Sunday, November 16, 2025
Sermon by Rev. F. Vernon Wright V
Life Beyond the Trance
Being raised the way I was, you know by transcendentalist wolves without electricity… I had the keen awareness, …that I had very little in common with my class mates.
Class mate one: “You see last night on “Dukes of Hazard” Luke driving General Lee and he goes off that jump and he crashes through that barn!
Class mate two: “That was wicked awesome! Don’t you think Vern?”
Me: ….uh, Dukes of Hazzard, huh… Didn’t General lee loose the Civil War?
… poor kids at my school. I might have well been from Mars.
Needless to say I have always struggled with not fitting in and not feeling worthy of well pretty much anything. Of course I know, I do now fit in, I am respected, of course I am! I’m Rev. F. Vernon Wright the V!
Oh how we labor to be worthy! Oh how we fear we are not worthy! The lengths our culture will stoop to to make us feel that we are not! I mean the skullduggery of making every young person fear that they will burn in hell if they uh… self pleasure! And the only way to redeem themselves is to confess!
Ah… yeah…
Or that the only way to know God, be saved, go to heaven, not burn in hell, is to declare that this Jesus Christ guy, who don’t get me wrong, was a terrific fellow, is your personal lord and savior and to do everything somebody like me tells you to do- and to in fact brow beat, coerce and cajole everyone else around you to do the same… And if you don’t you won’t be worthy… And that this Jesus fellow who was actually white, had blue eyes and was blond, was never ever, ever gay, would like very much for you to put him back into Christmas, is in favor of the demolishment of the Palestinian people, says abortion is murder, and that everything in that book called the Bible is actually literally true, and not one sentence or phrase in it could ever be I don’t know, poetry or legend! And all of this, regardless of the Constitution, should be taught in public schools, and there should be prayer in them, formally all together, and God must only be invoked in the name of Jesus and no one else… And if you don’t think that’s true, well then you deserve to be brow beaten and bullied and not graduated or employed, or allowed into heaven when you die- even if this book called the Bible doesn’t really say anything like that really.
…This whole concept that you might have to live in fear that if you do the wrong thing at all and you happen to die you will actually spend an eternity burning and being horribly punished…
Wow… I wonder if we possibly could have an unworthiness problem?
And those that do have an unworthiness problem, which is to some extent all of us- look what happens when a charismatic leader says to us we are worthy and superior to someone else as long as they conform… well it’s incalculable? The hysteric fevered pitch of the orgiastic crowd! The fetishistic belief that if your fearless leader can do no wrong, you can’t either! Wow! How wonderful! Maybe there really are simple truths to complicated problems, maybe if you tell a lie over and over again with increasing certainty, it really would be true! Its as if someone like that was able to hypnotize huge segments of the population- to induce a spell!
I think Tara Brach is right when she called it the “trance of unworthiness”. Brach is an insight meditation instructor, and a long time meditator. Her understanding of meeting that place within that judges thoughts acceptable or unacceptable, good or bad, positive or negative, worthy or unworthy, and the underlying fear there- perhaps handed down through the literal traumatization of countless generation, with compassion, mercy and kindness is fairly profound. Many of us who start a practice of meditation are struggling with lots of anxiety- to see clearly the depth of the fear, and begin to realize that there is much, much more to life, well one begins to be able to at long last embrace a touch of freedom. She mentions Carl Jung, who wrote, “Become who you are. Become all that you are. There is still more of you—more to be discovered, forgiven, and loved.”
I think most of us here understand this. Most of you have tasted this freedom to be what you actually are. And we know, once we have journeyed outside the cage we can never go back in. We know panic isn’t leadership, or growth, or creativity, or joy, or wonder, or awe, its a circular firing squad, its a trash heap polluting the world’s oceans, its an algorithmic zombification of infinity confirmation bias leading to an idiocracy! Yes we know how strong and deep and hypnotizing the trance of unworthiness really is!
But we also know a different way, a freedom way. Each day we work on it this different community. In fact we belong to an ancient historical trajectory who saw beyond the trance just like Jesus, Buddha, Mohamed, Lou Tzu, and Confucias did. And a great many shamans throughout the ages… some witches too! It’s not perfect. No nothing is. But it can be fun.
And think just this last weekend, we had a chance to cast our own spell over an entire community- Just by being there thousands knew that they were okay as the were. They had a chance to step away from the trance out there. And every Sunday, and last night when we watched Rick Steves, cute Rick Stevie little documentary on fascism. Actually we can be a part of the solution. Actually there is life beyond the trance. Actually you are all beautiful exactly as you are, with your beliefs and disbeliefs, your similarities and your differences, your beauty and your ugliness. We are just trying to do our best with what we got we are just trying love and serve one another with a little truth and peace and helpfulness here.
Blessed be!
