01/06: Inbetween Times: Who We Are For Each Other
This sermon was given at the Unitarian Society of Northampton & Florence on May 31, 2009 as part of a service collaboratively led by members of the Worship Committee. Also a part of this were Reflections by Lynne Marie Wanamaker which may find its way to her blog, http://www.mindbodymama.com/ -- it's totally worth the read! -- KJ
Opening Words
A Gift
Just when you seem to yourself
nothing but a flimsy web
of questions, you are given
the questions of others to hold
in the emptiness of your hands,
songbird eggs that can still hatch
if you keep them warm,
butterflies opening and closing themselves
in your cupped palms, trusting you not to injure
their scintillant fur, their dust.
You are given the questions of others
as if they were answers
to all you ask. Yes, perhaps
this gift is your answer.
~ Denise Levertov ~
(Sands of the Well)
Readings
Mysteries, Yes
Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous
to be understood.
How grass can be nourishing in the
mouths of the lambs.
How rivers and stones are forever
in allegiance with gravity
while we ourselves dream of rising.
How two hands touch and the bonds
will never be broken.
How people come, from delight or the
scars of damage,
to the comfort of a poem.
Let me keep my distance, always, from those
who think they have the answers.
Let me keep company always with those who say
"Look!" and laugh in astonishment,
and bow their heads.
~ Mary Oliver ~
(Evidence)
A Spiritual Journey
And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles,
no matter how long,
but only by a spiritual journey,
a journey of one inch,
very arduous and humbling and joyful,
by which we arrive at the ground at our feet,
and learn to be at home.
~ Wendell Berry ~
(Collected Poems)
To Be of Use
The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half submerged balls.
I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.
I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who stand in the line and haul in their places,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.
The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.
~ Marge Piercy ~
Inexplicable
It doesn’t roll off the tongue.
A poet friend suggests excising it,
since stumbling is a sign
of wrong word choice.
Yet inexplicable belongs in a poem.
Belongs in every poem.
Is a poem, in and of itself.
Inexplicable.
It’s why I bother to put pen to paper.
It’s the reason for ragged keyboard rhythm,
late night blue screen blanching my face.
Inexplicable.
How we rise each morning,
instead of burying our heads
under bedcovers,
sewing them shut.
Why we keep on
welcoming babies
with bone-deep joy
to this sordid world.
How we fill burlap sacks
with grit and gratitude,
our hands shredded
as we drag one over the other.
How we refuse the daily pull
towards greedy dark,
keeping at least one toe,
some of us whole torso,
in the light.
Inexplicable.
It’s what makes a poem
worth writing, worth reading,
worth flooding the world
with redundant, flawed attempts
at explanation.
It’s just the way it is.
There is no other way.
Stumbling every time,
practice or no.
Just part of the bargain…
the unavoidable,
intractable,
inexplicable
bargain.
Karen G. Johnston
Inbetween Times: Who We Are For Each Another
In our official by-laws, the purpose of the committee which stands here before you is “to work with the minister toward enrichment and variety in the religious celebrations of the Society.” We do this in many ways – meeting each month, communicating over email, sometimes via phone, engaging with the minister in a variety of ways, listening when you have a suggestion or concern, finding guest speakers and supporting them by being service leaders, yada yada, yada. I like to think that our goal is to cultivate a positive and rich worship experience through our support of the minister, support of guest speakers, and in our direct roles as part of worship.
Each of us was asked by someone to sit on this committee or heartily volunteered. I was asked sometime last spring. My children finally old enough that they don’t need my constant presence at home, I commenced to attend my first meeting last June. I thought I was going to get to do something I love – talk about worship, plan worship – all under the auspices of “doing good” and “giving back.” All the while, I get to do my geeky poet’s version of fun.
