Reverend Frieda Gillespie - Services, Sermons, and Ceremonies

The tree the tempest with a crash of wood
Throws down in front of us is not to bar
Our passage to our journey’s end for good,
But just to ask us who we think we are

Insisting always on our own way so.
She likes to halt us in our runner tracks,
And make us get down in a foot of snow
Debating what to do without an ax.

And yet she knows obstruction is in vain:
We will not be put off the final goal
We have it hidden in us to attain,
Not though we have to seize earth by the pole

And, tired of aimless circling in one place,
Steer straight off after something into space.

I was Christmas shopping week before last at Barnes and Noble in Framingham when I saw a group gathering at the back of the store. I was curious and went to see what was up. A sign said that Rabbi Harold Kushner was speaking about his new book, “Overcoming Life’s Disappointments” that night. You may know Rabbi Kushner’s many other books, the most famous of which is “When Bad Things Happen to Good People.” I stayed for while and listened to him. He’s a great extemporaneous speaker and he told story after story of how people’s expectations get them into misery and how disappointments can lead to unexpected happiness. It was a delightful interlude in a very busy time in my life. I bought his book and have been reading it. He uses the life of Moses as a teaching metaphor to how we all deal with disappointment. You can read the book to learn more about the life of Moses, but his thinking about the ways we respond to disappointment I found profound and very helpful.

Kushner asks the question, “When the real world turns out to be a lot less friendly than we dreamed it would be, do we give up and settle for what the world is willing to give us without a struggle? Do we rail against God for the unfairness of life? Or do we look deeply into ourselves and only then discover how resilient we are?” He goes on to say, “It may be that instead of giving us a friendly world that would never challenge us and therefore never make us strong, God gave us a world that would inevitably break our hearts, and compensated for that by planting in our souls the gift of resilience.”

In non-theological terms it’s not what happens to us that matters but how we respond to what happens that matters. Do we give up, giving away our identity, or fight endlessly against unbeatable forces? How can we respond so that, although we might be damaged by forces we cannot control, our integrity is not damaged and we find ourselves able to rebuild or refashion our lives using our native resilience.

It begins in the reign of Alexander the Great. Alexander conquered Syria, Egypt and Palestine, but allowed the lands under his control to continue observing their own religions and retain a certain degree of autonomy. Under this relatively benevolent rule, many Jews assimilated much of Hellenistic culture, adopting the language, the customs and the dress of the Greeks, in much the same way that Jews in America today blend into the secular American society.

More than a century later, a successor of Alexander, Antiochus IV was in control of the region. He began to oppress the Jews severely, placing a Hellenistic priest in the Temple, massacring Jews, prohibiting the practice of the Jewish religion, and desecrating the Temple by requiring the sacrifice of pigs (a non-kosher animal) on the altar. Two groups opposed Antiochus: a basically nationalistic group led by Mattathias the Hasmonean and his son Judah Maccabee, and a religious traditionalist group… They joined forces in a revolt against both the assimilation of the Hellenistic Jews and oppression by the Selucid Greek government. The revolution succeeded and the Temple was rededicated.

According to tradition as recorded in the Talmud, at the time of the rededication, there was very little oil left that had not been defiled by the Greeks. Oil was needed for the menorah (candelabrum) in the Temple, which was supposed to burn throughout the night every night. There was only enough oil to burn for one day, yet miraculously, it burned for eight days, the time needed to prepare a fresh supply of oil for the menorah. An eight day festival was declared to commemorate this miracle. For eight days which started this year on December 15th, Jews light candles, each night adding one more. Note that the holiday commemorates the miracle of the oil, not the military victory: Jews do not glorify war.

