Hope provides a sense of destination and direction – it encourages us to find goals in life and supports a compelling vision of the future that draws us toward it. Hope gives us the energy to get started – the motivation and the courage to take the first step and the next step and the next on the journey toward realizing our vision. It helps us get up and start again when we stumble on the path or when we are set back by our own mistakes or by events that are beyond our control.

Even if the destination is not clear to us, hope is what keeps us moving toward it with faith that in time we will discover the purpose and meaning of our lives; that we can make a difference and that we can bring more love into the world. It is as much about the journey as the destination.

When we invite roots to hold us close, we invoke the radical heritage of a tradition that grounds us, supports us against the storms of intolerance and evil, and pulls nutrients from the rich humus of culture and experience that has built up over eons. We acknowledge our longing to be deeply connected with a particular place, in a particular time. The realities of our family heritage, our culture, the resources available to us, and our bodies provide opportunities, sustenance, and our particular niche within the larger context of the world. Hope springs out of the stories we create to give meaning to our experience.

When we pray for wings to set us free, we acknowledge that our work is not yet finished and that we have aspirations for a better world. We seek freedom from the bonds that hold us back. We want to soar above the storms, to seek a loftier viewpoint, and to create a just, humane, and sustainable world where love is stronger than hatred. Hope is the muse for the images we create of a positive future.

Our opening hymn, "Our Praise We Give," acknowledges the blessings of what we have already been given – the harvest, the safe harbor, and a warm inn at journey’s end. And it recognizes the opportunities that lie ahead on the journey – the soil yet to be planted, the favorable winds filling our sails, and the roads wending ahead to hilltops clear. Roots and wings.

We need both – roots and wings – safe harbor that comforts us and protects us and a promising road that lures us into the future. To live deeply, we need both a rich and close connection with tradition and the creative power of freedom. Inspiration lies in the marriage of these, and it is hope that gives us the energy to move forward.

Hope, as I am using it, consists of an optimistic approach to life. Its core is a fundamental belief that the essence of the world is love. Its outlook is one of positive expectancy that a vibrant future awaits.

In his book, Learned Optimism, which Liz Hoffman sent over to me, Martin Seligman reports on laboratory research in animals and extensive work with human subjects that indicates that we learn to approach life with either a pessimistic or an optimistic outlook. Those of us who are more pessimistic than optimistic are more likely to develop depression and to respond to the normal setbacks in life by going into a long-lasting funk. On the other hand, those who are more optimistic have a much greater capacity to pick themselves up after a setback without giving up.

One measure of your relative optimism or pessimism is in how you describe and explain both good and bad things that happen in your life. The optimist is able to place responsibility where it belongs, to look on failures as isolated events, to respond appropriately to repair the damage, and to set the events aside and move on. The pessimist, on the other hand, is likely to blame herself or himself inappropriately, to generalize failure, and to assume it is the result of a persistent flaw in her or his character. The pessimist is likely to stay stuck in replaying the event over and over in her or his mind until she or he begins to believe the messages of inadequacy and they become self-fulfilling predictors of the future.

On the other hand, an optimist will explain good things that happen as the norm, to be expected, and as indications of the generally beneficent nature of the world, while the pessimist will describe good things as accidents and isolated incidents that run counter to the norm and cannot be expected to continue.

For example, I was involved in a minor accident a week and a half ago. It was my fault. I backed up and hit the car behind me, and the bumper on my truck creased the hood of the other vehicle. I was upset with myself. I thought I was stupid, that I was likely to have another accident that day, and that I had become an unsafe driver. After I apologized and exchanged information with the other driver, I wished her a better day, and she reciprocated. But still I was so preoccupied with feeling dumb and inadequate that I drove right past the exit from the highway for my next stop, which reinforced my sense of being vulnerable and fragile.

But within a short while, I recognized that I had been in a hurry, I had not paid close enough attention, and that even though I had looked in the mirrors, I had not seen the car behind me, which was lower and a color that blended into the background. It was a wakeup call to pay more attention. My driving record is excellent, and this minor incident, though troubling, didn’t reflect on my general ability as a driver nor on my intelligence. I called our insurance company to report the incident, took appropriate responsibility for it, and then got on with my day.

My initial reaction to the accident was pessimistic, but it pretty quickly shifted to a more optimistic outlook. Because pessimism and optimism are learned responses, we can relearn our approach and shift to being more optimistic. Part of the learning task involves recognizing when our self talk is pessimistic, learning to stop and reflect on the reality of the situation, and learning to replace pessimism with appropriate optimism.

