Sermons
March 1, 2009 - "Habits of the Heart "
The Shakers tell us that it is “a gift to be simple and a gift to be free.” They found that gift through work and song and dance and prayer. What about us? What practices have we developed to inform, heal, and strengthen our hearts so that we too might feel simply free? What has taught us to listen, see the truth around us and to sustain hope and compassion in hard times? How about practicing meditation, prayer, jogging, reading, writing, music, or art? Or participation in a community that both sustains and challenges you? We call these disciplines practices, because we do them over and over so that we might go deeper in the hopes of seeing new truths. We also call these practices habits because we hope that they will become almost second nature.
I read an article on brain activity that said “performing an action over and over changes the brain’s circuitry…Anything that we do on a regular basis rewires the brain. When you practice a certain skill, the circuit grows stronger, and the area of your brain dedicated to performing the skill gets larger.” [Cooper] So, maybe the question should be, what habits are you teaching your brain? Are they helping your heart open or are they numbing you to the pains of the world?
We need stimulating habits of the heart because just as stretching and strengthening our muscles does not come without practice, it is the same for our hearts. We too easily go through life minute by minute, focusing on the little stuff which is often pretty irritating or self serving. In fact meditation is one great spiritual practice that reminds us that really all we have is “the little stuff.” Deep meditation also shows us that to find meaning in the day to day we must not just go through the motions. We must pay exquisite attention to the details and let them go. It takes years of practice for paying attention to become a habit of the heart.
In our reading today we heard from The Reverend A. Powell Davies, the Unitarian minister at All Souls Church in Washington DC. He wrote about the tendency for most of us to not want to pay attention to the hard truths of our lives. “Help us to beware of language which in its soothing beauty hides the truth, and especially the truth about ourselves.” Davies knew that we do not want to see how we are complicit in systems of injustice. He realized, through his own life of prayer and social activism that it is easier to turn away then it is to turn inward for guidance. He prayed to God. You might pray to, or focus on the Cosmos or the Spirit of Life or Truth.
“O God, to whom we pray for truth, be with us in our trembling fear lest we find it. We fear its light; our lives are full of shadows: what shall we do for shelter when we stand before the brightness of truth? We do not want, O God, the truth that troubles us and seeks to save us; we look for truth that brings safety, comfort and repose. We want to know that Thou art God and that our lives are in Thy care. We do not want the truth that tells us of a world of human wretchedness, with wrongs to be set right and justice calling us to serve it. For if we seek this truth, we must admit our own betrayals; our callousness and cowardice, our evasions and our love of ease. We do not seek at all the truth of conscience. We want Thee in Thy tenderness, Thy loving kindness, Thy compassion, an indulgent Heavenly Father with unwavering forgiveness. What shall we do, O Spirit of the Holy and the Highest? What shall we do to be saved?” [Davies]
Does this ring true for you? Do you sometimes, if not often, fear that if you find the truth that you will not have the strength to do anything about it? I know that often I would rather look for truth that brings me safety and comfort than truth that troubles me and seeks to change me. I would rather that my heart be a couch potato than to get up, and look at my own “stuff”; my own habits of selfishness and narrow minded thinking. I would rather do what I usually do, than risk being saved from my own self.
And so, to counter my tendency to turn away from the truth of suffering and my part in that suffering, I practice, practice, practice, new prayers, so that I might develop new habits of the heart. This practice in developing healthy and healing habits of the heart begins in childhood and goes on throughout our lives. We adults teach the children how to look squarely at themselves when we ask them “What were you doing when that happened? What were you thinking?” We do it for years; teaching our children and each other to look, listen, and not run away from ourselves.
I have been thinking about the habits of the heart for two reasons. One is that we are now in the Christian season of Lent and for me, growing up in a devoted Catholic family, Lent was full of spiritual practices. These practices were geared to help us go within ourselves. We were taught to look at our failings and our desires so that we might be prepared to reflect on the central focus of Christian life which is the life and teachings, death, and resurrection of Jesus. We prayed special prayers, went to daily Mass, fasted from the candy that we all craved, and sat in quiet; watching and waiting and facing the inherent suffering and rebirth in the Christian story.
Of course, we didn’t want to do this. We didn’t want to give up candy, or go to Mass at 7AM every day before school. We didn’t want to go to confession where for the most part we had to struggle to come up with something to say to the priest. We didn’t want to sit in church on Good Friday and face the Stations of the Cross – those paintings that told the story of the last days of the life of Jesus. Who the heck wants to do that? We wanted, as A. Powell Davis says “…Thy tenderness, Thy loving kindness, Thy compassion, an indulgent Heavenly Father with unwavering forgiveness.” We didn’t want to be bothered in our hearts and our minds with our own childish lack of kindness to each other.
Because that is what it mostly came down to for us; having to face when we were not kind to each other, to our parents, and to ourselves. On reflection now, years later, I wonder. Was this good practice? Did this help me, then and now, to be more honest, more able to face the truth of my life? Or did it just make me feel guilty, humiliated, less than worthy? On the whole, I think it was good practice. On the whole, I think I am better off because of these habits. Now, these many years later, I find I can more easily sit quietly, wait, watch the suffering in the world and find my place within it.