That is the story that is told and commemorated at Hannukah each year by Jewish people. But like all political struggles, there is more to the story than that. Antiochus IV came into this war after it was well underway among the Jews themselves. The Jewish priests of the time with ambition for wealth and power, had become more aligned with the Selucid rulers and attempted to incorporate Greek customs more and more officially into the lives of Jews. This was not resisted as much in the major cities as it was in the countryside where tradition was more strongly guarded. This resistance quickly developed into civil war between the ruling priests and the opposition groups, where the degree of cultural and political change was the subject of the struggle. Antiochus in keeping with centuries of ruling policy had to step in to squelch the fighting in order to maintain security and peace in the empire. The fighting lasted sixteen years before the Selucid armies decided to give the Judeans their independence.

But driving Antiochus out didn’t solve the issues the Jews faced at that time. Throughout the long period of independent rule they still fought with each other about how much of Greek culture they would allow or incorporate into their own. Some felt that Judaism represented the best of Greek culture as it was; others felt that Judaism was the antithesis of everything Greek religion represented. They continued this in-fighting for almost a hundred years until the Romans stepped in and conquered Jerusalem for the same reasons Antiochus had nearly a century before.

This constant in-fighting was a battle for the very identity of a group. It was about who they thought they were and, like all political battles, who was going to be in control.

The story about the oil that lasted far beyond what it should have is a beautiful metaphor for the common ground that exists between them. Oil was the very fuel of life to these people, providing light and heat for cooking as well as religious symbolism. It was a symbol of honor and respect. Placing oil on the head of another person during biblical times was a way of showing high regard for that person. Oil was one of the most valuable commodities. The story tells us that what is really valuable, what is most important is available to us even though all of our other dreams may be disappointed. The other shining aspect of this story is the way the Jews rebuilt and rededicated the Temple after its desecration. They found the resilience in themselves to renew what had been violated in their lives. Which meant that it never was really permanently violated – that is the nature of resiliency.

It is ironic that the Hannakah holiday has been infused now with the secular and Christian custom of gift buying and giving. And of course that’s not all. Christmas trees and new foods have infiltrated Jewish homes. I saw a recipe on the Internet for the traditional Hannukah potato pancakes, Latkes, that was for Zucchini latkes with red pepper jelly and smoked trout. The force of assimilation continues….
It strikes me that in our Unitarian Universalist congregations we have similar battles going on. We are an amalgam of many theologies and there are often struggles between those that have never related to religion or those who have been actually harmed by religion and those for whom religious metaphor offers meaning and richness. I’ve observed this here in the differences between you regarding the use of religious language in the service. It is not an easy thing to decide what is worth taking a stand over and what isn’t. “Who do you think you are?” becomes a key question. When is it possible to yield to another’s wishes without impinging on your own integrity and when is it not? Can we share our feelings about an issue without having to dictate to the other person? Can we be open to how another feels about our wishes? Can we yield without letting disappointment derail us?

I think all of us at one time or another or perhaps many times in our lives get our dreams stomped on by reality – the reality of what others want or the reality that what we dreamed is just not real enough to be manifest. This happens whenever we enter into relationship. The other person as beautiful and exciting as we might perceive them to be at first will inevitably fail to live up to our vision of their perfection. They will disappoint us in some way, if only that we have to give up something we’ve become attached to in order to be with them. We are much better off when we accept this and allow the faults and foibles of our loved ones to be as dear to us as the rest of them. This doesn’t happen though without a conscious process.

You are all part of a conscious experiment, the experiment of containing within one sanctuary all of the religious, spiritual and humanist aspirations of a diverse group of people. It is a challenge, believe me, for any minister to design a service that meets the needs of all of who are present – it is a challenge that cannot be met in any one moment or even any one Sunday. But that challenge pales compared to the challenge you all face to be community together even though you may violently disagree about some aspects of the direction for this congregation. You have a choice to fight and struggle or to focus on what is most important, what you have in common, the oil that fuels this community and honors it, the very heart of why you are together. Who you think you are as individuals must be tempered by what you think you are doing here together. This is the key to all relationship.

