More Than Flowers- part 2

When I say “More than flowers” I also want to look beyond reproduction into a more holistic picture of what it means to live a full and meaningful human life.. For centuries a woman’s life has been framed in terms of reproduction, as if flower and fruit were the culmination and meaning of ones life. That whole “maiden, mother, crone” thing really centers reproduction in a way that no longer represents our lives today. Currently 15% of people my age and older have no children, but we expect that number to rise given surveys about younger generations choosing not to be parents. Given the impact of humans on our planet, that seems like a wise choice for many people to make.[i]

Many years I skip the Mother’s Day sermon because I know it is a privilege to be able to choose to be a gestational parent, I know our culture normalizes the whole 2 parents 2 children thing. As a cisgender woman and birth mother to a son I have had the privilege of watching grow to adulthood, I hesitate to reinforce that culturally dominant story line.

I understood this in a new way when my son went off to college and I came home at an empty nest. I turned, as I often do, to nature to help find a symbol to be a touchstone for this next phase of my life. I found this plant life cycle diagram that supposedly shows the circle of life, but look- do you see that the parent plant actually disappears once the offspring enters the picture? Try it yourself- go search and find a diagram that doesn’t end with the creation of a seed, try to find one that doesn’t INCLUDE a seedling!

I have an amaryllis I bring out of dormancy every year, (it's the very same plant who inspired me a few years back). [slide] Some years it goes through its whole cycle and just never flowers. It grows all the way from a dormant bulb into a huge beautiful green plant that grows and thrives and looks delightfully happy and just never has a thought of a flower. Because I’m a plant geek and a softy, I keep my amaryllis friend year after year. It seems to be having a rich and full maturity and is content to be done blooming. It’s just we humans that think that every plant has to flower every year or it’s a failed plant and needs to be composted.

This metaphor is not useful parents done parenting, nor for people of all genders whose life does not include parenting. What does it mean to value the whole life cycle, not just the flower? Mature plants provide many important gifts to their ecosystem and to their plant community, whether or not they are fruiting. Mature plants provide shelter for those younger and more vulnerable. They are literally changing the atmosphere and the soil around them to be more hospitable to their species. Their roots stop erosion and hold valuable nutrients, and many participate in that mycelium network we are beginning to learn about, trading sugars and nutrients through that complex root network. Mature plants provide protection from disease and predators, and crucial support in storms. They prevent erosion, add goodness to the soil, prevent invasive weeds form taking over. And are, just …beautiful in their own unique ways.

Even in the final stages of their own lives, and beyond, they offer invaluable gifts to their communities. For example, as a tree comes to the end of their life if they are not disturbed they can become nurse logs, which can provide support for new life for as many years as they lived standing up. [ii]

The other problem with this diagram, this way of imagining the cycle of life, it that it invisibilizes people of other genders, and anyone who is not a birth parent who do all those things we have historically called mother’s work. This we actually see quite well in the plant world- plants have pistol and stamen (that is to say they make and fertilize eggs). Some plants, like Moss, change reproductive organs as the need arises. I’d love to honor that fluidity today- that we are growing in the range of support that we are able to offer the next generation as we nurture them into being.

As we know, it can feel lonely not seeing the stories and lives of people who look like you, As Gen. Jacqueline Van Ovost, one of 2 female 4 star generals in the country today said this week “You can't be what you can't see. When you look up and you don't see someone that looks like you, it's very hard to think that you could actually do that, right?”[iii] We need images of parenting and care-giving and the holistic role of a community beyond the flower, beyond the archetype of the individual cis-woman conflated with the complexity of how life really works. And we need a view of our own lives that honor our wholeness and not just the flowers we may or may not produce.

Wolves are like this too, the life of the community or pack includes only one breeding mother at a time, and all the other members of the pack have their own roles to play in their shared lives together. Wolves evolution over millions of years demonstrates the wisdom that there is plenty of important work that supports the pack that has nothing to do with reproduction. They also model how many in the pack collaborate to raise the next generation safely to adulthood.

How can we, as a faith community, honor this wholeness? The wholeness of all that it takes to gestate, bear and nurture a child, then support them into adulthood? The shorthand of the word “mother” usually understood to mean a cis-woman who does all those things by herself just can’t communicate the true complexity of our lives. This is not new, it has always been complicated, and because we rarely talk about how complicated it is, Mother’s Day has been a time, for many, when they felt left out, unseen. Sometimes that’s why we come to church, to make the simple complicated, that is to say, to hold with love and care the reality of our lives, and of others in our community whose experience is like ours, and different from ours. We honor the blossom, leaf and root. We honor birth and struggle, body and spirit. We honor the messiness of life, always changing and growing in a complicated web. All are needed for wholeness of living system that holds us all.

