Past Services

by Rev. David Usher

Sermon from Sunday, December 7, 2014

I wrote this sermon on Thursday. I started the day by walking down the hill to church. There was a brief lull in the rain, and I can always use the exercise. And while I was walking, I was very aware of how totally safe and secure I felt. Yes, of course I could have tripped and hurt myself, it was possible that a meteor might have fallen from the sky and landed on my head, but I was willing to take that chance. I felt safe as I walked down Walsh St to church.

I felt safe for several reasons. I felt safe because this is Grass Valley. A small town, a place of low crime, even though the local Police Department deems it necessary to have an armoured tank to help it enforce law and order against the jay walkers and those who overstay the in-town three hour parking limit. I felt safe because I am a man 6’2” tall and 220 pounds, and therefore less likely to be mugged than if I was physically frail. But, most of all, I felt safe because of my skin colour. If a police patrol car had happened to pass me on Walsh St, it is very unlikely that the officer would have stopped me, very unlikely he would have searched me, very unlikely he would have pulled a gun and shot me, very unlikely he would have got me in a choke hold if I had challenged his right to accost me for no apparent reason. In fact, I have been stopped by the police once and only once. While driving late at night in Adelaide, when in my twenties, I was stopped and breathalysed. In Adelaide the police conduct random breath tests. They set up a station and stop maybe one car in ten. I had not been drinking. I had no reason to be fearful. The episode was courteous and proper. I was sent politely on my way.

Here is the thing. All my life, I have lived in a world made and governed by people like me, for the express benefit of people like me. All of my life, I have lived in a world in which I have enjoyed every privilege and advantage. I am male. I am heterosexual. I have had a strong, healthy and fully-abled body. I was born in a country of affluence and prosperity and political order, fortuitously at a time when, as a strong, healthy, heterosexual man, I was not expected to go to war to kill or be killed to satisfy a politician’s whim. I am intelligent, and have had the benefit of an education at one of the world’s premier universities. And though, during my childhood my parents were financially strapped, I was never hungry, never homeless, never without, and now I am blessed with an abundance far, far beyond my due. And, more than any other factor, I have had the benefit of my skin. All of my life, I have lived where my skin has been a suit of armour, protecting me against prejudice, granting me privilege and access. Yes, I am a foreigner in this land, but nobody knows that until I open my mouth. There have been no barriers placed in my way because of the accidental particularities of who I am. Doors have not been closed to me, they have always been opened.

All of my life, I have been able to breathe. I have been able to breathe the fresh air of privilege and power, and the immediate companions in my life have been breathing that same fresh air with me. All of my friends, the people I know and love best, are middle class, educated, cultured, affluent, propertied, comfortable and content, for the most part share my political leanings, and all of them are white. I do know and love some whose sexual orientations differ from mine, but that is pretty much the limit of my emotional stretch, and even with that I have had a journey to travel which perhaps might be the subject of a sermon at another time. I did not intentionally set out to live in such an exclusive, isolated bubble, but there it is. I have and I do.

I suspect for all of your lives, you also have been able to breathe. You have felt protected, privileged, even pampered by a society made by people like you, for the express benefit of people like you. Perhaps, like me, you have been in a bubble all this time. And what makes living in a bubble so dangerously seductive is not to realise that you are in a bubble. To assume that your limited one-dimensional experience of the world IS the world. Like The Truman Show, not to be able to see beyond one’s own limited perception, and therefore to assume that your perception and experience is the objective reality.

From my lifelong position of privilege and power, living now in the cosy comforts of Grass Valley, I find it difficult to imagine what it must be like to be an African American or other oppressed minority in this country, particularly in a city torn by economic hardship.

I find it difficult to imagine what it must be like to live in a country whose every message is that you are not worthy.

I find it difficult to imagine what it must be like to be afraid every time a patrol car cruises by, every time you walk down the street, every time you encounter an institutionalised bureaucracy, knowing that you will be regarded with fear, suspicion, dismissiveness and scorn.

I find it difficult to imagine what it must be like to have your voice so systematically silenced, I, whose role it is in part to speak.

I find it difficult to imagine what it must be like to know that you have a strong chance of being incarcerated for long, long periods of time for doing what, if you were white, you might receive a mild slap on the wrist.

I find it difficult to imagine what it must be like to be caged by the colour of your skin in a country which touts itself as the land of the free.

I find it difficult to imagine what it must be like to have doors slammed in your face, again and again, to be excluded, to live on the margins, to be told you are unworthy, a menace, an embarrassment.

I find it difficult to imagine the exhaustion, the despair, the frustration and the rage which a lifetime of being treated thus must engender.

I find it difficult to imagine not being able to breathe because of the choke hold society had around my neck, even as the choke hold around Eric Garner’s neck squeezed the life out of him, a choke hold in plain view of a camera, seen now by millions, but not enough to indict a white police officer who was, after all, only murdering an unarmed and innocent black man.

And, perhaps hardest of all, I find it difficult to imagine how for so long I could not have been more aware of my own bubble.

I find it difficult to imagine how I could not have known that, while I could breathe so freely, others could not.

I find it difficult to imagine how, even though I did know, yet I have largely remained silent and self-satisfied.

And because I find it difficult to imagine each and all of those things, I must not presume to judge the actions of those for whom that is their experience.

I must not presume to be the voice of the otherwise voiceless, for whom riot is the only language they have still at their disposal.

I must not presume for others.

I must not presume that I know best.

These past few weeks have borne tragic witness to two outrageous examples of white police officers being granted immunity to kill black men; two outrageous examples of justice not being done; two outrageous examples of the societal message being reinforced yet again.

If you are black, you do not matter.

If you are black, you are not safe.

If you are black, you have no voice.

If you are black, the system which is supposed to protect you will be the very system which will not only deny you protection, but will be that from which you need to be protected. The system that can punish and persecute and even murder you with impunity.

These have been only two such examples, but they have caught the spotlight. In 2012, no fewer than 313 black men, women and children were killed by armed police officers, security personnel or self-appointed white vigilantes, and in all cases their killers have not been convicted. Why? Because black lives don’t matter. Because a black man, by virtue of simply being black, makes us afraid and therefore we are entitled to “stand our ground” and kill him, our instinctive self-generated fear justifies us even if he is unarmed, even if he is guilty of no crime, even if has done nothing other than being himself.

And there have been voices, voices of white men, voices of powerful white men, voices of powerful white men who make the rules, calling for peace, calling for calm, calling for order.

This is not a time for peace. This is a time for disruption.

This not a time for restoring order. This is a time for changing the order.

And, most especially, this is not a time for those who are so used to speaking, and pronouncing, and pontificating to continue to do so. It is a time for those with voices to stop talking and to start listening.

Two thousand years ago, there was something known as Pax Romana. During the Roman Empire, those who lived in Rome had a very clear understanding of what constituted peace. They wanted to live in the secure knowledge that they need fear no external enemy, because the Roman legions which dominated all of Europe would keep such enemies at bay; and that they need fear no internal disruption because the forces of government would quell any civil disobedience. As a free Roman, of the patrician class, you could enjoy your Pax Romana to your heart’s content.

But, your peace was secured only at the price of others’ suffering. Your prosperity was bought with the economic subjugation of other peoples who paid a heavy price to their Roman masters. Your freedom was bought by others living under the yoke of slavery. Your security was bought by others living in fear of invasion and domination. Your reliance on the judicial system was based on the assumption that the system was designed to protect you and your property.

 

The adage says that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. I cannot remember who it was, but someone in my living memory said that what really corrupts is not power, but fear of the loss of power. The system of white male supremacy has held sway for a long, long time, and those who fear its decline will inevitably retreat to the bunker and become more and more desperate in their attempts to shore up their crumbling power base.

All of us are beneficiaries of a system loaded totally in our favour. How willing are we to relinquish some of our power and privilege? How willing are we to examine our own prejudices that sees a black man instinctively as something to fear and therefore to put down, marginalise, even to kill if we so choose?

I am not immune. For many years I have had an interest in the judicial/penal system. At various times in my ministry in England, I have been a volunteer visiting prisoners, a volunteer for the probation service, a volunteer assistant prison chaplain, and most recently a magistrate who, in the UK judicial system, is a lay judge. I recall one particular incident. It was my first time as an assistant chaplain in a medium security prison. How many of you have ever been inside a prison? If you are like me, at least initially you enter with some apprehension. Perhaps your mind is full of scenes from movies about what you might expect. Anyway, I entered this prison, I went through all the security checks, and I was led to the chapel where I was going to lead a discussion with about thirty prisoners. I had assumed there would be warders in the room to protect me. Instead, I found myself in a room with no windows, one door, the nearest warder at the end of a long corridor, and thirty prisoners. All of them black. Some of them very large and very formidable looking. I am not proud to admit that little scenarios about my imminent demise instinctively ran through my head.

And what happened? Nothing, of course. My biggest challenge was keeping order in the discussion, so keen were they all to participate. I have led many an adult RE class in my time as a minister, nearly all of them with people like you. Educated, intelligent, cultured, privileged. Let me tell you, no class I have ever led with the likes of you has come close to having the power of that class. I have no idea why those men were in prison, I made a point of never finding out, but for them faith was not something to be politely discussed over coffee and cookies, faith was what kept them whole; it was what kept them human in an environment which did everything it could to strip them of their humanity.

What is there for us to do in the wake of Ferguson, in the wake of Staten Island, in the wake of every time the system perpetuates an injustice which has been centuries in the making? There is much which needs to be done, and it will not all be done overnight. But perhaps, perhaps, one small first step for people like you and me – privileged, powerful and protected as we are – is to realise that the problem is not just the occasional trigger-happy rogue cop; not just a prosecutor who performs with such blatant bias and a judge who allows him to do so; not just anything pertaining to a single instance. The problem is that we are part of a system that allows and condones and even encourages such things.

Quite a few years ago, Plato observed that “Justice will exist only where those who are not affected by injustice are filled with the same amount of indignation as those offended.” And in more recent times, James Baldwin wrote that “It is certain, in any case, that ignorance allied with power is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.” Well, we do have power. We were born to it. So the question is, Are we willing to remain ignorant by wilfully remaining within our bubble? Are we to be the enemies of justice, or its friends?

I can breathe. You can breathe too. While, all around us, others are suffocating. Others are dying the long, slow death of injustice and oppression. Just as long as I have breath, just as long as you have breath, what are we going to do about it? What are we going to do about it?

by Rev. David Usher

Sermon from Sunday, November 16, 2014

Looking at Things

Port Augusta is a dusty, dreary town at the top of Spencer’s Gulf, two hundred miles to the north of my home town of Adelaide, South Australia.  It markets itself as the gateway to the north. Gateway to a whole load of nothing would be nearer the truth.  Two thousand miles north to Darwin, two thousand miles west to Perth, and virtually nothing in between.  To this dreary town some years ago there came a fourth rate circus, one charm of which was a sad collection of exotic animals including an ostrich.  This circus was a ragbag affair, but if you have the misfortune to live in Port Augusta, you are grateful for any diversion.  Anyway, one day the ostrich got loose and, with the whiff of freedom in its nostrils, it made off into the scrub.  The circus folk and some of the locals gave vain chase for a while but soon gave up, and a few days later the circus moved on to ply its tawdry trade in the next dusty town and the worthy citizens of Port Augusta returned to their heat and beer induced torpor.

