The first took place in grade school. In my class, there were about 55 or 60 kids. When we were in the third grade, we were introduced to the music nun, whose job it was to shape us into a massive choir, no easy task.

She did so by selecting five students, whom she identified as being non-singers, and eliminating them from her effort. If she got rid of the worst, I suppose here thinking went, she would have at least half a chance at creating a successful singing group.

This is not a story about seeking justice for others who’d been wronged. It’s a story about personal indignation in that I was one of the un-chosen five. For years I was sequestered with the musical misfits. We engaged in unsupervised mischief while our classmates went on to create and learn vocal harmonies.

I was also only one of two students from the class who later went on to make a living (at least for part of my life) by singing. The other was not one of the misfits, but the class’s musical prodigy.

The second story is from an experience that occurred during my junior year at high school. By that time some rather serious holes had begun to erode my adolescent faith. I found that the prescribed theology could no longer hold water, let alone my attention. My patience with the structures and the laws of the church had also worn thin. If I bothered to go to church at all, which was occasionally necessary to maintain appearances for my parent’s sake, I was merely going through the motions.

I put up with this situation as long as I could, and then made an appointment to see a priest at my school. Father Tom was someone whom I trusted and respected. I got together with him one morning before class. He listened for over an hour; I told him how it just didn’t work for me anymore. The dogma was impossible to accept in good conscience. Why in the world would I want to waste my time going to mass? And so on.

Father Tom listened carefully and patiently. I supposed at the time that he might somehow be able to make it all right for me again, to help me see what I’d missed so that I could, "Get it." In fact that’s what he did, but not in the way I’d imagined.

So after I finished my ramblings, he sat thoughtfully for a minute. And then he said caringly, "Charlie, maybe you need to consider that possibility that you’re just not a Catholic?"

Can you imagine? What a wonderful gift of freedom he gave me! I accepted it and moved on.

Now, these are two very different stories that still have some elements in common. They’re both about identity, about who I was or thought I was. In both of them I’m strongly influenced by sources–authorities–outside of myself. One of the stories though, carries a message of limitations; I was identified as a non-singer and efforts were put forth to make sure that would continue to be the case. The other story offers a different kind of message; it offers the hope of expansion. That’s a key phrase, one I’ll come back to a few times: the hope of expansion. To a very considerable extent that’s what our identities tend to do; they either limit us, or they provide us with a hope for expanding our horizons.

Lots of times the world around us, the culture around us, ascribes identities to us, like the authorities did in my stories. Lots of times though, the expectations that form our identities are our own. Often those lines are blurred.

Mostly our identities either restrict our experience and expression or they encourage us to stretch our boundaries. The spiritual work of growth–maturity–is the process of taking responsibility for and owning our identities. It is also the process of transcending those identities by moving from less into more.

In, An American Childhood, Annie Dillard talks about awakening into our lives, sometime around the age of ten, and discovering there, that we are ourselves. And we don’t ever stop being ourselves. The Tao Te Ching tells us to be careful though, not to hold that consciousness of ourselves to tightly. We need to let it be fluid and to let that fluidity carry us into wholeness.

When I originally had the idea for this sermon, I thought that there was no limit to its applications for spiritual and social issues. How do our identities either confine or expand our lives spiritually? How do they feed our deepest understandings of what it means to be human in this vast universe, knowing that someday we will die?

And then there’s the whole realm of social implications which are also spiritual. What is the role of identity in questions of racism and antiracism? What is its role in issues of gender discrimination? Classism? Homophobia? Religiously based genocide? Just to mention a few.

When I originally had the idea for this sermon, "The Limits of Our Identities," I thought I was sitting on a gold mine of endless possibilities ripe for plumbing the depths of our souls and promoting hope for the expansion of our spirits. Little did I know, when I began to plan for this service, that at this very moment we would find ourselves in the midst of such an historical experience as this.

Here we are in Day Six of an election extravaganza that begs us to examine the limits of our identities, that pleads with us to expand our horizons. And the stakes are not small. They are for the potential of the future of our country.

I was as ready as anyone for this Presidential campaign season to come to an end. Eighteen months is just a little too long. I have to admit though, I’m somewhat grateful for the extended reprise before the finale. It’s given me a little extra time to do an "identity check" before I have to move into the reality of a new Presidency.