More Than Flowers- part 1

Mother’s day is complicated

It’s complicated because each of us has a completely different experience of being mothered, or not being mothered, of being a mother ourselves, or not mothering by chance or choice. It’s complicated by loss and grief and hardship.

And its complicated this week by the leaked supreme court decision that would take away the choice from people with uteruses about whether and how to experience pregnancy and birth.

But despite all that complexity I want to start by centering mothers, because mothering is hard and often invisible work. And to do that I’m going to get nitty gritty about this- because mothering almost never looks like it does on the Hallmark cards, a fuzzy pink image of a smiling woman receiving flowers. I’m going to say the word “uterus” more times today than you’ve ever heard in church before, because at this moment in our history we cannot afford to overlook or make invisible or minimize the role people with uteruses have in sustaining life on our planet. Our culture encourages us not to talk about such things in public, about the muscles and nerves and blood vessels and hormones of gestating new life. Once a person becomes pregnant their body begins to change, and never changes back.

And if you are able to carry the baby to term and deliver it, the changes are profound. I’ve been in the pulpit for 20 years since I gave birth to Nick, and even standing pregnant in the pulpit I never mentioned any of it, because, you know TMI. But perhaps it’s because we don’t talk about such things that roomfuls of male lawmakers believe they are wiser than I am about gestation and birth. Maybe if decisions choosing to carry and birth a child are now public decisions, maybe the realities of our private experiences need to be public as well.

My generation of mothers was taught that you should not tell such stories from the pulpit, in fact people don’t want to really see you mothering, or know that you are mothering, because parenting is a hobby you do in your free time, and should not be visible or in any way reduce your productivity at work. And we as faith leaders have colluded with this, because we let these messy embodied parts of parenthood be invisible, we don’t name them as holy sacred mysteries, Even our sacred scriptures say things like “she brought forth a son” [Luke 2:7]

The days when I can deliver a vaguely sweet and nostalgic mothers day service are gone, I think. If we are going to talk about motherhood, honor motherhood then it’s time to get real.

Survival of our species depends on many people with uteruses giving birth to the next generation. To carry new life in their own bodies, to go through the profound physical and emotional challenges of pregnancy. As a gestational parent, I want to share with you that moment in the 3rd trimester when you realize there is no easy path ahead. In the best case scenario, after hours or days of pain and work and probably medical intervention, you will greet your new child. But is no guarantee- Not every mother makes it. Not every child makes it. The risks to your own body and to the child are real. So I want to just extend a prayerful space to every person who carried a child, and never got to meet that child. They are mothers too and I stand in solidarity with everyone who ever lost a child to a miscarriage or a still birth, to parents who have lost children at any age.

And though I count myself lucky to have come through a long, complicated labor that ended in medical intervention, it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done- even though it was my choice which I entered into with the support of a partner and good medical care and the means to care for the child we now know as Nick. Every person with a uterus deserves the right to make that choice.

Then I want to center those people who care for infants and small children, sometimes the same person who gave birth to those children, sometimes not. Tremendous gratitude to those who lost sleep night after night waking to the cry of a hungry or wet or colicky child. Gratitude to all those who have cared for an infant or high needs child alone, had to chose on a given day whether to nap or shower or pay the bills because there was never time to do more than one.

Recently I was watching the show “Life & Beth” and our heroine was holding celebration of life for her mother, a mother with real problems, whose life choices caused harm her children, damage they were still living with. One daughter offered "She wanted to be a really good Mom, and sometimes she was" The other offered, "Our Mom... she made our meals and put our band-aids on, and picked us up from practice." As I heard those words I felt the reality of that, no matter how troubled our relationship to our parents - wow, that’s a lot of work! A lot of mostly invisible work, that often is thankless.

Consider that for everyone sitting here today, we made it to adulthood because someone fed us, clothed us, cared for us in times of illness and injury. Maybe that was a parent, maybe that was a sibling. Maybe you had to parent yourself in some hard years. I invite you to call to mind the person or persons who day after day made sure you were fed, made sure you survived.

Perhaps that was the same person who nurtured your spirit, who taught you how to love and be loved, who taught you to celebrate and cultivate your unique gifts. Or maybe the person who made sure you were fed didn’t get you, didn’t see you, and it was other people who taught you to love and be loved, who nurtured you. Call to mind that person or persons as well.