My experience is different than yours. You may have been taught these same Lenten practices and experienced them in a totally different way. Or these practices may seem absolutely foreign to you. No matter; because however we were raised, as we move into the next stage of our lives we must look seriously at what habits of the heart we are now trying to put in place. We need to do this so that we don’t spend our days focusing only on the minutia, and running away from the truth that is knocking on our door. Knocking for us to wake up, pay attention, and do something to effect change in an injustice and sorrowful world. A. Powell Davis ends his prayer with a question. He asks “What shall we do, O Spirit of the Holy and the Highest? What shall we do to be saved?” Saved from what; saved from our own limited thoughts and actions.
So, my thinking back on my experiences with Lent led me to question the usefulness of spiritual practices. But then this past week I thought about it for a second time while I was sitting with a group of clergy and lay people. I was at the Franklin County Interfaith Council meeting. We were sitting in a circle with people who work in the social services. We had gathered to talk about how all of us; clergy, church members, and social service workers give of our hearts all day long. We give of our hearts to those in distresses. We give even when we don’t know if we have enough or the right thing to give. And then, sometime later, we find ourselves growing deplete and we think, we have nothing left to give. Some people call this “compassion fatigue” or “burnout.” Many of you sitting here in this room have felt this kind of burnout. You just want to close the door or pull up the covers and go back to sleep. You no longer want to look directly at life.
We went around the circle and listened to each other talk about how we each sustain ourselves so that we can reduce those moments of wanting to turn away or to go back to sleep. We were talking essentially about what habits of the heart we had each developed. I thought the priests and the other clergy would talk about their faith in God and in someway they did but it surprised me. One priest talked about growing up and working in the tobacco fields and now years later, he finds himself sustained by raising roses. Another talked about finding ways of seeing what he called “The Big Picture – The Good Big Picture” and for him that was through being in nature, looking at art, and listening to music.
A member of a church talked about how important her 12 step group was for her day to day life. A man talked about how important his friends and family were to him – how they sustain him in keeping his heart open to other people. The woman next to me said that her dogs sustain her – her dogs, her children and her husband – but her dogs came first. Many people talked about their faith communities, or groups of friends that have stuck with them through thick and thin. And some people talked about prayer – not necessarily asking God to solve their problems, but the kind of prayer or meditation that helps them to focus on who was in front of them – and how could they stay with them, just stay with them and hear whatever story was waiting to be told.
This group of people was talking about how they tried to make heart work a habit. They were talking about how they could strengthen their heart so they could keep it open. And so I leave you today, with questions. What do you do to build up your own capacity to see the truth of suffering and injustice close by you and in the world? What do you do to sustain yourself in your own work of caring for yourself and the people and world around you? Is it taking a day to be silent, or walking in the woods? Is it confessing to another person how you have fallen down in your soul and don’t know how to get up? Is it singing, running…What is your practice. Is it becoming a habit of the heart?
And we, as a community of faith; how are we doing caring for each other so that we strengthen each other’s hearts? From my point of view as your minister I watch you do for each other what you would want done for yourselves. You visit each other when you are sick. You help each other when there are emergencies. You work together, with great love and commitment so that every Sunday there is a caring and sustaining worship service. When you hear a need in the community, you do not turn away and go back to bed. You gather and talk about it and figure out how this church should respond. These are all habits of the heart for our church. So how are we doing at caring for each other as we do this work? And how are we helping each other avoid the compassion fatigue that leads to cynicism?
The Shakers lived, danced, prayed and worked together to experience being in the “valley of love and delight.” I encourage all of us to look at our practices and our habits. If they are helping us grow more courageous so that we might face the hard truths of our lives with an open heart then this too might be such a valley. This is the work of our church. Thank you for your dedication to this life of the heart.
Sources:
The Language of the Heart by A.Powell Davis
Tis a Gift To Be Simple – Hymn # 16 in Singing the Living Tradition
“Computing the Cost: Nicholas Carr on How the Internet is Rewiring our Brains” by Arnie Cooper in The Sun Magazine
February 15th, 2009 - "To Be a Valentine "
Kahil Gibran, known to most of us as “The Prophet” talks about work and love. He says “All work is empty save when there is love….” To work with love is “to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your own heart, even as your beloved were to wear the cloth.” [Gibran] He is telling us, on one level that unless we pay exquisite attention to our work, and bring to it the spirit of love, that our lives will be empty and worthless.
This is a big charge and one that you may or may not agree with. How many of us put our hearts into our work? More often, we work because we have to and we are happy to be done with it at the end of the day. That is of course, if you have work. In our present economic situation more of us will be losing our jobs never mind working with love.
But perhaps Gibran is not really talking about jobs, and maybe not even about work, if work is what you do to make a living. Maybe he is telling us that not only our work but our lives are empty without love. And it is our blessing and our responsibility to build love, one moment, one person, one act at a time.
Here we are, gathered together in the season of love – for that is what Valentine’s Day is supposed to be. We are celebrating our church, our community of love and caring, by sharing valentines with the children. We are to be their buddies and they are to be buddies to us. We were encouraged to branch out from last year – to add another buddy to our lives, even as we continue to care for and about the relationship that we consecrated last year with valentines and ice cream. I thought that this was a stroke of genius when Deb suggested it – choose someone new, someone you have not yet pledged your love to. Let another child or another adult in on your circle of caring. And so in this sweet way, we do the work of love. We make love visible in this sweet and silly way.
