by Reverend Earl C. Davis (June 3, 1876 - May 19, 1953)
The attitude of many people today towards religion is said to be that of indifference. They look upon it as some sort of interesting relic of the past, which has some such place in the lives of men as the relics of the American in a museum have. They are interesting, they throw light upon a people that have been and are fast passing from the family life of the races. So also, we are informed, is religion. It was once a potent factor but is rapidly becoming an obsolete thing which no longer interests except as an indication of what has been, of what people have thought, and what motives have dominated their lives. To what extent this feeling has extended, and whether it is increasing or on the wane, does not interest us now particularly. The point is that it exists.
Again, even where there is a formal allegiance to religious forms, there is a sort of a dry rot permeating it all, so that it fails to hold the devoted, spontaneous consecration that has marked the great religious movements of the past. Did you ever, in your wanderings, come across a deserted village? What a strange, haunting sense of vacuity you feel. Or did you ever return to your house when the family is away, and feel the utter desolation that comes over, because the master spirit that made the place alive has gone. You wander from place to place, vainly hoping to meet a familiar face, haunted by the grim barrenness of the furniture and trappings that only few hours before glowed with atmosphere of coziness. The cold dead ashes of the fireplace send a shiver through you. Goldsmith in his wonderful poem, "The Deserted Village" tells a tale like this. "These were thy charms-but all these charms have fled."
Much that same feeling has come into the formal village of organized religion. From all sides come the complaints that the zeal, the vitality, the whole souled interest has fled. A spirit of ennui has crept over the body. All the furnishings of doctrine, or sacrament, all the customs and formalities are the same. Pious exhortation, appeal for consecration, appeal for loyalty fail to overcome the dismal feeling, for many at least, that no longer does "the Real Presence," dominate the ancient village, where God once was. To many even the feeling of lack, of the absence of the Master Spirit of life the feeling that the great values have passed from the lives of men, seems to have extended not alone through the organized religions of the times, but to have spread through-out society. That we are living in an age haunted by the absence of the master spirit, that we aimlessly, and restlessly run from one thing to another, trying to find that which will satisfy, and demand the full and unreserved allegiance of our hungry spirits.
To a very large extent this is a true description of our times, often overstated, and exaggerated, but nevertheless grounded in truth. What is the meaning of it?
Simply this, we are forever confusing the permanent spirit with the accidental manifestation. We look for the living among the dead. We seek for spiritual warmth before the dead embers of the past. To be sure they once glowed, but they glow no more. No dead God can satisfy our living souls / and only a living God can rekindle the fires in our dead hearts.
The word "God" is a word, which we use in a symbolic manner to express our conception of the totality and essence of things. God is spirit, God is life, said Jesus. Even so it is. In the face of the tremendous fact and challenging mystery of natural and human life, we feel the overpowering grandeur of it all, and with that strange, subtle heroism, which makes even the least of mankind wonderful, and we cast forth onto the unexplored seas of effort, and truth. To the best of our experience, and wisdom we explain that Great Mystery of Life, and call it God, an imperfect symbol of our imperfect insight into the reality and possibility of Life.
After we have little, limited Gods to represent the great reality, we deceive ourselves with the idea that our God is the only God, perfect and complete. Then we set about to make other people see why we think so. We develop dogmas, and our little sentiments become sacraments, and by the time we have converted a few followers to believe in our little "home-made" God, all the life, all the spirit, and the human and enthusiastic passion that glowed in our God as we made disappears as soon as we have finished.
For God is not static, God is life. While we are worshiping the deserted village, that we once built, the life spirit has passed on and is building elsewhere. The God that we made was vital and interesting while we were making him. But when we had finished and put a fence about him, he was dead. Life flows on. The God of the Ancient Hebrews was wonderful in the making, but he is dead now. The God of the Middle ages, is dead, however great and wonderful he was. We believe today that we are painting an image of "the God of things as we see them for the God of things as they are" that is greater, better, and truer, than man has ever done before. In this great human task there is life, satisfaction. It is the "Master Presence" that holds us in its all-absorbing Grip.
The living God, the God that is Life, that is Human Life, that dwells in the individual men and women, with all their noble hopes, all their achievements, all their defeats and their limitations, all their mistakes, and selfish, cruel sins, the God that all this and more, infinitely more, that is the totality of life, that God grips our souls. When we look at life that way, we no longer feel the haunting fear of vacuum, of absence. Every being, every thing, every life, every shrub, is pulsating with such tremendous vitality, such wonderful hope, insuppressible purpose, that we are fairly carried off our feet, by the infinite sweep of life, which like a mighty river carries us past the present of today towards the infinite possibilities of tomorrow. Villages may be deserted, ancient creeds may become void of life, but the streaming, surging, flow of life goes on, building, creating, dreaming, loving, and living. There is the Living God, for which we hunger and Thirst. Life, Life and evermore Life.