Parents were never meant to do this alone, since the beginning of our species we worked together in communities to raise our descendants. What one person could be good at everything a child needs their whole life? What I hear young parents say today, when we say “I don’t know how you do it” is “I’m not doing it, it’s not working, Help!”

When I think of Mother’s day I don’t think of fancy meals at restaurants, I remember with great vividness cancelling a mother’s day reservation and instead scrubbing up puke because I was the only one in the family well enough to do it. I bet every parent has a story like that- fitting in a way, it gets to the core of something important and invisible about parenting.

So when I say “more than flowers” today let that phrase remind us that more than the most beautiful gift of flowers on Mother’s day if we are really going to honor Mothers, we make sure that people with uteruses have a say in whether and when and how to birth new life.

More than flowers, caregivers need to be seen and supported in the critically important work of shaping the lives of a human child. Parenting is not just a hobby some people choose. Each of us knows the power that being parented well or badly, generously or neglectfully, with sufficient resources or struggling to get by has on our lives and our communities.

Today, we stand with all people with uteruses, that they may be free discern with their own innate wisdom whether or not to become parents. So today we center those gestational parents who carry, birth, new human life, and the caregivers who and raise the next generations, please notice and honor and support them today and every day. . Support them not only with gestures of beauty and poetry and flowers, but by honoring their wisdom to discern what they need, and giving them the support they so urgently need.

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[i] https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2017/08/more-adults-living-without-children.html

[ii] https://naturesdepths.com/nurse-logs/

https://treesforlife.org.uk/into-the-forest/habitats-and-ecology/ecology/decomposition-and-decay/

[iii] https://www.npr.org/2022/05/05/1096809726/a-complex-operation-is-involved-as-the-u-s-sends-weapons-to-ukraine

A Time for Peace

This month I am encouraging us to notice the cycles of the moon. In symbol and myth the moon is considered sort of a foil for the sun. Where Sun is energetic, fiery, the moon is cool, reflective, receptive. We live in a culture that is very solar, which values work and business and productivity and growing and speed and fire. We are not encouraged to pay attention to and value and notice the attributes and qualities which become visible after the sun has set. The moon is a symbol for, not the absence of the sun, but the special quiet qualities that are hard to notice in the sun’s bright daytime light.

Because of the war in Ukraine, I want to talk specifically about peace. I believe peace is not simply a cease fire, an absence of hostilities, but its own quality and way of being that must be practiced and cultivated.

Unitarians and especially Universalists have a long history of working for peace, I was talking with Maggie Sheffler about the 4 years they stood out on the town square protesting the war in Iraq – every Wednesday. Our Athens congregation was strongly represented- making a statement with their presence.

At that time when we were getting ready to invade Iraq, many members of the UU church I was serving in Palo Alto, and my co minister Kurt Kuhwald, were very involved in the anti-war movement. One Sunday as we were on the brink of war we even canceled one of our 2 Sunday morning services, so that members could board a bus to the huge protest in San Francisco. I followed in my car with my little Nick, then not yet 2 years old. Tens of thousands of people marched in the streets, and I was lucky to find a contingent of UUs, because poor Nick was overwhelmed by the noise and energy of the march. At the closing rally, many speakers took the stage, and I was surprised at the anger and hatred that was shouted over the assembled crowd. It occurred to me that “anti-war” was different than “pro peace.”

Back in the church office on Monday I talked to our administrator Barbara about the march, noticing this paradox, and the impact of the event on little Nick. Her husband, Paul George, was then director of the Peninsula Peace and Justice Center, and she mentioned that his marches were generally more “pro-peace” and encouraged me to join those instead. I began attending the peace center marches, which had hundreds not thousands of people in attendance, and the tone was indeed different. Joan Baez often sang, there were prayers for peace, and one afternoon I found another parent set up on a blanket with a sign that said “stories for peace”- she had a collection of books teaching the values and skills of peace to young children. The difference between the 2 marches was stark- there are spaces needed for us to cry out in anger against a war, against our elected leaders, but this little oasis the parent had created where children could be children, could learn the skills of peace, this was different, this was cultivating peace. Perhaps that is one definition of peace, a space where a child, or any person, could loosen their guard enough to feel safe and learn. We know in fact that our nervous systems need spaces where we feel safe for us to heal and grow. Life needs such spaces.