Truthfully I do think that Valentines Day is both sweet and silly, and often over the top. It is over the top because it has been made into one of the most commercial holidays since Christmas. Cards, flowers, candies, silk pajamas, dinner out and hearts, hearts, hearts. All for love or mostly for money? I think it is really both. Love and money. If it were not somehow, at the root, about love and friendship I don’t think the money would flow so easily.
Did you know that one of the first companies making Valentine cards in the United States was here in Massachusetts? In 1847, just twenty five years before this church building in Northfield was erected, a woman named Esther Howland developed a successful business in her Worcester, Massachusetts home with hand-made valentine cards. From that time on the card giving business of Valentine’s Day has grown. Valentine’s Day itself was supposed to be initially a Christian feast day in honor of Saint Valentine but I am not sure it that is really truth or fiction. As a holiday it is celebrated in most every country of the world.
What interests me about Valentines Day is the idea that we need a holiday to say “I Love You.” We need a day, set aside from the rest, to declare to our friends, our families, our children and our lovers, that we love them – and we hope that on this day they will tell us that they love us. It sounds to me like we are a rather insecure and love starved world – tell me that you love me!
Maybe we are. Maybe our world is starved for true deep expressions of love. Maybe we are good with the props – the cards and the candy – but not so good with the truth about our caring for each other and our deep need to be loved.
A Catholic priest Edward Hays talked about this idea of a love starved culture when he said “You and I are meant to be “letters” to the world. People who “read” us receive a message from the Divine Mystery…Now there’s a delightful vocation – to be a sort of “valentine” from God to a love hungry world!” Hays then goes on to say why he thinks that we need to find ways to communicate this love and why letter writing is one good way of sharing love messages. He says “Perhaps we could pause at the conclusion of having penned a note to a friend… and we could breathe part of our spirit into the envelope. More than just a puff of breath, we could send along with our message a part of our soul.” [ Hays ]
Hays is talking here about hand written messages, old fashioned, snail mail letters, sent to a friend. I wonder if we can do the same thing with our buddy valentines – breathing part of our soul into them. I wonder if you can do with this email, or instant messaging, or texting, or blogging, or face book, or any of the many newer methods of communicating words. Or is something live, lost in the translation when it is received instantly. What do you think?
However we do it, by letter, by valentine or by email, we do need to find ways in our day and age, to show the people around us, at church and home and the office, that we love them. I say show because I believe that it is not really so important to “send” a valentine, as it is to “be” a valentine. And not just on Valentines Day.
Our reading this morning is a reminder that we need to show our love, our gratitude and our willingness to forgive and be forgiven over and over, in good times and in sad times. We need to share the four things and maybe even more things on a regular basis so that we are not caught up short, in our dying days without having made our love visible.
This reading was very powerful for me when I was working in hospice and also last summer when my own father was dying. I saw in my work and in my family that we are love starved and that many, if not most of us, are afraid of saying “I Love You.” Perhaps we are afraid because saying how much we love and need to be love shows up our vulnerability and this is hard. Not only are we afraid to say “I Love You” but we are terrified to say “I Forgive You” and “Please Forgive Me.” Maybe we think we will open up a can of worms that we cannot get back in. Maybe we think that talking about forgiveness means that we must forget all the pain we have suffered in our lives or that we do not deserve to be forgiven. And how about “Thank You?” Why is it hard, on a daily basis, to say “Thank You?”
I think that it is hard to say, and to live out, these simple phrases, mostly because we do not have enough practice doing so. We are not a culture that celebrates gratitude except on Thanksgiving. We are not taught how, at the end of every day, to not go to sleep until we have asked for forgiveness for all that we have messed up on. And even though we are surrounded by valentines, we do not have enough practice in saying how much we love and appreciate each other; how much we need to have and to be buddies.
First Parish is a place that we practice being a valentine; a valentine of love, forgiveness and gratitude. In our worship service every Sunday we say out loud that “Love is the Spirit of this church.” We seek to dwell together in peace and we forgive each other when we do not and then we promise to try again. We pledge to help each other and to thank each other for the help we give and receive.
In our time of prayer and meditation we offer our prayers and our love for all those who grieve and suffer. This is practice in loving. We acknowledge in our hearts when we have fallen short of our principles and our beliefs. This is practice in asking for forgiveness. And we give generously from our hearts and our wallets, week after week. This is practice in saying “thank you” for everything that we have been given. And we raise our voices every Sunday and sing “Let faith and hope with love arise. Let beauty, truth and good be sung.” This is practice in remembering that we must put our best self forward, striving to be more loving, more forgiving, more grateful.
Today, in our Valentine Feast, we are not only sending each other a silly, sweet, beautiful card, but we are being what it is that we profess – a loving community that practices what it preaches, Sunday after Sunday, day after day, every day. To be a valentine is a great vocation. Say what you need to say today and everyday, where ever you go, to whoever you meet. Whether it is the four things, or some other message that speaks to your own condition. Say it. Be It. Now. Today. Do not wait. As Gibran says, “The blessed…are standing about you and watching.”
