Presented January 16, 2000
First Parish in Bedford, Massachusetts
One of my friends had been asked by a friend about our collaboration with [Joseph] Campbell: "Why do you need the mythology?" She held the familiar modern opinion that "all these Greek gods and stuff" are irrelevant to the human condition today. What she did not know -- what most do not know -- is that the remnants of all that "stuff" line the walls of our interior system of belief, like shards of broken pottery in an archeological site. -- Bill Moyers
Today it is everywhere apparent that WE are on the side of Light. THEY on the side of Darkness. And being on the side of Darkness, THEY deserve to be punished and must be liquidated (since OUR divinity justifies everything) by the most fiendish means at our disposal. By idolatrously worshipping ourselves as Ormazd [the Zoroastrian God of Light], and by regarding the other fellow as Ahriman, the Principle of Evil, we of the twentieth century are doing our best to guarantee the triumph of diabolism in our time. -- Aldous Huxley, The Devils of Loudun
A little bit later we're going to leave myth and start talking about history. One thing I think history shows is that the forces of Darkness are almost always well funded. Let us bear that in mind as we collect the offering.
From the Epistle of James, chapter 1, verses 19 and 20: "Therefore, my people, let everyone be swift to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger. For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God."
Order of Service Cover: from Apocalypse: St. Michael and his Angels Fight with the Dragon by Albrecht Durer