In Seminary I had been introduced to the work of Thich Nhat Hanh, whose writing helped me see the difference between “anti war” and “being peace.” He was a young monk in Vietnam when our war was raging there. His beautiful writings tell of the horrific and tragic things he saw, the friends he lost, but also his profound and enduring commitment to peace, the kind that he had cultivated through his Buddhist meditation practice. Naht Hanh tells us that begins in our own hearts- if we are tending to our own peace, and noticing and working with those things which disturb our peace, like grief, anger, disappointment, pain, it increases the odds we can respond non-reactively when hard things happen in our lives. Hanh writes “Imagine a boat full of people crossing the ocean. The boat is caught in a storm. If anyone panics and acts rashly they will endanger the boat. But if there’s even one person who is calm, this person can inspire calm in others.” [“How To Sit” p. 15]

Nhat Hanh was not content to stay cloistered in the monastery, but was an outspoken and tireless activist not only against the war that ravaged his beloved country, but he spoke for peace, His life was a beautiful illustration of how direct action and contemplation can be woven together.
He writes in his book “Being Piece”

“In the peace movement there is a lot of anger, frustration and misunderstanding. The Peace movement can write very good protest letters, but they are not yet able to write a love letter. We need to learn to write a letter to the Congress or the President of the US that they will want to read, and not just throw away. The way you speak, the kind of understanding, the kind of language you use should not turn people off. The president is a person like any of us.

Can the peace movement talk in living speech, showing the way for peace? I think that will depend on whether the people in the peace movement can be peace. Because without peace, we cannot do anything for peace. If we cannot smile, we cannot help other people to smile. If we are not peaceful, then we cannot contribute to the peace movement.” [p. 79-80]

Can you imagine that in our own context right now, imagine writing a letter of love to someone with an opposing point of view in the congress right now… It’s easy to dismiss such thinking as idealistic, but Thich Nhat Hanh saw the realities of civil war up close, and still he believed in the power of what he called “Being Peace.”

Despite his courage and integrity, he and other pacifists were often misunderstood and persecuted. He writes:

“During the war in Vietnam the young Buddhists organized themselves to help victims of the war rebuild villages that had been destroyed by bombs. Many of us died during service, not only because of the bombs and the bullets but because of the people who suspected us of being on the other side. We were able to understand the suffering of both sides, the communists and the anti-communists. We tried to be open to both, to understand this side and to understand that side, to be one with them. That is why we did not take a side, even though the whole world took sides. We tried to tell people our perception of the situation; that we wanted to stop the fighting, but the bombs were so loud…we wanted reconciliation, we did not want a victory, working to help people in a circumstance like that is very dangerous, and many of us got killed. The communists killed us because they suspected that we were working with the Americans and the anti-communists killed us because they thought that we were with the communists. But we did not want to give up and take one side.” [p. 69-70]

This is often a criticism of people working for peace- that they are disloyal, that they are not doing all they can to help the cause. They have chosen not one side or the other but the side of peace, the side of ending the armed conflict. As you heard in the teacher’s words, this path is not always respected or understood.

As a lifelong pacifist, I have often heard the criticism that it is foolish to face a conflict unarmed, to expose oneself to violence undefended. I have also heard the criticism that pacifism is just a disguise for cowardice. But when I think of great pacifists like Thich Nhat Hanh and the Monks of Vietnam or Martin Luther king and those who peacefully met military aggression in the civil rights movement, I see not naivete but courage and integrity; what courage to arm oneself only with peace, knowing our peaceful actions can be met with violence. These folks can be called foolish, naïve, but to me their principled courage says “violence is a choice, and though I may not be able to end this violence by my choice, I at least have not perpetrated, have not let it spread, even though there is a steep price to be paid.

Now it should be said that cultivating peace has a shadow side- it can lead to quietism unless we are careful. It’s easy to confuse cultivating peace with avoiding conflict. One criticism of liberal white religious folks in the 20th century is that the White churches who had fought for abolition in the 20th century consolidated their work around the peace movement and neglected justice. This was an important criticism by Dr. Martin Luther King, that we sought peace at the cost of working for justice- because certainly working to end hundreds of years of systematic racism is going to make some waves, is going to create conflict. MLK’s life embodied that narrow path of working for justice in nonviolent ways. As MLK wrote in 1965:

“World peace through nonviolent means is neither absurd nor unattainable. All other methods have failed. Thus we must begin anew… Those of us who believe in this method can be voices of reason, sanity, and understanding amid the voices of violence, hatred and emotion. We can very well set a mood of peace out of which a system of peace can be built.” [Dreams of Brighter Tomorrows in Ebony Magazine, March 1965]

Dr. King and Nhat Hanh were friends, and in nominating his friend for the Nobel peace prize King wrote in 1967:

“I do not personally know of anyone more worthy of this prize than this gentle monk from Vietnam. He is an Apostle of Peace and Nonviolence. His ideas for peace, if applied, would build a monument to ecumenism, to world brotherhood, to humanity.”