Sources:
Kahil Gibran – The Prophet
Ira Byock – The Four Things That Matter Most
Edward Hays – Secular Sanity
November 2nd, 2008 - "Grumbling in Paradise "
Our reading from the Upanishad, that ancient Hindu scripture, is a wake up call that seems to be written for those of us in New England. We are surrounded here in gold and red, in blue sky and rolling hills, and sometimes we don’t even notice these jewels. We don’t notice it because we are caught, caught in the veil of illusion that keeps nagging at us to get busy and stay busy, to want more and do more, to live in the world of overwhelm and the world of stuff. And when we are living in the world of overwhelm and in the world of stuff we have trouble even noticing the paradise around us.
The Upanishad says “You could have golden treasure buried beneath your feet, and walk over it again and again, yet never find it because you don’t realize it is there. Just so, all beings live every moment in the city of the Divine, but never find the Divine because it is hidden by the veil of illusion.”
I know this to be true for myself and in talking with a number of you over the past year I think it is true for many of us. We want to appreciate our beautiful world, our families and friends, our good fortune, but instead we find ourselves complaining about not having enough time to smell the coffee never mind embrace the world. Some of this is because in the words of the poet Frederick Zydeck, the stuff of life is distracting us from what we are called to be.
Once I had a dream
I stepped before the throne of God
He asked me only one question,
“Did you become what you were supposed to be?”
“I’m not sure,” I told Him.
But when I died I had so much stuff,
it took three days to find me.”
Of course this is not true for everyone. We are, all of us, in different times of our lives. Some of us have more privileges and more stuff than others and some have more responsibilities. We all have different personalities and see the world with our own eyes and from our own experiences. In this time of economic downturn it is even harder for many of us to appreciate the jewels in our lives. When times are tight it is easy to devalue what we have rather than express awe and gratitude. But even while we are hearing the words loss, loss and more loss, there is also background chatter in our culture that is beating a steady drum to the tune of more, more, more. That tune is not making us happy, peaceful, or attentive to what is. And when we do not see what is, we cannot either praise it when it is beautiful, or commit ourselves to upending it, when it is unjust.
A few months ago I started listening to this background chatter in my own life and I wondered what was going on for me and for the people around me. When I heard myself complaining about my life situation I tried to step back and listen and when I did that I realized that I was complaining about things that were only a problem because I was living in a world of abundance. I was too busy. I had too much to do. I was juggling many wonderful but competing things. I had too much stuff. I was, in a word, grumbling in paradise.
I am talking here about the real life paradise that is available to us when we pay close attention to the moment – to who and what is in front of us. This kind of paradise is not a Garden of Life, a place where we get to wander around and eat just about everything in sight. The paradise that I am talking about is present for and in us, no matter who we are.
We are in that paradise when we live deeply and intentionally, in joy and love. Paradise is present for us when we embrace both the tragedies of life and the possibilities that we can change the world and make a positive difference. Our Universalist theology proclaims that no one is too broken to be loved, no one is too troubled to be forgiven and that everyone can experience a kind of paradise. But when we are distracted and overwhelmed, grumbling about our too busy or too full of stuff life we cannot see paradise – the veil of illusion is too thick.
While this idea of grumbling in paradise was running in my mind, I was hearing friends complaining about clothing that they bought on line and had to return because it came in the wrong color. Parents were complaining because they were torn between going to see their daughter in her soccer practice, their son playing in the band, and their mother coming for a weekend visit. Neighbors were complaining because a housing project was being considered down the street and they thought there would be too many cars on the road, too many children in the school system, too many people clogging up their quiet cul de sac. The complaints were real in some sense but just as easily these circumstances could be experienced as joys instead of woes. “Look at what we have, look at what we are surrounded by. Look at the fullness of life. Look at how much we have to share.” Yes, there is a golden treasure buried beneath our feet and we are walking all over it.
True, we do all see the world from our own perspective. Do you remember the Walt Disney version of Snow White? Snow White befriends a group of dwarfs who in turn take care of her. Each of them has a name that reflects something about their personality or their passion or behavior. Sleepy and Sneezy, Dopey and Doc, Bashful, Happy and Grumpy. Some days I know I am more Grumpy than Happy and I definitely know that some days I am mostly Sleepy. But it is not just perspective, it is also the age in which we live. The age, as Reverend Gilbert says “Of Overwhelming.” “We are on a treadmill walking hurriedly, going nowhere: the images of our lives fly pass us as on a movie screen. At such times we need to gather ourselves together, slacken our pace, blank out the screen, ignore the clock.” [Gilbert]
Well if you do not feel like you are on a treadmill most of the year, you might feel that way now as the winter holiday season crashes in. If you are starting to grumble about this holiday treadmill, what better time to gather ourselves together, to ignore the clock, blank out the screen and take stock of our lives? This is the time of the year when we have before us many traditions that teach us to count our blessings, look back on the calendar year and try to peer into the future. This time of year has the potential to be a time of the Spirit, deep and full and loving. But at the same time we often become overwhelmed with our busy lives, trying to do what needs to be done in every corner of our day. And when this happens we find ourselves grumbling and missing the beauty.