I knew nothing of this story when, a year or so later, I was a nineteen year old jackaroo on a sheep station a hundred miles north of Port Augusta.  Also on that station were two brothers, Ned and Dan, grizzled old bachelors who had spent their lives knocking about in the outback.  Soon after I had arrived at the station, Ned and Dan had gone down to Port Augusta for the weekend.  Six months later, they rang up to say they were ready to be collected.  I was despatched.  I found them, ashen faced and wasted from their six months in the town’s bars and brothels.  They looked and smelled terrible.  Driving back in the summer’s heat, I was leaning out of my open window to catch whatever fresh air I could.  Dan, on the passenger side, was fast asleep.  Ned, in the middle, was awake but enduring cold sweats and groaning quietly.  I had never seen anyone with the DTs, but I figured I was now.  Suddenly, out of the scrub and directly in front of us from right to left, dashed an ostrich.  I almost hit it.  An ostrich!  In Australia.  Emus, yes, aplenty, but an ostrich?  I turned to Ned.  “Did you see that?”  He was shaking, his eyes bulging.  “Thank God you saw it too,” he said finally.

Many things we get to see only fleetingly, out of the corner of our eye, as if through a glass darkly.  We think we have seen it, if only a passing glimpse, but can we be sure?  We turn for a closer look, but it is gone.

While working as a jackaroo on that sheep station, one of the best experiences of my life by the way, I learned to do something remarkable.  I learned how to see. I learned to see things to which I was at first blind.  As a novice musterer, riding around on my motor bike in paddocks of fifty square miles and more, my trusty sheep dog straddling my lap and petrol tank in front of me, I struggled to locate any sheep at all.  I would ride right past them, or even if I was stationary and staring intently at the distance, I could see nothing.  Only with practice did I learn how to see the creamy grey specks on a distant hill, or the tracks in the sandy dirt.  Back then, I had excellent 20/20 vision. Even so, I had to learn how to see things.

What do you fail to see, though it be right in front of you?  What do you need to look at differently?  Lucy M Green’s poem, Looking at Things, talks about how she learned to look at things so that she could something different in them.  Something magical, mysterious, beautiful, bewitching.

Wonder awoke in me

When, a child, I discovered feathers,

Marvelling at their softness, their delicacy of outline,

But still more at the sheen and ripple

Of changing colour, blue, and green and gold,

Gleaming across the peacock feathers I found –

Not the great eye-feathers only,

But tiny ones catching the light, to change as I turned them;

Yet never could all the colours be caught together.

The magic was in the moment, the glimpsing,

The passing enchantment,

Sweeter perhaps for the very swiftness of loss.

 

Shells with their circles of pearl

And hollowed, satin-smooth curves

Had their transient rainbows for my delight,

Shadows of rose and blue and pale sea-green;

Even the milky moonstones

Took on soft colours, like the ring of haze round the moon.

Mystery held them, as the colours were glimpsed, and then vanished.

I treasured the pearly shells, and the feathers,

Even as later in life I found joy

In the blue or gold fire of opals, caught for a moment;

Still more in the rainbow mist

Of a great waterfall, seen from afar,

Incredibly distant along a Norwegian valley;

Or the colours mingling in the flung spray of a wave.

 

It is given to us to see only one aspect in the moment,

One fact of the prism,

One colour of the spectrum.

That is enough of joy, but also enough of blindness

To bring humility, and kindle in us faith

That one day we may see life in its fullness

In the constant light of eternity.

Then may we know the whole of love blended in beauty,

Even as here on earth we see, for a passing moment only,

The rainbow with every colour alight in joy.

When you look at the world, what do you see?  Do you see loveliness and joy, radiance and delight?  Or do you see misery and pain, suffering and despair?  Beauty or boredom?  Both are there.  Which you see depends on the eyes with which you are looking; the openness of your heart; the willingness of your mind to engage; your imagination to be transfixed.

Whether we are looking for sheep in the dusty outback, or at the sheen of a peacock’s tail feather, we can learn to see that which we are seeking, however fleeting it may be.  Faith is learning to see.  We can learn to discern beauty amidst the drab, to discover hope amidst the gloom, to see cause for courage when our hearts might otherwise falter.  Faith is learning to see, to see even that which is fleeting, ephemeral, and darkly through a glass.  Even that which is not there, but which our imaginations make real.  And in seeing beauty, we are made beautiful.  In seeing hope, we are made hopeful.  The world reflects who we are.  Faith is how we see the world, it is how we see our place within the world.

What do you see?  What do you see?

What do you see when you look at Unitarian Universalism?  I confess that sometimes my eyes grow dim from having had it before me all my days.  There are days when I see only its faults and failings, the pettiness of our squabbles about things which really do not matter, when meanwhile there is a hurting world out there which needs us to be our best selves, not our worst.  I grow complacent in my familiarity with the faith which has always been there for me.  But sometimes I am glad and grateful to have the cool embers of my complacency shaken when I encounter someone who has just discovered Unitarian Universalism for the first time and who is on fire because of it.

Like the time six years ago when I was part of the faculty for a leadership conference sponsored by The International Council of Unitarians & Universalists, held in Kenya for new Unitarians from that country and from Uganda, Burundi and Congo Brazzaville.  Yes, you heard correctly.  Congo Brazzaville, a place less likely it is difficult to imagine, but where it took root because of a chance conversation in a hotel bar.  The Africans at that conference really were on fire, confident that once others heard this liberating message they too would embrace it; and convinced that it was their privilege and their duty to do all they could to let others hear that message.  Not only that, though they each were individually poor, barely able to keep themselves, they were committing a significant percentage of their meagre resources to those who had even less than themselves.  It was absolutely central to their understanding of what it means to be a Unitarian that they had to do the work of social justice, giving up to half of their income to it.  I was embarrassed, no, I was ashamed at the realisation that my eyes had forgotten to see what had been right in front of me all the time.

This faith is precious, a pearl of great price, yet it is also precarious if we fail to perceive and appreciate its preciousness, not just for ourselves but for as many others as possible.

And what is that faith?  What is the faith that has the power to transform lives, giving them meaning and value amidst the sometime sea of secular senselessness?  What is the faith that has sustained me through the many years of my bounty and particularly last year when I was given a diagnosis which rudely and unexpectedly confronted me with my own mortality, when I was challenged to take stock of my life and give thanks for it?  I mean, really give thanks for it.

It is not a faith in the weary outdated mantra of Freedom, Reason and Tolerance.  Perhaps those words resonated and inspired in previous times, but they are weak virtues today.  Freedom?  Freedom from what?  Have you been persecuted recently for daring to believe according to your own conscience?  Been to any good heretic burnings lately?  Reason?  By all means let us not be unreasonable, but are we creatures of the mind only?  Have we no heart, no passion, no enthusiasm?  Are we no better than a philosophical debating society?  Are we not meant to engage the whole person?  And Tolerance?  What a hollow word, making a virtue of what is usually mere indifference.  No, if we continue to proclaim Freedom, Reason and Tolerance as our banner cry, we should not be surprised that the world heaves a weary sigh in reply.

I offer you a new Unitarian Trinity.  Personal Authenticity.  Religious Community.  And Social Agency.

What we offer is the opportunity for personal authenticity in matters or faith.  At whichever wells we draw our spiritual water, whichever teachers we learn from and whichever path we follow, we offer the gift of being true to our own deepest selves, fearing not to doubt or to believe.  I am occasionally surprised after I have preached a sermon to be congratulated on my courage for having preached as I have.  I have never, in my thirty plus years of ministry, had to summon courage before preaching a sermon, because interpreting life as I understand it, in love and humility, is what as a Unitarian minister I have been called to do.  I might incur the displeasure or disapproval of individual congregants, but I need not fear censure from higher authorities for transgressing doctrinal instruction.  And you in the pew, you need not acquiesce meekly to my words.  Though, I can tell you, I have had some congregants in my time for whom some meek acquiescence would have been no bad thing.

We offer Religious Community.  I know it is the fashion today for people to opine that they are spiritual but not religious.  If you knew the number of times I have heard that, usually from people who have not had a religious thought since their pet hamster died.  What it usually means, from what I can tell, is that they have an occasional vague fuzzy feeling, but really can’t be bothered doing anything about it.  Unless you happen to be truly exceptional, and, I’ll wager none of you are, it is a nonsense to claim being spiritual without being religious because being spiritual requires work, practice, the repetition of discipline.  Being spiritual draws you to being religious.  That is what religious community is.  The place and the people in which and with whom to practise faith.  The genius of our religious community is it is where you are expected to be true to yourself, but to which you commit your energy, your time and your money as a real expression of your personal authentic faith.

And we offer Social Agency.  How lazy and self-serving we have become by telling ourselves that Unitarian Universalism is all about finding your own truth and nothing more.  If the world is not a better place because of your faith, what value that faith?  Yes, we are permitted, encouraged, required to find our own truth.  But we are also required to do something about it.  Last week my story was an updated version of The Good Samaritan.  Loving your God, and loving your neighbour.  Above the entrance of many Unitarian churches in the UK, and perhaps in the US also, are the words “Dedicated to the worship of God and the service of man.”  We might now quibble about the niceties of language, but the essential sentiments remain true.  We gather to be in communion with that which is divine, and the service of humanity.  To love God and our neighbour.  You don’t get one without the other.  It’s not an either/or; it is a both/and.

That is a meaningful and relevant new trinity of our faith for the present day.  Personal authenticity.  Religious Community.  Social Agency.  Through them we are connected to that which is greater than our own small selves, sustained by that which abides even as we might perish, lifted up when otherwise we might remain fallen.  It is certainly the faith that held true for me in my own dark hours.  They say there are no atheists in planes that are going down.  I thought my plane might have been going down, but more than anything, I remained joyful that I had known what it is to fly.

Having faith is not about what you believe.  Having faith is about how you see the world.  Is the world mere emptiness, in spite of all there is of beauty and charm and miracle and wonder and delight?  Or it the world precious, in spite of all there is of pain and anguish and bitterness and ugliness?  Having faith is about how you see the world.

It is given to us to see only one aspect in the moment,

One fact of the prism,

One colour of the spectrum.

That is enough of joy, but also enough of blindness

To bring humility, and kindle in us faith

That one day we may see life in its fullness

In the constant light of eternity.

Then may we know the whole of love blended in beauty,

Even as here on earth we see, for a passing moment only,

The rainbow with every colour alight in joy.

 

 

by Rev. David Usher

Sermon from Sunday, November 9, 2014

Who was Jesus?  What really do we know about him?  Strip away everything that has been claimed about him, all of it by people who never met him and all of it articles of faith rather than statements of fact, and what do we know for sure?  Nothing.  There is virtually nothing we know for sure about the life of Jesus.  Can there ever have been a person in human history about whom so little is known as fact, and yet about whom so much has been claimed as faith?

There are those who say that, given that we know so little, it is more reasonable to suppose that actually he never existed at all, that he is the product of fancy and fabrication by those who came along a long time later and who had their own particular agenda to promote.  That requires more of a leap of denial rather than any leap of faith in believing in the historical fact that there was such a person as Jesus, about whom we know so little.

All four of the gospels which were included in the Christian canon, a decision made for theological and political reasons several hundred years after Jesus is believed to have lived, by bishops and other churchmen who wanted to present a very particular point of view, all four of them were written a long time after Jesus had died.  Scholars agree that Mark was the first to be written, probably around the year 65 CE, a generation later.  It is believed that Matthew and Luke were probably written about the same time as each other, perhaps around 90 CE.  And John?  John is not like the other three, it is more a sermon than a gospel, and most likely written around 120 CE.  That is almost a century after Jesus had lived and taught.