Surely those ideas of peace are needed now more than ever, as our world is caught up in conflict and war.

I encourage you to consider- in what ways do you cultivate peace? How can we be those voices of reason, sanity and understanding amid the voices of violence hatred and emotion”? Not everyone is called to be a Buddhist monk, but … for us- how are we creating peaceful spaces. How can we create pockets where we can sooth our battered nervous systems, where we can heal, process. How and when can we cultivate those energies of peace, quiet and contemplation? I have a friend who notices the bitter arguments on Facebook around, for example, racism. In her heart she is deeply anti racist, but there is a point at which the posts become not an attempt to create a better world for people of color, but loyalty tests- who says the right things the right way, and who can be caught out for using the wrong words. She decided that within her Facebook spaces she would notice where genuine dialogue and learning were possible, and focus there.

I asked my colleagues about Unitarian Universalism and peace, and one minister said “Please try to nuance the difference between UU pacifists (such as Julia Ward Howe, Emily Balch Greene, and others) and those who tried to serve the cause of peace more pragmatically: through diplomacy, the development of international structures, deterrence of aggressors, and military service to keep the peace.” Just because your minister is a pacifist, doesn’t mean all UUs have to be.

We are not all called to follow to live a life like Thich Nhat Hanh; he carved out his own path as only he could. But this weekend of the new moon I offer the invitation to notice and cultivate the lunar aspects of ourselves, and specifically to cultivate peace in our own ways, to create moments and places where healing and growth can happen, and to bring peace to our own hearts. As we navigate these stormy seas, can we aspire to be one person who is calm, in hopes that by being peace we can inspire peace in others

A Pearl of Great Price

 

"Who are we at Easter?” asks the poet Barbara Pescan. Before I begin today’s reflection, I want to just give you a bit of context about how Unitarian Universalists understand Jesus. From its early days Unitarianism broke with traditional views of the trinity proposing that Jesus was a holy one, Jesus had a special relationship with the divine, but was not the same substance as God. That’s where the word Unitarian comes from.

In the 19th century Unitarian preachers like Theodore Parker brought a historical approach to biblical scholarship, and after much research and soul searching came to believe that biblical miracles were “best not accepted as facts, nor dismissed as legends, but appreciated as "myths"—that is, poetic expressions of ancient piety with profound symbolic meaning.” Even among mainstream Unitarians at the time, this was considered radical, many felt that you could not really be Christian if you didn’t believe in the factual truth of miracles. But the transcendentalist ministers like Ralph Waldo Emerson preached that, "an intuition cannot be received at second hand.”[i] That is to say, it is more important what each receives through our own intuition, than believing a miracle happened elsewhere long ago.

By the time I grew up in a UU church in the late 20th century, this view was mainstream in Unitarian circles, especially those which were strongly humanist. The Jesus I grew up knowing was a wise teacher, community organizer, who stood up for the dispossessed, and whose wisdom and life of integrity was available to all of us, whether we believe in miracles or not. That is why even though many UUs do not identify as Christian one of the sources of our living tradition is

“Jewish and Christian teachings which call us to respond to God's love by loving our neighbors as ourselves;”

In this spirit, honoring Jesus as spiritual teacher, I offer a parable. We UUs don’t believe that these parables have one specific interpretation, but that they are symbols which invite us to know ourselves and the world in a new way, and that the meaning we find will change and grow as we do. I chose for today a parable from the gospel of Matthew – the pearl of great price, or “Great Value”.

“the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it. " -Matthew 13:45-46

This simple parable has been in my heart a lot lately as I wonder “what really has value-- what would be worth “selling all you own”?

In this time of Covid, with so much is in flux, I think a lot of us have been discerning what is truly valuable to us. I wonder, what would a pearl of great value be to you?

Love? Friendship?
Knowing what is true and deeply real?
Seeing the true beauty of life?

Consider the great wave of resignations we have seen this past year- the pandemic has given us time to consider what is really important to us. This pandemic has also show us our own fragility, our own mortality and that of those we love. Folks have had to ask, what is worth risking my life for? And more important, what is worth living for? Each of us has made our own unique response to these questions we all are facing. For example, I know some folks who have given up a good income to stay home with their school-aged children. The pandemic taught them to value the precious time at home with their families. Others have made the exact opposite choice- because they love and need to provide for their family, they are willing to put their own lives at risk of exposure to the virus by going in day after day to their high risk jobs.