This is the busiest time of year for our church. This week we host a fundraising lasagna dinner. In a few weeks we participate in the ecumenical Thanksgiving service and put on a tremendous community Thanksgiving dinner. A few weeks after that we swing into action with the Christmas Fair, a Solstice celebration and our community Christmas Eve service. And of course, this is all happening while many of us are busy managing holidays with our families or dreading the season and waiting for it to just get over with.
As your minister and your friend, I hope that we walk, not run, into this holiday season. I hope that we all find ways to stop and to look deeply and thoughtfully at what we are doing and what it means to us. The activities that we do are important because we are doing them together and for our community. They express the love that we have for this church, and the world around us. They celebrate traditions and remind us about whom we are. But we have the potential in this season and really every season to walk again and again over the golden treasure buried beneath our feet, yet never find it because we don’t realize it is there. It is possible, too possible, to forget why we are doing what we are doing and in doing so, forget to see who and what is most important in our lives. We can easily grumble our way through the holiday season and through our busy, sometimes too busy lives.
Sometimes I think about the dream in Fredrick Zydek’s poem, the one in which he stood before God, stood in the presence of Life, in the realm of paradise, and received one question. “Did you become what you were supposed to be?” This is a question that many of us ask. Is this what we are supposed to be? Is this what we are supposed to be doing? Are we becoming our most joyous, loving, thoughtful selves? Or are we rushing through our lives and grumbling while all around, lies a paradise, waiting for us to wake up and find it.
I believe that there is a golden treasure buried beneath our feet and that we can change our pace, change our priorities, and our world view so that we will see it. We may need to simplify our lives, or our perspectives. We may need to practice meditation or prayer or jogging in the morning, if by practicing we become more tuned in to and more appreciative of the good news; the news that this treasure is ours for the taking if we would stop and see it. If you find yourself grumbling that you do not have time to meditate or pray or jog, or whatever you do then that is something else to consider. If we are feeling overwhelmed by the holiday activities at the church let’s stop, take a breath, remember what it is that we love about these events and keep asking, is this helping us to be what it is that we are supposed to be. If we find that it is not, then it is up to us to turn it around.
Reverend Gilbert says that “we can remind ourselves that we are in charge of our lives – that it is we who dictate the pace, that we can set the rhythm of our own lives…Out of the hectic rush of events we can still set our own pace. We are the only ones who can.”
We are the only ones who can set our own pace and the only ones who can choose if grumbling is what we want to do. We are not stuck, like the dwarfs were, in a one size fits all response to life. Our Universalist message of a loving presence that is available to everyone, on good days or bad days, busy times or times of rest is a message that lifts the veil over the world. If we choose to believe that there is a treasure to be found under our feet it might make a difference in how we live our days.
Sources:
Reading #613 from Singing the Living Tradition
“The Age of Overwhelming” a sermon by Richard Gilbert in the journal Quest June 2008 (including poem by Frederick Zydek)
September 21st , 2008 - "The Worth and Dignity of Every Person? "
Lately I have been asking people what kinds of questions you have about First Parish and about Unitarian Universalism. One reason that I am asking is that we have had a place on our website that is titled “Frequently Asked Questions” followed by the phrase “Coming Soon!” I am not clear on how long our readers have been tantalized by that “Coming Soon” but I am guessing that it has been a long while and that we had better make our promise good.
Another reason I have been asking about questions is because we are in the process of revising our church brochure. What should we put on a pamphlet that might be read by the folks at our Saturday breakfast, or by visitors coming to our services? I remember many years ago when I was a newly attending member of a Unitarian Universalist church. I was asked by a Jewish friend of mine, “what does your church believe anyhow?” and I stumbled in my answer because I realized that I really didn’t know. While I knew many of the things we stood up for, I didn’t really know what the church and the association of churches to holds at its center. I knew that many people said “Oh, Unitarian Universalists believe anything that they want or nothing at all!” I doubted that was true but I couldn’t say for sure.
Over the years I learned that one of the ways Unitarian Universalists express our differing beliefs is by trying to live up to our 7 Principles, the ones that we read in our responsive reading. These Principles are expressions of the values that our congregations hold dear. They are what we strive for and often times fail miserably at. On one level, a Principle like “We affirm and promote justice, equity, and compassion in human relations” sounds simplistic. Someone said to me “Who wouldn’t be for that!” But in fact having such a value front and center in your life is hard to really practice. For instance, think about the question of Capital Punishment and then ask yourself, what kind of justice? Equality for whom? Compassion for everyone? Our 7 Principles may not be what you want someone to recite to you on your death bed, but I do believe that they, and what lies beneath them, is a message that can bring us closer to the heart of our faith.
I believe that the heart of our faith is the spirit of love – the love that we at First Parish claim when we read our declaration of fellowship every Sunday “Love is the spirit of this church and service is its law.” Our Principles and the many sources that we draw upon for inspiration are intended to center us in this love and direct us as we go about our lives. And so, in the spirit of asking questions, I would like to reflect this church year on those Principles. I invite you to join with me in thinking more deeply on this list of values and commitments and to ponder what they say about what we as congregations, attest to be true.
