Finding Easter

When I was a kid, Easter was new handmade dresses from Gramma for me and my sister, and going to my Unitarian Universalist church with the whole family. There was always an Easter sweater we had to put over our dresses- because Easter is colder than you think. After church it was plastic eggs filled with goodies, and hard-boiled eggs that were more fun to decorate than to eat. One year I got a plush bunny in my easter basket, and you can tell by the fact that I still have it that it was special to me.

As an adult, a parent, and a minister, it became less and less clear to me what the Easter of Jesus had to do with bunnies and eggs. I learned that Easter comes from the name of an old Anglo Saxon Goddess, called Oestara, in an ancient German earth-centered tradition. Called Eostre in England, celebrated at the beginning of spring in those old pre-Christian traditions.

It makes sense, if you live in our part of the world, to celebrate these days of growing sunlight, the return of life to the world. Every day I go outside and watch the ground near my house go from grey and frozen, to muddy and sprinkled with the first green shoots emerging. Some sunny days you can practically watch them grow! Last week the little purple crocuses in my yard that had come up through the snow were waiting, waiting, waiting in the cold and grey, until finally a sunny day came and they stretched their petals wide like they wanted to hug the sun, and the bees, which had been hiding wherever bees hide in the cold and grey, were humming from blossom to blossom. The birds are so noisy now when I get up early in the morning to walk my dogs. I hear new songs I haven’t heard all winter. They chase each other and I think many of them are trying to find a partner and a nest where they can have children like the rabbit in our story.

One spring I did see a bunny in my backyard, but most years I don’t see any rabbits. Squirrels though we have in abundance. The Squirrels have spring fever for sure. Many UUs who celebrate Easter, are celebrating this season of growth and new life in nature- that moment when all the plants and critters in your ecosystem know in their bones and roots that the hardest part of winter is past, and as we will sing in a moment “nature wakes from seeming death” and the wheel of the year has turned, and now it feels like spring, and we can get on with the joyful and challenging work of growing. As we sung earlier “Herb and plant that, winter long, slumbered at their leisure, now bestirring green and strong, find in growth their pleasure”

We know from our history books that when the Christian church was forming, they often put their new Christian holidays at times when people already had celebrations, and Easter is a good example of this. In the Christian tradition, Easter is the end of a long story, with many challenges along the way, the story of the life of Jesus, his teachings, and the brutality and sadness of his death. Because of course when Jesus died, everyone thought he was gone forever, that this big swell of energy he had built, all his teachings, all they had come together for, we gone, crushed by the Roman government. And so there was a sad desolate time of mourning after his death, until 3 days later when the tomb where Jesus had been laid was empty, and Jesus showed himself to his followers, alive again, miraculously resurrected.

These two very different Easter celebrations, really have nothing to do with one another, except for that one thing they both say to our psyches, our hearts and spirits- that even when there are no signs of life, when there seems to be no reason to hope, perhaps there is still life waiting beneath the frozen ground, even in the tomb. For people who live in a climate like ours, the spirit naturally wants to celebrate this turning of the wheel, after the long cold bleak winter, the bursts of yellow and green and purple. Our psyches see the harmony between the Christian and earth-centered spring holidays of rebirth and resurrection. When we see proof of life returning, proof of rebirth and resurrection, it’s a relief and a joy. And it reminds us of something that happens in our hearts, in our spirits when we ourselves are surprised by new life.

One confusing bit is that Easter moves around the calendar- it’s held on the first Sunday after the Paschal Full Moon, the first full moon after the vernal equinox. (I was this many years old when I learned that.) Wednesday night was our full moon, so here we are, celebrating Easter. That also means some years Easter is earlier, and some years later. I remember one year I was preaching at the UU Fellowship of Big Flats one March Easter, and my son volunteered to hide all the eggs outside so they’d be ready for an egg hunt after the service. Well, all through the Easter service we watched the thick snow falling fast through the big windows. The sky was grey and dark. It snowed so hard no one could find the eggs when the service was over- they were all buried! I will tell you it was hard to hope that Easter, even though I was the one in the pulpit saying that spring always, always comes, even when it seems like it never will. Those are the times when stories of renewal and resurrection are especially important, to show our spirits that what feels like an ending, can be the start of something new. Clarissa Pinkola Estes writes: “Stories set the inner life into motion, and this is particularly important where the inner life is frightened, wedged or cornered. Story… shows us the way out, down, or up, and for our trouble, cuts for us fine wide doors in previously blank walls.” [Women Who Run with the Wolves p. 20]

That is why in the Christian tradition, Easter follows the long season of Lent, where observant Christians are encouraged to take the time to dive deep into their own spirits and into their relationship with the divine. There can be no resurrection without all the other pieces of the story.

The same is true for the earth centered traditions who mark spring with celebration. The stunning gift of the yellow daffodil is that it emerges in the cold and grey when few things are yellow. The beauty of the crocus is that it risks blooming in the snow and frost, into the messy leaf litter of last year’s trees.

Celebrating Easter means Listening into the season -- of our web of life, of our spirits. We pause today for a long loving look at this unique year that will never come again and has never been before. How is it with your spirit this Eastertime?

Although Christian churches all around the world are telling the same story this morning, celebrating the most important and holy day of their church year, there is no moment when all of spring happens all at once- the trees like to sleep in a bit after the crocus and daffodils wake up and start their year. From my office window I can see the little tree buds swelling, but I haven’t seen any leaves yet.

So spring, if by spring we mean that moment when petals and leaves and wings unfurl and soak in the sun, it comes at different times to different plants, and different creatures. While a couple bees buzz in my crocus blooms now, some pollinators sleep in until May, which is sensible, because there’s only those 5 flowers in my yard right now, not enough pollen for everyone.

I live down on the flat part of my town, but my friends live up in the hills. Just last week I saw cars driving down into the town with snow on them and I wonder at how differently the seasons unfold in different places. Sometimes it can be weeks before the same flowers bloom up on the hills, weeks before their snow melts. In our congregation this morning we have folks form all over- One family is joining us from south Carolina where it has been definitely spring for a while now. The sweet children's story "The Bunny Who Found Easter" assures us that “At Eastertime there are always rabbits.” But it simply cannot be true that everywhere around the world there are rabbits at Eastertime.

This is all to say, that Easter is a movable feast. It does not come at the same time every year. It does not look the same for all of us. I also mean the Easter in our spirits-- the calendar of our spirits sometimes does and sometimes does not line up with the calendar of the banks or of sun and moon. It can be sad if everyone around you is celebrating “Now the dark, cold days are o’er, spring and gladness are before” and your spirit feels like it is still in the tomb, like it is that last tree with no leaves.

There is a crooked Catalpa tree in our back yard that is always the last to leaf out. “I think that one’s dead” said my husband last year. But I remembered how it was with this tree, and sure enough when the time was right the tree burst out these gigantic heart shaped leaves giving shade to the whole back yard just in time for the hot sun of summer.