There is only one other reference to Jesus.  The historian Josephus makes a passing reference to someone who most likely was Jesus, but as Jesus was a common name, who can say?  In any case, Josephus says little more than that there was such a fellow teaching and preaching and causing trouble. And that is it.  Nothing else.

Now, imagine this.  Imagine an event that happened a hundred years ago.  There is such an event the centenary of which we will soon be observing – the beginning of the first world war.  Now, at least we know that that did actually happen, but suppose your great, great grandfather was a soldier in that war.  And when he returned from the trenches of Flanders and France, he told his friends about some of his experiences in that horror.  He never wrote anything down.  He told his stories over a pint, and not as a chronological record of events but as episodes, isolated incidents, things he recalled, images which had seared themselves into his memory.  And then when his friends were having a pint with others, those others recounted what they had heard, and they then told their friends, and so it went on.  Nobody ever wrote anything down until, say, the nineteen sixties when someone had the bright idea of assembling these stories and anecdotes and memories into some kind of coherent narrative.  They had this bright idea because they had decided that your great, great grandfather must have been not just a soldier but a hero to have done what he had done.  Fought selflessly for a cause greater than himself.  Endured terrible hardship and privation.  Been willing to sacrifice his own life that others might live and live better than they might have done otherwise.  The motivation to write all this down was sparked not by the desire to tell a story objectively and factually, but to portray someone in a particular way.  As such, certain things are highlighted, others ignored.  The ordering of events would have a structure, a direction, a theme to convey your great, great grandfather as a real hero.

And as for dialogue, do you suppose that anything which was written down as part of this story, written fifty or more years after they had been said, and having been orally relayed through numerous re-tellings, do you suppose that any of the dialogue would be word-perfect transcripts of what was actually said.  Could any of you write down exactly what you said in a conversation even yesterday, let alone what someone else had said a hundred years ago and which you had never directly heard?

And yet, here we have four gospels, and precious little else, which tell us all we can know about Jesus and who he was, what he taught, how he lived and how he died.  All of them written long after Jesus had died, by people who had never met him, who were relying on stories passed down orally through the decades, and who had no intention of writing a factual account about Jesus but were writing a powerful polemic to persuade people that Jesus had in fact been not a normal person, not even a hero, but God!

During the nineteenth century, there grew a fashion amongst Biblical scholars, German scholars particularly, to attempt to write a Life of Jesus. Using all four gospels they tried to mesh the various stories and episodes reported therein into a coherent biography of Jesus life, charting his course from birth to childhood to his adult ministry and finally his death.  Many attempted it, with varying degrees of plausibility, until at the end of the century Albert Schweitzer wrote a compelling book, The Quest for the Historical Jesus, in which having reviewed all of these attempts he concluded, “Guys, give it up.  It is impossible.  The historical Jesus is lost to us.  Unless some new evidence comes up, we can never know.  Jesus now is a man of faith, not fact.

In the early part of the twentieth century, Biblical criticism, again led by German theologians, adopted a more nuanced approach to the Bible.  Instead of assuming that the Bible had somehow fallen from the sky, the complete and unchallengeable word of God miraculously written in our native tongue and every word true, these scholars looked at the historical and social contexts, they analysed the stories as literature, written by men who had their own agendas.  In more recent years there has been The Jesus Seminar, in which scholars have assessed each of the reported sayings of Jesus and speculated on their likely authenticity.

And, for all of that scholarship and as welcome and as helpful as it is, Jesus remains a figure of faith, and what is most important is not how much of the stories and sayings are “true”, but how we relate to them.  How do they impact and influence us in our attempts, today, to be faithful.

In other words, the real question is not who was Jesus in real life two thousand years ago, but who Jesus is in your life now.  Who is Jesus to you?

Given that the only way to discover who Jesus might be in your life is to be found in the gospels, and given all the doubts and uncertainties regarding the veracity and accuracy of those scant sources, I have to say that I marvel at the answers some people discover for themselves.  Since coming to the States I have been reintroduced to the phenomenon of TV evangelists.  There is no enema more powerful.  And Christian rock, so saccharine it is guaranteed to induce diabetic shock.  I have to wonder, are they reading the same sources that I am?  Or are they overlaying so much of their own cultural stuff, their need to use Jesus for their own purposes, that they have lost all sight of what lies in the texts.  Or perhaps it is I who is guilty of projecting my own cultural and religious stuff onto Jesus.  Who knows?  Perhaps each and all of us read into the scriptures what we want to read, and conveniently ignore the rest.

But, if I try to peel away the accretions of the millennia and everything which has been said and claimed about Jesus, though I choose not to call myself a Christian, I still find him to be a compelling figure, more compelling for me than any other spiritual teacher.  Conservative Christians often use the acronym, WWJD.  What would Jesus do?

It is a question I find helpful.  If I want to learn the challenging spiritual art of forgiveness, I turn to his example.

If I want to understand the nature of the radical inclusivity of love, who better to turn to?  If I want an example of faithfulness even unto death, is there a more powerful example?

This is the Jesus who stands out for me and who speaks to me.

He is a man of conviction and courage.  He is not afraid to speak his truth, usually in love but sometimes in anger, regardless of how well others might receive his words and regardless of the consequences to himself.

He is a man of compassion, who is not bothered with imposed religious conventions when they mask the personal realities in a situation.  He wants to be in real relationship with his God and how that God is manifest in the world and in people’s lives, not with rules and forms and ritualised pieties.

He is a man who cares not for distinctions between men and women, Jew and Gentile, native and foreigner, gay and straight.  The next time you encounter a Christian using their scripture based faith to justify the violence and virulence of their hatred towards gays, tell them that you agree with everything Jesus said condemning homosexuality.  Which, you guessed it, is precisely nothing.  Indeed, in John’s gospel there are frequent references to him “lying down with the disciple he loved” which it is not unreasonable to suppose might be allusions to a same-sex relationship.  There is only one thing which Jesus repeatedly condemns and warns against.  Money.  Hands up those of you with a mortgage, or a bank account, or a pension plan, or even two coats when others have none.  Hands up if you would be unwilling to give it all away.  Not some, but all of it.  Come on, hands up.  Well, you are all going to burn.  But don’t worry.  I will be turning to toast right alongside of you.

He is a man who is counter to the establishment but who identifies himself with what he is for rather than what he is against, whose message is of inclusive love rather than excluding hate.

He is a man who is serene in the face of danger, who behaves with honour when in the company of rogues, who speaks his truth even when to do so invites ridicule or worse.

He is a man, a human in whose life shines the light of the divine.  A man no more God than you or me, but who, more than you or me, was aware of and in touch with the divinity within him even as we might learn to be aware of and in touch with the divinity within us.  He was awake to his divinity, while most of us slumber.

Most of what the church teaches about Jesus I find positively unhelpful, especially all the injunctions to worship him as God.  He wanted people to worship God, not him.  Frequently in the gospels he implicitly and explicitly chastises those who tried to deify him.  Don’t worship me, worship God!

I do not always find it easy to penetrate many of the teachings of mainstream Christian churches, they are often a barrier through which I cannot pass.  But when I do pass through that barrier, I find a man whose clarity of voice speaks directly to my heart and spirit.  I do not call myself a Christian, because I cannot accept what the Christian church demands in belief about Jesus, namely that it is through him and him alone that the way of wholeness is to be found because he was God incarnate who died exclusively for our sins of those who profess belief in him.  Others are able to believe that.  I am not.  I find those beliefs not only intellectual untenable but ethically indefensible and counter to my experience of the world in which people of different faiths and of none are amongst the finest exemplars of humanity.  The beliefs about Jesus having been God I dismiss.  But I am happy to say that in the person of Jesus, I find a man whose spiritual path I would follow to my great spiritual benefit.  What would Jesus do?  I would hope I might do the same.

And you?  Who is your Jesus?

 

by Rev. David Usher

For a while when I was in the UK, I belonged to an organisation called Modem, a clever acronym standing for Management and Organisational Development in Ministry. The purpose of this outfit was to bring the skills of management into closer harmony with the mission of ministry, and vice versa, to bring the spirit of ministry and faith into the workplace. I am interested in such things, and I learned some interesting and useful things.

Some of those things were some fairly basic principles of good self-management, like how to manage your time efficiently. Things like – handle a piece of paper only once. Sounds straight forward, I know, but when some while ago I heard that for the first time, it was a revelation to me. Up until then my modus operandi was to handle it a dozen times before I would finally deal with it. If I received a letter to which I had to write an answer, first I would read the letter, then put it aside to answer later. Then I would pick it up several times as I stumbled across it amidst the litter on my desk, and maybe read it again each time. When I couldn’t put it off any longer, I would finally write my reply, but of course I would have forgotten the content of the original letter by then so I would have to read it again. Then it would lie around on my desk for another week or so, getting in my way, covering the other piece of paper I was looking for, before I would file it away. In such a way could a great many hours be happily wasted, keeping me from doing anything productive. But being told to handle a piece of paper just once opened a door for me to become much more efficient in my administrative abilities.

Then there is filing. Or rather, then there might be filing. I know that there are ministers who have amazing filing systems. Not just for committee minutes and that kind of thing. But sermons, for example. And sermon illustrations. There are ministers, I am reliably informed, who, if you mention a theme to them, can go to their filing system and pull out their little index card, or in these modern times go to their computer file, on which will be written every reference to that theme they have ever made in forty years of preaching. I wish I could do that. Instead, J don’t know how  many wonderful readings or references I have come across and used in my twenty years of preaching, and I have no idea where to find them again.

And lists. Let’s not forget lists. I love making lists. Are you a list maker as well? I come into the office on a Monday morning, and I make a list of the things I need to do that week. I come into the office on other mornings, and I make a list of the things I need to do that day. Letters to write, services to prepare, meetings to prepare for, phone calls to make, people to visit. Lots of chores manage to appear on successive lists – I don’t always get them done on the day I initially think I will – but at least they have been on my list. And it really is quite satisfying to cross something off the list. There are days when I have a page full of things to do, and at the end of the day every single one of them has been crossed out, and I go home thinking I have achieved something that day. But my capacity for self-deception with lists is remarkable. I make my list, and then I work steadily through it, crossing off each thing done as I go. But then I will do something not on the list. So, after I have done it, what do I do? I write it down on the list so that I can have the satisfaction of crossing it off again.

So, anyway, my brief association with MODEM was very useful, very helpful, and believe me, I can always use some more assistance in learning the art of efficient management and administration. There is virtue in good management. There is no inherent virtue in mismanagement. There are ministers who scorn the very idea of using the words ministry and management in the same sentence. Not me. I would be glad to be able to do some things better. And do more things in less time.

But, two things I do know. The way to salvation is not through an efficiency drive. And being busy is not the same as accomplishing something worthwhile.

The Managing Director of a large company was given a ticket to a performance of Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony, but when he found he could not go, he gave the ticket to his Vice President for Operations. The next morning he asked his VP how he had enjoyed the performance. Instead of getting a few observations about the symphony in general, and the experience of being there, the VP handed him a formal memo. Which read as follows.

Time and Motion Study of Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony For considerable periods, the four oboe players had nothing to do. Their number should be reduced, and their work spread over the whole orchestra, avoiding peaks of
inactivity.

All 12 violins were playing identical notes with identical motions. This seems an unnecessary duplication, and the staff of this section should be drastically cut, with consequent substantial savings. If volume of sound is really required, this could be accomplished with the use of an amplifier.

Much effort was involved in playing the 16th notes. This appears to be an excessive refinement, since most hearers are unable to distinguish such rapid playing. It is recommended that all notes be rounded up to the nearest 8th note. If this were done it would be possible to use amateur musicians instead of experienced and expensive professionals.

