We like to think that in this modern, rational day, one that is permeated with the scientific method and pragmatic thought, that we have finally escaped the darkness of superstition -- particularly people like us Unitarian Universalists, determined critical thinkers. I'm not so sure that's true. I've been looking at my own superstitions lately -- even trying to overcome them. Mine tend to be mild and quite limited. Most of them have to do with placating jealous gods. I tend to think that if I want something to happen that could go either way, if I prepare for it to happen, it won't. For instance, if I have a more than tentative social appointment but one that is not entirely definite because of outside factors, I'm sure that if I get ready for it it's bound to fall through. I also have superstitions about clothes. Certain clothes that I wear may be good luck, others bad luck, but only for certain types of occasions. A particular skirt might be good luck for going dancing but bad luck for preaching in. It has nothing to do with style. In order to escape rationally from my superstitions, I've tried doing the opposite that the superstition would indicate, and I've batted 1.000. The superstition works every time. I know, of course, that it is pure coincidence or at best a self-fulfilling prophecy, but nevertheless, I have not been able to banish my superstitions by proving their inadequacy.
There are a lot of traditional superstitions around, most of which, I'm glad to say, don't affect me. I had a very superstitious roommate in college, and it occurred to me that if I believed all of hers as well as mine, plus all the others I had learned of over the years, I would be utterly paralyzed, or at least never have a quiet moment. Everything seems to be bad luck of some sort, although there are a few good luck possibilities. One of my roommate's most important ones was a hat-on-the-bed superstition. From her terror at seeing it, I presume it means that a death will occur amongst one's acquaintance. She wouldn't talk about it, just grabbed the hat off the bed and told me never to do something so foolishly unlucky again. Well, I have done it since. I keep forgetting it's bad luck. One lucky thing is that I don't believe it.
That was one I'd never heard of before, but there are a lot of them that are more commonly believed: things like the number 13, walking under a ladder, and opening an umbrella in the house. Fear of the number 13 attracts me because I love the word for it: triskadecaphobia. There are still skyscrapers being built which skip the 13th floor. I've often wondered whether people who live on the putative 14th floor experience the same amount of bad luck as do those who live in another building on the 13th, or, for that matter, those who live on other floors. It's never seemed logical to me that just not admitting that it's the 13th floor would make it any safer, but then I've never understood superstitions which I myself don't hold.
Black cats are another interesting case. When I was a small child in Tennessee we had a black cat which our neighbors poisoned from superstition. Some people think that black cats are bad luck period. More sophisticated superstitious types think that owning one is good luck. It's only strange black cats that you shouldn't allow to cross your path. Witches, of course, think that a black cat is always good luck.
Some bad luck can be averted. Did you know that seeing the moon through the branches of trees is bad luck? However, if you have inadvertently done that, all you have to do is go to a clear spot and look at it over your left shoulder, and you'll be safe. I'm not sure of the significance of the left shoulder, but that is not the only superstition in which it figures. Spilling salt is bad luck, but if you throw some of it over your left shoulder, you'll be okay. I actually tried that once, and it stuck to my fingers. Maybe you're supposed to use a spoon.
Those things avert bad luck, but there are also things that will bring good luck. Everyone knows about the four-leafed clover, the rabbit's foot and the horseshoe. The feet don't seem to do the rabbit much good, but I suppose that's different. Some people who hope that a horseshoe will bring them good luck are unaware that when they hang one, it has to be with the open end up. Otherwise all the good luck will run out. That's common knowledge among those who have made a study of such things, but of the horseshoes I have seen hanging, I can only remember one that was mounted in the correct fashion.
Of course, we know better than to believe any of that, anyway. I don't even believe my own superstitions. . . much. I never really thought that wishing on the first star would give me my wish, any more than I think that buying a lottery ticket will whisk me to fortune. I don't really believe that wearing certain clothes or not wearing others will help me achieve my desires. . . quite, and I know that the shiver of apprehension I feel when I break a mirror is not based on a rational fear of seven years bad luck.
Most of us really aren't, as a culture, as superstitious as we used to be. Most skyscrapers now do have a 13th floor. We really believe that the only genuine danger in walking under a ladder is in having something fall on you from it, and the danger in opening an umbrella in the house is that it may put out an unwary eye. Unless we're especially interested in that kind of folklore, we are not even familiar with many of the most popular old superstitions. Had it not been for such movies as The Exorcist and Omen most of us wouldn't even know that the prescribed ritual for ridding oneself of devils required bell, book and candle, and I doubt that very many of us are familiar with the proper gesture for warding off the evil eye. Nevertheless, I think G.K. Chesterton's Father Brown hit on something real when he called modern culture prone to superstition. He blamed the superstition on the loss of the old Christian faith, but indeed, I would call most of that superstition as well. The implication is that without an underlying faith we must run to superstition, but by his formula it would seem to me that we just need some superstition. Perhaps, however, it is not that which we need, but something else, since superstitions do little good and often harm.