How is it for you, right now, today? Does your heart feel like a daffodil in full bloom? Like a bird singing as it waits for sunrise? Like a bunny overrun with young ones? Like a bee bravely looking for the first flower? Or do you feel more like a flower bulb that is still waiting in the dark earth for the right time to emerge? Like the great Catalpa tree who wants more sun before it can leaf out?

Easter is a season of the spirit and not of the calendar. Here, today in the twin tiers, it’s a great day to notice the first buds on the bare trees, the rain and the mud, the green shoots, and how the flowers change from day to day. All of these are spring, all of these are life. If your hearts are leaping with the spring, let them leap. And if your heart is still waiting in the chilly earth, let our Easter celebration remind your tender spirit that when the season is right for you, your spirit will unfurl and bloom.

Co-Creativity

A few years back, I was on my first retreat at Eastern Point, and the more I gazed at the ocean, the vibrant colors of sunrise, the shells on the beach, the rocks, the more I felt compelled to try to draw them. This was weird, because I don’t draw. But the colors and shapes were so beautiful I felt the need to somehow respond. I was so excited about this idea, but when I finally went to put colored pencil to paper, it was frustrating and discouraging. My friend the artist offered to help me get started. She put a drop cloth on her dining room table and filled it with supplies. “Just play” she said. I stopped trying to make something in particular, and just figure out how to make the brush work. I learned that afternoon that there were certain things each brush, and those acrylic paints were good at-- bright bold colors, layering, textures. None of it looked like anything, but some of the shapes and textures pleased me. I learned that day that if you are going to make something with paint, you are going to have to do it in partnership with the paint, and the brush, and the canvas or paper or whatever you are painting.

This is true no matter what we are creating, no matter what medium we are using, whether we are making dinner, or a worship service, or a raised bed garden. When we bring any idea into the world, it is made out of matter that has its own nature, its own capacities and limitations. Even the most faithful reproduction is a new creation.

We too, the makers, have our own capacities and limitations. I was listening to an interview with singer songwriter Diane Cluck one time, and she asked the interviewer to name something he disliked about his own voice. He had a wobble, he said, that he never felt good about. They talked about how such a characteristic of the individual voice was part of what made your voice distinct, could be a foundation of personal style.

It occurs to me that whenever we create something, we are never creating something out of nothing, we always begin with what is already there. Even when we make a cake “from scratch” we mostly don’t mill our own flour, or grow our own wheat. In fact, wheat only evolved about 10,000 years ago, before that it was something else. Our unique bodies and selves shape what we are creating, even without our conscious choice. And everything happens in a community of living and non-living beings in a landscape that has been shaped long before we began.

And much as we try to make things that last unchanged, creation continues working on what we have created almost immediately once we have finished making the thing. Consider how a cake changes once out of the oven, over hours and days. The raised bed for our garden, how the natural forces work on the wood over time. Life itself is ceaselessly creating, as it has been for millennia. In truth, whenever we create something, we are actually co creating.

Consider, for example the creativity of the tree that became the wood for the raised bed. As William McDonough & Michael Braungart write in their essay "The Extravagant Gesture"

“Four billion years of natural design, forged in the cradle of evolution, has yielded such a profusion of forms we can barely grasp the vigor and diversity of life on Earth. ... “

and how the creativity of one species shapes the response of other species:

“Responding to unique local conditions, ants have evolved into nearly 10,000 species, several hundred of which can be found in the crown of a single Amazonian tree..”

And you yourself are no less unique, and your unique way of creating is vital and full of life, whether it is extravagant or simple, practical or whimsical. Whether what we create is exactly what we had in our minds, or full of mistakes and missteps that we never imagined or wanted.

As we do our creative work, whatever that may be, it becomes a spiritual practice as we consider how it is working on us, connecting our own spirit and self to the work. How does it feel as it moves through us? Is it fresh and vital? Does it touch something new and inspiring? Is it steady and patient, does it calm us and those around us. One of the things I like about the hug shawls is that I use a simple pattern, and so not only do I create a shawl I hope will be soothing and comforting to another, but the repetitive act with the soft yarn in the pleasing color is soothing and comforting to me as well. As Matthew Fox has said “…the most beautiful thing a potter produces is... the potter.” As we are drawing or singing or building or cooking, we make not only the cake but we make ourselves. I will tell you that one of the reasons I like being a minister for these congregations, and can see myself continuing into the future, is because I like the self that is created as I do this work.

Our creative work also connects us directly to one another and to the web of life. My raised bed garden is co-created with and impacts thousands of species seen and unseen. The cake I bake has in it the contributions the farmers who grew the wheat, the ecosystem where the wheat was grown, and in turn helps form the bodies of those who will eat the cake when it is finished.

This is a time when great creativity, in the sense of innovation, is needed. We have enough things, too many things, the great industrial machine creating great quantities of things must be replaced by a calling to create of the right things, for ourselves, for our world. We have an opportunity to co-create our world in a way that will impact our communities and our ecosystems and generations to come. Paying attention, noticing, and responding is important in our acts of creation.

Consider a common way we have of constructing, say, a new development or shopping center. Step one is to bulldoze everything, to create what we imagine is a blank slate on which to build our human vision. But of course even once a field is leveled down to bare soil, still we build in a watershed that rains and floods and is shaped by weather beyond our control, we build for people with growing evolving needs, we build in an ecosystem with the beings who have always lived in that place, whose displacement impacts other communities and ecosystems.

Perhaps it is time to think creatively about creation. If we understood creation as not the heroic act of an individual, but as an inherently collaborative act, a communal act, we might stop as Wendell Berry said in his essay “Solving for Pattern” creating “Solutions that cause a ramifying set of new problems”

“A bad solution is bad, then, because it acts destructively upon the larger patterns in which it is contained ... most likely, because it is formed in ignorance or disregard of them. A bad solution solves for a single purpose or goal, such as increased production. And it is typical of such solutions that they achieve stupendous increases in production at exorbitant biological and social costs.

"A good solution is good because it is in harmony with those larger patterns ... the way a healthy organ acts within the body.” ... “A good solution causes a ramifying series of solutions.”

A collaborative style of creation that is in harmony with larger patterns is all part of what I mean when I say “Co-creation.” Co-creation is an idea that works well with our Unitarian Universalist theology- that we are forever collaborating with the Spirit of Life and all other living beings in the continuous creation of the world we live in, of all we are and all we see. In our story that creative force is called God -- a personified being with a voice. Many UUs struggle with a personified God, but there’s a school of thought called “Process theology” which is a better fit for many UUs. It was founded by a mathematician in the 20th century who describes a God that could be found in nature, and harmonized with reason and the evidence of senses. Imagine if what we called God was a process working within and among all processes. To Henry Nelson Weiman “God is a part of nature, the part that brings forth the increase in good…. In short, God is creative transformation, the growth of meaning and value in the world.” It’s an interesting way to look at the world- that God is more like a process than a being, that this process God is inseparable from transformation, from the ongoing reality of creation, which we are all involved in together.