No useful purpose is served by repeating with horns the passage that has already been handled by the strings. If all such redundancies were eliminated, the concert could be reduced from two hours to twenty minutes, with great savings in salaries and overhead.

The symphony had two movements. If Mr Schubert didn’t achieve his musical goals by the end of the first movement, then he should have stopped there. The second movement is unnecessary and should be cut.

In the light of the above, one can only conclude that had Mr Schubert given attention to these matters, he probably would have had time to finish the symphony.

Well, maybe he would have, but would anyone have wanted to listen to it?

The thing of course, is this. Just as music is much more than the efficient arrangement of sounds, so living well, being present to the moment, is much more than the efficient management of time. As is living faithfully, living spiritually, living as if life mattered far more than wasting our powers through getting and spending.

Isn’t it curious? There is one thing I never put on my daily or weekly list of things to do. I never write – Do nothing. Yet, often, that is the most important thing I should be doing. Nothing.

Bill Bryson has become a very popular writer with his eccentric mix of travel and witty observation. In one of his books, I forget which one (see, if! had written it down and put it on an index card, I could have told you the title ofthe book, the page number, everything) in this book Bryson tells of an incident which happened once to him. He was living in Hanover, New Hamsphire. He had abandoned Britain where he had lived for twenty years to return to his native land, and had chosen Hanover as a suitable place to hang his hat. A great choice. Hanover is a delightful New England town, home of Dartmouth College.  Anyway, late one afternoon, he was beavering away at his computer, furiously writing something or other which he should have sent off days before. He was feeling oppressed by a deadline. His son called to him to come outside a play catch.

I can’t, I’m busy.

Come on, Dad.

I can’t, I have to finish this piece.
Aw, gee, Dad, come on.

Those of you who have been a parent, or for that matter a child, will recognise the exchange immediately. For some reason, even though he really did have to meet that deadline, Bryson relented.

OK, he called back.

And he and his son went outside for an hour of playing catch. Which they did. No big deal. It was something he had done a hundred times before with his son. Except that this time it was a big deal. It was a gorgeous, crisp late afternoon, with the brilliant sunlight filtering at a sharp angle through the dazzling hues of the New England foliage. The kind of New England autumn day which takes your breath away. And there he was, playing
catch with his son, doing what American Dads have done for generations, the simple rhythmic bonding of throwing and catching a baseball to and fro.

And Bryson was overwhelmed. Overwhelmed with the beauty of it, the wonder of it, the appreciation for the miracle of being alive and so blessed, that there he was amidst the glory of creation, doing something elemental with his child. It was an afternoon to savour in the memory for a lifetime, so perfect was it, so vivid to all his senses, and most especially to his sense of joy.

But, you know what, says Bryson? I nearly missed it. I nearly missed it by thinking that hunching over my word processor was more important. Words that I, and anybody who might read them, would soon forgot, compared with that magical moment with my son which I will never forget. I was almost too busy making a living to be aware that I was alive.

If you never look up, how are you going to see the sunsets? If you never stop, how are you going to smell the daisies? If you never give thanks, how are you going to know how much you have to give thanks for?

There is no such thing as being too busy to stop. Usually it is not that you are too busy to stop. It is, more likely, that you have forgotten how. Or are afraid of the stillness. Saying no to the rush, stepping off the carousel on which everyone else is mindlessly going around and around, takes a lot more courage and self-confidence than might be imagined.

There is the story of the priest who prayed faithfully for an hour every morning. That hour or prayer in the morning, he explained, put him into the right frame of mind for the rest of the day. Except, of course, when he had a particularly busy and frantic day ahead of him and he didn’t have time. Then he did not begin by praying for an hour. He began by praying for two hours.

You don’t need me to tell you how busy your life is, you don’t need me to recite all the things you have to do, the many things on your daily list, you don’t need me to tell you how frantic it all can be, how the joy of it can drain away in the weariness of work to be done. But remember, the life of the spirit is not subject to time and motion study experts. It is often not the more you do, but the less you do, which is important.

This is not an advocacy for laziness. But it is a reminder that we neglect our spirits at our peril, and we cannot tend our spirits if our shoulder is always to the harness. So don’t just do something, sit there. Waste time. It might be the best thing you can do with it. But here is a question. Suppose the next time I write down my list of things to do, I put on it, Do nothing. How much nothing will I have to do before I am allowed to cross it off?

 

by Rev. David Usher

Sermon from Sunday September 14, 2014.

I was at a dinner party a little while ago, in England, and I found myself sitting next to a woman I had not met before. So we went through the usual getting-to-know-you pleasantries – what’s your name, where do you live, what do you do. Now let me tell you, I like being a minister. I don’t want to be anything else. But in social situations like that, I always rather dread being asked what I do, particularly in the UK where even going to church is generally regarded as a sign of mental deficiency, let alone being a minister. Because invariably I get one of three reactions. The first is that I can see the instant look of fear in their eyes, and the quick checking of the nearest exit as they apparently think I am about to get all evangelical on them, and then for the rest of the evening they apologise if they happen to say anything even remotely irreverent, given that as a parson I obviously have such delicate sensibilities. The second is that they spend the rest of the evening interrogating me, as if there is no other subject I could possibly be interested in or be able to talk about. But the third response, oh the third response is by far the worst. That is when they spend the rest of the evening telling me all the reasons why they do not go to church. Whether or not they go to church is entirely a matter for them, I really don’t care, but they seem to feel the need to justify to me the fact that they don’t, with all the most specious rationalisations you could think of, all of which I have heard a hundred times before.

This particular woman fell firmly into that third category. She proceeded to tell me, at great length, about her disdain for church and her reasons for not going. Churches are full of hypocrites, she said. It is not true, by the way. Churches are not full of hypocrites. There is room for more. Religion is bunk, she said, nothing but superstition and nonsense, and think of the wars started because of it, blah, blah, blah. I tried to keep my head down. I tried to pretend I was intensely interested in my Brussels sprouts. I was a guest after all, my mother brought me up right, I know it is not good manners to start an argument at a dinner party, but then this woman said that anyway, going to church does not make you a better person.

It was then that I kind of snapped. I turned on her. That is exactly where you are wrong, I said. Going to church does make me a better person, and that is the whole point. I go to church in order to be a better person. Not a better person than you, or a better person than anyone else, but a better person than the person I would be if I did not go to church. How could it do otherwise? Going to church reminds me of values the world would otherwise make me forget. Going to church puts me in the company of the wisdom of humanity’s great spiritual teachers and exemplars. Going to church means I learn the stories of everyday folk who have overcome great adversity with serenity and equanimity through the steadfastness of their faith. Going to church means I hear poetry and music which touch my soul, which comfort and inspire my sometimes tremulous and fainting heart. Going to church does not make me a better person than anyone else. It makes me a better person that I would otherwise be. It makes me a person who is trying to pay attention to the business of being faithful in life, faithful to life, holding myself accountable to that which is greater than myself.

The other day I came across a definition of faith I had not encountered before. But before I tell you this definition, let me ask you a question. How would you define faith? If you worked at the Oxford English Dictionary and were responsible for words beginning with the letter F, what would you say about faith? I was once at a dinner party – and yes, my life does consist of nothing but dinner parties – where another guest did work at the Oxford English Dictionary, and he was an expert in words beginning with the letter P.

How would you define faith as an objective phenomenon in human life? And perhaps more interestingly, how would you describe faith as a subjective phenomenon in your life? What is the basis, the reality, the significance of faith to you?

Well, the definition I recently encountered was that Faith is believing things you know are not true. Believing things you know are not true. A rather cynical definition, it has to be said, but then Mark Twain was not known for being entirely without criticism of the many foibles of organised religion. Twain’s rationale was the if you know something is true, then believing it does not require faith. Therefore, faith is believing what you know is not true.

One of the subjects I had to study for my theology degree was The Development of Christian Doctrine up to the year 461AD. I know, wild and crazy times. Those first few hundred years were very important in the life of the Christian Church as it tried to make sense of itself. The Church got side-tracked into the mistaken idea that being a Christian meant believing the right things. It is the only major world religion which is based on the primacy of belief. None of the others are. Not Islam or Judaism or Hinduism or Buddhism. All of them are about practising the life of faith. But early on Christianity got stuck in the idea that it was all about believing the right things. This was largely thanks to the efforts of Roman Emperor Constantine, who for entirely political reasons converted to Christianity and wanted to impose his own hegemony over the empire. Hence the Council of Nicaea which came up with the Nicene Creed, recited weekly to this day. Note something very significant about the Nicene Creed. It is all about believing things about Jesus. It says nothing about what Jesus taught, or how you might live as a follower of Jesus. Very cunning, that Constantine.

So the early church fathers were duped into trying to formulate it all into a coherent system of beliefs, separate from but consistent with the Judaism from which it had been hewn, and compatible with the predominantly Pagan gentile world within which it had taken root. What could it all have meant, for Jesus to have been the Saviour and yet to have died so ignominiously, to have been both god and man. It was a great intellectual challenge, a puzzle over which endlessly to fret.

Those early Christians kept holding Councils, not just at Nicaea but for the next century, at which Bishops from throughout the Christian world would assemble to argue for weeks and weeks and weeks about the tiniest detail of doctrine. They would meet in smoky back rooms, do deals, cajole and threaten, and finally they would hold a vote. And those on the losing side who did not immediately repent the error of their ways were then banished, imprisoned or executed. By the way, we will be introducing that at congregational meetings here. It should certainly raise the stakes, liven things up, don’t you think?

Anyway, it was Tertullian, in the early part of the third century, who wrote a vast tome on the doctrine of the trinity, trying to make sense of how three could be one and one could be three, and each was separate but they were both the same, and though Jesus was the son of God he was as old as God even though ordinarily a father does come before the son. Thousands of pages, going around and around and around. You can see why studying it gave me high blood pressure. Heady, exciting stuff. Poor old Tertullian got himself into a terrible tangle, and the more he tried to explain it, the more of a tangle he got himself into. Until finally, in exasperation, he threw up his hands and declared, “It is absurd! That is why I believe it.”

I guess some things haven’t changed. When I look critically at some of the details of what some churches expect you to believe, I too throw up my hands and exclaim, “It is absurd!” The difference is, that is why I don’t believe it.

But, for all that some things that some people believe as articles of faith might, in my entirely non-judgmental opinion, be completely unreasonable, having faith itself is not unreasonable. Not only is having faith not unreasonable, having faith is essential. Without faith, all is lost.

The story is told by a tribe in West Africa of the Sky Maiden. It happened once that the people of the tribe noticed that their cows were not giving as much milk as usual. They could not understand why this should be, so one young man volunteered to stay up all night to see what might be happening. After several hours of waiting in the darkness, he saw something extraordinary. A maiden of astonishing beauty came down from the sky on a moonbeam. She carried a large pail, and she milked the cows one by one, filling her pail and then climbing back up the moonbeam to the sky. The young man could not believe what he had just seen, so he lay in wait again the following night and, sure enough, the maiden appeared again to milk the cows and then return up the moonbeam to the sky. On the third night he set a trap, and when she came down again he sprang the trap and caught her.

“Who are you?” he demanded.

She explained that she was a Sky Maiden, a member of a tribe which lived in the sky and had no food of their own. It was her job to come to earth at night to find food. She pleaded with him to let her go, but he was so enchanted by her great beauty that he demanded that she marry him.