I’m not going to assume anything about anyone here might have voted. With the entire election coming down to a matter of 327 votes, chances are just as good as not that your candidate, whoever that might be, is not going to win. That is, if you voted for Bush or Gore. If you voted for one of the other candidates, your chances aren’t even that good. So we can say that we all have a reasonable chance of being dissatisfied by the results of the election.

Isn’t it good of the universe to give us a couple of extra weeks to adjust to that possibility? We don’t have forever though, and I think we might still have a lot of work to do.

The founding fathers of our county, many of whom were Unitarians and Universalists including Jefferson, the Adams, Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin Rush, created a democracy. They created a form of government in which church and state were separated, but our republic was still built upon religious value.

That religious value is one that recognizes the inherent worth and dignity of every person; it’s one that recognizes the intrinsic equality of all persons. Of course we have to admit that the identification of all persons, which was quite limited at the time of the Constitution, has since expanded and will continue to expand until it does mean all persons.

The point is though, that the democratic principle, upon which the government is built, entrusted the designation of the leadership of our country to the will of the majority. I don’t think that we can infer that our forebears thought that might mean that everyone would always be pleased by every electoral outcome. It was intended, we can be sure, that winners and losers would be treated with honor, and that those elected would govern with the respect, the good will and the confidence of the electorate.

Cynicism and resolute unwillingness to cooperate on the part of the minority were never a part of our founding father’s vision for democracy. In fact it is these–cynicism and resolute unwillingness to cooperate–that stand as the largest threat to the well being of our republic.

Think of the difference within just the past 30 years. Democrats and Republicans worked together through Watergate to bring about the best resolution for our nation. It wasn’t easy and it wasn’t smooth, but there was a spirit of cooperation that carried the day.

Two years ago when we woke up and found ourselves in the midst of Monica Gate, we were also awakened to the cold realities of a nation divided by partisan politics. The plan of the day was to take no prisoners. Hang the country, our side is right, was the implacable attitude. It was nearly our undoing.

If the rhetoric of this past week is any indication, we’re not in for much of an easing of this partisan civil war. We’re losing sight of our national identity and embracing, in its place, a more parochial, a more limited identity. Democratic and Republican party identities, with their growing cynicism and resolute unwillingness to cooperate can not promote an expansive vision for the future of our country. It’s time for each of us to take a stand to refuse cynicism, to embrace potential, and to have faith in the spirit of democracy.

None of us here will decide how to count those last votes in Florida, the votes that will determine who is our next President. It is up to each of us though, after that determination has been made, to move beyond the boundaries of partisanship that have been so limiting and self-defeating. It will not be an easy path, but it is up to each of us to promote the hope of expansion. Isn’t it time we grow up a bit–both personally and nationally–transforming our identities, moving beyond personal interests, and building instead a faith that can make each of us and this nation more whole.

The Election of 2000 calls each of us to engage in a religious response. Cynicism is a response that limits our identities and limits our potential future. It is not a response of high religious integrity or aspiration. Maybe we need to consider the possibility that we just cannot afford to be cynics.

If that's the case, then what might we be instead? What will allow us to open the door, to engage in identities that are transformative? Perhaps we're called, at this divisive moment in history, to be reconciliationists, to work for the bringing together of our disparate party identities. If our candidate is not the one to win the election, maybe we are called, not so much to speak, but to listen. Maybe we need to learn to see beyond what we thought was best, in order to form a better, a more common, a more Democratic whole. Reconciliation occurs when conflicted parties try to listen to one another.

How can we embrace a President who was not our own personal choice? Perhaps by letting go of some of our arrogance, arrogance that informs us that the majority of the country is wrong. Self-righteousness has never helped to promote any vision of healing. And we need healing in this country.

Perhaps, just perhaps, if we act in good faith and with trust in our new leaders, we will actually help to build the faithful service and the trustworthy leadership we so fervently want and this country so desperately needs.

We are called by this moment in history to leave our cynicism behind, and to claim our identity as an American people. My hope is that we will choose well in this moment, that we will transform our identities, and that we will move ahead from this experience, united in a hope for a future filled with unlimited possibilities for blossoming and growth.