Consider taking this as a spiritual practice- as you are creating whatever it is you create, notice those sacred intersections of your own creative efforts with those of our community, our web of life, and the mysterious spirit of life that works with us and through us. Notice the ways we create together what one individual cannot create in isolation.

Music producer Rick Rubin writes in his new book “The Creative Act: a Way of Being”:

"Every manifestation of this unfolding is doing its own work on behalf of the universe, each in its own way, true to its own creative impulse.

"Just as trees grow flowers and fruits, humanity creates works of art. The Golden Gate Bridge, the White Album, …, the Sphinx, the space shuttle, the Autobahn, … the Roman Colosseum, the Phillips screwdriver, the iPad, Philadelphia cheesesteak.

"… Each of these is humanity being true to itself, as a hummingbird is true to itself by building a nest, a peach tree by bearing fruit, and a nimbus cloud by producing rain. "

I encourage you in the coming days, to notice how you are participating in the creation of our world, how you are co-creating with the creative force some call divine, how you are co-creating with your community and with the web of life. Listen to and collaborate with all who co-create with you, and in so doing, observe how you are co-creating your self- your great masterwork.

Mother's Day- the Ideal and the Real

Me and Mom, home from the hospital

I’ll be honest with you- I don’t love Mother’s Day, especially since I’ve become a mother myself. There’s nothing like a holiday to remind you of that gap between stories and expectations and the reality of our human lives. From the Mother’s Day where everyone got a stomach bug just in time for the Mother’s Day brunch at the fancy restaurant where we had long anticipated reservations, the Mother's Day everyone forgot, the Mother's Day where the ruined pancakes made everyone grumpy,  the 2020 mother’s day when we waited 3 hours in a parking lot for mother’s day take out...I could go on, but suffice it to say I would gladly replace Mother’s day with a normal ordinary Sunday with no expectations. Maybe I just have some sort of Mother’s Day curse, but I think there’s something more. I think that like most consumption driven occasions, it draws our attention to the gap between who we really are, what life really is, and the ideals we hold -- a gap commercials tell us can be filled with things like jewelry and flowers and fancy meals.

The impossible thing about parenting, is that all parents are ordinary humans, with needs and weaknesses and faults and habits and desires and preferences. The child is also an ordinary human with needs and weaknesses and faults and habits and desires and preferences. There will be times when the two will come together in harmony, and other times when the parent, being the full grown one, will sublimate our own needs to support the needs of the growing child. And there will be times when the parent is dealing with their own mess and is not actually give the child what they needed most, or maybe can’t meet the child’s needs at all.

When we are little parents have such power in our lives- they are our whole world. Then as we grow up and begin to individuate, we notice the ways in which our parents couldn’t or wouldn’t meet our true needs, and we grieve that gap. We begin to imagine how we might have parented ourselves better than our actual parents did. I’ll just speak from my own experience, because I know every family is different, but my parents were generally decent human beings who tried to do the best by me they were able, given their own gifts and challenges, and brokenness and world view. And I tried to be generally the best child I was able, given my own gifts and challenges, and brokenness and world view. After I left home I spent some time in therapy figuring out who I am and what I need, and here I am, a functioning adult, Phew! Even my parenting still shapes me, and impacts me, for better and for worse.

Me and my son

Now, as a parent myself, I have seen the impossibility of being the perfect parent of any child. I grieve the ways I was not the parent my son needed. Nick is now 21 and on the brink of graduating from college- As I look back I can see that sometimes I was a good parent to him, sometimes I missed the mark because I was a human having a bad day and was not the parent he needed me to be. I can also see mistakes I made because I parented my son as I might have needed, and not as a totally unique person who experiences the world differently.

One thing that this whole Covid period has changed for me and my family, is I let go and let go and let go of what I should be, what we should be, and I feel like it is quite a lot to just support one another in our humanness. It is quite a blessing to find a few other humans you trust enough to share your true self, and support one another just as we are. To support one another imperfectly because to be human is to be imperfect.

I must acknowledge that some families have great tragedies in them, of neglect, of trauma, of loss and grief. Some folks in our beloved community did not have “good enough” parents. The responsibility for nurturing you into the beautiful people you all are today was not met by your parents, so perhaps you had to nurture yourself beyond what any child should have to take on their own shoulders. Perhaps there were other people outside your family that supported you and nurtured you. I honor and make space for your reality today- whatever that may be. Your reality matters here.

Part of the reason that even talking about mother’s day is challenging, is because the idea of a mother is both amorphous and complex. It’s a concept shaped by stories and myths and commercials and Instagram. I wonder what that looks like in your imagination? What picture do you see in your mind when we use that word “mother”

Jungian folks make a distinction about the individual, the collective and the archetypal. And mothers are all 3. Each of us has our own person with a womb who brought us into this world, each of us had people who nurtured us as we grew. Maybe there was a person called “mom” that we think of on mother’s day, or maybe there wasn’t, and we feel that absence on Mother’s day. This modern cultural holiday can remind us acutely of those absences, those gaps, so it’s up to us as a faith community to support that complexity of our human experience.

Ideas in our Collective consciousness are those ways of thinking and understanding that bind us together as a culture, as a community. The collective consciousness shapes our thinking about the word mother. Every mom character on TV, every Instagram post, commercials, yes even Mother’s Day sermons shape our thinking about what a mom is, what is normal, what should be. We know this changes:

When some of us were growing up, (or so I get the impression from what I see on TV) the cultural idea of a perfect mom wore a tailored dress and petticoats, loved her new vacuum, and kept her suburban home and children clean and orderly for when her husband got home from work. My mom’s generation often had a full time job in addition to mothering, and wore navy blue power suits, and were supposed to be like the woman in the perfume commercial “I can bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan.”

When I was a young mom, I knew a good mother practiced attachment parenting, and something called “positive discipline.” We had paid work outside the home (because what family could live on one salary?), was infinitely patient could leave her work-for-pay job at the drop of a hat to take her kids to their many activities, and somehow had time for yoga and a mom’s group.

Today’s parents are having fewer children and having them later. The ideal parent has achieved work life balance, were juggling their jobs and parenting and their own mental health needs during a pandemic, and still was supposed to time to post on Instagram how good they looked doing it.

Though the image of a perfect parent changes, each we all feel pressure to conform with the collective vision, and find ourselves, or our own families wanting.

