Reading:
1877
July
4th No encouraging word can be spoken in behalf of universalism in
this vicinity. A few young people are keeping the Sunday School alive, and that
is about all the evidence of our existence as an organization.. The exceedingly
hard times furnish some excuse for ministering to the imperious demands of the
physical rather than to the spiritual nature.”
1880
June
20. Rose Sunday. The church was beautifully decorated and the day was fine. All
nature seemed to smile on the day set apart by the Universalist church for
observing the solemn rite of baptizing our children and may adults took
advantage of the occasion to receive the beautiful ordinance. A large concourse
of people was present.”
1882
The
trustees of the Society have entered into a contract with Rev. Brunning to
preach once in two weeks, and are to raise the sum of $150/ He is to alternate
with Litchefied, preaching in Athens every Sunday morning. He draws out a good
congregation and things look encouraging. His sermons are practical and to the
point ...
During
the winter the ladies held two parties called New England Suppers, realizing
the sum of $69, out of which sum they have put new windows in the church…
1884
The
society is dead and has not enough vitality left to get up a respectable
funeral. Sunday School closed with the Christmas exercises, and has not
reopened. Nor has the church been used for divine service since that time.
1895
There
has been quite an awakening from the Rib Van Winkle sleep of the society, and
some young blood has been added, which it is hoped will redound to its good.
Bro G.A. King aided by Rev. G B Russell of Athens and Rev. Leonidas Polk of
Towanda, held a series of meetings during the winter which resulted in
increasing membership and interest. 29 persons were baptized and received into
full membership in January.
1896
Our
prospects are favorable for success. We have an attendance of 50-75. The YPEU
is in a flourishing condition. Financially we are quite poor but with much zeal.
It was decided to build a shed for teams which is slowly advancing.
June
14th Children’s Day was observed today with appropriate ceremonies.
The church was handsomely decorated with evergreens and flowers. The Sunday
School numbers 70 on the roll with 50 average attendance. The attendance a t
church this evening was 172…
August
28th The society and all seem to be working together in
harmony. Peace and quiet reigns.
Sermon
The
spring equinox this year was mostly grey -- the trees, the skies, the earth,
everything in our part of the world so very grey. There is one window I
check every morning, pulling back the curtain to see if the birds are back at
the birdfeeder, to see if the crocuses have made any progress. There is nothing
like the tiny brave bloom of a crocus to give us hope that someday we will
throw off our wool mittens and thick long coats and drink lemonade under the
lush green shade of a tree. Without the crocuses, it’s hard to be hopeful when
the forecast calls for another week of freezing nights and grey days.
Just
as there are seasons in the natural world, there are seasons in our beloved
community. The excerpts Jack and Diane read from our church history
remind us that our Universalist community has also known periods of new growth
out of grey, seemingly barren earth. Reports of church life in 1877 lament:
“No encouraging word can be spoken in behalf of universalism in this vicinity. .... The exceedingly hard times furnish some excuse for ministering to the imperious demands of the physical rather than to the spiritual nature.”
It
turns out that 1877 was near the end of what is called “The Long Depression” an
economic depression that effected the US and Europe and was only outdone by the
“Great Depression” of the 1930s. In 1876 the unemployment rate peaked at 14%.
(This Great Recession we ourselves have so recently experienced had a peak
unemployment rate of only %10.) I feel for the trustee who wrote that
report 136 years ago who could think of “no encouraging word.” The church was
in a deep grey despair.
Just
3 years later, in 1880, the history gives an exuberant description of Rose
Sunday. “The church was beautifully decorated and the day was fine. All nature
seemed to smile on the day set apart by the Universalist church for observing
the solemn rite of baptizing our children” The church hired a new minister and
put new windows in the church. Resurrection!
But
grey times returned: just 2 years later they despaired that “The society is
dead and has not enough vitality left to get up a respectable funeral.” Then
silence- we find nothing at all in our little church history until 1895
when it reads “There has been quite an awakening from the Rib Van Winkle sleep
of the society.” Resurrection! This season of growth and renewal seemed
to be more lasting, as the following year the leaders still felt that “Our
prospects are favorable for success. We have an attendance of 50-75...