It turned out that there is a gift I did not know would come with this package of serving this congregation in this way. So obvious is this “surprise” gift, I now feel a bit embarrassed for not having anticipated it. It wasn’t the chance to write multiple emails each day. Or to find a time to meet with the minister when I was supposed to be working my day job. Or to find balance when there were divergent perspectives. It turns out that attendant to mundane committee logistics, being a part of this committee (and I’m guessing, part of any committee here, really) provides the chance to minister to one another, provides the opportunity to BE OF USE.
As Lynne Marie shared with us earlier, it’s not just about committee work, both the mundane and the sacred aspects of it. Here in the Great Hall, among us, between us, we all get the gift to be of use: we all get to hold each others’ hands, metaphorically and really; sometimes even more, a kiss on the cheek, a stabilizing caress of the back, perhaps even a full body hug in a time of joy, or among sorrowful tears.
[Pause]
A 2006 sociological study by McPherson and Smith-Lovin tells us what we may already intuit: the last twenty years saw a significant decline in the number of confidants we Americans have. We are becoming more isolated. From close to three, to just more than two. Though this may not sound like a huge change, it is the loss of nearly one third of our most intimate source of support.
More disturbing is the modal American’s situation. Not model, but modal – the value that has the largest number of observations. The modal American has no confidants. None. This means that of all the categories: Americans with, say, ten confidants and the category of Americans with, say, five, or three, or two, or one confidant – of these categories, the largest category – the mode – is those Americans having no confidants. In 1985, the mode was three.
There is a tide of isolation that is growing to Tsunami proportions. No doubt, given that so many of us here today are “good” thinking Unitarian Universalists, we likely have opinions about why this is happening. Certainly I do. The study describes contributing factors, such as marked decrease in participation in voluntary associations and neighborhoods. Maybe the study even speculates why this is happening – to be honest, I didn’t read all the fine print.
In the end, their speculation as to why, and even our or my own, does little to change the fact of it. Identifying the reason may be helpful in developing effective strategies, but it takes something wholly different to implement what it takes to change it. We don’t need another sociological study. What we need is a spiritual covenant, a spiritual showing up.
What we need is a real-life spiritual antidote. But before we know what the correct antidote is, we need to know what the poison is – not the symptom, but the root cause.
I believe that our increasing isolation – both on an interpersonal level and on a geo-political level that we saw sky-rocket under the so-called leadership of our last president – is based in fear. There may well be other factors – on that geo-political realm, I’d say an unhealthy dose of arrogance came into play as well – though again, fear is at the heart of arrogance, so we wind up back where we started.
With the UU value of freedom of the pulpit firmly in hand, I’m going to seek understanding through the spiritual paradigm that resonates most for me. According to the Buddha, the antidote to fear is compassion. My Western mind finds this especially interesting, because I was taught that the opposite of fear, and therefore somehow its remedy, is courage. Though they may share a connection, courage is not compassion.
Over the years (about 2500 or so of them) followers of Buddha, in seeking to cultivate compassion, have been directed to Metta meditation. Metta is the Pali word for “loving kindness.” Loving kindness in the face of fear. It takes courage to conjure loving kindness when one is afraid. Yet courage is only a tool to get to metta, to loving kindness.
Different Buddhist teachers have slightly different versions of the Metta meditation, which involves repeating specific phrases and directing them towards an ever increasing circle of beings, beginning with oneself. The following is the version I use, which I have adapted from use within the sangha – Buddhist community -- to which I belong:
May I be safe and protected from harm.
May I be peaceful and happy.
May I be healthy and strong.
May I be patient with all that arises.
May I be peaceful with all that arises.
May I be present to all that arises.
After speaking these phrases, one then directs these well wishes to someone who has been a benefactor or someone for whom you have much affection. For instance, may my beloved be safe and protected from harm. May my beloved be peaceful and happy. And so forth.
Then, they are repeated for someone or –ones with neutral standing. The cashier at your grocery store, for instance. Then to someone for whom one might have mild disdain – the driver who took your parking spot this morning. Then to someone with whom one is experiencing much more than mild disdain, perhaps an object of scorn or outright hostility. (I’m gonna let you figure out that one…)
As a way to bring a close to this meditation practice, which can last a very long time, depending upon on how many individual people or groups of people one includes, one directs the meditation to all sentient beings:
May all beings be safe and protected from harm.