“I will marry you,” she said, “but first you must let me go back to my home for three days. Then I promise I will return and be your wife.”

The man agreed, and three days later, true to her word, she returned, carrying a large box.

“I will marry you and I will make you very happy,” she told him, “but you must promise never to look inside the box.”

For several weeks they were very happy together. Then one day, when his wife was out, the man was overcome with curiosity, and he opened the box. There was nothing in it. As soon as she returned, with the intuition only a wife can have about her husband, she knew what he had done.

“Yes, I opened the box” he confessed, “but I don’t understand why you forbade me from looking inside an empty box.”

“I cannot be your wife any more” she said.

“Why?” the man demanded. “What is so terrible about looking inside an empty box?”

“I am not leaving you because you looked inside the box,” she replied. “I was sure that one day you would. I am leaving you because you said it was empty. It was not empty. It was full of sky. When I went home for that last time, I filled the box with everything that was most precious to me to remind me of where I came from. The box contained the light and the air and the smells of my home in the sky. How can I be your wife, when everything that is most precious to me, is mere emptiness to you?”

Having faith is not about what you believe. Having faith is fundamentally about how you see the world. Is the world mere emptiness, in spite of all there is of beauty and charm and miracle and wonder and delight? Or it the world precious, in spite of all there is of pain and anguish and bitterness and ugliness? Having faith is ultimately about how you see the world.

When he was fifty three years old, Ed Guiton, an Englishman, went on a rock climbing holiday in Bolivia. He was a very fit man. He had always been very active in strenuous outdoor sports. One evening, after a satisfying but tiring day of climbing, he was back in his hotel room when a combination of high altitude and low blood pressure made him do something he had never done before. He fainted. As he fell, he hit his head on the bedpost, and broke his neck. A freak, meaningless accident, and now Ed Guiton is a quadriplegic.

My God, how would you cope if such a thing happened to you? How would you cope? The fact is, every single one of us, all of the time, is just one second away from the possibility that our safe, predictable, contented lives will be wrenched irredeemably from us and twisted into some unimaginable new shape. How would you cope? How would you adjust the way you see the world so that you could continue to live in it, so that the world had become not mere emptiness but remained full of things precious to you.

In an essay about his experience, Guiton says this.

“There is still immense pain and frustration. But I am heartened, if by nothing else, then by a change of direction in my dreams. There is one recurring dream, in which I’ve got two walking sticks and I’m hobbling painfully down the road, jerking about a bit, and people are walking past and I can hear them muttering “Poor old sod”. And I’m saying, “No! you don’t realise. This is me, getting better!”

Being a person of faith, ultimately, is knowing that, in spite of everything which might appear as evidence to the contrary, in spite of the feeling sometimes that we are strangers and pilgrims in an inhospitable land, in spite of whatever misfortune or malady or malice might befall us, in spite of it all, life is good, life is precious, it does make sense, it is worth while, and though we might not know what it is, there is meaning and purpose to it. Sometimes people construct elaborate theologies and observe strict rituals and write endless tomes to remind and reassure themselves of that basic article of faith. And sometimes people just feel it in their bones.

There is the story of the Jews, prisoners in one of the Nazi horror camps. One day they decided to put God on trial for allowing the terrible suffering that was all around them. One was the prosecutor and the other counsel for the defence, the rest were the jury. After each side had put their case in this mock trial, the jury decided the case for the prosecution was overwhelming. There was no God, and if there was, such a God was not worthy of their worship. And just as they delivered their verdict, one of them noticed that the sun was setting.

“Look” he said, “the sun is setting. It is the start of the Sabbath.” And together they all turned, and prayed.

Having faith is what enables you, in spite of everything, still to turn to your God and pray. It is the way you see the world. And coming to church is a way of being reminded that there is this way to see the world, it is to be in the company of all who have seen the world and everything in it as wondrous and holy, and have centred their lives on that vision, a vision that sustains them through whatever might have been their fortune or otherwise.

And if there are people out there, who look at us and say in their condescending way, “Poor deluded sods”, we can reply, “No, don’t you see, this is us, and we are getting better!”

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote….

We pray without ceasing. Every secret wish is a prayer. Every house is a church, the corner of ever street is a closet of devotion. Every desire of the human mind is a prayer uttered to God and registered in heaven. Those are not prayers, which begin with the normal appellatives of the Deity and end with His Son’s name and a ceremonial world – those are not prayers, if they utter no one wish of our hearts, no one real and earnest affection, but are formal repetitions of sentiments taken at second hand, in words the supple memory has learned on fashion. But the true prayers are the daily, hourly, momentary desires, that come without impediment, without fear, into the soul, and hear testimony at each instant to its shifting character. And these prayers are granted. For is it not clear that what we strongly and earnestly desire we shall make every effort to obtain, and has not God so furnished us with powers of body and of mind that we can acquire whatsoever we seriously and unceasingly strive after?

In that spirit, let us pray.

We pray to live reasonably and wisely.

Which is to pray that we shall not believe too easily nor doubt too readily, but what we shall have the understanding faith of the wise.

We pray to live reasonably and wisely.

Which is to pray that we shall not face life with cowardice, not yet with foolhardiness, but with a calm and measured courage which can suffer no defeat.

We pray to live reasonably and wisely.

Which is to pray that we be not slaves of our passions, nor yet unfeeling, but that we shall strive to guide all our ways through all our days with just and careful thought.

Living thus reasonably and wisely, we shall be building out of life immortal things – the things that shall endure.

by Olivia

Throughout the process of the Coming of Age program, there’s been one question that comes up a lot. “Do you identify as a Unitarian Universalist?” For me at least, this is a difficult question, a question that leads to all sorts of other questions. What is Unitarian Universalism? What makes someone a Unitarian Universalist? Or, for that matter, what makes someone a member of any religion? What even is a religion?

Now I, as a lazy teenager, tend to avoid philosophical questions in such numbers at all costs, but eventually I forced myself to sit down and really think about it. In most faiths, there’s some sort of deity that the members worship. However, we don’t exactly have one of those. So what is it that makes Unitarian Universalism a religion? Then it hits me. Religions aren’t based solely upon a deity, there’s generally some kind of text associated with it, for example, the bible in the case of Christianity. And UU’s do have something like that, there’s one that almost all of us can agree on, a small but mighty one. Our Seven Principles. So I think, maybe that’s what makes a UU: someone who follows all the principles. So I sit there in defeat, vividly aware that I must NOT be a true UU. And then I laugh. Not every person that considers themselves Christian follows every single thing in the bible all the time, nor do Buddhists always live up to the morals they value. These sacred guidelines are there to help us realize what we’d like to live up to. So I come to my conclusion, in my mind being a part of a religion means attempting to live up to the guidelines set by the religion, and/or participating with spiritual practices associated with that religion. So I can proudly say, I consider myself a Unitarian Universalist, even though I don’t always manage to live up to our principles, I do try.

On a similar note, another question I was commonly asked in the Coming of Age program, was to describe my spiritual practices. At first, I truly thought I had none. But after a wee bit of contemplation, I realize I actually do have a few. The simple act of coming to church and being a part of my community is one, I also go to retreats called “cons”. These conferences are a place for UU teens to gather and celebrate UUism, our community, ourselves and our beliefs in a safe space. Another one of my more unique spiritual practices is the use of prayer beads. I loved the sermon Reverend Denis gave on prayer beads, if you were lucky enough to hear that.

Whenever I’m sad, stressed, angry, or anything really that I feel I need to sort out internally, I whip out my prayer beads. They can almost always calm me down. Except when I break or lose them, which is about every other day, including today.

In addition, there’s a few social issues I feel very strongly about. I’m hesitant to call myself a feminist, because the word alone comes with the idea that women are better than men. I don’t believe that. In fact, I’m kind of over the whole gender thing in general. I mean, the biological part is important for babies and such, I have nothing against babies, don’t worry. but all this “You should wear pink because your a girl” and “guys can’t wear dresses”. Seriously. What’s the deal with that. Dresses are pretty cool. And also the whole thing where you’re expected to align with one particular gender. What if I don’t want to? What then? Well, then I suppose you become a UU, but that’s another topic. So instead of “feminist” I like to refer to myself as a humanist, meaning I support the equality of every single person.

So what is my big social issue, you ask? Equality. Mainly, gender equality and sexuality equality, which, in my terms, are really one thing. When I say gender equality, you probably think equal wages and women out of the kitchen and all that. I think equal wages are important, don’t get me wrong, but what I really mean when I say that, is equality in sexual expression. I’m in high school, so I get daily exposure to discrimination based on sexuality. I think heteronormativity is SO ridiculous. There are so many ways in which people’s sexualities vary, that I think it’s outrageous for “straight” to be the norm. I think everyone should have the same right to express their sexuality. Now, here’s where I get in to being humanisty about this. When people talk about equality in sexuality, they tend to glance over the discrimination against woman, of any sexuality. Women are expected to not have any of that sexual teenage hormone stuff. Nope, not at all. That;s where words like “slut” come in. These so called “sluts”, I believe, are some of the bravest people. They’re the people who aren’t afraid to express their sexuality freely, despite discrimination. Also, that thing I said earlier about getting women out of the kitchen? I don’t agree with that. I think that if someone wants to be a stay at home mom, or even a stay at home dad, they shouldn’t be put down for not getting out there and having a career. Being a parent is a job in of itself. Basically, I believe in the inherent worth and dignity of all people.

However, I can’t say all the things I believe fit into a religion, a social issue, or even a set of spiritual practices. I believe in second chances. I believe in inspiring and being inspired. I believe in the healing power of art and cuddling, especially with puppies. I believe in forgiveness for even the worst of mistakes, but only with sufficient regret (bonus points for groveling). I believe that everyone has the right to be happy. I believe that everyone has the right to be upset, even if their life story isn’t as tragic as yours, sometimes you just need to cry over your spilled milk, no matter how insignificant it may seem to someone else. I do not believe in god. I believe in science. I believe in karma. I believe in intuition. I believe in music. Lots of it. Every day. I believe in love. I believe that honesty forms all four cornerstones to any good relationship. I believe in the beauty of rain, and dancing in it. I don’t believe in nonchalant promises. I believe that every human body is beautiful, no matter the shape or size. I believe in expressing yourself freely. I believe that you can learn a lot about yourself through writing. I believe that the real god is found in the diversity formed by each and every one of our beliefs. I believe that these beliefs will not be entirely mine in 5 years, a year, a month, or maybe even tomorrow. But I can tell you, that in this moment, I am ever so grateful for the freedom to express what I believe, to you. Thank you.

Doing What’s Right

by Indra

I have been growing up in a Unitarian Universalist community; it is a community which fervently believes in the common good and that we,as humans on planet Earth, shall overcome all the violence, segregation, and injustice in the world at present, sometime in the future.  I am being raised to value and carry on charity work and other forms of social action to help the world.  But during all this teaching from the church and my parents of acceptance, tolerance, and caring, I’ve quite often wondered why.  Why should I take time out my day, my life, to help others when I could be reclining in bed reading books or on the couch watching TV or playing videogames?  Furthermore, why should I even care for the needs of others?  Some believe doing good deeds earns you a place in heaven with God; others believe that if they do something great and of worth to the world they’ll be remembered, immortalized; and others still, believe in doing good deeds not because it gives them credit with themselves or others, not to earn themselves a place in heaven, and not for fame and fortune, but because the deeds are right.  Many people do right deeds for the wrong reasons, whether it be out of fear of damnation or of longing for popularity.  I believe in doing right deeds because, and only because, they are right.

