Currents

I am indebted to the fantastic leadership of our current Worship Council for the energy they’ve put into choosing this year’s themes, and especially for the input of Sarah Witte and Stew Guernsey who did so much to make these materials on “Belonging” readily available to me over the past few weeks. Thank you.

 

Reading – from Belonging: the meaning of membership by the Commission on Appraisal of the Unitarian Universalist Association. June 2011. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. All sermon quotes from the same

 

G. Peter Fleck, in the title essay of his book, The Blessings of Imperfection, makes direct reference to the lived life of organized religion:

           

            Well, let’s be frank and admit that the church has its aggravations. The eternal and oh-so-necessary concern about finances, the annually recurring problems of balancing a budget, or finding money for repairing the vestibule, repairing the boiler, and tuning the organ, the ongoing criticism of the ministers sermons, which are too liberal for some and too orthodox for others, too pedantic for some and too colloquial for others, the endless committee meetings about the Sunday School curriculum, and about the propriety of social action, the persistent shortage of tenors in the choir. Who wants it? Who needs it?

The answer to this question is that we…want it, because we need it. The answer is that the church, and I am now speaking of the liberal church, in spite of its shortcomings, the imperfection that characterizes everything made by humans, is better, infinitely better, than no church. Maybe I should not have said “in spite of its shortcomings” but “because of its shortcomings.” For isn’t it true that in our churches, in these communities of the spirit, we have more resources than outside of our churches to accept each other’s imperfection, to reconcile our differences, to forgive and be forgives, to comfort and to be comforted, to love and to be loved? Isn’t that what the church is all about – because it is what life is all about?

 

Morning Reflection – Rev. Jennifer Emrich

 

Belonging is a process. Belonging to anything is a process.  Whether we are speaking about the imperfect but necessary church, family, partnership, country or entire civilization to which we belong, becoming a member takes a long time, and requires much of us that we could not have guessed we even needed when we began our polite inquiries into the arrangement.

 

All initial inquiries are polite. Well, perhaps the screaming entrance of the infant into a family, whether born of the body or adopted from afar lacks the usual niceties we try to put on for one another, but other than that, when we first seek to belong to something, or to someone, we are putting nothing but our best face forward. And we usually see and receive nothing but the best in return. We become quite enchanted, with the church, the partnership, the family, the new company, the new presidency, what have you. Nothing can shake our resolve. Nothing can quiet our fervor.

 

Except, something will.  The Commission on Appraisal for the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations tells us that “Community is a happy sounding word, and it is common for religious liberals to emphasize the ideal of community as a primary reason and purpose for the institution of the church. Such idealism has its place, but building an authentic human community is never easy and only fleetingly happy (p.9).”

 

As it goes for the church, so it goes for the world.

 

I have real concern about many of my friends right now, and many of you here in this congregation. I should take this opportunity to say that not all people in this congregation vote the same way. If you don’t know that, take care. We are a diverse group – Democrat, Republican and Independent. We don’t all agree about Marriage Equality, either, though our faith in that matter is clear. I will not do as our Catholic Bishop is doing and force you to spend long hours in prayer praying that my beliefs about marriage carry the vote on Tuesday. We’ll skip that this year. I will tell you that I marry people who are gay and lesbian and bi-sexual. I marry men who used to be women to women who love them….These weddings are a great privilege to be part of, all weddings are, but, it’s different when you’re performing a ceremony that is not actually legal. The parents of the brides or grooms are different. The tension in the room is different, the looks on the faces of the assembled friends and family when I stand up in my robes and stole, and I say, ‘By the power vested in me I proclaim you wed’…the celebration afterward – it’s all different. Someday I will miss that extra energy, that revolutionary buzz that flies through the ceremony, singing. Because I am not worried about Marriage Equality in Maine, or anywhere else. Marriage Equality in America is a done deal. Maybe not on Tuesday. Maybe not four years from now. But certainly I will live to miss that other energy, and to celebrate the new reality. I work with teenagers and young adults every week, folks. I hope we do this work for them, but if we do not, they will do it for themselves. Of that I have no doubt.

 

What I am worried about, and what I caution against, is despair. I’m hearing that word a lot. I don’t typically presume to tell others how to feel, but I don’t think despair is appropriate, I don’t even think it’s what we’re really feeling. I think we have to understand that we only truly belong to that with which we have become disillusioned, and lived to tell the tale. Disillusionment, that abrupt and uncomfortable experience of finding that that with which we are enchanted is, in fact, as flawed as everything and everyone else. It’s a paradox, because we feel like we belong to a church, a partnership, a country, a political movement, when we’re enchanted with it, when we’re “happy” about it, when it helps us float through our day, excited for what comes next. The truth is, we can’t even see what there is to belong to when we’re enchanted. Again, from our Commission on Appraisal: “the idealization of community is a ‘human wish dream’ that is a hindrance to genuine community and must be banished if genuine community it to survive…the congregation that is supposed to be a loving community is sometimes beset with conflicts. Decisions can be made with which we disagree. People can become disagreeable. The church is a human institution and sometimes it can become all too human. When such difficulties arise, some walk away, some step back. But fortunately there are those who remain steadfast through these times of disillusionment, whose loyalty grows beyond it. Out of their disillusionment grows a loyalty less to the institution and more to the values and ideals that the institution seeks to serve and embody. It recognizes that institutional as well as personal failure is inevitable. This is loyalty of a high order. It requires extraordinary patience, tolerance, and the capacity to forgive. These are spiritual gifts, learned in real community.” (CAUUA – p.11)