May all beings be peaceful and happy.
May all beings be healthy and strong.
May all beings be patient with all that arises.
May all beings be peaceful with all that arises.
May all beings be present to all that arises.
Being of use to each other. To stand by each other. To be a gift to each other. To be at a crossroads of one known minister going, one unknown coming, and to be present, to be peaceful, to be patient with it all.
[Pause]
When I first read that sociological study, I thought of the loneliness it described. I tried to picture that modal American, that human being without any confidant, without any one in whom he or she could confide. Then, recently, the gift of someone here among us, sharing a tender dark moment of their life with me, trusting me that much, being brave enough to risk such a confidence. I realized there is something more than companionship that is missing when that modal American has no one in whom to confide.
There is also the loss of purpose, loss of meaning-making that comes from being in a mutual relationship – not just the chance to tell one’s own woes and joys to, but also the chance to listen to the woes and joys of another person. The modal American not only can’t share his or her worries, but also has no one with whom she or he co-creates purpose, no one with whom he or she makes meaning by witnessing the life of the other.
[Pause]
We have been in time period officially called “interim ministry.” Secretly, I have been calling it our Inbetween Time. “Inbetween” being one word, despite what the dictionary says, because, somehow, it’s not in [pause] between, but inbetween, a time together, not apart. Lines from Marge Piercy’s poem reminds me of this time when it invokes people who “move things forward, who do what has to be done, again and again.” We have done a lot of that in the past three years.
We have just said a rather “Ivory Soap” hello (99 44/100% pure, nearly like our vote) to Janet Bush, our new minister who will start officially with us this summer but who is already spending generous time planning and creating.
We are just about to say good-bye to Steve – a party was held two evenings ago and his last service with us on June 14. Steve: someone whose stewardship and ministerial presence has been a salve after years of…well, let us just say that Steve has been healing to this congregation at a time when we were so happy to have him be just that.
As a congregation, it sometimes has felt that we know better than any other that capital “M” ministers come and capital “M” ministers go. And hopefully we also know that as little “m” ministers, we are still here. We are here as each others’ ministers, as each others’ confidants, as each others’ antidotes.
[Pause]
In the Spring issue of UU World, Reverend Christine Robinson wrote of an experience she had at Disneyworld, and her reflections upon the commonalities between that experience and worship:
Why do people come to church? It is not to learn. People don’t even go to museums to learn. It’s not to be entertained. People don’t even go to Disneyland just to be entertained. They come to church – especially, they come to church – to quench a thirst, find meaningfulness, to have an authentic experience, or, in a more traditional religious language, to connect with mystery and see their everyday lives reflected in the mirror of eternity. Churches, then, and the lay and ordained people who lead them, are Imagineers of Soul, sorcerer’s apprentices in the art of quenching thirst, filling voids, opening the doors of meaning.
If we replace the word “church” with “house of worship” or “congregation” or something more inclusive, then this is just what the Worship Committee – in cahoots with the minister, in connection with each of you, aim to do: to support your being of use, to help you make meaning, to provide opportunities to cultivate confidants.
At our Annual Meeting a few short weeks ago, our new president, read aloud something apropos for marking this Inbetween Time. Here it is, in part.
[We] are called to stand in that lonely place between the no longer and the not yet and intentionally make decisions that will bind, forge, move and create history…. We are the ones called to gamble our lives for a better world.
Yes, it is a gamble, when we walk through those doors – the very first time and then ever since, whether it was 45 minutes ago or 45 years. It is a gamble and one that requires compassion of us and towards us. Given the general insecurity and fear in the world, given this tragic trend towards isolation, sometimes it’s hard to know why we walk knowingly into such a gamble. But like one of today’s poems tells us:
It’s just the way it is. // There is no other way. // Stumbling every time,
practice or no. // Just part of the bargain… // the unavoidable, //
intractable, // inexplicable // bargain.