Then there is the archetypal level. And mother is a powerful archetype of creating and nurturing life. Archetypes are the deep symbolic images that are not only shared by our culture, but are shared by many generations over the millennia. As long as there have been humans, there have been mothers. There’s not just one single “mother” archetype, but many facets and faces of the great mother. My symbol dictionary says She is “the origin of all flie, the containing principle; she symbolizes all phases of cosmic life, uniting all the elements, both celestial and chthonic. She is the queen of heaven, mother of god, opening of the way, keeper of the keys of fertility and the gates of birth, death and rebirth. …All great Mothers are weavers and spinners, weaving the web and pattern of life with the thread of destiny, she has the dual nature of the creator and destroyer, and is both nourisher, protector, provider of warmth and shelter, and the terrible forces of dissolution, devouring and death dealing. She is the creator and nourisher of all life and its grave.” [p. 108] Wow.

In the Christian religious tradition, the one mother archetype out of all of that which is revered is Mary, mother of Jesus, peaceful and compassionate. But there are so many other images of the Great archetypal mother. The symbol dictionary again says “In Buddhism and Taoism she is the passive, static principle, wisdom, realization and beatitude, with the lotus and open book of wisdom as her attribute. In her beneficent, nourishing, creative aspect she is … Isis, Hathor, Cybele Ishtar, Lakshmi, Parvati, Tara, Kwan-yin, Demeter, Sophia, Mary…as ensnaring and death dealing she is Astarte, Kali, Durga, Lilith, Hecate, Circe…[she] has serpent-hair or is of frightful appearance” [J.C. Cooper p. 109]

Because we are human, we can’t be all that, we can only be who we are. Some tiny piece of the great mother.

But because we are human, we need that great mother, our spirits need one larger than our little selves to be there before it all began, and to accompany us all through the end. We need the deep calm of the peaceful passive moon mother, and we need the fiery defender – the great bear defending her cubs. We need the mother earth who nourishes and feeds us, and my spirit longs for the great archetypal lap into which we can crawl, when I need to feel small, and comforted.

I saw on a friend’s fridge a photo of Michelle Obama with her daughters on her lap, but my friend and her buddy had photo-shopped their heads onto the photo. They thought Michelle Obama would be an ideal mom, and were inspired by this as they re-parented themselves. I love that idea- it’s so empowered. WE can finally be the parents to ourselves that we always needed. But I bet even Michelle Obama has bad days, even the Obama kids are going to have to re-parent themselves at some point as they grow into who they are, and know what they really need.

I’d like to invite you to consider: what images of mother are surfacing for you this year at Mother’s Day? What support do you need as you notice those gaps between what you long for and the reality of what is?

Let's close in the spirit of meditation/ prayer:

We call to mind with gratitude all who gave us life and nurtured us.

We acknowledge all our human parents could not be for us, even though we needed it deeply

We empower ourselves to be the parents we needed, to fill those gaps as we are able, and to ask for help supporting and nurturing ourselves in our human imperfection and frailty

We are called to birth, to hold, to comfort, to support, to nurture life as we are able in our own unique and imperfect human capacities

Finally we imagine the great archetypal mother who is so timeless, so huge, that even we full grown adults could rest into their love, feel supported by the life giving forces larger than ourselves, and held by the nurturing web of life

Amen

Our Universalist Hearts

The story of Universalism begins with the conversion of hearts. The heart of John Murray, the heart of Moses Park, the heart of our congregation. Back in the early days universalism spread through debates of scripture and doctrine, inviting a new and yet also very old way of looking at the core teaching of Christianity -- that all were forgiven, all were saved because of the fact of Jesus’ life and death.

This was a radical teaching -- Surely not everyone… Surely not those imperfect people, those others who believe differently than me… Surely most people are too imperfect, especially in their faith, to be saved.

Yes, said the Universalists. Everyone. None of us are perfect, not in our actions, not in our faith. But each and every person must be included.

Way back when I was little, the school kids were so relentless in dividing their classmates into those who were in and those who were out; those who were cool and those who had cooties. (Probably you learned too learned at some point in your life what it is like to be on the outside looking in) I think it might have been then that my heart knew it was Universalist- that I just couldn’t feel satisfied, couldn’t feel safe even if I made it into the inner circle, knowing that other folks were left out of the circle.

By the time I was growing up UU in the 1970s and 80s, our Universalism had expanded beyond Christianity to include the wisdom of the world’s religions, but when we talked about Jesus, he was spoken of as a great ethical teacher and community organizer. And that Jesus, the Jesus of the gospels, he always seemed to be with the outsiders. He told the story of the shepherd who leaves the 99 to find the one lost sheep. That spoke to me- I sure wanted to feel like someone would come find me if I was lost, as frankly, I get lost a lot.

This kind of universal love is hard. Whenever we talk about our first principle “The inherent worth and dignity of every person” we notice how hard it is. Seriously, I can’t even stay in the room when some politicians are on TV. Our human capacity to love is imperfect and partial- that’s just a fact of being human.

It reminds me of a song I’ve had stuck in my head - Free by Sylvan Esso:

Oh, people always ask me
What it's like to love everybody
What it's like to love everybody
They ask me
I tell them, “Don't be crazy
There's too many people around me
If I loved them all,
they'd break me, you see”

But Universalists have always believe that the divine has a capacity to love, to include that is bigger than my human capacity. The God I believe in can hold it all. And whether or not you believe in God, because today’s UUs are diverse in their beliefs, we know that we are part of something larger than ourselves- the web of life. The Spirit of Life dwells in every living thing. Moss and trees and squirrels, yes, but also slime mold and vampire bats and fungus. All of it is sacred.

Today, day long theological debates are out of style. We can barely understand the big fancy words, or the logic of the old arguments. But it is clear to me that this moment in history is a moment where our message is needed. As our culture grows more and more divisive, reinforcing divisions by party and religion and all the things. As if more, better dividing will finally make life flourish. No, our way forward, the way we help heal the world will not be theological debate but through love. Not the theological points made by that young women that so disturbed John Murray, but perhaps we can emulate her graciousness.

Think of those examples our historian Katie Replogle offered of the way Universalists in this Valley have always lived their values, taught Universalism through a bag of corn, or standing up for the oppressed. Through acts of connecting and caring, stretching ourselves to grow our hearts wider, to see the beloved, the sacred in all the nooks and crannies in our world we find new ways to embody our Universalist faith. Believing, as our ancestors did, that there is something bigger than all our divisions, which even now holds us all.

How it all Began

I wanted to share with you the story of the very beginnings of our congregation, the way it was told in the record book of the Sheshequin society (probably written by George W. Kinney). But sometimes that old language is hard to understand, so we’ve also provided a translation.

Reader:

The Universalist Society of Sheshequin, from the most reliable information to be obtained, was moulded into form about A.D. 1808. Up to that time, the scattered people of this valley, including “Old Sheshequin,” generally worshipped according to the Baptist faith, Rev. Moses Park, mainly, ministering to their spiritual necessities.

Translator:

Most people here in the valley were Baptist, and Rev. Moses Park was their minister.

