many of the best and brightest in the field, Frankl's most significant credential was his being a Nazi concentration camp survivor. Like many others, he lost all of his family and most of his friends during this horrific period. What he observed and experienced in the camps became a building block in his theory and therapy. "[He] tells of having observed, the moment when a fellow prisoner gave up hope. The man would go quiet, smoke a last cigarette he had been hoarding, refuse to get out of bed, ignore threats or blows, and soon, usually within a day, the prisoner would die." (Sanders, 18) Decades ahead of others, Frankl understood the relationship between attitude and health, and then later of how attitude was integral to life meaning which effected health.

What Frankl had observed was the value of hope - even in the most deplorable and ghastly of conditions, almost as if to give the Ecclesiastes 9:4 piece a heartbeat ("But to whoever is joined with all the living has hope."), he saw the difference hope could make. It could be the difference between life and death, the difference between life meaning and meaninglessness.

I was on my own search for meaning when I left the church of my childhood. I think that my friends and family just figured it was a temporary detour - another of my idealistic and soon-to-be short-lived enthusiasms, this one prompted by my move to New York City. The denomination I left was over a million members with congregations numbering in the tens of thousands; I turned that in for a faith community with membership of less than 150K and about 1000 congregations. My family church was one of novel-like mid-western moderation reflected in their church potluck jello salads and hamburger casseroles; my church-to-be was well known for it's strong stands on justice issues, its out of the mainstream theology and its legendary coffee hours which many rumored was our version of communion.

Most significantly, the church of my origin was definitely a Christian church, no question about it - I was baptized my immersion at the age of 8, took communion every Sunday, I was an alter boy who won my town's junior high sermon contest. I traded all of that in for a church which has it's roots in the Christian tradition but is denied entrance into many Christian organizations, a church whose absence of ritual and liturgy - of bells and smells - have some questioning why we're even considered a religion. The church of my childhood will soon merge with the United Church of Christ making them one of the largest and most respected liberal Christian churches in the world, but when I told my seminary professors I had joined the Unitarian Univeralist Church their response was: "Oh. That's too bad."

"The Unitarian Universalists? They're all head and no heart" was a common refrain I heard from friends, professors and family. Maybe those weren't their exact words, but that's what I heard. Or maybe it was an inner conversation I was hearing. Maybe it was Abraham Maslow I was hearing, after all the great humanist psychologist had written that we are a "rational religion," not given to expressions of emotion, of the heart, of the right brain but that we like to stay "in our heads," that is, we've been known as aloof, intellectual, freethinking heretics.

And yet, in spite of all of this, there was something about my old church that had stopped working - it just didn't do it for me: it was hollow, void, voiceless when I needed answers. So many of the places where others put their faith just didn't work for me. There wasn't meaning there, for me, anymore. All I felt I was getting was otherworldly future talk. What I found in Unitarian Universalism was hope, what Scott Russell Sanders says he hears people asking for, what Viktor Frankl observed and knew in the camps, is what I found in this faith. I found "this worldly hope." And it felt and still feels so good and right.

The Latin word for hope is sperare, and comes from an Indo-European root meaning to expand. (Sanders, 125) To be of hope means to feel expansive, feeling no constraint; to go beyond the limits and embrace a wider view, thinking beyond the boundaries. For me then, hope describes the Unitarian Universalism I have come to know and love. And if I had to use just one word as synonymous with my understanding of who and what we are as a faith community - not just today but for our history - it would be hope. I see and feel hope in these ways.

The hope that is Unitarian Universalism lives in the present with an eye to the future. I thought about this when I recently read this story:

The hope that I experience in Unitarian Universalism doesn't permit me to let go of what we share, the shared meaning that keeps me afloat. Grounded in the present, in the everyday, in the here-and-now experiences of daily living, I know what could be and I'm willing to work with others to transform the here-and-now based on a shared vision, a vision that we laugh and sing about, that we argue and cry about, a vision that if we are to reach it can only be arrived at together. The hope that is Unitarian Universalism asks, "How can you let go?"