Unfortunately I often feel that I might not be doing any difference in the world at all.  I don’t think enough people have the devotion, confidence, or even care to do anything; and at this point in time I believe most of everyone needs to pitch in their time and efforts to make any difference in the world we all live in.  So what’s the point of good deeds then?  I have struggled trying long and hard to answer this question; and I’ve come to the inferring that, for me, the reason I should carry on doing what good I can, even if for a lost cause, is because it makes me happy.  I believe that humans need a sense of right and wrong to make decisions.  Unless a person follows his or her judgement of right and wrong, he or she won’t be content with themselves; otherwise they would be complacent at most.

The other thing, though, is I try to be aware not to get caught up in worrying too much about my actions: whether or not I’ve been doing the right thing or whether or not I’m doing enough of the right thing.  I try to live in the present and make the best choices as problems present themselves instead of fretting how I’ll go about being a part of the solution to all the world’s problems (since there’s no way I can.)  I’ll try to do my best to help the people I can and avoid overworking myself.  There’s only so much one person can do by themselves.  I have no vision of an utopian world to work towards; I don’t believe all the world’s peoples can ever be united as one; all I want is to be the best person I can be, regardless of whether or not other people notice.

by Rev. Denis Letourneau Paul

Once upon a time, in Once Upon A Time Land, there was a tortoise who was very dependable.  He would always get where he set out to go.  It just took him longer than it took most people.

One day, Rabbit saw Tortoise walking slowly down the road and said, “Tortoise, you are so slow, I could probably grow hair faster than you run.”

“Oh yeah?” said Tortoise slowly.

“Yeah,” said Rabbit.

So, they decided to race.

On the day of the big race Tortoise and Rabbit lined up at the starting line.  Owl said, “On your mark.  Get set.  Grow!”

Tortoise started to run.  Rabbit started to grow his hair.

Tortoise ran.  Rabbit grew his hair.

Tortoise ran.  Rabbit grew his hair.

That was a long time ago.  Tortoise is still running.  And Rabbit is still growing his hair.

That’s the way life is.  Sometimes, we get competitive, just for the sake of competing.  We make everything a race, just to keep from being bored to death.  But that kind of competing can get very old very fast, so that what was meant to prevent boredom actually becomes boring!

Has that ever happened to you?

A good way to prevent getting bored to death by the week-after-weekness of our weeks is to just pay attention to life, pay attention to everything that is going on around us, and to try to understand it.  A good way to really live life, instead of just racing for the sake of racing is to slow down and ask a simple question:  WHY!

Do you ever ask why?

Of course you do!  Asking why keeps your mind engaged, keeps life exciting, and more importantly, helps you understand yourself and other people a little better.  Asking why is one of the most important things we do when we gather here on Sunday.

In my last sermon, I talked about why Sundays are so important to us as Unitarian Universalists, about why we set this day aside as something different from the other days of the week and about why we gather.  Now, some would say that they come here in order to ask tough questions about what other people are doing…especially the government, or big corporations, or dictators in other countries.   We want to know about the world.

It is very important to ask questions like this?  But why is it important?  I think, it’s important for us to understand what our role is the world, to ask why we do what we do.

It’s important that I understand what makes me tick…what I do well, and what I could stand to improve.  And as I improve myself, as I understand how each thing I do affects everything else, I improve the world.  To reflect on myself and my actions…to ask hard why questions about myself…helps me make meaning of my life.

Sundays help us understand ourselves better by allowing us a little time where we get away from the hustle and bustle, the distractions and competitiveness, the need to acquire more stuff and more distinctions.  Sundays help us return to our true selves, the selves that cry out, hoping to be heard.  Sundays get us to listen to each other, and to the suffering and celebrations of the world.

But on all those other days of the week, Monday through Saturday, we can be so much happier, so much more effective, if we can take the time to connect to something greater than ourselves and our needs.  That’s what spiritual practices help us do.  Things like prayer, and meditation, and chanting help us to dive into the mystery of the universe, to become more compassionate.  Calmer.

Prayers help us to be grounded.  Centered.  Connected to other people who share our faith.  But there are other ways of getting the same effects.  Like running, or bicycling, or cooking.  Anything entered into with the intention of expanding yourself, challenging yourself, even forgiving yourself will help you be better at lovingly challenging others, forgiving them as you forgive yourself.

A couple months ago, on my second weekend here in Grass Valley, Paige and I got to share a very silly story with you, a story about a farting wolf, and Aneka, Julia and Eli helped us out by playing the roles of the animals.  After the service, Aneka came and asked me a question.  She said that in her Soul Explorers class they’ve been studying the prayers of different faiths around the world, and she wondered if Unitarian Universalists have a special prayer, that is all ours.

Well, we don’t.  There are some songs that a lot of our congregations around the country sing with some regularity, and there are plenty of readings in the back of our gray hymnal.

Some would say that Mary Oliver poems or Pete Seeger songs are pretty sacred to most of us, but there are none that we all know by heart, that we all recite together regularly, across every single congregation.

Around the world, there lots of different traditions that have very specific practices of prayers.  Jo Waters and the Soul Explorers are going to share some practices with you.

My favorite is the Muslim practice of praying at specific hours, five times a day, facing the city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of the prophet Muhammad and the religion of Islam.  Imagine the planet turning, millions of people praying in waves across time zones.  As morning prayers are recited in one time zone, afternoon prayers are recited in another, and evening prayers in yet another, ripples of prayer moving across the globe like the ripples in a pond after throwing a pebble into the water.

My hope for us is that we can all stop racing around, let go of the boredom of life, and settle into prayers, so we can pay attention to the pebbles and be the ripples in the water, with Unitarian Universalists all over the world.  And in doing so, love each other more, and honor the ancestors, elders, leaders and youth…all of whom make us who we are.

by Rev. Denis Letourneau Paul

All across the United States, families were sleeping in tent cities, in make shift cabins, not unlike the way millions continue to live in developing countries around the globe.

I’ve had the chance a few times now to visit Nicaragua, where I stayed with families in concrete block Managua houses that had no glass in the windows and corrugated tin roofs that didn’t quite meet the walls, so that when the dust kicked up from the late afternoon wind everyday, the houses would fill up with dirt.  My friend Heidi is always grateful when North Americans come to – as she says – eat dirt with the locals.  

 I also stayed with people like Ramon and Marta, who live in a beautiful, well maintained home in the northern village of San Diego.  The have earthen walls and thatched roofs over dirt floors.  They cook on wood-fired clay stoves and haul water from the common well shared by the entire village.  They grow vegetables and raise livestock, while they sell sticks to the nearby global tobacco farmers in order to make a couple hundred dollars a year for staples like oil, sugar and rice. 

The first time I met Ramon, he asked me how many acres I own in the United States, and was incredulous when he learned that I paid $1200 a month for a rented room smaller than his kitchen in a city where 90% of the residents will never own their apartments, let alone a million dollar 2,500 square foot building lot. 

Our conversation made me wonder how, in the short span of 75 years, we in the US had gone from building homes out of the materials we found on the land we acquired, to building McMansions…the image the rest of the world has of our average homes.

Witold Rybczynski is an architectural historian I have come to think of as an “Ethnographer of the American Dream.” In his classic book Home: A Short History of an Idea, he charts the history of residential building from the first single-family homes to concern themselves with domestic privacy, through the trends of capturing light and air, to refining ease and efficiency, to displaying style and substance as markers of success. 

The truth is, the idea most of us have of home is remarkably recent in human history.  As recently as four hundred years ago, even the richest people in the world didn’t have separate rooms for discrete purposes.  The rich had servants bring them whatever they wanted, wherever they were, while the poor just piled everyone into one single space, the way they still do in most of the world.

The most recent innovation in the history of the home is that of seeking comfort and well-being, which isn’t surprising when you consider how much our houses reflect not only our values, but how we see ourselves. 

Frank Lloyd Wright was one of the first architects to consciously use the medium of building to express a specific world view.  His mother was one of the Wisconsin Lloyd Joneses, commonly called the “Almighty Jonses” for their staunchly liberal stances.  Her brother was Jenkin Lloyd Jones, the Missionary Secretary of the Western Unitarian Conference who planted newly-ordained female Universalist ministers in nascent churches across the west.  The family motto was “truth against the world.”  Frank Lloyd Wright etched “Truth is Life,” above the fireplace of his own home, and made hearth-top inscriptions a common feature of all of his early houses. 

The Heath residence’s inscription stands out: (from a person seated in the congregation):

 

The reality of the house is order

The blessing of the house is community

The glory of the house is hospitality

The crown of the house is Godliness

Wright was a vocal humanist who never went to church.  He was reviled by neighbors to whom he owed huge sums of money.  He left his wife and children to run off with a client’s wife, Mamah Borthwick Cheney, who was later murdered by household servants repulsed by her “wanton” lifestyle.   Wright probably didn’t have much order, community or godliness in his own home.  

But, those were the values he wanted to project, and the image the Heath family wanted to show to the world, celebrated in cast concrete.

Growing up, my own home very much showed the world how my parents wanted to be seen.  They were painfully aware of how the word “dirty” was attached to their immigrant status, so they made our house immaculate.  Pristine walls and floors and perfect furniture defined a space that was void of plants, art, books, music or indoor pets.  They also didn’t want to be seen as argumentative, so our house was quiet…teeming with people, but somehow silent.

I would imagine that most of us have childhood memories that are less than perfect, memories of  poverty, loneliness, fighting, neglect, or even abuse.  Most of us are probably like Sophia’s friends, a little envious of her home and her family, but as wonderful as her family is, she still looks forward to leaving, because that’s what a good family does: it prepares the children for life outside of its emotional comfort and well-being

There’s more to a good home than emotional comfort and well-being, there’s also the physical, which is being challenged and redefined by the tiny house movement.

Ten years ago Jay Shafer started appearing on TV and in magazines with his Tumbleweed Tiny Homes, built in the tradition of Henry David Thoreau’s shack at Walden Pond.  At 84 to 144 square feet, they are as movable – and legal – as any recreational vehicle, and so charmingly traditional that they don’t challenge anybody’s idea of what a house should look like, except for the fact that they require their inhabitants to pare their lives back to the bare essentials, and to use the outdoors as a living room.

The Summit Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Santee California is so enamored of Tumbleweed Tiny Houses, they bought a trailer and began their own, which they are calling – appropriately enough – The Walden Project.  The plan is that once the tiny house is done, individuals, couples and even families will live in it for one- to two-week stints, and blog about the experience of intentional living. 

They want to learn to do with less in San Diego California, so there is more for San Diego Nicaragua.  They want to make the world smaller and more inclusive by living in a way that is smaller and more inclusive. 

It’s not so crazy for a family to live like this. 

All over the United States people are moving into tiny homes, converted garages, and micro apartments to simplify their lives and make their families closer.  They are realizing that to reduce expenses and space, is to free up time and force togetherness.  There’s no place to hide, so they must really live into that covenant that is unspoken in most families, the bond that makes them a family no matter what happens.

Last week, something amazing happened here, that challenged and strengthened our covenant.

My sermon, which outlined an unusual way to imagine the divine, touched off a response that surprised me, and a conversation via email that could have grown contentious very quickly.  I’ll admit, the initial post on the listserv scared me a bit.  Sure, it was critical of my sermon, and not addressed directly to me, but that wasn’t the issue.  The issue was that people could have taken sides, could have started calling each other names, could have gotten defensive, or worse, offensive.  Instead, there was remarkable gentleness present in the comments, and lively theological discussion followed, the kind that every minister dreams of.