What treasure have you found over these past 2 years? What is truly valuable to you, valuable enough to give up, maybe not all that you have, but something?

This chapter in the gospel of Matthew is a series of parables Jesus offers to those assembled around him, all beginning with: “The kingdom of heaven is like…” This can be tricky for UUs who are not sure about heaven, and find the whole idea of kingdoms problematic, but many of us believe that we are called to work together in this life to create a just, compassionate world for everyone, to make a heaven here on earth. If this is what you believe, this parable might mean that we are encouraged to “give it all” to create this gem, this pearl of great price- a just compassionate world for everyone.
What would be worth sacrificing for?
Ending racism?
Creating a world where all were free-- None were oppressed?
Growing in compassion?
In her book A House for Hope Rebecca Parker describes another view of heaven found among UUs- a view that heaven is here and now, that the divine, the spirit of life in their miraculous beauty is right here, and that this is the pearl of great price, the end of all our searching.

Parker remembers a conversation with a fellow traveler on a Forest Service bus in the Ansel Adams Wilderness.

“We do foster care for kids.” He said it was heart breaking to see some of the violence, abuse and deprivation these children had experienced. But he and his wife welcomed them into their home and did what they could. ‘Not even love can repair the damage sometimes,’ he said “I know,“ I replied.
He asked what book topic I was working on now, and I answered, “Paradise.”
“Paradise” he mused, and looked out the window of the bus for a few moments at the bright sky, the deep green pine forests, the alpine meadows coming into view, and, rising above them, the sharp peaks of the Minarets.
“Do you mean ‘paradise’ like where we are right now?”
“Yes,” I said ”like where we are right now.”
We both gazed out the window… breathing the pungent fresh air.
“This is enough,” he said
“You know that because you help kids” I said
A could of thoughtfulness passed over his face.
“Yes, “he replied “that’s right” [p. 16]

Could this be the pearl of great Value? Those moments when we know in our hearts the true beauty that is right here, even despite the very real suffering we see in the world?

Christian author and pastor Ray Stedman asked “why a pearl?… Why didn't he use the ruby or the diamond, or any other jewel? The answer is that the pearl is the only jewel which is the product of living matter. A pearl is the response of an oyster to something which causes it injury. A pearl grows out of hurt.”[ii]

From life’s hardships that we would never have chosen, sometimes a pearl comes-. Like the Foster Parent in Parker’s story whose work with heartbreaking hardship taught him to see paradise in the hills and trees of the natural world. What beauty do you see in the world despite the suffering? Despite the ugliness that we all see every day? Consider also the compassion of that foster parent, which seems to have grown over those years of working with foster children. Compassion is another gift, another pearl that can grow in times and places of real suffering. Many people notice that their own struggles help them grow in compassion for others.

Wisdom is another gift that is built up slowly layer by layer from the hard things of life.

This has been a challenging time for all of us, and quite devastating for some. The heart of the Easter story is not a message that those who are most holy avoid suffering, but that despite our suffering we rise.

As we observe our third Easter together since the start of this pandemic, I wonder --are there pearls of wisdom, of beauty of compassion that perhaps have begun to form in each of us and in our community? These pearls don’t appear right away, it takes time for a pearl to be formed in layer after layer of nacre. It takes 6 months for a pearl to begin to form, and 18-24 months for pearls to be big enough to admire in a jewelry store. In the same way it takes patience for our trials to be transformed. No good comes from rushing the process, it happens at its own organic pace.

I invite each of us to be on the look out for these pearls of great value, of great price, which may be growing in our hearts and spirits even now. Despite the conflict and suffering we see in the world, I believe such pearls are growing also in the larger communities and web of life of which we are all a part. Let us cultivate and treasure them when we do find them, because they are precious. May we all grow in wisdom and compassion so needed in our suffering world, and notice the profound beauty which is here too, pearls of great price.

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[i] https://uudb.org/articles/georgeripley.html

[ii] https://www.raystedman.org/new-testament/matthew/the-case-of-the-valuable-pearl

Our Theological House

drawing by Tyler Seymour

 

The house where I live right now is an old house- it was built in 1890. It creaks and slants- I don’t know if there is a level floor in the place. It has a beautiful wrap around porch that we love and is right in the heart of the city of Ithaca, which we also love. We are grateful that it is warm and snug. And even though the closets are tiny, and my partner can’t stand up in the basement without hitting his head, it is our home. 