I have a colleague who has made a study of the Japanese tea ceremony. It is not a simple serving of tea but a ritual that has its basis in Japanese religion. She talks about its physical and mental discipline and compares that to what she considers the major weakness in our religion, Unitarian Universalism: a lack of that discipline. As she was talking about it, I tended to agree with her, except that I think that to talk of lack of discipline among us is to talk of an effect of another problem, its underlying cause. It is the lack of faith and the need for it which causes superstition and the lack of discipline. Faith is religious discipline.
It is always problematic to use such words as faith, since the use of such words with layers of meaning and emotional content can distract attention from the point being made, as when feminists are distracted from whatever is being said by the inappropriate use of non-inclusive language, which is the real reason I try not to use it myself and urge others to avoid it to make sure that they are communicating to everyone. However, I can't find another word than faith to say what I mean, so I'll start by talking about discipline.
For a long time I was extremely perturbed by what I perceived as my own lack of discipline. I would, because of this, set up methods to force discipline on myself. For instance, because I much prefer other aspects of ministry to the scholarly side of it, I purposely attended the divinity school which would be most likely to force scholarly discipline upon me. Because of it, too, I eagerly join scholarly study groups which keep me from lapsing into complete empathetic, aesthetic mush with no real knowledge of my own.
It's also for the sake of discipline that I don't buy lottery tickets. I love to fantasize what I would do with a million dollars or so, and every time I do weaken and send in my number to the Reader's Digest sweepstakes, I know I'm lost for another while, hoping that luck will take over solving my problems this one time. So, for the sake of my own discipline, I try to structure it so I don't have any excuse to think about all the useful things I could do with lovely great gobs of money.
It has always bothered me that it is necessary to manipulate my environment to manipulate myself, but it occurs to me that that is precisely what discipline consists of. We don't consider it self-discipline when someone does precisely what he or she wishes to do, however single-mindedly. It is only self-discipline when you force yourself to do what you don't really wish to do in order to attain some goal, and whatever method is used to enforce that discipline is fine -- it's still discipline. The tea ceremony is a discipline; running is a discipline; study is a discipline; sustained political action is a discipline; faith is the ultimate discipline and the reason for discipline.
I think my tea ceremony colleague's complaint that UUs are undisciplined is the same statement that I make when I say we are faddish -- an accusation I sometimes describe as being prone to idolatry -- but I'm not sure either of us has properly focussed on the reason for the undiscipline or the faddishness. It is a search for a faith to live by, and our undiscipline a result of our failures to find it. Perhaps we are not so much undisciplined, as dissatisfied after a time with the disciplines that we discover, and I think that it is our eagerness to discover a faith which the disciplines we find are the outward manifestations of that lead to Father Brown's idea of superstition. Care of one's health through nutrition and exercise, as I mentioned before as one of our favorite disciplines, is less likely to prolong life than having long-lived ancestors; those who are involved with the Forum (formerly est) or types of meditation seem far less changed to others than they do to themselves; believers in witchcraft have less impact on their environment than they usually hope.
Actually I have an open mind about the value of most of those things, but I strongly reprobate the tendency their believers have to attribute anything that occurs to the object of their belief. Superstition is the attribution of an occurence to an irrelevant cause, and everything that happens which may be used to support the superstition is used as proof, while those things that do not are discarded. On Friday the 13th we may have the same kind of luck as usual, but there is a tendency to attribute the bad luck to the day if that is one of our superstitions, and ignore the good things that happen. This is equally true in our more modern superstitions such as crystal healing. Thus we buttress our faith and practice the disciplines that structure it.
By faith I do not mean unfounded belief, as it is usually used. Belief may not be a part of faith at all. Faith is commitment to some orientation to the world which may or may not include a set of beliefs. There can even be a faith of skepticism where everything is seen as not proven -- even the skeptic's own existence. The reason that faith has come to mean unfounded belief is that so many faiths have unfounded beliefs as a concomitant. When it is said, for example, that the doctrine of the resurrection must be taken on faith, that means that that doctrine is a part of that particular faith, not that belief in the doctrine is faith itself.
It seems to be necessary for human beings to live with some sort of faith in order to make sense of the world be live in, to make our value judgments, to choose our actions. Wasn't it Voltaire who said, "If God did not exist we would have to invent him"? Our faith is manifested in the disciplines we choose.
Often Unitarian Universalists are in process of rejecting a faith they have found inadequate and searching for a new one. It is easy to fall into superstition in that search -- to think that you have at last found the truth and adjust your perception so that everything from now on fits into that truth. In looking to make sense out of the world, it is only too easy to make patterns whose elements are forced to conform, at least within our minds. Faith is necessary to us, yet for us as Unitarian Universalists it should also be necessary to test and doubt each element of that faith, not only to avoid superstition, but also to protect the faiths we hold from the same kind of loss that many or our childhood faiths have suffered. Only a continually tested faith, one that is continuously doubted, is proof against doubt.
Unitarian Universalists pride themselves on their theological diversity, but I would argue that transcending those diverse beliefs we share one faith whose disciplines we are called to practice. This faith's discipline is that of testing and of doubt, that continues the search for truth and leaves behind all superstition.