All that talk got me thinking.

What if we could take this energy, this mutual respect and willingness to assume the best of intentions of one and turn it into something else, something greater?  What if we could really be present to one another every day, even the people that we normally don’t see, in the way that a tiny-house-dwelling family has to be?  Right now, this congregation is a lot like nearly every other UU church in the United States. 

There’s still just enough room that generations can avoid each other, children at one end, and adults at the other, during what is arguably the most important hour of the week, the hour that rejuvenates our souls, grounds us in what is most important, connects us to the world outside of ourselves, and renews the covenant that binds each to all.

I’m going to go out on a limb here.  I bet Sophia’s family doesn’t live in a giant house, and I’ll bet they do things together.  On purpose.  Like sharing meals, doing projects, making music, and entertaining guests.  They live their covenant every day, and that practice, that constant engagement and attention to one another is exactly what makes the covenant livable over the long haul.

So now that you are at a crossroads in your life as a congregation, as your home is starting to feel small and your beloved minister has left, you have the chance to assess how you want to be with each other in the future.  Do you want youth to be separated by square footage and programming?  Or do you want to maximize your opportunities to engage with one another as you live out that which you come together to celebrate each Sunday: the covenant that binds you together as a family of faith… dare I say it, the godliness of this family of faith. 

This space gives you a unique opportunity to create the kind of home that all the other churches on the block would envy, a place with the reality of order, the blessing of community, the glory of hospitality, the crown of a covenant well-lived.  The scale of this place, and the way you occupy it, gives you the chance to do no less than to teach your children to see the world in a completely different way, to experience the light of the universe in a unique way, and to use that vision to go out into the world and bless it, to create a world where everyone has a home, and to live out the values of inclusion and justice they learned here.

May it be so.

Finding Your Saving Message by Julie Brock
April 16, 2013 at the
Unitarian Universalist Community of the Mountains

Good morning. It is a pleasure to worship with you this morning. I want to thank Rev. Meghan for sharing her pulpit with me. She is off to general assembly, and it happens that my flight is a day later than hers, so I get the honor of being with you today. I have to say, though, I’m already getting a little excited for general assembly. This morning Gini Courter wrote on her facebook, “What would it be like to have thousands of people to sing Blue Boat Home with?” Magical! There is always something kind of magical when thousands of Unitarian Universalists gather in one place. It is so validating. We are such a small religion that sometimes it is difficult to remember that there are that many of us!

Although, according to the Pew research center, Unitarian Universalist grew 15% in the last ten years. When every other Protestant denomination is shrinking, our numbers are exploding at record rates. The folks in Boston are very excited about this. In fact the UUA has hired a full time congregational growth specialist. Her name is Tandi Rogers, and it is Tandi’s job to study all the congregations that are growing and find out what they have in common, so we can tell everyone to do the same thing. Tandi researches growth trends and presents her finds at general and regional and district assemblies, and at other business-like meetings where UU congregational leaders gather.
Amazingly enough, according to Tandi, there is one thing that growing congregations have in common across the board. Across geographic location, and starting size, and
theological leaning, and budget, and year of congregational establishment, the congregations that were growing had one crucial thing in common: They all had a clear saving message that they lived-out in the world. Those were the words Tandi Rogers used: a clear, saving message that they lived-out in the world.
When I heard Tandi say this at last year’s Pacific Central District Assembly, I was thrilled, and, if I’m honest, a little perplexed. Immediately, my mind started pondering what this meant. I mean, it wasn’t really super all that useful, because it isn’t directly actionable. It isn’t telling me to advertize a certain way or offer a certain kind of service. In fact it doesn’t really mean anything except that somehow, I understood that … actually … it means everything.
Having a saving message means that a church has a purpose beyond self perpetuation. Having a saving message means the congregation has thought about and decided on what is ultimately important in life, and advertized that their church is a place where reverence and honor is given to that ultimately important thing. And they don’t advertize it by putting their message on the order of service. They advertize by being of service in the world, making connections in their communities, and choosing pathways for the church that are about things larger than what is going on inside the church walls.
Imagine with me for a moment a UU church: a cute, smallish church with an aging population, because most people who attend that church have done so for years. Week to week the only thing that changes on the order of service is the sermon topic and the title of the hymns. The most important thing that happens from month to month is the 3rd Sunday potluck put on by the women’s circle. The sermons often discuss the latest social theory, or send support and love to the victims of the world’s latest atrocity that the congregation morns from afar and possibly takes up a collection for. It is a happy congregation, a comfortable congregation, a stable congregation. It will exist this way until it ages into oblivion.
But ask yourself the following questions: Why do they gather? How do they grow? What do they serve?
Comfort and stability are not bad things, but they have no business being the goals of a church. Church is about more than that—or it should be. Comfort and stability can be isolating; they can reduce the need for us to need one another, the need for us to save each other. Those who are comfortable lose the compulsion to seek.
Now imagine with me for a moment a church that, whatever size, is bustling, is moving. Imagine with me a church where the message each week is one that upsets at least a couple of congregants, because it is asking them to consider things outside of their comfort zone—it is asking them to change and expand. And the congregants who attend have signed on for this. Not only have they agreed to be stretched they are funding their limbering. Heavy dense questions are considered and then acted on, both inside and outside the sanctuary walls. People from all walks of life flock to this church because they understand that we can only appreciate true human potential when we see people in all their forms. And even though it is hard to be in a diverse community, people stay and work on it because they get that, in the end, it’s not about them being comfortable. It’s about how many folks are saved.
Why does this church gather? How does this church grow? What does this church serve? Which would you rather be a part of?
It is a valid question. Creating a saving message is powerful work. It is also extremely difficult work, and some churches are quite happy to remain comfortable. The work of crafting a message of salvation is particularly difficult in a Unitarian Universalist context. Most major religions do the heavy lifting for you. They have a broad saving message that is suppose to apply to everyone. Christian and Islamic faiths have a omnipotent God figure that judges how you live your life or express your faith, and it decides the status of your salvation based on that. Buddhism says that there is a state of enlightenment that can be attained by letting go of worldly attachment, and this state will save you from suffering. Hinduism also has a state of enlightenment one can reach and be saved from the cycles of reincarnation. But Unitarian Universalists don’t exactly have a message of salvation that applies across the religion. We used to. Universalism came to be as a direct reaction to a salvation theory that did not sit right. John Calvin brought about a message of predestination that said God had already decided who was damned and who was saved, and basically we should just not worry about it. Leave the thinking to the holy folks. To which our Universalist ancestors said, “Um … no that’s not it.” And an entire new religion was created.
Our ancestor felt the all encompassing love of God and knew that it was for everyone. And I think, inherently, that we still know this today. We know that every being has worth and dignity, and deserves love, justice and compassion. We might not use the same vocabulary but we’re still here, we are still gathering Sunday mornings in a church, not a social hall or library, or a political rally. We’re here in a sanctuary. So … this begs the question: What are we taking sanctuary from? From what do we need saving?
Clarence Skinner is called the father of modern Universalism, and he, along with many liberal theologians, had this idea that the only hell possible was one we created on this earth by being out of right relationship. As I observe the world around me, I find evidence for this theory every day. It seems that most every act of evil perpetrated by a human being is done so out of some kind of fear. Wars are started because someone fears the loss of power. Hate crimes are committed because someone fears their lifestyle will no longer be dominate. People fear the loss of influence and control, but it seems to me that the real fear goes much deeper than that. We covet influence and control because we are really afraid of being alone. We are terrified of facing a world where we have only ourselves for comfort, companionship, or distraction.
Our deepest collective fear as a species is isolation. That is what we take sanctuary from in this room. We come here to create a beloved community that we may save each other from isolation. We come to dwell in the presence of the all-pervading all-encompassing, many named, but never-ending love. That ever-present company that the first Universalist knew belonged to all people.
What if isolation was the thing that we ultimately needed saving from? What if being saved simply meant you truly understand that you will never be alone? Could salvation be as easy as sensing the never fading divine presence and understanding every moment that you are deeply okay? What kind of Grace could you live out if you felt that way? What amount of anger could you let go of? What kind of peace could you spread? What new and beautiful perspective on life would be opened up to you if you were immune to the deepest kind of human trepidation?
But we Unitarian Universalists are apprehensive. We are apprehensive as a people to truly engage the power of that love. For some reason it is more comfortable for us to think about saving others. We are going to save the communities that are forced to live on the margins and we are going to save the disinherited. But then it becomes us and them, and we are in a different form of isolation.
Instead of trying to save the others, what if we created a message so inclusive, so universally true that it brought folks out of their isolated states and made us come together to worship, and rejoice that we are here, and that life has an infinite possibility for beauty?
Barack Obama crafted the pithy and invigorating message of “Yes we can!” And people heard it, and they believed, and thousands flocked to the polls. Martin Luther King, Jr., believed in a world where the content of one’s character meant more than the color of one’s skin. He proclaimed it possible, and millions took to the streets. Mohatma Ghandi preached that non-violence and revolution were simultaneously possible, and countless numbers put down their arms. So what is your saving message? What do you have to proclaim that will cause the human soul to pay attention? Jerry’s story: When he was at the new-member orientation, when it was his turn to speak, emboldened by the candor of others, he proclaimed, “I don’t believe in the divinity of Jesus, and I don’t believe the virgin birth, and I don’t believe in the literal resurrection, and—” About that time, Rev. Meghan interrupted him, leaned across the table, looked him in the eye, and answered, “You are welcome here.”
Tandi Rogers said that the churches that are growing are doing so because they have considered what it means to have a saving message. The ministers and congregational leaders and members have engaged that God love, they have felt the penetrating connectivity, and they have decided how the presence of such a force calls them to be in the world. They examine all of those callings, find the common threads, and name that truth. They demonstrate the veracity of that truth by turning it into a lived gospel. And all of a sudden their souls are on the line too. It is their human connection and their life mission that are in question, and, with matters that sacred, there are no people in the middle and people on the margins. There are just people, and we all need to save each other.
I don’t know what happens after this body lets go of this life. I’m becoming increasingly ok with that, because … well … I don’t’ think that I have a choice. I’m certainly not presumptuous enough to assert that I have a message that will work for all people or even for all of Unitarian Universalism. But I have one for myself. It might be cliché, but I’m kind of a first and seventh principle kind of girl. I believe that every voice is sacred, and we are all connected. And while this human container causes me to be extremely fallible, it is my life’s mission to remember that message each and every day, and each and every moment. If I could look at every person and perfectly remember that 13 billion years ago we all originated from the same single point of light, if I could keep permanently in my consciousness that we are all made of the same star stuff, that my body is our body, if I could always hold up that another person’s perspective on life is another window unto the face of God, then I would be infinite. I would disappear into the connective force that created life, no longer having use for a singular body. My consciousness would melt into a defiance of time, no longer needing to separate what was, is, and will be.
If I had to come up with a story to describe the end of time, that’s what would happen. We would all realize the depth of our connection, soften and permeate one another, and return to that original point of light with a lot of new stories to tell. Maybe that’s what happened. Maybe we got bored hanging out in eternity knowing everything, so we created this life game to keep ourselves entertained.
These are stories I tell myself from the land of maybe. But right now, we are living in the land of what is. We are watching people flock to churches that have a clear and urgent message. People have often said to me that Unitarian Universalism has a weak theology, because we don’t provide concrete answers. We are an unnerving religion because we don’t tell you how to get saved. Unnerving maybe. But weak? I don’t think so. I think it is the stronger message that our salvation lies in our own hands, that our scripture is written from our own saving messages, and that our gospel is lived through our action.
Our growth will not come from a stellar membership committee or the world’s best potluck casserole. We will grow when we decide what kind of church we want to be, when
we demonstrate what kind of people we are by considering and deciding on a saving message that we live out in the world. Because we believe in love, and we feel our unbreakable connection, every day, right now, from now on.
Blessed be and amen.