Reader:

In the year previous, a Mr. Noah Murray, who had settled in the vicinity of Tioga Point, was known as disseminating the heretical doctrine of the Universal Salvation of the human race from the bondage of sin and corruption. He was scattering firebrands within the walls of Zion, and it was decided that these innovations must be no longer tolerated.

Translator:

Rev. Muray was new to town, and was preaching Universalism. The neighbors freaked out.

Reader:

For the purpose of silencing this pretender, Moses Park and Joseph Kinney were deputed to fight this Goliath and demolish his strongholds. They were thought to be well adapted to accomplish this laudable purpose: the former, possessing the Christian virtues in an eminent degree, and the latter adding a shrewdness, ingenuity and soundness in argument hard to withstand.

Translator:

The neighbors sent Moses Park and Joseph Kinney to convince Murray he was wrong. They were chosen because they were devout and smart and good at arguing

Reader:

Armed with their own well-thumbed Bible, they proceeded to the residence of Murray and made known their mission. They were very courteously and kindly received, and their challenge accepted; and for the space of about three days they fought the good fight.

Translator:

They went to Mr. and Mrs. Murray’s house. They were let in politely and for 3 days they argued about it.

Reader:

The doctrine of the Endless Suffering of the wicked, together with Baptism as a saving ordinance, were relied on by the one party as indispensable to a right understanding of the Scriptures, and a necessity of the divine government.

Translator:

Park and Kinney kept talking about how “only baptized people are saved from hell.”

Reader:

But the deeper they went into the investigation the weaker became their defense, until one after another, they saw their own strongholds demolished and the Sun of Righteousness melting the icebergs of Calvanism [sic].

Translator:

Their arguments didn’t hold up and eventually even they couldn’t believe what they were saying themselves.

Reader:

In short, they “went woolgathering and came home shorn.” They were defeated. They acknowledged it, and finally rejoiced over it.

Translator:

They realized they were wrong, and were okay with it.

Reader:

In conclusion, they agreed to adopt the doctrine of Murray, and Mr. Park was to present the sentiments to his audiences, and study their effects before making any formal declaration of the name.

Translator:

Mr. Park was afraid to tell his congregation he was a universalist now, so he kind of snuck universalism into his sermons

Reader:

His Congregation had been known to approve of the new preaching, and wonder at the improvements in spirituality and wisdom of the preacher; and one bright morning in June A.D. 1808, Mr. Park, after speaking as by inspiration, informed his hearers that, for some time past he had been uttering and believing with his whole soul, the doctrine of the Universal Salvation of the human race; the line of demarcation was drawn.

Translator:

It went okay so in June 1808 he outed himself as a Universalist, and told them “Surprise!” he had been preaching Universalism for some time.

Reader: 

A few denounced, but a large majority stood by him, and, with various changes and discouragements, have remained steadfast in the doctrine to this day.

Translator: 

Some folks left the congregation, but the rest became the Unitarian Universalist congregation we are today.

The Story of Us

Brian McDonald rings the bell at 2013 celebration

Last Sunday a group of us carpooled over to the Sheshequin meeting house to give thanks and blessings to the sacred space where our congregation met for almost 200 years. All who wanted rang the bell and we told stories of weddings and memorials, of what it was like to be a child in the Sunday school there, of the special feeling of gathering in that sanctuary which drew many of us to this congregation.

We also remembered the challenges of that building and how we ended up here. As Nell Allen had told me in an email:

“We moved to the area in summer 1980 and began attending then. At that time it was well established that services ran thru the summer but were on hiatus from Christmas until Easter…. (That did not benefit any struggling RE program, though. ) .. Sunday services from Thanksgiving thru Christmas were held in the afternoon so the church would have all day to “warm up.” ..[members] who tended the stoves would go down early spending all morning and afternoon there. ... No one felt safe starting the fires and leaving the building.”

On Wednesday we gathered again to tell our own stories about the congregation. We first gathered in 2014, and still have the notes from that gathering hung over on the windows there, with updates when we gathered again in 2018, and this week.

Destiny and Barry remember their wedding at the Sheshequin meeting house

It was at that first gathering that Sigrid remembered that in the 1970s we were a small congregation of mostly elders, 16 at the most, so when the Allen family joined in 1985 with their 4 children, it was the beginning of a new era and a jumpstart to the Sunday school. That’s when Jill and Karen and their kids joined the congregation.

Nell also mentioned in that email:

 “… at some point (perhaps very late 1980s) the insurance company let us know that they would not be able to insure the building should we continue use of the stoves.” The ad hoc team who had been looking for a new location with heat and running water settled found this building in Athens, which was being sold by the Christian Scientists. Jill tells us the team didn’t realize it had been previously owned by the Unitarians who built the building decades before until they did the title search. The building was purchased on March 15, 1991, 32 years ago this month.[i]

A Service of Rededication was held on Saturday, September 14, 1991. The Annual report tells us that “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 (The minister at that time who had served as the minister of the Binghamton Church (1963-1980), and came to serve the Sheshequin church part time in his retirement[ii] ) led the service. After he spoke briefly about a principle, a trumpet sounded and a banner of the principle was brought forward by the youth of the church as the congregation sang a song appropriate to the principle. The service was simple yet moving. An open house followed.”

Bob Allen was president of the congregation for 15 years, and brought us into leadership of the Trustees of the Pennsylvania Universalist Convention. Bob and John McDonald build the chalice stain glass window using tiles from an old window. Don Riker commissioned the plaque below it. Perhaps you’ve noticed a crack in one pane. Bob said it was a “crack of humility.”

Bob was also a pilot, and when the plane he was flying crashed, killing him, the whole community was crushed. Memorial services were held at Redeemer and at UUCAS. It was that service that first brought Katie to visit our church- Chris had been visiting for a short time already. When Katie heard Rev. Thor speak, she was moved by his message and has been here ever since.

After Harry Thor’s retirement a student minister, Janelle Curlin-Taylor came to be our intern. This was a tumultuous time for the church, and when Janelle left the church was in a time of conflict.

We entered a period with no paid minister, and strong lay leaders emerged. Nell Allen served as president and church administrator for many years until just before I arrived. In 1999 we started the “Earth Day Fair” in our parking lot to bring the values of sustainability to the larger community, which became an annual event.

Lee Richards, a student minister, served this congregation from 1999 to 2002. During this time our nursery was a lively, welcome place, Lee mentioned once from the pulpit “the sound of a happy child” in the nursery. Ginna wrote about this time: “Lee Richards came in like a breath of joy while we are in mourning. He brought in the Unitarian part of UU, not just Universalism. He brought in a kaleidoscope [and displayed it in the sanctuary]. In 2002 Lee declined to renew his contract after his third year. Conflicts lingered in the congregation.