We may well be mirrors that reflect eternity, but we are and must be mirrors that reflect each other’s everyday lives in this world as “common as mud.” We gamble by taking in a family in desperate need, by showing up even when we are bone tired or just want to read the Sunday paper, or by sitting next to someone unfamiliar and striking up a conversation. It’s even a gamble not knowing if we will take part in yet another three-hour, emotion-filled Annual Meeting, or – surprise! – the quickest, quietest one in the record books!
It turns out that when we need something or someone, the solution just might be for us to gift the very gift we seek. For us, in the midst of being our own flimsy web of questions and needs and loneliness and wants, to take in our cupped palms the fragile butterfly questions and needs and loneliness and wants of those around you, of those in this holy hall, of that one sitting next to you. It may well be awkward. It may not be easy. In fact, sometimes it will not be easy. As Wendell Berry told us, it will be “very arduous and humbling and joyful,” but he told us too it is a spiritual journey, “by which we arrive at the ground at our feet, and learn to be at home.”
Words for Parting
Yes
It could happen any time, tornado,
earthquake, Armageddon. It could happen.
Or sunshine, love, salvation.
It could, you know. That's why we wake
and look out -- no guarantees
in this life.
But some bonuses, like morning,
like right now, like noon,
like evening.
~ William Stafford ~
(The Way It Is)
References
Anderson, Mary Lou. Meditation for Leaders. Source unknown.
Berry, Wendell. Collected Poems. North Point Press, 1987.
Levertov, Denise. Sands of the Well. New Directions Publishing Corporation,1996.
McPherson, Smith-Lovin, & Brashears. Social Isolation in America: Changes in Core Discussion Networks over Two Decades, AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW, 2006, VOL. 71 (June:353–375)
Oliver, Mary. Evidence. Beacon Press, 2009.
Piercy, Marge. Circles on the Water. Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. 1982
Robinson, Christine. “Imagineers of Soul,” UU World, Spring 2009
Stafford, William. The Way It Is. Greywolf Press, 1999.
Opening Words
A Gift
Just when you seem to yourself
nothing but a flimsy web
of questions, you are given
the questions of others to hold
in the emptiness of your hands,
songbird eggs that can still hatch
if you keep them warm,
butterflies opening and closing themselves
in your cupped palms, trusting you not to injure
their scintillant fur, their dust.
You are given the questions of others
as if they were answers
to all you ask. Yes, perhaps
this gift is your answer.
~ Denise Levertov ~
(Sands of the Well)
Readings
Mysteries, Yes
Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous
to be understood.
How grass can be nourishing in the
mouths of the lambs.
How rivers and stones are forever
in allegiance with gravity
while we ourselves dream of rising.
How two hands touch and the bonds
will never be broken.
How people come, from delight or the
scars of damage,
to the comfort of a poem.
Let me keep my distance, always, from those
who think they have the answers.
Let me keep company always with those who say
"Look!" and laugh in astonishment,
and bow their heads.
~ Mary Oliver ~
(Evidence)
A Spiritual Journey
And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles,
no matter how long,
but only by a spiritual journey,
a journey of one inch,
very arduous and humbling and joyful,
by which we arrive at the ground at our feet,
and learn to be at home.
~ Wendell Berry ~
(Collected Poems)
To Be of Use
The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half submerged balls.
I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.
I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who stand in the line and haul in their places,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.
The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.
~ Marge Piercy ~
Inexplicable
It doesn’t roll off the tongue.
A poet friend suggests excising it,
since stumbling is a sign
of wrong word choice.
Yet inexplicable belongs in a poem.
Belongs in every poem.
Is a poem, in and of itself.
Inexplicable.
It’s why I bother to put pen to paper.
It’s the reason for ragged keyboard rhythm,
late night blue screen blanching my face.
Inexplicable.