Joy and Woe

By Rev. Meghan Cefalu

June 9, 2013 – UUCM

A poem by William Blake has been running through my mind in these last few days, as I’ve been preparing to stand here and speak to you this morning. He writes:

Joy and woe are woven fine, A clothing for the soul divine, Under every grief and pine, Runs a joy with silken twine. It is right it should be so, We were made for joy and woe, And when this we rightly know, Through the world we safely go.

On Thursday of last week I sent a letter out to the members and friends of this congregation. I know that for a number of reasons not all of you here this morning have received or had a chance to read the letter. I will take this opportunity to read parts of it so you all have the same information.

Dear Friends,

It is with both deep sadness and the excitement of a new adventure that I let you know that I have accepted a position in another congregation and will be resigning as Minister of the Unitarian Universalist Community of the Mountains as of December 31, 2013.

Serving the Unitarian Universalist Community of the Mountains has been one of the greatest joys in my life. And so the decision to leave has not been an easy one to make. It has been through prayer and reflection, conversations with my spiritual director, friends, family and colleagues that I have come to realize that this is the right time. I truly believe that the congregation, and especially the current and incoming leadership, is well positioned to navigate this transition with grace. Just as I trust that I am ready for a new challenge, I have every confidence that the strength and resilience of this community will serve you well through this period of change.

This congregation and I have both grown a tremendous amount over these last seven years. It has been such a privilege to get to know and love you during this time of shared ministry. The idea that I will have to say goodbye to every single one of you breaks my heart. Thankfully, we will have six more months to celebrate and honor our ministry together, bring some closure to this chapter of UUCM’s life, say goodbye and wish one another well.

I will begin my new position as the Assistant Minister for Congregational Engagement and Pastoral Care at the First Unitarian Society of Newton in Newton, Massachusetts (ten miles west of Boston) in January. I am excited to have the opportunity to work collaboratively with the senior minister and a large staff team. My focus will be on bringing in and integrating new members, creating programs that will encourage multigenerational engagement in the congregation, and facilitating the lay ministry program.

The letter goes on with some more logistical points that I’ll talk about this morning.

I know that this news may come as a shock to you whenever it was that you first heard it. I wish there was a more gentle process of letting you know. It has been said that, “Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.”[1]

I want to reiterate that this was not an easy decision to make. While the new job is just exactly what I’ve dreamed of, there is still a part of me keeps asking, “Are you crazy?”. This congregation and I have grown up together. I am your first settled minister. You are the first congregation to call me. We have fumbled our way along and learned how to navigate this minister/congregation relationship together. It has been a delightful journey thus far. And now things are really humming. Why would I want to leave such a good thing, especially when it is going so well?

And how can I possibly say goodbye to all of you people whom I have gotten to know and grown to love? How can I leave before watching with pride as next year’s high school seniors, Sophia and Willow, bridge into young adulthood? How can I miss hearing the kids in the next Coming of Age program read their credo statements? And, strange as this might sound, I can hardly stand the idea of someone else performing the memorial services for some of our more fragile elders. Who will know them and love them enough to do it right? Leaving this congregation might just break my heart.

And that is okay. My heart has been broken before and it will be broken again. I am a big believer in that saying, “It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” Or as William Blake reminds us, “We were made for joy and woe.”

Just because it will hurt like hell is no reason to halt the forward momentum of life. Life’s transitions are never without some pain. You cannot have learning, growth and change without some degree of loss. So, as much as it will hurt to say goodbye to you, and as much as moving across the country and leaving my mother and the rest of my family and friends pains me, I feel the tug of a new adventure pulling at me. And, I am taking a leap of faith.

Maybe you are reminded of a leap of faith that you have taken in your life. Maybe it was when you went off to school, or joined the armed forces, or came out of the closet, or asked someone to marry you, or said ‘yes’ when someone else asked, or finally broke down and sought help for an addiction because your life was spinning out of control. When was it that you took a leap of faith?

Whatever the situation was, it was your decision to say ‘yes’ to a deeper calling within you that changed everything. You had to be willing to let go of what had been in order to take those first tentative steps towards something new. Do you remember? Do you remember feeling scared? Did your decision upset someone else?

Eckhart Tolle writes, “Some changes look negative on the surface but you will soon realize that space is being created in your life for something new to emerge.”

It is my deep faith that my choice to leave UUCM is ultimately in the service of life and creativity and growth for everyone involved. Or at least it can be, if we choose to respond from that perspective.

May it be so.

 

Part II – Sophia McKean

Part III – FAQ

 

The Board and Committee on Ministry and staff have had the chance to sit down with me and ask me questions and share their thoughts about this decision. I’d like to offer some of their questions and my answers, as I’m sure you all may have similar questions.

 

Q: Why didn’t you tell us this was a possibility? It would have been nice if we could have known.

A: I have longed for this process to be more open and transparent. It was painful to be keeping this possibility a secret from you. But all of the wisdom I’d received from colleagues and the advice of the UUA office of ministerial settlement told me that I should not inform anyone at the church until I had been officially offered another position. Part of the reasoning is that if the new job had not come to pass, my ministry with you might be compromised.

I am committed to transparency and healthy process. So after I received the official offer from the board chair of the Newton church on Wednesday morning I wrote the letter of resignation and called meetings with the Board of Trustees and the members of the Committee on Ministry for the following day. I called and spoke directly with those leaders who would be the most affected by my leaving. I would like to make myself available in these next few weeks to speak personally with any of you who might have a particularly difficult time processing the news.

 

Q: Why now? Especially right after you were gone on renewal leave last year?

A: I was told in seminary that I would know when a ministry with a particular congregation is complete. I never in my wildest dreams thought I’d ever feel that way about UUCM. Until I did.

My time away on renewal leave was a time of rest and spiritual growth. And, inevitably, the time for reflection gave me some clarity about my career path. I became clearer about what I enjoyed the most about parish ministry and those aspects that I would like to spend less time on. This new position will allow me to more deeply explore those areas that light me up.

I learned recently that the average length of a ministry is now about 6 years. UU ministers are encouraged to take their sabbaticals in their fifth year. I don’t think that this is a coincidence. It makes sense to me that once people have the down time to gain some clarity they may come to realize they are ready for something new. That is the reason the contract often states that the minister will serve the congregation for a full year following the end of a sabbatical leave.

While it might have seemed like I was away all of last year, my sabbatical actually ended in December. I was taking my accrued vacation and study leave during the months of February and March. Just to make sure I understood the language of my contract correctly I sought and received confirmation from the UUA settlement office.

I know it may seem awfully soon to be leaving you. But this new job was slated to begin in

August of this year. It was such an ideal position to me that I let the search committee know I was interested, but that I could not possibly start until January to honor my commitment to this congregation. Ultimately, they decided it was more important to wait for the right person than to have someone else who could start in August.

The other part of the answer to “why now?” has to do with you. I have no doubts in my mind that this congregation will continue on its upward trajectory – even through a major transition. Last year while I was away you all did more than simply survive my absence; you thrived. Attendance on Sunday mornings did not suffer. The board made great headway in a number of important areas. The RE program grew by 100%. Pledges increased. People had disagreements and worked them out. New members were drawn in. You did all of that without my guidance and support. Your new leadership is organized and competent and ready. There are members here who remember this congregation before I arrived. Their long-term perspective will help bridge the community through the interim ministry and then into your next settled minister. You are ready.

And this may be harder for you to take in, but I believe you are ready for new blood too. There are several projects that I know need to happen in order to further the ministry of the congregation. And I honestly don’t feel like I have the drive and motivation to spur them on. Someone new will inevitably come in all fired up with the energy to move with you to the next level.

I am committed to several major projects before I leave. We will hire an Office Administrator, and go through the process to re-envision and restate our congregation’s mission. Adding an administrative staff person will help provide some continuity and improve our communication. Having a well-defined and dynamic mission statement will sharpen our focus towards our true goals as a congregation.

And there are other significant changes already afoot. Under the leadership of the Director of Religious Education, the Religious Education Committee has recently decided to become the Lifespan Religious Education committee. This new model will encompass Adult Religious Education and will include multigenerational learning and service opportunities. I know this congregation is bound for even more greatness!

 

Q: What is the process? What will happen next?

A:  Most likely the board will hire an interim minister to begin in January. Interim ministry is a specialized ministry. Interims are specially trained to help a congregation grieve the former minister and prepare themselves to call the next minister. They are like the official rebound relationship of ministers.

The UUA helps match interims with churches in need. The interim will probably be with you for 18 months during which time a search committee will form and begin the process of finding your next settled minister.

I want to reassure you that you will not have a hard time attracting another wonderful minster here. This is a very desirable congregation. Not only is Grass Valley situated in one of the most beautiful places in the country, but this congregation has what ministers look for most: you know how to love a minister. That matters a great deal. And this congregation has a healthy emotional system, meaning that you do not tolerate anyone holding the community hostage by using intimidation, bullying or bribery. You have no idea how rare and precious that is.  You have a covenant of right relations that truly influences your interactions with one another. You have a demonstrated commitment to fair compensation for your staff. This will be a dream job for a wide number of very talented ministers.

And so we will have these next six months to say goodbye in all the ways we need to.

Goodbye is not easy. There is a reason last week’s service was on the topic of letting go. They say a minister preaches what she most needs to hear. We will help one another let go and embrace and even get excited about the upcoming changes.

Eminent Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh has said, “It is not impermanence that makes us suffer. What makes us suffer is wanting things to be permanent when they are not.”

Every goodbye brings up all the other goodbyes we’ve had to say. Every grief surfaces all our other experiences of loss and feelings of abandonment. There may be buttons pushed in you by this news that surprise you. Remember that the process of grieving is never tidy. It is messy and unpredictable. Feelings of anger, sadness, indifference and excitement about new possibilities will cycle around and around. It can be helpful to simply know to expect this and allow whatever feelings you have to simply be there.

In a few moments we’ll have the opportunity to participate in a ritual that will allow you to explore and express some of the reactions or feelings you may be having this morning.

First, I’d like to move us into a time of meditation and inward reflection.

Remember that under the level of your thoughts and emotions, exists a deeper state of mind that is peaceful and calm. This state is always available to you. It takes some practice knowing how to find and rest in this place.

I invite you to close your eyes, take slow deep breaths. Call all of yourself back into your body. Feel yourself rooted firmly to the planet. Bring your awareness into the center of your head.

Susan Sanford shared this image with me this week and I’d like to pass it on to you.

If you imagine yourself as the water in a lake you can see that even when a large rock splashes into the water upsetting the surface and sending out waves in every direction, the rock is not the lake. The lake remains. It grows calm again. And when fish and other creatures move and muddy the bottom of the lake, the fish are not the lake. The mud settles and the water grows still again. When wind ripples the surface causing whitecaps to form, the wind is not the lake. The lake remains fundamentally unchanged.

There is in you a deep inner stillness that is not upset when your life situation changes around you.

Take some more deep and slow breaths. Bring your awareness inward, into the center of your head. Call all of yourself back to this present moment.

Let us rest for a few moments in the stillness and peace of our inmost calm.

We’ll come out singing our sung prayer, Spirit of Life…

 

[1] Mary    Shelley.           Frankenstein.