My Ethical Will
Paul Beckel
First Universalist Unitarian Church
February 3, 2002

INTRODUCTION
After thinking about it and talking about it for about 15 years, I've finally completed a will and a living will. So now I have at least a vague sense of what will some day happen to my stuff and my body. Today I'd like to share with you another form of a will, called an ethical will.

An ethical will arises out of the question, "What legacy shall I leave behind insofar as hearts I have touched, hopes I have inspired, and ripples I have generated in the pond of life?"
The process of creating an ethical will involves self-examination, self-definition, and an expression of the wisdom we have drawn from our experience ­ wisdom we wish to gift to the future. Today we take some time to make some preliminary notes for our ethical wills, and consider what it means to give and to receive advice.

READING Another Graduation Speech To Live By
Ladies and gentlemen of the class of '97, wear sunscreen.

If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience.

I will dispense this advice now. Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they've faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You're not as fat as you imagine.

Don't worry about the future. Or, worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 p.m. on some idle Tuesday.

Do one thing every day that scares you.

Sing.

Don't be reckless with other people's hearts.

Don't put up with people who are reckless with yours.

Floss.

Don't waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind. The race is long and, in the end, it's only with yourself.

Remember compliments you receive. Forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how.
Keep your old love letters. Throw away your old bank statements.

Stretch.

Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don't.

Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees. You'll miss them when they're gone.

Maybe you'll marry, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll have children, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll divorce at 40, maybe you'll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary.

Whatever you do, don't congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either. Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else's.

Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can. Don't be afraid of it or of what other people think of it. It's the greatest instrument you'll ever own. Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room.

Read the directions even if you don't follow them. Do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel ugly. Get to know your parents. You never know when they'll be gone for good.

Be nice to your siblings. They're the best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.

Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young.

Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard.

Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft.

Travel.

Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians will philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do you'll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble, and children respected their elders.

Respect your elders. Don't expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund. Maybe you'll have a wealthy spouse. But you never know when either one might run out.

Don't mess too much with your hair or by the time you're 40 it will look 85.

Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it.

Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts, and recycling it for more than it's worth.

But trust me on the sunscreen.

This "speech has been widely misattributed to Kurt Vonnegut ­
Thus another piece of advice: don't believe everything your read!

REFLECTIONS, Part I
A guru was holding class for a group of young disciples when they begged him to reveal to them the Sacred Mantra by which the dead are restored to life. "What would you do with a dangerous thing like that?" the guru asked.

"Nothing. It would just serve to strengthen our faith," they replied.

"Premature knowledge is a dangerous thing, my children," the old man said.

"When is knowledge premature?" they demanded.

"When it gives power to someone who does not as yet have the wisdom that must go with its use."

The disciples persisted, however, so the holy man, in spite of himself, whispered the Sacred Mantra into their ears, imploring them repeatedly to use it with the greatest discretion.

Not long afterward the young people were walking along a desert place where they saw a heap of bleached bones. In the spirit of frivolity that generally accompanies a crowd, they decided to test the Mantra, which should only have been used after prolonged meditation. No sooner had they uttered the magic words than the bones gained flesh and were transformed into ravenous wolves, which chased them and tore them to shreds.
[from The Heart of the Enlightened, Anthony de Mello, SJ]

***
Advice, pithy aphorisms, and other people's "deep thoughts" are often received with a sense of frivolity -- either because of excessive skepticism, or excessive belief.

It is easy to discount wisdom. On the other hand, it is also easy to take it too seriously, and to fear it. The antidote, I believe, is to study and to understand all things by your own light, to make the wisdom you discover your own, and to remain humble regardless of how deep you think you've gone.

***
Our project today is to write An Ethical Will. Well, more likely, our project today is to take some notes. With luck we may find a happy medium between one extreme -- of cramming everything we know and love and think and feel and hope for...into a brief period of reflection on one scrap of paper with a dull pencil // and the other extreme -- of thinking about it for a few minutes, then forgetting about it for another 20 years.

Etching oneself in history, of course, is not a one-time event, but an ongoing process of self-knowing and self-sharing.

There are many stories of the revered parent, who has called his or her offspring to their deathbed for a final blessing and words of wisdom. Jacob so gathered his children and grandchildren in the book of Genesis. Moses' final blessing included a retelling of the story of his ancestors, and predictions of things to come.

An ethical will has no required format, and no required elements. The outline provided is far more than you may want to include. It's intended only as a starting point.

The ethical will is an opportunity to express feelings of love, gratitude, grace, and blessing...
To capture stories...joys and sorrows. It is a chance to consider and to express how we have really felt about this journey of life, with the hope that those after us will have an easier time of it...with hope that our insights might make a difference.

This is an exercise to engage in with some humility, because whatever we write, whatever we do in our lives, we can never know for sure if people will attribute our efforts to someone else, or if we'll receive credit for someone else's work, as Kurt Vonnegut apparently did.

We're going to have two interludes of about 5 minutes each. Before we start I'd like to explain just one phrase on the last page, "Unfinished business vs. the Tao." When recounting my own life, one thing that comes to mind is the things I'd still like to do. And sometimes I find myself making lists. Now list-making is not only practical, and motivating, but can even have a spiritual element in that it can be a form of self-definition.