The hope that is Unitarian Universalism is about possibility. As Unitarian Universalists, our faith speaks of anticipation and expectancy as though living on the edge of our seats. One person I've read notes that hope and hop come from the same root that speaks of leaping in expectation. Now, I know that we are not given to authentic Sunday morning emotive outbursts driven by whatever spirit moves you (even though some of you have confessed that this is what you would like to do and if you did others surely would follow your authenticity). I'm reminded of the northern, urban, downtown Unitarian church that was visited by a rural southern Universalist. In the middle of the sermon, the Universalist, who was moved by the sermon words of expectation and possibly, leaped from his pew and shouted "Amen Sister, Amen. You preach the liberal word!" At which point one of the ushers came running down the isle to ask if the man was okay. "Okay? I'm doing just fine, mighty fine. I'm filled with hope, Mr. Usher. I can feel the hope of my faith." To which the usher replied - "Well that's well and good, but not now, not here."

Unitarian Universalism has always asked in its message of hope, "If not now, then when? If not here, where?" Of course now and here! Our faith preaches a message of expectation, of possibility, of hope. Let us live this hope and move to the edge of our seats with anticipation, prepared to hop when moved by our spirit!

The hope that is Unitarian Universalism assumes the best about people. As a voluntary, covenantal faith community, we assume that people are here because they want to be, that you are here in the spirit of fellowship, that we have each others best interests in mind. And sometimes this can be a mixed blessing.

Several months ago, on a Tuesday, in the late morning, the church's office staff excepted a collect person-to-person phone call for me, by name, something we virtually never do. The person calling claimed to have attended this church several times, his wife and children had gone to church school. They lived in West Annapolis but were on their way home from his uncle's funeral in Newport, RI. Their car had broken down on the Cross Bronx Expressway and needed repair. He explained why he didn't have the money to cover the repairs, it all made sense to me - I even talked with his mechanic several times. He needed the money to cover the costs.

He spoke with an English accent, and I have to admit that I thought I vaguely remembered him and his family. I knew precisely where he was in the Bronx - a dreadful place where I still have fears of breaking down when I travel to Long Island. Between calls, I tried to verify some of the information he'd given me, but found out only enough information to make any decision all that much harder. To make a long story short, I advanced him the $360. This is very unlike me - about once every three years do I respond to phone calls for help and never for cash. So why this time? Because I could not stand the thought that if this family had been attending our church, if they had attended and were members, as he said they had been, of the Unitarian Chapel in London which he named along with their minister, then if I didn't loan him the money how would I ever be able to stand up here on Sunday morning and look at them where you now sit? I couldn't do that. So, off went the money. Not only has he never been heard from, but weeks later, in a UU computer newsletter, a warning was put out from our Dallas church describing the con in detail.

I was embarrassed, I still am. And I would probably do it again! Because there have been times when I wasn't conned and I know I made the difference. I know that our hope can be a mixed blessing, but as Unitarian Universalists we must continue to believe in the inherent worth and dignity of every person, we must believe and act as if we are all here for each other.

The hope that is Unitarian Universalism doesn't give up on people. Our hope puts faith in people's ability, goodness and possibility - in their potential. Wherever a person is on their faith journey, we want to empower, not silence. In a different context, Maya Angelou tells this story:

I know that many come to Unitarian Universalism having been silenced by a version of religious or spiritual rape, and like Angelou, they need support and encouragement as they learn that it's safe to speak again, to speak of their meaning, their God, their vision and journey, in a community that will honor and love them for who they are and not what they should be. This is the hope called Unitarian Universalism.

So for the past minutes I've been telling you all about this hope that is our faith. And by what authority, you might wonder - I mean, maybe you are wondering how I know. And here, I will begin an answer only and save the rest for another time. And I will start with these words from Vaclav Havel as though they were mine: "I have thought about this and examined myself a thousand times, and eventually - to the delight of some and the astonishment of others - I have always come to the conclusion that the primary origin of hope is, to put it simply, metaphysical. By that I mean to say that hope is more, and goes deeper, than a mere optimism or disposition of the human mind."

It is to say, hope comes from inside us - I don't believe we get hope somewhere along the way: we already have it, each one of us, and it's just a matter of figuring out how to feel it, use it, experience hope. For me, its Unitarian Universalism that best does it because our faith makes this hope its starting place.

You see, we begin by acknowledging a version of this maybe silly, but simple story:

It goes by many different names, I have chosen to call it Hope. We each have it - without it, we cannot live. It is the essence of our faith. Let us trust it for in doing that, our spirits can soar.