Before the Unitarians and Universalists merged into one denomination, both of these religions worked hard to understand how this spirit of love moved them and held them together in their religious life. The Unitarians got their name from their heretical belief that there is one God, one force of love that unites all. Jesus was their prime teacher of that love. They believed that Jesus was inspired by the spirit of God, but was not God.
The Unitarians were convinced that all people could and should develop a moral character so that we might improve the world for the future generations. They had a strong faith that humans were not perfect and not always good but were in some real way worthy and dignified and or at least “redeemable” From the 18th century, First Parish has preached this kind of liberal message, practicing rational thinking and prioritizing ethical behavior, striving to know what it was to be moral and how to act on these values.
The Universalists were also a free thinking bunch of people, many of them poor, hard working farmers. The foundation of their faith was the then unheard of idea that no one, no one at all, would ever be predestined for hell. They believed in the inherent worth of everyone –the belief that no matter how much you messed up in life, the God of love would never let you go.
The Universalists gathered as a denomination in Winchester New Hampshire in 1803 (205 years ago) and they drafted their profession of faith. What they had to say in 1803 may sound old fashioned now but at that time it was enough to set them apart. They said “We believe that there is one God, whose nature is Love, revealed in one Lord Jesus Christ, by one Holy Spirit of Grace, who will finally restore the whole family of mankind to holiness and happiness.”
They believed that the whole family (not just some of us) was worthy enough to be saved. They also knew that there was disagreement in their churches about just about everything so they added a clause ….. “And while we consider that every Church possesses within itself all the powers of self-government, we earnestly and affectionately recommend to every Church, Society, or particular Association, to exercise the spirit of Christian meekness and charity towards those who have different modes of faith or practice, that where the brethren cannot see alike, they may agree to differ; and let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind. (Winchester Profession)
And so we can see that the Principles that our congregations attest to today are in some part, a continuation of the thinking of our ancestors who prized moral behavior, open thinking, the love and forgiveness of a loving God and the promise to agree to differ.
By 1961 at the merger of these two religions the new Unitarian Universalist Association did its best to reflect the heart and soul of each of these traditions and drew up a list of commonly agreed on principles and purposes. The churches were invited into this discussion and each of them, including First Parish, was given a vote in approving the bylaws. Those Principles were revised again in 1985 giving more thought to the sexist language and to the need to include a more responsible approach to the environment. Today, even as we speak, there is a new committee at work reviewing the Principles, so that they might speak to us, in the 21st Century.
In the new draft under consideration there is a clause after each Principle, trying, in some way, to put flesh on these sparse phrases. The first Principle “We covenant to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person” is followed by this paragraph:
“At the core of Unitarian Unversalism is recognition of the sanctity of every human being across the lifespan. We are relational creatures, capable of both good and evil. We have experienced enough brokenness, including in ourselves, to seek the power of forgiveness and reconciliation. We are called to make choices that help to heal and transform ourselves and the world, and to move toward solidarity with all beings.”
A far cry perhaps from “We believe that there is one God, whose nature is Love, revealed in one Lord Jesus Christ, by one Holy Spirit of Grace, who will finally restore the whole family of mankind to holiness and happiness” but maybe not so far after all. In our 1st Principle we are challenged to affirm and promote that within every one of us there is a built in, inherent, not to be denied, worth and dignity. We not only believe that this core of worth and dignity is within each person, whether we like them or not, but we are called on to affirm and promote this core worth and dignity – to fight for it and to change ourselves so that we might see and work for it. This is what our congregations promise to the world and to each other.
Our 1st Principle “does not say the inherent worth and dignity of people with whom we happen to agree or whom we like. It says every person…and it does not admit exception.” (Collier) This is a tall order. It means that Unitarian Universalists, do not believe everything or nothing, we believe that we are called to respect and stand up for the inherent dignity of everyone. We may disagree with the ideas of our neighbor, the ones sitting in the pew or out in the street but we cannot disregard them and cannot lose faith in their humanity. When visitors come to our churches we hope that they find us not only welcoming to them but eager to learn about who they are and what is important to them. And if it turns out that this person thinks radically differently that you do, you are charged to keep listening, keep in relationship, keep respecting both your and their worth and dignity.
This is one reason that our denomination has been so active over the years in social justice causes from abolition of slavery, voting rights for women, capital punishment, and more recently, the legalization of gay and lesbian marriages. Our Association encourages churches to reflect as a faith community on how racism continues to permeate our culture and how we as Unitarian Universalists can become anti-racist and multicultural in our lives. The Association also offers and encourages (or affirms and promotes perhaps) the process of becoming a truly welcoming community to gay and lesbian, transgender and bisexual people. This is because we not only give a nod to the reality of the worth and dignity of everyone, but we affirm and promote this worth.
Affirmation and promotion of worth and dignity means first of all an awareness that some people are discriminated against – denied worth and dignity just because of their mere being. Affirmation means outreach and strong language and behavior that makes it no question who is invited into our sanctuaries. And so, in this example, we see how our Principles might be something that everyone would sign on to at face value, but in reality they are very hard to live up to.