During all these ups and downs we have had the incredible good luck of having dedicated, talented keyboard players at this church. Even when ministers came and went, we had a familiar face at the keyboard leading us in music. Marion Jones played from 1973 until 2002 when Katie Replogle took over, and Katie has been our church pianist ever since.

In January 2003 we hired Rev. (Jace) Kahn, a trained Interim minister, who brought a great deal of healing to the church. Our ties to the district and to the UUA were strengthened. We became a fair share congregation and a leading giver to the UUSC. (Just this past year we were acknowledged 25+ Honor Congregation

For Participation in the Annual Program Fund)[iii] In 2003 we made Rev. John Trowbridge (who served this church for 21 years! from 1964-1985) our Minister Emeritus. By the time Jace completed his 2 year interim ministry, we were in a much stronger, healthier place.

In 2004, when the Towanda church closed (for the first time), Alice Hardenberg joined our congregation. Alice was passionately outspoken about transgender rights, an activist and an educator everywhere she went. In 2005 the church was delighted to call The Rev. Ann Marie Alderman to be our first settled minister since Harry Thor. She encouraged us become a “Welcoming Congregation” -- to do the inner and outer work necessary to truly welcome the GLBT community. For a couple of our members this was too much of a challenge, and a few folks left, but for the majority who stayed, this was a powerful transformation and “welcoming congregation” became an important part of our sense of identity.

When Ann Marie told us she had accepted a full time position at another church, there was great sadness. The time after her departure called on all the strength of our lay leaders. It was Genevieve and Marion who started calling this the “little church that could” and posted this moto in the social hall.

During that year of lay leadership, I had been invited to preach once a month while you were in your search. When the church was not able to find a match through the search process, they asked me if I would come preach for another year, or maybe be a consulting minister. I said what I really wanted was to be your minister, to be called and settled. So even though I’d been preaching here for a year, we diligently followed the official process from start to finish with interviews and packets and finally a congregational vote to call me as your minister in spring 2008.

When I arrived you had a very strong lay worship leader program, which lasted right up through Covid- though the minister preached 20 services, the other 22 were led by the lay team, even in the summer. I’d be curious when this began, but I know in part it was due to the intrepid leadership of Chris Eng who chaired the team for over 15 years, and perhaps the strong involvement of church members in the toastmaster’s program that supported a group of experienced speakers.

When Nick and I first came to visit your halls were once again full of the noise of children, so full that we had to create a policy about children in church. These conversations led us to apply for and receive a Chalice Lighter’s grant, with which we hired our first professional religious educator, Josh Wilbur, who was followed by Aileen Fitzke, Lindsey Smith and Maggie Belokur. 

2015 Coming of Age Retreat

In my first months as your minister, Mike Sarno approached me about a coming of age program for his daughter and other teens. I had led coming of age programs for many years back in California, so we worked to create the first COA program here back in 2008. The Athens planning team had wistfully wondered about offering a joint coming of age program, but it was a teen from Big Flats, Lydia, who noticed the Coming of Age event in our order of service and bravely asked if she and her friend from Big Flats could participate, and we have offered joint programs ever since - just as the North Branch congregations had one “union youth group” back in the 1950s and 60s. Many small churches can’t offer a program for their teens, but with our congregations together, we were able to create something powerful and real. So far we have offered a total of 4 COA programs, including a joint program with Cortland and Ithaca 2019-20 -- the first one to have a zoom component, which turned out to be central in the spring of 2020 when everything changed.

That 2008-9 year was a busy year for us- full of plans and seeds being planted. After a yearlong congregation-wide process to discern how we would serve the larger community, we decided on “Feed a Friend” where we would grow our own fresh organic produce to donate to local food banks. When Project Grow launched in 2011 under the leadership of Destiny Kinal, it was clear that the missions of the two initiatives were closely aligned, and we ended Feed a Friend, and put our energy into collaborating with and supporting Project Grow.

2009 was a big recession, and we weren’t sure how we could ask people to contribute to our pledge drive with such economic uncertainty[iv]. So we came up with a pledge celebration that honored our diverse gifts- thus began the potluck and open mic tradition that lasted for over a decade. For many years the open mic, the Christmas service and many Sundays include the always sometimes silly, sometimes soulful choir, lead by Karen Ream and then the Uke Group lead by Katie Replogle.

John Dosher speaks at a CSN event

When we first learned about Hydro-Fracking many of us were confused and puzzled by it, especially those of us who were being offered mineral leases. “You might want to talk to Mike Lovegreen” someone suggested and once I did I knew this would be an important ministry of our congregation. We held our first community forum on the topic which grew into the “Community Shale Network” hosting about a dozen forums over 4 years. Elaine and Mike were a critical part of that work, which was a true community team reaching far beyond our congregation. We were proud to provide factual information to the community about this controversial topic without any rancor. (started 2008-9)

In the fall of 2010 during a conversation about global warming we decided to charter a Green Sanctuary Team. Our work with CSN and Project Grow were part of a plan that included a full assessment of the energy efficiency of this building, and a series of improvements thanks in large part to the tireless efforts of Jane Land. Our plan included classes and workshops and sermons, and a covenant of sustainable purchasing and use. The Doschers were an important part of this work. We quickly blew past all our goals, but it took some time to sit down and write up all we had done. Finally we submitted
our write up, and in the summer of 2017 we were recognized as a Green Sanctuary Congregation.[v]

In 2011 a flood immobilized the Valley. The rains came down hard on Thursday, and by the time the streets were clear on Saturday we had to pass through a National Guard checkpoint on the way to the church to assess and repair the damage. Volunteers filled the parking lot sanitizing and drying the contents of our basement. Sunday we worshiped without power, without potable water. At coffee hour, Diane and Maggie wondered how we could be of more help to our neighbors. We held an emergency board meeting, and decided to open our building to folks who just needed to use a restroom, or a clean place to rest. The next day we began serving a hot lunch and all were welcome to join us in the social hall. Other volunteers delivered sandwiches to people who didn’t want to leave their work salvaging their homes or businesses. For weeks we fed and cared for our neighbors until the crowds died down, and our work helping repair the damage of the flood continued in other ways.

In 2014 our newest members, Mike and Judy, proposed the idea of hosting a trivia night at the church as a benefit to community organizations. The first Trivia night was held fall of 2014, and was a big success, offered monthly right up through 2020, raising needed funds for the Bradford County Humane society and other community organizations.

In 2014 you offered the first sabbatical this congregation had ever given a minister. During that time you showed you were still the “little church that could.” You taught a class on Ethics. You brought in a trainer from Dickenson College to teach you how do water testing to monitor our local creeks. And it was during this time that it became legal in Pennsylvania for same gender couples to marry. The very week I came back from sabbatical, Our members received the 1st and 3rd licenses in the county, and we celebrated these unions with great joy.