Kushner talks about a mother who came to him frustrated that her family didn’t appreciate all that she does. Her kids think that clean clothes just magically appear in their dressers and her husband thinks that she has an easy time all day with only housework and child rearing to do. Kushner’s response was “[she] needs to remember that when she works so hard to make her home an inviting place and to put nourishing meals on the table, she is not doing it for herself, or for her husband and children. She is doing it for the mythical entity we call a family, because sustaining a family is what gives meaning to her life and what sustains the lives of her husband and children as well. She is working to uphold the image of herself as someone who does not compromise on the things that matter most to her.”

In a like manner you are working not to please each other or pacify each other, but to create a mythical entity called a congregation. Because in doing so you sustain the spiritual life of yourself, and the others in the congregation. You can each decide what matters most to you, but unlike the stay at home mother and wife, who has a certain amount of autonomy in her work, you must work together to discover and decide what is most important. You don’t have the luxury of not compromising. But that doesn’t mean you must give up what is most important to you. It means you may have to dig deeper beyond the superficial appearances of things, or words. You may need to mine your own hearts for the common ground that will sustain you.

Can people of diverse religious and anti-religious experience co-exist in community? That is the experimental question at hand. You’ve answered ‘yes’ to this in so many ways over the years. If you reflect on what has made this possible, it is undoubtedly the way in which you have honored each other in spite of your differences. As you open your doors and community to more people, you will be faced with more diversity rather than less. How will you meet that challenge? Will you act as the Maccabees did and send them packing? Will you give up your struggle and go with the flow as the more metropolitan Jews did? Or will you dig deeply, as Kushner suggests, discerning what really matters to you? Will you express that in a way that is respectful to others allowing them room for their wishes while maintaining your own integrity?

The more we can do this, the more the miracle of the oil will be operative in our lives as the abundance we really seek is available regardless of who gets their way over this or that issue.

I’d like to close with a poem by Lao Tzu expressing this so eloquently as he reflects on the old saying “Yield and you need not break”:

'Yield and you need not break:'
Bent you can straighten,
Emptied you can hold,
Torn you can mend;
And as want can reward you
So wealth can bewilder.
Aware of this, a wise man has the simple return
Which other men seek:
Without inflaming himself
He is kindled,
Without explaining himself
Is explained,
Without taking credit
Is accredited,
Laying no claim
Is acclaimed
And, because he does not compete,
Finds peaceful competence.
How true is the old saying,
'Yield and you need not break'!
How completely it comes home!

Our Unitarian Universalist movement is mourning the death of one of its prophetic ministers, Marjorie Bowens-Wheatley who died of cancer on December 10th at the age of 57. What made Rev. Bowens-Wheatley so appreciated and loved by clergy and lay people alike was her unwavering vision of a multi-racial denomination. As one of the few African American Unitarian Universalist ministers her vision and ideas have and will continue to be been very important to that goal.

Marjorie made an observation that I think is obvious but one I suspect we don’t think about very much at all. She said, “In our movement, there seems to be a cannon of language that "educated" people are supposed to be familiar with and love. There is a cannon of literature that is presumed to have been read. There is a cannon of music that too often does not allow the spirit to emerge freely.

In most of our congregations that I have been a part of or worked with, structures that create and sustain whiteness are normative. There is presumption from some clergy and some laity that these cannons of music, and literature, and art, and language, and social discourse, rooted in the European experience, are normative. Euro-centrism is seen as logical and rational, and those who express a need for a spirited form of worship or those who use a different language set are somehow made to feel less educated, less than worthy. These presumptions make it extremely difficult for culturally oppressed groups to find a place in our congregations. Speaking personally, while I enjoy and appreciate a wide variety of cultural traditions, when I cannot find myself in a worshipping community, it drains the life of the spirit out of me, and I must go elsewhere to nurture my soul.

If I and other colleagues who are rooted in cultures outside Europe are to be nurtured in our movement, then I must keep the faith that things can be different. Being open to and supporting new possibilities in ministry, different cultural forms in worship, new ways of seeing—these too are important to keeping the faith, to nurturing the spirit. If you will stand with me in solidarity in an expanding circle of culture so that it includes all of us, you too will be keeping the faith.”