How we rise each morning,
instead of burying our heads
under bedcovers,
sewing them shut.
Why we keep on
welcoming babies
with bone-deep joy
to this sordid world.
How we fill burlap sacks
with grit and gratitude,
our hands shredded
as we drag one over the other.
How we refuse the daily pull
towards greedy dark,
keeping at least one toe,
some of us whole torso,
in the light.
Inexplicable.
It’s what makes a poem
worth writing, worth reading,
worth flooding the world
with redundant, flawed attempts
at explanation.
It’s just the way it is.
There is no other way.
Stumbling every time,
practice or no.
Just part of the bargain…
the unavoidable,
intractable,
inexplicable
bargain.
Karen G. Johnston
Inbetween Times: Who We Are For Each Another
In our official by-laws, the purpose of the committee which stands here before you is “to work with the minister toward enrichment and variety in the religious celebrations of the Society.” We do this in many ways – meeting each month, communicating over email, sometimes via phone, engaging with the minister in a variety of ways, listening when you have a suggestion or concern, finding guest speakers and supporting them by being service leaders, yada yada, yada. I like to think that our goal is to cultivate a positive and rich worship experience through our support of the minister, support of guest speakers, and in our direct roles as part of worship.
Each of us was asked by someone to sit on this committee or heartily volunteered. I was asked sometime last spring. My children finally old enough that they don’t need my constant presence at home, I commenced to attend my first meeting last June. I thought I was going to get to do something I love – talk about worship, plan worship – all under the auspices of “doing good” and “giving back.” All the while, I get to do my geeky poet’s version of fun.
It turned out that there is a gift I did not know would come with this package of serving this congregation in this way. So obvious is this “surprise” gift, I now feel a bit embarrassed for not having anticipated it. It wasn’t the chance to write multiple emails each day. Or to find a time to meet with the minister when I was supposed to be working my day job. Or to find balance when there were divergent perspectives. It turns out that attendant to mundane committee logistics, being a part of this committee (and I’m guessing, part of any committee here, really) provides the chance to minister to one another, provides the opportunity to BE OF USE.
As Lynne Marie shared with us earlier, it’s not just about committee work, both the mundane and the sacred aspects of it. Here in the Great Hall, among us, between us, we all get the gift to be of use: we all get to hold each others’ hands, metaphorically and really; sometimes even more, a kiss on the cheek, a stabilizing caress of the back, perhaps even a full body hug in a time of joy, or among sorrowful tears.
[Pause]
A 2006 sociological study by McPherson and Smith-Lovin tells us what we may already intuit: the last twenty years saw a significant decline in the number of confidants we Americans have. We are becoming more isolated. From close to three, to just more than two. Though this may not sound like a huge change, it is the loss of nearly one third of our most intimate source of support.
More disturbing is the modal American’s situation. Not model, but modal – the value that has the largest number of observations. The modal American has no confidants. None. This means that of all the categories: Americans with, say, ten confidants and the category of Americans with, say, five, or three, or two, or one confidant – of these categories, the largest category – the mode – is those Americans having no confidants. In 1985, the mode was three.
There is a tide of isolation that is growing to Tsunami proportions. No doubt, given that so many of us here today are “good” thinking Unitarian Universalists, we likely have opinions about why this is happening. Certainly I do. The study describes contributing factors, such as marked decrease in participation in voluntary associations and neighborhoods. Maybe the study even speculates why this is happening – to be honest, I didn’t read all the fine print.
In the end, their speculation as to why, and even our or my own, does little to change the fact of it. Identifying the reason may be helpful in developing effective strategies, but it takes something wholly different to implement what it takes to change it. We don’t need another sociological study. What we need is a spiritual covenant, a spiritual showing up.
What we need is a real-life spiritual antidote. But before we know what the correct antidote is, we need to know what the poison is – not the symptom, but the root cause.