Earl Clement Davis and his wife, Annie
Reverend Earl Clement Davis, chronology
June 2, 1876: born in Poland ME
1897: graduated with AB from Bowdoin College, Brunswick, ME
1897 -1902: Principal or Howe School in Billerica, MA
1904: Harvard Divinity, STB (Bachelor of Sacred Theology)
June 28, 1905: married to Annie Foster Dodge in Billerica, MA
1905 - 1919: Minister of Unitarian Church in Pittsfield, MA
1919 - 1924: Minister of Unitarian Church in Lancaster, PA
1924 - 1933: Minister of Unitarian Church in Concord, NH
1933 - 1953: Minister of Unitarian Church in Petershams, MA
May 19, 1953: died in Worcester, MA
For a peek into the treasure chest of Reverend Davis's sermons, manuscripts and publications,
visit his grandson, Davis Baird's webpage.
On , Mark Whiting Davis delivered Earl's The Thirst for a Living God sermon, to the First Congregational Parish, Unitarian Petersham. The sermon had been written and delivered by Reverend Davis in Petersham, during his time as minister of the church between 1933 and 1953.
Mark was born in (the 4th of 7 children) and came, with his family, to Sunday services in Petersham for the first 5 years of his life. He has fond memories of his Grandfather’s sermons, of getting together for Sunday meals with Grandfather and Grandmother, aunts and uncles, brothers and sisters, and cousins. Thanksgiving was always an extra special occasion. Mark remembers being Christened (along with his sister, Helen) by Reverend Davis in 1952. Reverend Davis died on May 19 of the following year.
Thanksgiving in Petersham - 1948
Sometime after my grandfather died, my grandmother moved to live with her daughter’s family in Lexington. When she moved, my family started attending the Unitarian Church in Worcester. I was a reluctant participant, and by the time I reached high school, I’d had enough with religion.
Sometime in my senior year or high school, I read an interview with the renowned atheist, Madalyn Murray O’Hair, and decided that I was an atheist. Upon graduating from high school, I joined the Navy. After bootcamp in Chicago, I was in an O'Hare Airport bookstore killing a little time before my flight to Jacksonville. The title, Advice From A Failure, grabbed my attention, so I bought a copy. Author Jo Coudert, my second philosophical mentor, was also an atheist.
A year and a half later, I shipped out of Norfolk, VA aboard aircraft carrier, USS America for a 9 month deployment on the Mediterranean Sea. While aboard, I met a shipmate who turned me on to Ayn Rand, another atheist, who’s philosophical novels, like Atlas Shrugged, and non-fiction works, like The Virtue of Selfishness, are cornerstone doctrines for many far-right Republicans. I carried Ayn Rand around with me for the rest of my Navy days and brought her with me through my first 2 years at UMass in Amherst, where I marveled in the study of physics, chemistry, calculus and German. Truth, justice, capitalism, and the American way were perfectly CLEAR to me.
My 3rd year at UMass was a Junior Year Abroad program that took me to Albert Ludwigs University of Freiburg in Germany. Within a few months, my clarity began to unravel, my allegiance to doctrine was losing its grip. Friendships with other American students, as well as German classmates, formed a kind of wake-up round-table that challenged my certainty.
While I had been in the Navy, the beauty of structures that were a couple thousand years old, like the Acropolis in Athens, or in the Coliseum in Rome, or the Piazza Della Signoria in Florence, made feel like I was a mile high. I enjoyed their beauty and history for all the right reasons, but it was more like I was collecting medals for my ego than appreciating any expansion of my soul.
This second trip abroad was different. With these new friends, time kept stopping … again and again I felt dissolved, and suspended, in amazement and in aMUSEment. I lost myself at a Fastnacht celebration in Basel, Switzerland wandering through the nighttime streets under the spell of columns of joyful, costumed, marching, masked, music makers. I lost myself climbing up to Hohensalzburg in Austria. I lost myself hearing the Prague Symphony Orchestra perform The Moldau in Smetana Hall in Prague (behind the Iron Curtain) on New Year’s Day. I lost myself dancing with friends along the Blue Danube to take a break from the many miles in our old volkswagon bug, nicknamed "Betty". I lost myself dancing with villagers in Britanny to the most hauntingly beautiful music. I lost myself watching the ballet, Giselle, in Paris, and listening to Bach’s 5th Brandenburg Concerto somewhere. I lost myself spending an enchantingly beautiful spring day at the Burger’s Zoo in Nijmegan. I lost myself marveling at the majesty of Mont Saint-Michel in Normandy. I lost myself singing the Weihnachtsoratorium with the BachChor in Freiburg. I lost myself witnessing spring bust out across the Swiss Alps. I lost myself wandering through history and religion by way of the art treasures of the Kunsthistoriches Museum in Vienna, the Louvre in Paris, and countless other European museums. I lost myself in a dozen cathedrals where the silence went on forever. I lost myself in the hearts and minds of my new friends. I lost myself to a bigger me that seemed connected to all people in all times, and to all life, and to the EARTH.
In losing myself again and again, I was pushed beyond some inner horizon. The word God … that had died for me a few years earlier … slowly came back to life. I felt on-my-knees gratitude for the GIFT OF LIFE. And I felt a new hunger … a new thirst … for a Living God.