At the 2002 LREDA conference, Rebecca Parker gave us a tour of what she called “Our theological House” which we inherited from those Unitarian Universalists who came before, those who built it, those who renovated it and added that wing. When each of us entered the UU faith tradition, whether by birth or by choice, we become stewards of not only our beautiful historic buildings, but our theological house as well. And as with our beautiful old buildings, there are some parts we cherish, like our beautiful stained glass windows, some parts which require upkeep, like our boilers and masonry, some mysterious quirky parts you just get to live with, and some parts that are perhaps dangerous and rickety and need to be repaired or replaced. An important example of this is the institutional racism that like asbestos, is everywhere in our time and culture, and our beloved theological house is no exception. So we are working on a major renovation right now together to make our house anti-oppressive. By taking the time to know this house we inherit, we are better stewards of it.

Newcomers to UU often get the misunderstanding that “you can believe anything you want” if you are UU. And while it is true that there is no UU creed that we all subscribe to, we don’t each have to build our own house from scratch, nor do we have to love every bit of this house we inherit, but by coming to know it we can appreciate and use it’s gifts, take shelter in stormy times, and leave a structure that is sound for the generations who follow.

Rev. Rebecca Parker, who was first ordained as a Methodist minister before becoming the president of the Starr King School for the Ministry, where I went to seminary, showed us that that we UUs do, indeed live in a theological house like other faith traditions. And that the structures of meaning making have some things in common with other faith traditions. In your goody bag (slide) is a worksheet that illustrates Parker’s metaphor- which is not a perfect one but can be fun to play with- matching each part of a “systematic theology” with the parts of a house. What it means to be a church is called “ecclesiology” you can see those are the sheltering walls. Other theologies have different “ecclesiologies” or beliefs about the why, what and how of religious community.

“Theology” is the part of our belief system that has to do with God. Parker says that this is like the foundation of our house. When you are talking to your Jewish or Catholic or Muslim neighbors, and they talk about God, you can know that your house has a foundation too- what theologian Paul Tillich called “the ground of being.” Whether or not you believe in God, whether that word makes sense for you, all of us stand on some foundation of belief even if we never notice or name it. Talking about our foundations is one of the hardest conversations for UUs, because when this house was built, our fore-parents had no trouble talking about God. The Universalist side of our tradition, built their house on the foundation of a loving God, a God whose love included everyone. Universalism is a house built on the foundation of Universal love, a good strong foundation with no holes that some people fell through, no locks that let some in and kept others out. One of the foundations of Unitarianism was that we could use our minds, and the reality perceived by our senses, and we could use reason to connect with God. Unitarianism was built on a foundation that included all the exciting things we were learning in the emerging field of science (which was brand new when Unitarianism was born) and that this scientific exploration was compatible with faith. Our Unitarian foundation doesn’t crumble when you shine the light of consciousness on it.

Some of the folks who grew up in our house or moved in as adults were founding pillars of the humanist movement. At the start of the 20th century, they said “enough arguing about what the foundation is made of. People are suffering- the roof is caving in, the interior needs paint, and we can see out the window that there’s an ambulance has pulled up at the neighbors -- they need a pot of soup and probably some other things; there are 2 world wars – let’s go do something to help!”

In 1913 the members of our Athens church built an annex onto their original building, and if you stand in our social hall you can see where old meets new. Our theological house has some similar places where old meets new. I want to tell you the story from the history of the Athens & Sheshequin congregation about an important and controversial building renovation to our metaphorical house, that leaves a funny seam in our metaphorical house as well, where old and new were joined. All the 7 little churches near the Sheshequin church were old-school Universalist churches. They believed in God, Jesus, the bible, but what made them radical, so radical that the neighbors had been giving them trouble since before the Old Sheshequin House was first built, was that they believed that everyone, EVERYONE was included in God’s love. And if you know everyone is included, and you see someone suffering, or being excluded, well you are most likely going to feel called to do something. That’s why the old Universalist churches supported women’s suffrage, supported abolition, that’s why the old Cortland church was part of the underground railroad.