Financially we are quite poor but with much zeal” And as if to help me with my
sermon they noted that “Children’s Day was observed today with appropriate
ceremonies. The church was handsomely decorated with evergreens and flowers.”
The season of growth and blooming follows the grey season of dormancy.
As
you will know if you have tried to grow tulips in a more moderate climate,
without the dark frozen ground of winter, the tulips cannot return in the
spring. One of my dear mentors, Til Evens, who was not only a shining star of
Religious Education, but also was a talented gardener. Each year after
the tulips were done blooming and the leaves began to die back she would dig up
all her tulips and put them in the refrigerator during their dormant season,
because the winters in Santa Cruz were not harsh enough, and if the tulips were
left in that warm moist soil they would not come back in the spring. One of the
great spiritual truths is that you cannot skip over the dry grey season.
Just
as there are seasons in the natural world, there are seasons of the soul. There
are many different ways of thinking about these seasons, but the controversial
theologian Matthew Fox describes a four-fold path.
Drawing on a mystical tradition which extends back to the 13th
century mystic and teacher Meister Eckhart, he names these paths, the Via
Positiva, the Via Negativa, the Via Creativa, and the Via Transformativa. It is
the Via Negativa I want to talk about today. This is the time of uncertainty,
of darkness, of letting go. Sometimes we think “If I were a better, more
spiritual person” or “if we were a better church” then there would be no
uncertain, grey times for us. But when you read the great mystics, the great
spiritual teachers, they all describe dark, uncertain times. During such times
it can feel like there is a palpable absence of God. Instead, Fox argues,
were are seeing a different aspect of the divine, a different, but still important,
aspect of the soul.
Consider
the summer garden here in the twin tiers; during this season of frantic growth
the main job of the gardener or farmer is to weed and to harvest. One pumpkin
or squash plant can quickly take over a garden bed where just a couple of
months before hundreds of tiny crocuses grow. Our minds, our souls are
like that summer garden. We have so much knowledge, so many ideas about how
things are and how things should be, that there is no room for new life.
In the season of the Via Negativa our senses are cleansed of all we think we
know. The vining fertile growth of summer dies back to the bare soil of winter to
allow space for clarity, to allow time for renewal. The Via negative reminds us
that as Fox says “the ground of the soul is dark.”
For
many people, these dark seasons have a feeling-tone similar to depression, and
so in our culture we often medicate these symptoms. As a culture we want to
rush toward spring, skimming along the surface of life, afraid of what we find
in its depths. And mostly that hunger for light and growth is an instinct that
serves us well.
In
my own cycles of fall into winter into spring, I notice that I often experience
a rush of energy and activity in the fall, so much to do-- so many exciting and
necessary tasks! By the time we get past the Winter Solstice, my inner
season has turned as well and I crave quiet stillness. I feel like my blood
itself is thickening, is asking me to slow down and just be still. I want
nothing so much as a quiet evening at home with an afghan draped around me and
a dog on my lap. Those great ambitions of the fall overwhelm me and make me
feel inadequate. Whether it happens in the solar winter or in some winter of
our soul, the best advice is not to fight this quietude. Fox says what
needs to be done in such seasons is simple:
Let go of images
Of the busy-ness of ideas
Breathing,
sinking down into yourself
Realizing you are already home
like
the crocuses dying back in flower and leaf, pulling all their energy into the
bulb, hidden in the dark cold earth, having faith that someday they will flower
again. We have all seen what happens to plants that burst forth too soon
when a late frost hardens the soil overnight. Sometimes remaining dormant
and still is the wise choice. The Via Negativa is a path that requires
tremendous courage and faith – faith that there is some important gift in the
stillness and in the dark, even as grey week stretches into grey week. Without
this quiet, dark, dormant time, Fox explains, there can be no Via Creativia –
the soul’s season of rebirth and creativity. Without the dark time of the womb
and the difficulty of labor, there can be no birth. Without the dark frozen winter,
there are no tulips in spring.