I believe that our increasing isolation – both on an interpersonal level and on a geo-political level that we saw sky-rocket under the so-called leadership of our last president – is based in fear. There may well be other factors – on that geo-political realm, I’d say an unhealthy dose of arrogance came into play as well – though again, fear is at the heart of arrogance, so we wind up back where we started.
With the UU value of freedom of the pulpit firmly in hand, I’m going to seek understanding through the spiritual paradigm that resonates most for me. According to the Buddha, the antidote to fear is compassion. My Western mind finds this especially interesting, because I was taught that the opposite of fear, and therefore somehow its remedy, is courage. Though they may share a connection, courage is not compassion.
Over the years (about 2500 or so of them) followers of Buddha, in seeking to cultivate compassion, have been directed to Metta meditation. Metta is the Pali word for “loving kindness.” Loving kindness in the face of fear. It takes courage to conjure loving kindness when one is afraid. Yet courage is only a tool to get to metta, to loving kindness.
Different Buddhist teachers have slightly different versions of the Metta meditation, which involves repeating specific phrases and directing them towards an ever increasing circle of beings, beginning with oneself. The following is the version I use, which I have adapted from use within the sangha – Buddhist community -- to which I belong:
May I be safe and protected from harm.
May I be peaceful and happy.
May I be healthy and strong.
May I be patient with all that arises.
May I be peaceful with all that arises.
May I be present to all that arises.
After speaking these phrases, one then directs these well wishes to someone who has been a benefactor or someone for whom you have much affection. For instance, may my beloved be safe and protected from harm. May my beloved be peaceful and happy. And so forth.
Then, they are repeated for someone or –ones with neutral standing. The cashier at your grocery store, for instance. Then to someone for whom one might have mild disdain – the driver who took your parking spot this morning. Then to someone with whom one is experiencing much more than mild disdain, perhaps an object of scorn or outright hostility. (I’m gonna let you figure out that one…)
As a way to bring a close to this meditation practice, which can last a very long time, depending upon on how many individual people or groups of people one includes, one directs the meditation to all sentient beings:
May all beings be safe and protected from harm.
May all beings be peaceful and happy.
May all beings be healthy and strong.
May all beings be patient with all that arises.
May all beings be peaceful with all that arises.
May all beings be present to all that arises.
Being of use to each other. To stand by each other. To be a gift to each other. To be at a crossroads of one known minister going, one unknown coming, and to be present, to be peaceful, to be patient with it all.
[Pause]
When I first read that sociological study, I thought of the loneliness it described. I tried to picture that modal American, that human being without any confidant, without any one in whom he or she could confide. Then, recently, the gift of someone here among us, sharing a tender dark moment of their life with me, trusting me that much, being brave enough to risk such a confidence. I realized there is something more than companionship that is missing when that modal American has no one in whom to confide.
There is also the loss of purpose, loss of meaning-making that comes from being in a mutual relationship – not just the chance to tell one’s own woes and joys to, but also the chance to listen to the woes and joys of another person. The modal American not only can’t share his or her worries, but also has no one with whom she or he co-creates purpose, no one with whom he or she makes meaning by witnessing the life of the other.
[Pause]
We have been in time period officially called “interim ministry.” Secretly, I have been calling it our Inbetween Time. “Inbetween” being one word, despite what the dictionary says, because, somehow, it’s not in [pause] between, but inbetween, a time together, not apart. Lines from Marge Piercy’s poem reminds me of this time when it invokes people who “move things forward, who do what has to be done, again and again.” We have done a lot of that in the past three years.
We have just said a rather “Ivory Soap” hello (99 44/100% pure, nearly like our vote) to Janet Bush, our new minister who will start officially with us this summer but who is already spending generous time planning and creating.
We are just about to say good-bye to Steve – a party was held two evenings ago and his last service with us on June 14. Steve: someone whose stewardship and ministerial presence has been a salve after years of…well, let us just say that Steve has been healing to this congregation at a time when we were so happy to have him be just that.