The Unitarians and the Universalists were both influenced by the social gospel movement in which w were encouraged to turn our focus from getting into heaven toward “making God's commonwealth of justice, abundance, and peace a reality in this world.” The Unitarians and the Universalists found themselves, inspired by this ideal, showing up at the same causes like abolition, and votes for women and they both found themselves in occupied Europe during world war 2 working to help refugees. Later they found themselves marching together in the civil rights marches in the 1960s. And in working together to make the world a more just, compassionate place, they built a wing of our shared theological house, in which they worked together to save those who most needed saving, and though their theologies were different, they could all stand together knowing that we are not alone, that if our foundational values hold us all up, maybe it doesn’t matter what the floor is made of. This common room where people worked together to make a more just and compassionate world. Is a room the Unitarians and Universalists built together, and so we hang out here a lot in this beautiful room of community outreach and social justice.

But when in the 1950s the 2 movements decided to join together, the Universalists in this very valley voted against merger, because they didn’t want to associate with humanists (which, really, how much of a Universalist are you if you want to exclude humanists?) And so the people who called themselves Universalists, but couldn’t open their minds and hearts enough to actually let everyone into their own theological house, they pretty much left. And those who remained began the big home improvement project with their new Humanist family.[i]

The Humanists also felt uneasy about this home improvement project- And the story of how we got our current UU principles (which is a good one for another day) was about finding common ground from the old universalist house, and the old Unitarian house, and also about who they hoped to be in the future. The theists and the atheists, the Christians and the humanists made an uneasy truce.

Even today, the discerning eye can see in our theological house the joining places where old and new meet, and specifically the place where humanism and Christianity come together. I’m lucky to have grown up this Unitarian Universalist theological house. I was born and raised in a UU congregation in Devon PA. It was founded in the 20th century. It was an old stone house which had been joined with a beautiful modern architecture with shiny warm blond wood. My high school friend said “it looks more like a ski lodge than a church” and I suppose he was right. Where traditional Christian architecture reaches up for the sky, this mid-century architecture honored the horizontal, honored the human community. The architecture of my childhood UU church is actually a wonderful metaphor of old and new joined together, of our that new humanist wing built onto the old stone construction. It seemed natural to me that the two could be joined. The church where I grew up was very heavily humanist, and I’m not sure they ever used the word God in Sunday service. Jesus was talked about as a great teacher and community organizer, like MLK, or Gandhi, or Susan B Anthony.

Imagine my surprise as I went away to seminary, and discovered there were more rooms of our sprawling UU home. I really got to know the universalist wing, when I became your minister and met meeting UUs who have an easy relationship with a God who loves everyone. I was surprised to find, Over at that old Sheshequin house, there is a little covenant taped into the inside of the hymnals

We avow our faith In God as eternal and all-conquering love;
In the spiritual leadership of Jesus;
In the supreme worth of every human personality;
In the authority of truth known or to be known:
And in the power of men of goodwill and sacrificial spirit to overcome all evil and progressively establish the kingdom of God.

This was being read every Sunday morning in the Sheshequin meeting house, at the same time I was growing up in my modern humanist church. In our churches and fellowships right now are folks who have to work hard to translate every time that hear the “G” word. And just a few rows over are folks who miss the “G” word. Who miss just being able to talk about God, and pray the prayers they remember from their childhood.

That’s the difference between a religious tradition, and starting your own church; our tradition, our theological heritage, has many different rooms we share, some of which we prefer.

What I love about the metaphor of this house, is that I am not the house, you are not the house, the house is just the place where we meet together to serve lovingly, grow spiritually and live ethically. Each of us also has our own theological house, with different wings and roofs and gardens and foundations. If you grew up Jewish, or Hindu or Buddhist, or Catholic, or “none” your heritage, your religious education, your family of origin influenced the meaning-making structures that you use every day probably without even thinking about it. Part of growing into your own unique mature self, is understanding the house you grew up in, went to school in, and how those formative structures shaped and impacted you, but are NOT you- you are your own Self.

This winter, the ministers and members of 4 congregations came together to look at the questions on your journal sheet, our systematic UU theology. One of the folks in our 4-congregation class said they felt more grounded having taken a longer tour of our house this UU house that we share with one another, with 400 years of our theological ancestors, and with the generations of those who will follow. Hopefully this house we share feels pretty welcoming, a roof to shelter you in the storm, a solid foundation to hold us up, a nice ventilation system to let the fresh clean air through. It’s okay if you hate the moldings in the living room, and that you like some rooms better than others. But I encourage us to take the time to explore our own home. Hopefully, like the man in our story this morning, even though we travel far and wide looking for answers, it's worth coming home to look closely at our own hearth. May you also find the treasurer buried here.

Note-
[i] To learn more about this, visit the church history blog written by our own Katie Replogle  https://www.uucas.org/?p=1311