This
first Sunday after the Equinox, after day has finally become longer than night,
when furtive bits of green appear in the landscape for those with eyes to see,
we remember resurrection. My current home in Ithaca we purchased one fall, and
as far as we knew the garden beds were bare of everything but the bushes and
landscaping canvas which had been put in when our hundred year old home
was renovated. Imagine our amazement when first snowdrops, then crocuses, then
tulips, Star of Bethlehem and great old stalks of Solomon’s seal emerged from
that grey, seemingly barren soil. A whole garden lay there dormant all
winter long, and not one hint showed above the ground. Both the Pagan and
the Christian traditions celebrate Resurrection during this season because in
the Northern hemisphere there is no more powerful argument for hope than when
what looked for all the world like hopeless barren death shakes itself awake
and life springs forth. And we too emerge, blinking in the sun, called
back out into the world. If we have spent our dark time well, something new can
be born.
In
1947 the Athens congregation, called the “Church of the Universal Brotherhood,
had been meeting since 1849- almost a hundred years. They no longer had enough
members to maintain this building and so they sold it to the Christian
Scientists for $2000. The group then met at the Sheshequin church until in 1960
when they dissolved the congregation. Imagine the heartbreak and the grief. A
grey, difficult time for beloved community.
The
Sheshequin Congregation had struggles of their own. Because of the antiquated
heating system the congregation had stopped holding services between Christmas
until Easter. I asked Nell Allen, who was a committed steward of the
church for many years, what she remembered of that time, and as you can imagine
she said this winter hiatus made it difficult to get a good Religious Education
program going for the children. Jill Worthington, who had joined the
church in 1989(?) and remembers that we were renting a space in East
Athens for the winter months since Sheshequin was impractical. She
recalls “We had a sizable bunch of kids & they used the basement for
their YRE; we used it for after services Social Hour also since it had
a kitchen down there & large area with tables. Upstairs where the
services were held, was a nice gathering hall. But it wasn't our
own. "
Nell
sent me some excerpts from her archives including a passage from the 1991 the
president’s report to the annual meeting which reads “In late Spring we learned
that the Christian Scientists were considering selling their building.
After a congregational meeting we formally notified them that we were
interested in purchasing it. In the Fall arrangements were finalized.
After another congregational meeting, we offered to purchase the church for
$62,000. The members of the Christian Science Church have accepted this
offer.”
Because
over 40 years had passed since the Church of the Universal Brotherhood sold
their building, Jill remembers that the leaders of the Sheshequin church who
came together to purchase the building in 1991 did not know the history of the
building- did not realize that this had been built as a Universalist church! It
was not until the title review that they understood that they were reclaiming a
piece of our Universalist history. Jill recollects “When we found our
current Athens church with it's prior UU historical ownership, I think it
confirmed for most of us, this was meant to be...in a destiny kind of way.”
An
invitation went out reading:
“In Joyous Celebration
A Service of Rededication
After forty years the former
Athens Universalist Church has been/ returned to Unitarian Universalism.
The Sheshequin Universalist Unitarian Church
invites you to share in rededication this building
112 North Street, Athens, Pennsylvania”
The
Rededication Committee reported to the annual meeting: “A Service of
Rededication was held on Saturday, September 14, 1991 at 7:30 p.m.
Members of the congregation gave happily of their time and talents to clean,
decorate and bake for the big event. Chrysanthemums and luminaries graced
the entrance to the church; large arrangements of fresh flowers flanked the
pulpit. The service, while incorporating greetings from former ministers
and various denominational groups, was primarily based on the seven principles
of the UUA. The Rev. Harry Thor led the service…The service was simple
yet moving. An open house followed.” Resurrection!
The
following year the congregation added a kitchen, and our own David Porigow did
the renovations. It was because of this ambitious purchase that the
congregation began having an annual pledge campaign, a practice which continues
to this day, even though the purchase and renovations of our building are long
ago paid off.
Out
of despair- resurrection. Out of the sad disbanding of the Universal
Brotherhood and the struggles of the Sheshequin congregation to maintain a
community and their historic building through the cold dark months of winter,
we – the beloved congregation gathered here today in this cozy home – we are
the tulips that bloomed.
Our
journey as people of faith, as a beloved community is not one that avoids the
path through darkness, the Via Negativa, nor do we build our homes in the dark
grey places. When our journey takes us through a season of the soul that seems
dry and barren, let us have the courage find the core of who we are, to find
the dark home of the soul, and when spring comes as it always does, to burst
forth and bloom.
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