I know that everyone here has experienced being disrespected or has witnessing disrespect, sometime, somewhere in your life. For myself, being so close to my elderly parents, I have learned how painful at times it is to affirm and promote the dignity of the elderly and the infirmed. As a daughter, it has tested my faith, to watch my parents lose their independence and still valiently claim their dignity, their choices, their humanity.
When I was working in the nursing homes in Springfield I learned more than I wanted to about the dignity given to the sick, the elderly, and the dying. In every facilty I visited, the residents were called by their first name or some term of endearment by the staff. On one hand this may be seen as loving care – calling someone by their first name or “sweetie” or “honey.” But almost all of the men and women that I met had spent the sum of their adult lives being respectfully called their full name. I believe that it is more respectful, more dignified, to at least begin the conversation by referring to them as Mr. Jones or Mrs or Ms Jackson before calling them if you can call them Sam or Abbie.
And of course, that was not the hardest of it; sharing rooms with two or three other sick and dependent elders after losing their independent living; being served food they were not used to and often did not enjoy; at times being left in the hallways and not being able to make a choice about when to get up and when to go to sleep. The list goes on.
I knew that the nursing staff was doing their best to provide good loving care in a broken system. Sometimes I would find a nurse or an aide just sitting with an elder, holding their hand, bending in and listening even for a brief moment as a way to honor their worth, and heir dignity. As a chaplain I faced these indignities with sadness and sometimes outrage and, like the staff, did whatever small thing I could do to affirm and promote the worth of everyone I touched. Sometimes that is about all you can do, and that is a lot. Sometimes we find ourselves falling short of what we profess. This first Principle is one that we all can practice, in church, at work, in every place where people gather.
Worth and Dignity. I believe that we are all dignitaries in the world, worthy, flawed, struggling human dignitaries. The heart of our faith is the spirit of love and service is our law. This, our first Principle is our first directive. Believe in the inherent worth and dignity of every person. Believe it and affirm it. Promote it wherever you go. This is our message for a fractured world where so many are deemed unworthy, undignified, undeserving of love.
Amen and Blessed Be
Sources: Our Seven Principles in Story and Verse – Kenneth Collier
Winchester Profession of Faith
September 7th , 2008 - "Gathering Again: A Water Communion "
And so we have come to gather in celebration and in love. Whether this is your first time visiting First Parish or you are a long time member or friend we welcome you to our Sunday worship service. We have come from near and far, bringing with us our waters, our memories, our hopes and our dreams for this, our community of faith and our big and beautiful world.
We are a motley band of travelers, diverse in our experiences and our understandings. And yet we are united in our commitment to each other and to a greater purpose in life. This morning we have celebrated with a communion, a blending of water and words and song. Later this morning we will gather in the social room for our opening potluck lunch; another kind of communing. We will be breaking bread, sharing treats, and taking time to ask “How was your summer? How are you, really?”
In our opening hymn we called out for inspiration and hope as we go forth in our lives. “Come thou fount of every blessing, tune our hearts to sing thy grace…lift our eyes to what may come…and turn our lives to higher ways.” We sang out our hope in a vision of a peaceful world that we know is not here, not now. It is not here, not now, that “the lion and the lamb dwell together” and surely we cannot pretend that “the cries of war have fallen silent.” Yet we sing this hymn today on our opening service because it is our dream, our vision, and our life’s work to bring us one step closer to this reality of the Beloved Community of peace and justice.
We come to church for many reasons. We want a loving place for our children to grow and to thrive. We want to support our friends in their joys and their concerns, their hard times and their good times. We want to make a difference in our community, to tip the balance between the haves’ and the have nots’. And we want and need a time every week to reflect, to sing, and to go deeper into our spirits. First Parish is a place for all of this and more. Our long history as a congregation grounds us in tradition and reminds us that other people were here before us dreaming such dreams. Our children push us forward into the future and demand of us that we do not sink into complacency. There is power in gathering together. May we use it well.
One of the things we heard in our water communion was how many of us rejuvenate ourselves in the summer, through play, relaxation, spending time near various bodies of water. This morning I ask how you recharge yourselves even when the summer is over, so that you can be there for each other and for this next generation, without burning out.
I think about how many of us are trying to be responsible energy users as a way of caring for our planet and our future. Our Board of Trustees for instance is looking long and hard at our oil furnace system so that it is efficient and does not waste the precious fuel. We as a congregation have agreed to meet for services in our social room this year from November through March, a full half of our church year, in order to conserve fuel. At our homes many of us are switching to low energy using light bulbs and many more kinds of energy savers. In my house, where we use lots of batteries, we use a battery re-charger whenever possible to extend the life of our batteries.
And so I ask you, how do you, on a regular basis, not only conserve your personal energy but recharge yourselves? What do you do to bring yourself, on a regular basis, to the fount of every blessing, whatever that fountain might be for you? As we conserve and recharge our buildings, we must recharge ourselves so that our community of faith remains alive, creative, and brave.
At the beginning of this past summer I was at an all point low in energy and inspiration. I had lost one job and my father was failing in health. Our First Parish church year had ended and I found myself un-tethered and grieving. It was during this time that I read the poem by Mary Oliver that I shared with you this morning. This poem, along with some serious soul searching helped me to look at my own ways of strengthening my spirituality.