 

There are many relationships I have walked away from in this lifetime. Maybe you can relate.  Sometimes I have walked away out of emotional or spiritual immaturity. No doubt about it. Sometimes I have walked away because to do so is the act of emotional or spiritual maturity – we should not stay with people or in places that wound us body or soul. But, I belong to Unitarian Universalism, to the clergy, to the town of Yarmouth, to the state of Maine, to the United States of America. I belong to the First Universalist Church of Yarmouth. And, as far as I’m the mother of Max and Madelin, I’m an Emrich. I know I belong, not because all of these associations have brought me nothing but endless joy and contentment, but because all of these relationships and communities have failed me dreadfully, and threaten to do so again at any moment. I hold no illusions. What I believe in are the ideals and values that these organizations and partnerships promote and uphold, even when they fail to do so. (CAUUA – p.11) I am not always a graceful supporter, but I am a loyal one. I belong. I will still belong after I cast my votes on Tuesday. I will still belong no matter how the others I belong to and with vote, and whether or not their vote carries or mine does.  And no matter how the vote goes, I will not despair.

 

We must not despair over that which has been gained in the politics of the past that has allowed for the blossoming of civil rights in this country, the protection of the rights and lives of women, the progressive ground with which and in which our faith flourishes…despair that now, somehow, all is lost, or will be if the vote does not go a certain way. Despair terrifies me. It makes people walk away. It rends community in two. It will tear things down in a way no vote ever could….

 

The social justice for which we fight as people of a liberal religious faith is based on the social gospel. The social gospel tells us that we do not have to wait for divine providence to act itself out on earth. Rather, we are god’s hearts and hands and if we want justice to prevail we have been endowed with what it takes to create that heaven on earth. The social gospel is the most useful and prolific tool used to right what’s wrong in human relationships since the ancient advent of the Jubilee. But it has one flaw – it’s exhausting. And, I can see and hear in the past couple of weeks, it confuses disillusionment with despair.

 

Remember something beyond the social gospel, my friends. Remember the garden. Remember that we are all already standing on holy ground, on good, growing ground….It is not so much that we have to build a just world for all people with our own strength until it gives out, it is much more that we are already, as the Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor likes to preach, already standing on the X that marks the spot where the treasure is buried. We get to illuminate this good news so that others may see and feel it. There is no failure in failure. When everything goes wrong, when things are hard, when there’s more to know about someone than at first meets the eye, when we are out voted or shouted down, and the abundance we know exists still plays out as scarcity that starves and robs real people, and yet what we believe in and know in our hearts to be true continues, and the place where we can keep talking and feeling and needing what we need still stands, that’s when we belong. The Rev. Steven Charleston writes:

 

It all begins with small numbers. A few more drops of precipitation, a little more wind, a slight rise in the sea level, a couple of degrees difference in the elevation of the moon. Great forces are born in small numbers, in the increments of existence, the mathematics of our physical being.

 

And as with the natural, so the spiritual. A tiny bit more kindness, a single hope, a small increase in giving, a few more prayers, another moment of patience. Great souls are not instant in being, but being made up of instants. Life without and within, lived in the small things that count.

 

 Every small thing you are doing to raise a healthy family, create a whole and healthy self, participate in this church, and invest in the civil rights of this country counts. There’s a Sufi parable that helps me take the long view of American Democracy, and of this incredible religious experiment that is Unitarian Universalism. It goes like this: “In one of the great court banquets, everyone was seated according to rank, waiting the entry of the King. In came a plain, shabby man and took a seat above everyone else. His boldness angered the prime minister who ordered the newcomer to identify himself. Was he a minister? No. More. Was he the King? No. More. “Are you then God?” asked the prime minister. “I am above that also”, replied the poor man. “There is nothing beyond God,” retorted the prime minister. “That nothing,” came the response, “is me.”

We are the humble force behind the powers that be. And in that we are everything. We choose a country and a faith in which there is no one coming who can reign on high in one regard or another, rescue us, solve our problems. We choose to solve them ourselves, and to face the disillusionment that comes with our foibles and failures as we proceed. If we are steadfast, and connected to the beauty that yet remains, and to the great good Yes! in which we believe, we shall belong to one another, in a community that has been tested, and is true. From here we shall do great good in small numbers, and in one generation or the next, prevail.