It might have been 2018 when we first hosted a community meal at Athens Methodist Church. I had been looking for ways we could partner with our neighbors, and reported what I found to the board. When Judy Moore heard about the opportunity to feed hungry people, her energy and enthusiasm were a force of nature. She got so many folks out to help with our first meal we could barely all fit in the kitchen. Just this month we did our most recent meal, and the community knows us now by our aprons and our delicious dinners.

In 2016 under the leadership of Marcia Kesten, the board decided to respond to the UUA national call for support of the BLM movement by creating and hanging an BLM banner. Though members of this congregation had [vi] been committed to racial justice since 2009-10 the controversy about the banner created a sense of urgency and brought the conversation about how we should respond to systemic racism to the center of our congregation. The primary resistance was knowing that we lived in a conservative valley, and fearing that there could be real risk to our building, or to our safety. Jill remembered a time when the KKK burned crosses on the land adjacent to hers- these were not hypothetical worries. For over a year we engaged in difficult and powerful conversations, and formed the Anti Racism team. One of our favorite projects of this time was partnering in hosting a world café here in our sanctuary with the amazing activists and community organizers form Mother’s helping Mothers in Elmira.

In spring of 2020 the death of George Floyd was a renewed call to action. Though we were still meeting only on zoom, many of us gathered at the vigil in Riverside park, where we first talked of creating a community interfaith study group which in turn lead to first anti-racism community group in the Valley.

In July of 2021 we received the Eugene O Picket award from the UUA for our work in the community- our fundraising, our service, our anti-oppression work, and for “being a beacon of justice” in our conservative rural area. Our award letter says “Small rural congregations like yours save lives in places where it matters. Please know that you are seen and appreciated by the wider UUA. With deep gratitude for your faithful ministry.”

When we gathered here Wednesday to tell the story of us, we filled 2 hours and many easel pages and ran out of time. Over these past 200 years hundreds, hundreds of people have been part of this church, have been part of our story. The story is too big to tell it all in one morning, but I want you to know that each and every one of you is an important part of this story. Even as the story continues, it is important to look back over our journey together, to begin to tell the story of who we are as a congregation. To celebrate all that we have been to one another, to our community and to the UU world.





End Notes:
[i] A Service of Re-dedication was held on Saturday, September 14, 1991 at 7:30 p.m.

[ii] He served our congregation for 7 years from 1989-1996.

[iii] Su tells us we are 1 of 133 congregations in the country and one of 8 in PA, with this designation!

[iv] From the 2009 pledge letter “First, the Board has agreed to offer this guarantee to all who pledge; if you lose your job during the coming year, we will refund all the contributions you have made to that point in the 2009-10 pledge year. This is one way that we as a community can reduce anxiety and uncertainty as we plan for the future.”


[v] This was proposed at the 11/2/10 Global Warming Action meeting. Attendees: Darcey, Doug, JC, John, Aurelio, Carol, Katie, Jack, Chris, Aileen. The minutes say: ‘Tonight’s group agreed to propose to the Board that we charter a Green Sanctuary team.”
First GS team meeting  was held 12/5/10
Letter from UUA accepting candidacy dated 11/13/12
Submitted 2017, approved over the summer 2017

[vi] 2011-12 annual report “As part of becoming a truly welcoming congregation I promised to continue learning about anti-racism/anti-oppression and to consider how to tie this work into UUCAS and our institutional structure”

2009-10 annual report:
"I Invite our congregation to consider how they might become an anti-oppressive institution...
Participants from the “Weaving the Fabric” class presented recommendations to the Board of Trustees. The board has adopted a couple of future steps, and referred other actions to the worship team and YRE committee. This will require some consistent attention to make sure we continue to make steady progress on this issue. The Board has asked the Committee on Ministry to also give ongoing attention to this area.”

When Doubting is an Act of Faith

Reading: "Cherish Your Doubts "By Robert T Weston

Cherish your doubts, for doubt is the attendant of truth.
Doubt is the key to the door of knowledge; it is the servant of discovery.
A belief which may not be questioned binds us to error, for there is incompleteness and imperfection in every belief.
Doubt is the touchstone of truth; it is an acid which eats away the false.
Let no one fear the truth, that doubt may consume it; for doubt is a testing of belief.
The truth stands boldly and unafraid; it is not shaken by the testing:
For truth, if it be truth, arises from each testing stronger, more secure.
Those that would silence doubt are filled with fear; their houses are built on shifting sands.
But those who fear not doubt, and know its use, are founded on rock.
They shall walk in the light of growing knowledge; the work of their hands shall endure.
Therefore let us not fear doubt, but let us rejoice in its help:
It is to be the wise as a staff to the blind; doubt is the attendant of truth.

Reflection: 

That reading  is one I remember from the Unitarian Universalist church of my childhood. In that congregation many had come from other faith traditions where they had doubted and questioned what was taught, and perhaps had been told explicitly or implicitly that doubt was not okay. How wonderful to find a UU church where we were encouraged to “cherish our doubts” and believed that truth could stand up to doubt, could stand up to testing. This theme, this willingness to doubt goes all the way back to the beginning of the Unitarian tradition- Consider Michael Servetus, a 16th century physician and early thinker of Unitarianism who wrote a book questioning the trinitarian dogma of the church called “On Errors of the Trinity” which got him in a lot of trouble for questioning church doctrine. If you’ve got doubts, you are in the right place.

In my childhood home we had a creek in our backyard and the neighborhood kids loved to walk from rock to rock across the creek. You learn after a few stumbles to test each rock as you go- how solid and stable is it? I think growing up UU gives me a sort of confidence, a faith that it’s worth testing and sorting through what we assume to be true -- like walking across the stones in the creek. It’s in our 4th principle: A free and responsible search for truth and meaning. I came across this perfect exchange in my novel this week- 2 scientists talking about what they are learning form their research:

One says --“We knew that, though.”
The other replies -- “We suspected it.”
“Do we know it now?”
“We suspect it harder,” “We’re scientists We only know things until someone shows us we’re wrong.” [Leviathan Falls p. 151]

I confess to you that the events of the past few years have got me doubting a lot of things that I thought were settled truth in my own mind. It’s not comfortable to see the bedrock beliefs you were standing on suddenly seem shaky and cracked, “why-- if that’s not true, what else isn’t true?” As unsettling as this time has been, continues to be, that testing becomes more and more important- what is real, now even after all that change. What can we count on? And what has changed, and what did we get wrong?

The wisdom story we shared this morning, The Scared Little Rabbit from the Buddhist tradition, reminds us that it really is important to inquire and investigate the assumptions that drive our actions. “never be led by hearsay, test all things for yourself.”

But doubt is a double-edged sword. We see in our culture today a knee jerk or reflexive doubting that is not “a servant of discovery” but a blunt weapon. One person I know battled Covid for weeks in the hospital and when he was finally sent home told his circle “I don’t believe I really ever had Covid” I know a lot of us have had similar experiences- friends, neighbors and family who believe what they read on social media over what their own doctors tell them, over the evidence of their own bodies.