On the other hand, the Tao Te Ching states: the Master "leaves nothing undone." Which is to say, she has no expectations, and no regrets. So under "unfinished business vs. the Tao" you may wish to indicate where you are on this continuum between having lists of things you still want to accomplish in this life vs. having no expectations, and no regrets.

INTERLUDE
[A blank ethical will is at the end of this document.]

DEEP THOUGHTS by Jack Handy
I hope that after I die, people will say of me: "That guy sure owed me a lot of money."

One thing vampire children have to be taught early on is, don't run with a wooden stake.

If you ever drop your keys into a river of molten lava, let 'em go, because, man, they're gone.

If a kid asks where rain comes from, I think a cute thing to tell him is, "God is crying." And if he asks why God is crying, another cute thing to tell him is, "Probably because of something you did."

As the light changed from red to green to yellow and back to red again, I sat there thinking about life. Was it nothing more than a bunch of honking and yelling? Sometimes it seemed that way.

REFLECTIONS, Part II
Here's a little history about some ancient words of wisdom. King Solomon, said to be the wise sage of the Hebrew scriptures, is credited with writing the Book of Proverbs, the Book of Ecclesiastes, and the erotic love poem, the Song of Solomon.

The Book of Ecclesiastes was probably written about 700 years after his death, but it was attributed to Solomon in order to identify the work as a legitimate source of Israelite wisdom -- to lend weight to its teachings. (Ghostwriting has long been an accepted form of both marketing and flattery.)

There are several reasons modern biblical scholars do not accept Ecclesiastes as original writing by Solomon. First, the author makes claim to having wisdom "surpassing all who were over Jerusalem before me." Now since king David was Solomon's only predecessor in Jerusalem, this would be a bit of a hollow boast.

Second, the point of view changes as the book progresses. The speaker goes from being king, early on, to being a subject of the king, in later chapters. Finally, Ecclesiastes is written in a form of Hebrew used much later than Solomon. The Israelites spent about 300 years in Persia (this is known as "the Babylonian captivity") beginning some 300 years after Solomon's reign. This could account for the number of words from the Persian languages used in writing Ecclesiastes.

The title, "Ecclesiastes" is a Greek translation of a Hebrew word for teacher. Thus the book is intended to contain the lessons of life from The Teacher. Its focus is on the limits and the contradictions of life.

The teacher, Solomon, looks back at life from the top ­ from the pinnacle of success and power ­ and finds that life is "vanity." Even the best life is limited in knowledge, virtue, and power...troubled by evil and injustice, and ultimately ended by death. Yet, in spite of its limits and destruction by death, the Teacher maintains that Wisdom is better than Folly.

Some interpret the Teacher as a skeptic or a pessimist. Some consider The Teacher highly irreverent, and believe that the book's references to God were thrown in later by a more orthodox editor. Others suggest that this book's internal paradoxes are exactly the point: The Teacher is an utter realist, but he will not let go of God.

"Vanity of vanities. All is vanity..." the book begins. Conflicting interpretations of The Teacher's point of view can be seen in the various ways that the word "vanity" has been translated. The more skeptical interpretation is: life is meaningless, absurd...life is emptiness. Life is useless.

The more literal translation of the Hebrew term is "breath," or "breeze." Slightly more optimistic translations suggest that life is transient. A more poetic version suggests, "All life is vanity, and striving after wind."

How then, should we live? What's the use? What's it all about? The teacher offers two bits of advice. First, fear God and keep God's commandments. Second, enjoy life. Eat and drink. Love. Work and play. These are the gifts of God for us to enjoy.

I invite you again to take some time to consider and compose your gift to the future.

INTERLUDE
CLOSING WORDS
An ethical will is a gift. It is a gift to ourselves: because it can be an intense spiritual effort. It's an effort which may relieve us of some burdens. It's also a gift to those we love, not only for the future but even for now - if the exercise somehow makes us easier to live with.

In seeking wisdom we would do well to draw from the past, even though, ultimately, we must be lamps unto ourselves. When we express what we have found to be wisdom, we know what younger people will often think of our advice -- and yet we expend our breath. We have the urge to convey what we have learned to those who will come after us. ...That they too, may join in the life, of chasing after wind.
My Ethical Will

By:
Dated:
To be read by:
On the occasion of:

How I have really felt about this journey

Milestones

Where I have fallen short...I seek forgiveness

Tender memories of loved ones

Gratitude (to life, to those I love, even to my enemies who have taught me valuable lessons...)

Last wishes

Instructions for burial and memorial service

Traditions which I hope will be carried forward (what do we do? what is the spirit of what we do?)

My hopes for those who come after me

Self-Definition

Where did I come from?

Peak experiences and transitions

Where am I going in this life?

Where am I going beyond this life?

What do I give my heart to?

What is my responsibility to society?

How do I move through difficult times?

Do I need ritual in my life?

What is the purpose of the religious institution?

What is my role in it?

Unfinished business vs. the Tao

Insights