It helps to do this if our faith is grounded in hope. And there is perhaps no richer source of hope than lies in the deep faith of the Universalist part of our liberal, free religious tradition. Hope is the essence of Universalism, which offers us the polar opposite of a pessimistic theology based on the inherent sinful nature and unworthiness of humanity. What could be more hopeful and optimistic than the promise of ultimate salvation for every person?

Universal salvation arises from the inherent goodness of humanity and a fundamentally loving God. It is not a new idea within Christianity. Jesus was perhaps the first universalist. It is clear from his ministry, as it is presented in the gospels, that his radical message was very deeply grounded in the inherent worth and dignity of every person. His teaching stories and parables emphasized that every person was held in God’s love. He upheld the worth of women, prostitutes, thieves, and even of the reviled Samaritans. He called his followers to love even their enemies – to turn the other cheek – to give away personal property to those in need without holding back. He told his followers that God was interested in the welfare of each of them – the single sheep that wandered off from the flock, the lily in the field or the bird in the air. No one was outside or beyond God’s attention and love.

In the year 130 CE, the prominent Gnostic sects professed belief in ultimate salvation for all souls.

By 195 CE, Clement of Alexandria advocated for the eventual salvation of every person. He argued that sin would be punished, but that the purpose of punishment was remedial and that without ultimate restoration, punishment didn’t make sense. His student, Origen, argued early in the third century that evil was not a substantive condition, but simply a disorder that was introduced through the free agency of created selves. In other words, evil was not an external affliction of humanity but the product of human choice, and like Clement, Origen believed in the ultimate restoration of all beings.

In eastern Syria a sect called the Nestorians thrived from the 6^th to the 13^th centuries and had more followers than the combined Greek and Latin Christian communities. The Nestorian liturgy and prayers were distinctly universalist. Of the six early schools of Christianity in the 2^nd and 3^rd centuries, only the two gathered around Irenaeus and Tertullian taught that the wicked would be annihilated or subjected to eternal punishment. The other four advocated universal salvation.

It was in the sixth century that belief in universal salvation was declared a heresy and the orthodox position began to shift toward the concepts of original sin and everlasting punishment in Hell. While there were some few heretics who persisted in their belief in universal salvation, it was not until the Reformation in the 16^th century that universalism gained a substantial following again. It was primarily within the Anabaptist movement, which was the antecedent of Hutterites, Moravians, Mennonites, Baptists, Quakers, Congregationalists, and yes, Unitarians, too. The orthodox Augsberg Confession of 1536 was specifically framed to condemn the Anabaptist heresy, and the Anglican Church declared two decades later that advocacy of universalism would be punished by imprisonment, though the rule was relatively short-lived.

By 1750 James Relly, who until then had been a strict Calvinist, had a conversion experience and became a universalist. It was one of his followers, John Murray, who brought the message to North America in 1770 and founded the Universalist Church in America.

But Murray wasn’t the first advocate of universalism in the New World. George de Benneville, a French physician, had established a homestead in the Oley Valley just east of Reading, Pennsylvania. By the 1740s he had established a house church where as many as 100 of his German pietist neighbors would gather on Sunday mornings for worship and fellowship. He established what was probably the first school in Berks County, and the first apothecary shop in North America, where he dispensed natural remedies he had learned to make from the Native Americans nearby. de Benneville traveled around Pennsylvania and New Jersey preaching the message of universal salvation.

Well, it’s 250 years later now. We who gather in this liberal religious community are interested in the foundations of faith that will help us and our families to thrive in this life. We seek values that will help us make good decisions and guide us in ethical treatment of one another. Our search for meaning focuses on making sense of our existence and understanding our purpose in this life rather than in speculations about a possible life after death.

Our roots hold us close to the tradition that professed the ultimate restoration of all beings to God’s grace and a salvation in the next life that would include every soul in its embrace. It is a tradition of hope and optimism. Its essence lies in affirmation of the inherent worth and dignity of every person, in an optimistic expectancy, and in the ultimate loving nature of the universe. It encourages us with the promise that the journey leads toward a better possible future, awaiting the creative efforts of our actions.

Our wings set us free from orthodoxy and enable us to seek the truth that lies within our hearts. They enable us to soar beyond our past history and to embrace new understanding. Thus we free ourselves from entanglement in speculation about the afterlife that, after all, none of us can verify by experience. And with those bonds loosed, we are free to search for and discover the principles and values that support an optimistic and hopeful view of our world.

Our roots remind us that we are held in love. Our wings give us the power to change the world. Our faith provides the values that urge us to use our power to bless the world and to bring more love.