“Keep the faith!” was an expression that Rev. Bowens-Wheatley was known for. She used it as an encouragement not to give up when things are hard; to continue to have faith in the vision you are trying to achieve.

Marjorie served a UU church that was all white for a number of years. Can you imagine what that was like for her? I can only think that it must have taken a lot of generosity on her part.

I say that because, although we as Unitarian Universalists are good-hearted people and politically correct people for the most part, we are predominantly white, and are as blind as anyone else as to the ways in which we are privileged and benefited by the difference in power between white people and people of color in this country. As such we have very little if any intention or incentive to do anything about it. I’m sorry if that offends you but I believe it’s the truth. Each time I am faced with writing a sermon on Martin Luther King Jr. Day weekend, I find myself at a loss and maybe more so this year than ever. With our eyes so drawn to the war in Iraq, issues like global warming solutions to the problems of people of color in our country seem to be more than ever a distant hope.

One of Marjorie Bowens-Wheatley’s many contributions was to edit a collection of conversations about racism which was published in a book called Soul Work: Anti-racist theologies in dialogue. This was the result of a conference sponsored by the Unitarian Universalist Association of African American, Hispanic, Native American and white theologians and ministers. They each presented a paper for the others to respond to. James Cone was one of the participants. He teaches theology at Union Theological Seminary and has been one of the strongest voices for anti-racist theology otherwise known as Liberation Theology in our country for the last thirty years or so. In his paper he laments the fact that white theologians don’t talk about racism very much if at all. He proposes four reasons for this and although we are not academic theologians, I would like to you to see if any of these fit you in some way.

The first reason is the most damning. It is the fact that we don’t have to have to. Since white people have a position of power in all aspects of society, there is no motivation to talk about it or even notice it.
The second reason is that talking about white supremacy arouses strong feelings of guilt in us that we don’t want to feel.

The third reason is that we don’t want to engage with the rage people of color have about the harm that has been done to them by white people.

And the fourth reason is because we are not prepared for a significant redistribution of wealth and power that would be needed to make things right and just in this country.

Those reasons seem straight forward to me and I’d say Cone hits the nail pretty much on the head. I’d say that these are the reasons we don’t engage in real dialogue with other ethnic groups and cultures in our community or in our churches. All of these reasons have the common denominator of fear--an unwillingness to be discomforted or shaken up.

I wonder though if there couldn’t be an approach that goes beyond those feelings of fear; that would allow us to be more open and build bridges between our “European-centric” way of being and other ways of being.
I wonder what it would mean for us to be actively engaged with people of color as a church? Would it mean changing the way worship is done as Rev. Bowens-Wheatley suggests? Would it mean changes in the power structures of the church? This issue has been discussed and debated in many forms over many years in our denomination. There will be a weekend conference on creating multi-cultural and multi-racial congregations in Arlington, VA in February that I hope at least one of you will go to and report back.

One church in Clemson, South Carolina got tired of waiting and hoping that more people of color would come to their door, so in 2002 they started an “Unlearning Racism Committee.” Did you hear about this? They initiated a partnership with an already multi-cultural church of the Baha’i faith. They started out having social get-togethers to get to know each other and attended each other’s services. Then they began to take on some serious projects together. One of them was the creation of a documentary of the untold experience of people of color in World War II. Another was a state-wide campaign to remove the Confederate flag from the State House. But even if they hadn’t done those laudable things, imagine what it must have been like to work together and get to know each other. What affect might that have had on their sense of self and their consciousness of different cultures? I imagine that it broadened their horizons significantly.