As a congregation, it sometimes has felt that we know better than any other that capital “M” ministers come and capital “M” ministers go. And hopefully we also know that as little “m” ministers, we are still here. We are here as each others’ ministers, as each others’ confidants, as each others’ antidotes.
[Pause]
In the Spring issue of UU World, Reverend Christine Robinson wrote of an experience she had at Disneyworld, and her reflections upon the commonalities between that experience and worship:
Why do people come to church? It is not to learn. People don’t even go to museums to learn. It’s not to be entertained. People don’t even go to Disneyland just to be entertained. They come to church – especially, they come to church – to quench a thirst, find meaningfulness, to have an authentic experience, or, in a more traditional religious language, to connect with mystery and see their everyday lives reflected in the mirror of eternity. Churches, then, and the lay and ordained people who lead them, are Imagineers of Soul, sorcerer’s apprentices in the art of quenching thirst, filling voids, opening the doors of meaning.
If we replace the word “church” with “house of worship” or “congregation” or something more inclusive, then this is just what the Worship Committee – in cahoots with the minister, in connection with each of you, aim to do: to support your being of use, to help you make meaning, to provide opportunities to cultivate confidants.
At our Annual Meeting a few short weeks ago, our new president, read aloud something apropos for marking this Inbetween Time. Here it is, in part.
[We] are called to stand in that lonely place between the no longer and the not yet and intentionally make decisions that will bind, forge, move and create history…. We are the ones called to gamble our lives for a better world.
Yes, it is a gamble, when we walk through those doors – the very first time and then ever since, whether it was 45 minutes ago or 45 years. It is a gamble and one that requires compassion of us and towards us. Given the general insecurity and fear in the world, given this tragic trend towards isolation, sometimes it’s hard to know why we walk knowingly into such a gamble. But like one of today’s poems tells us:
It’s just the way it is. // There is no other way. // Stumbling every time,
practice or no. // Just part of the bargain… // the unavoidable, //
intractable, // inexplicable // bargain.
We may well be mirrors that reflect eternity, but we are and must be mirrors that reflect each other’s everyday lives in this world as “common as mud.” We gamble by taking in a family in desperate need, by showing up even when we are bone tired or just want to read the Sunday paper, or by sitting next to someone unfamiliar and striking up a conversation. It’s even a gamble not knowing if we will take part in yet another three-hour, emotion-filled Annual Meeting, or – surprise! – the quickest, quietest one in the record books!
It turns out that when we need something or someone, the solution just might be for us to gift the very gift we seek. For us, in the midst of being our own flimsy web of questions and needs and loneliness and wants, to take in our cupped palms the fragile butterfly questions and needs and loneliness and wants of those around you, of those in this holy hall, of that one sitting next to you. It may well be awkward. It may not be easy. In fact, sometimes it will not be easy. As Wendell Berry told us, it will be “very arduous and humbling and joyful,” but he told us too it is a spiritual journey, “by which we arrive at the ground at our feet, and learn to be at home.”
Words for Parting
Yes
It could happen any time, tornado,
earthquake, Armageddon. It could happen.
Or sunshine, love, salvation.
It could, you know. That's why we wake
and look out -- no guarantees
in this life.
But some bonuses, like morning,
like right now, like noon,
like evening.
~ William Stafford ~
(The Way It Is)
References
Anderson, Mary Lou. Meditation for Leaders. Source unknown.
Berry, Wendell. Collected Poems. North Point Press, 1987.
Levertov, Denise. Sands of the Well. New Directions Publishing Corporation,1996.
McPherson, Smith-Lovin, & Brashears. Social Isolation in America: Changes in Core Discussion Networks over Two Decades, AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW, 2006, VOL. 71 (June:353–375)
Oliver, Mary. Evidence. Beacon Press, 2009.
Piercy, Marge. Circles on the Water. Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. 1982
Robinson, Christine. “Imagineers of Soul,” UU World, Spring 2009
Stafford, William. The Way It Is. Greywolf Press, 1999.