Or consider how destabilizing it is for our democracy for the results of every election is doubted even after independent investigations, and close scrutiny of data and facts show that the results are sound.

In h The Tibetan book of Living and Dying Sogyal Rimpoche writes, 

“our society promotes cleverness instead of wisdom, and celebrates the most superficial, harsh and least useful aspects of our intelligence. We have become so falsely “sophisticated” and neurotic that we take doubt itself for truth, and the doubt that is nothing more than ego’s desperate attempt to defend itself from wisdom is deified as the goal and fruit of true knowledge. … not the open-souled and generous doubt that Buddha assured us was necessary for testing and probing the worth of the teachings, but a destructive form of doubt that leaves us nothing to believe in, nothing to hope for, and nothing to live by.” [p. 123]

This calls to mind our 5th source is -- “Humanist teachings which counsel us to heed the guidance of reason and the results of science, and warn us against idolatries of the mind and spirit.” I think part of what Sogyal Rimpoche is saying is that doubt itself can become an idolatry.

“Doubt is the touchstone of truth; it is an acid which eats away the false.” To extend that metaphor, acid eats away a lot of things, some of which are quite important to us.

Consider democracy: Clearly our system of government privileges some voices over others. If democracy is going to live up to our values, we must use our questioning, doubting minds to create a more equal government for all. At the same time- who knew democracy was so fragile? Who knew that it relied so heavily on all of us agreeing that it was important, that we wanted it to succeed, that if we all agreed on the rules of the game and followed those same rules we could trust the outcome?

Consider relationships: how constant doubting the loyalty, affection, friendship of the other can corrode the trust between you. It’s the plot of just about every Rom-com that one protagonist doubts, and so the other doubts. I think most people at one time or another have defended their tender hearts by doubting everyone, keeping at bay connections that might have been supportive and compassionate. This is the kind of heavy-handed doubt Sogyal Rinpoche is talking about. But this is the very nature of friendship, of love -- to risk putting weight on the relationship like reaching out your toe to that rock in the stream. We risk opening our heart, and hope the other does too. When we meet all people with skepticism, we limit and put at risk our relationships. We give each other the benefit of the doubt, (interesting phrase that) relationship becomes possible.

Consider our sense of self, our own worthiness. Teacher and Poet John O’Donohue writes:

Try, as best you can, not to let
The wire brush of doubt
Scrape from your heart
All sense of yourself
And your hesitant light.

I can’t offer you any proof that each person has inherent worth and dignity, and I’ll get real with you for a moment here, there are definitely times when I wonder- what is my worth? But if I try to head off my fears using doubt as a defense mechanism, I could easily dim that “hesitant light”. Instead we can try a more subtle use of doubt, like an experiment. If we have an old voice of judgement in our minds, that says “you’re no good” can we bring our skillful doubt to that, and ask “really? How do I know that? Where does that question come from? What other conclusions are possible given the facts of this moment?” What if we lived our lives as if we had inherent worth and dignity, investigating and exploring questions about what the worth of our lives have been to myself and to our community. Such an experiment could help us grow in self knowledge and wisdom.

Sogyal Rinpoche tells us: 

“The Buddha summons us to another kind of doubt, ‘like analyzing gold, scorching, cutting and rubbing it to tests its purity.’ ... In the place of our contemporary nihilistic form of doubt, then, I would ask you to put what I call a “noble doubt” the kind of doubt that is an integral part of the path toward enlightenment” [p. 124]

Consider Community: Because of our human capacity to co-regulate, to effect each others nervous systems unconsciously, both anxiety and resilience are sort of infectious. Feeling trust and safety or feeling distrust and fear are both contagious. Our distrust can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. In a way we make our community trustworthy by deciding together, as a collective that it is trustworthy. I have seen this beloved community month after month, year after year, discuss heavy and challenging things together, and when we start from that gracious assumption of good intent the discussions are deep and meaningful. I’ve also seen meetings where there is a deep distrust in one another, a suspicion that infects the relationship. I’ve seen communities rooted in distrust tear themselves apart. There’s a paradox there- trust has to be earned, but it can’t be earned if we don’t risk. Also, trust is a subtle and complex thing, just as doubt is. Trust is specific and personal. For example, I had a friend who was often 45 minutes late for our get-togethers. I could have painted with a broad stroke, assumed “she untrustworthy” but if I used a finer stroke I noticed the many ways she was trustworthy, and in fact she was quite reliable about always being late. I decided I would always meet her at my place or hers and bring a book in case she was running behind. Like the fine brushes of an archeologist, we brush away the dust until what is true and solid emerges.

As I was looking for hymns this week, I sung through #293 “O Star of Truth”. The tune is nice but it ends with the phrase “though I be lone and weary” and I thought, that’s not the kind of doubt I want to encourage today- doubt that isolates us and makes us weary. I am talking about the kind of doubt that can happen within beloved community – our community can help us be accountable, challenge us. We aspire to be that kind of community that can say “I have a different point of view”

And of course when we have evidence to the contrary- for example the wrong link is in the newsletter, the preacher uses the wrong word for something -- we try to again assume good intent behind the mistake, and also to make course corrections as we go. We know for a fact our leaders, or members, our tradition is fallible. Rev. Rebecca Parker once said what she admired most about UUs was that we understood something about what it is to be human. We know that we make mistakes, and we know that we learn and grow. We come together in community as fallible, growing, evolving humans, and part of the reason I love this congregation is because I trust that if I make a mistake, you will ask me about it in a gentle loving way- “the 28th is a Tuesday, did you mean worship would be on a Tuesday, or that it will be on Sunday the 26th?”

Sogyal Rinpoche writes: 

“Don’t let us take doubts with exaggerated seriousness, or let them grow out of proportion, or become black-and-white or fanatical about them. What we need to learn is how slowly to change our culturally conditioned and passionate involvement with doubt into a free humorous and compassionate one. This means giving doubts time, and giving ourselves time to find answers to our questions that are not merely intellectual or “philosophical” but living and real and genuine and workable. Doubts cannot resolve themselves immediately; but if we are patient a space can be created within us, in which doubts can be carefully and objectively examined, unraveled, dissolved and healed.”

On the spiritual path we will experience doubt, I know I do. Our task then is the subtle discernment of what is trustworthy -- in our religious tradition, in our community, in ourselves. It’s an easy habit to let our doubts convince us that nothing is trustworthy, to let our cynicism coat everything with a single shade of paint. Could we instead engage with doubt in a way that is “ free, humorous and compassionate?” Could we hold our doubts like an artist’s paintbrush with subtlety and skill to reveal a living and complex reality? Your doubts are welcome here- let us support one another as we test the stones beneath our feet, and trust that which we find to be trustworthy.