For me, spirituality means our outlook on life, our sense that there is a meaning or a purpose to our time here on the planet. Spirituality is that part of our being that connects with our deepest thoughts and dreams, all other beings and the web of life itself. This summer I found a greeting card with a picture of an infant in a diaper, held up by strong grownup hands. The inscription on that card was “We are here to help each other get through this, whatever it is.” For me, that was one great response to the existential question “Why are we here?” And so this summer I meditated on that picture and that poem. I read prayers from the Book of Psalms and wrote my own prayers and mostly I went swimming. Day by day it was with meditation, reading, praying, and swimming that I recharged my batteries. The poet Mary Oliver says:
It is time now, I said,
For the deepening and quieting of the spirit
Among the flux of happenings.
Something had pestered me so much
I thought my heart would break.
I mean the mechanical part.
I went down in the afternoon
To the sea
Which held me, until I grew easy.
About tomorrow, who knows anything.
Except that it will be a time, again,
For the deepening and the quieting of the spirit.
Who knows anything about tomorrow but that it will be a time again, for the deepening and the quieting of the spirit? And this deepening and quieting of the spirit, however you do it, usually takes place not off on a vacation in some out of time place but “in the flux of happenings.” When we are busy and when we are grieving. When we are tossed about by the changes that keep coming our way and when we are starting up a church year, a school year, a new job, and a myriad of other “fluxing things.” We must find a way to frequently go to the source, the fount of every blessing, regularly so that our batteries do not go dead and we do not waste away. I do not know what that source, that fountain is for you but I know that it is there.
The Bible, Jewish and Christian both, has many stories about water as a source of life and rejuvenation. From the opening passage of Genesis we read “darkness was upon the face of the deep: and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters.” Later we read about the flooding of earth in the great flood and how God repented for this action. God was sorry that she had washed away most of the planet, and she put a rainbow in the sky as a pledge to never again destroy the earth with water. In Jewish and Christian Bible stories, couples meet for the first time at a well and it is the pulling up of water and the offering of a cool drink that symbolizes the sharing, the communion of strangers which leads to deep relationships. Jesus met a woman as such a well and offered her what he called “the living waters” and what I would call, true connection, deep listening, respect and hope.
The Bible was written by people who lived in a desert land and so water was an important metaphor and reality for life. Here in New England, water is more readily available and is sometimes so forceful that it destroys whatever is in its path. Everywhere, everyone is connected and nourished by water. When I go swimming in my local pond I literally leave behind some of my skin cells and those skin cells blend with the skin cells of whoever else has swum in that pond, year after year. We are connected. That is the miracle of life.
Just yesterday I met a woman who talked about her love of swimming and her determination to swim as long into the fall season as she could. She is even planning to join a polar bear club in Shelburne Falls; a group of people that gather at the river on January 1st and dive in. She said to me “It is great to feel alive.” Not great to just be alive, but to feel alive.
Perhaps that is what spirituality is – when you really feel alive. Maybe you feel alive when you are holding your child or grandchild by the hand and taking a walk in town. Or maybe you feel alive when you sit in silence in your back yard and listen, really listen, to the bird calls. Perhaps you feel most alive making or listening to music or gardening. I don’t know what makes you feel alive but I hope that you do, and that you dip into that aliveness as much as possible.
Mary Oliver says “I went down in the afternoon to the sea, which held me, until I grew easy.” I too grow easy in water, whether it is the sea, a pond, a river, or a lake. And you, where do you go easy? Do you search out that place, that easy place often? I hope that this church, both in our Sunday worship services, in our potluck lunches and community breakfasts, our meetings and our play times, is such a place for you; a place where you grow easy and a place in which you feel alive. I hope that by talking with each other about how we nourish our individual spirituality helps our church community get stronger and more committed to doing the work that we are called to do. Being in touch with our spirituality links us to the rest of the world and helps us find our place and our work.
In our opening words we heard the meditation of the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hahn. Thich Nhat Hahn is a learned and compassionate teacher of meditation. He is also committed to bring peace and justice into the world – to making a place in the here and now in which the lion may lay down with the lamb. And so in our opening words he said “Water flows from high in the mountains. Water runs deep in the Earth. Miraculously, water comes to us, and sustains life.” He also said “Water flows over these hands. May I use them skillfully to preserve our precious planet.”
And so, on this our first Sunday of our church year let us take these waters that we have gathered together. Let us use them as a blessing on our work; to raise our children, to feed the hungry in our community, to bring peace to the each other and to the nation. To do this we must, each of us, take the time and space it requires recharging our batteries. Find that source of strength and go to it, not only in the summer but in every season.
Water flows over these hands. May we use them skillfully to preserve our precious planet. Amen and Blessed Be
Sources
“Swimming One Day in August” from Red Bird by Mary Oliver
Meditations by Thich Nhat Hahn from Earth Prayers From Around the World
Greeting Card quote from Mark Vonnegut, M.D.
Thanks for visiting the First Parish of Northfield Unitarian website!
© 2005-2006 First Parish of Northfield, Unitarian.
Based on a template design by Andreas Viklund.