This church has a history even and maybe especially as a small fellowship of reaching out and building bridges with the African American community here in Greenville. The assistance many of you give to First Born’s food pantry and the tutoring some of you do at the Little Willie Center are ways that you endeavor to stand in solidarity with people of color who are terribly poor. I suspect this city abounds with opportunities to speak out on inequalities, but it also abounds in possibilities for building connections for starting dialogues with people different from you. The Eastern Carolina Interfaith Alliance started by the efforts of Rev. Karen Day and others that a number of you still participate in is an opportunity to build bridges to other races, cultures and faiths.

The Universal Health Care Initiative that a dedicated group is working on here has goals that will benefit all people. This issue reaches across cultural, class and race boundaries. It is an opportunity to build bridges in another way.

I wonder what other opportunities there are to really be in dialogue and eventually relationship with people who perceive the world differently than we do. I wonder if it’s possible to be motivated by a sense of inner challenge rather than fear.

Part of the confusion we have is that we don’t realize that racism is our problem too. How much attention do we give to the question: What does living in a racist society do to those of us in a position of power and privilege? How is our mind and heart distorted and anesthetized so that we can accept this societal structure? And what does it mean for us to live in so much fear of so many of our neighbors?

The Rev. Rebecca Parker addresses this in her paper. She says, “To come of age in America as a white person is to be educated into ignorance. It is to be culturally shaped to not know and not to want to know the actual context in which you live.” What context is she referring to? Instead of living in reality—all of the realties of our lives, we choose those which support our “goodness” our “all-whiteness.” We do not willingly admit our ability to do harm. Parker says that “at some level we know that our pristine garden has been created by what has been exiled and exploited. This primordial violence lies beneath our sense of privilege and security. We are fearful of this deeper violence being exposed. We feel helpless in the presence of our own violence.”

It seems to me that real change could come about from the reclaiming of ourselves. No matter how glossy the image that covers our reality, there is a hunger in each of us to know ourselves and our neighbors as we really are. It is that hunger, called love, which offers hope. I contend that it is in building bridges within ourselves to those exiled parts and oppressed aspects of our psyche that will allow us greater freedom to build bridges to others. This Euro-centric way of being is imbued with the prohibition of feeling, of passion, and of body. Parker says we project these lost and suppressed aspects of our own souls onto people of color, causing us to have great ambivalence in relationship.

Parker recommends work on several fronts. Remedial education is a way to reclaim our knowing. There are lots of resources available to learn about the history of our city our state or our country through the eyes of people of color. We need to be willing to know that history. And to know what is really going on in our community today.

The second is becoming an engaged presence on political and social fronts, noticing and bearing witness to injustice and adding our voice in solidarity to those who would make positive change. Activism builds bridges.

Lastly and most importantly is the soul work that Parker recommends to reclaim and heal the fragmentation of our being. She says, “Whites need to accept the personal task of spiritual healing rather than project onto people of color our own loss of humanity, asking people of color to carry the burden of this loss.”

What is our motivation to do something about this today or any day? It is the very love of and desire for a full life not a partially suppressed or fragmented one, but one which includes all of our neighbors and revolts against the kind of violence that separates us from them. We cannot accept the insulated, walled garden of ignorance and fear when there is a real, full and vibrant life awaiting us, a life where we are needed and wanted.

African American writer Zora Neale Hurston writes, “Sometimes I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company! It’s beyond me.”

Rev. Marjorie Bowens-Wheatley wrote: “Deep in my heart, I do believe that this too can change. Behold, there is a new spirit among us, expanding our horizons. New forms of culture are breaking out all over. Do you see it? Do you hear it? Do you embrace it? Keep the faith!”

“You’re going to have to face reality.” How often have you heard or thought that?

The word ‘reality’ can be painful for many of us. We use is it to describe painful things – the reality of war, the reality of racism. Facing reality means accepting unwanted duties and responsibilities. We cite reality as the reason we can’t have or do what we want. We see reality as a bad thing. The realities of life, we think, keep us from achieving our dreams

But I don’t think that we give up on our dreams and hopes from seeing reality too clearly. I feel that we suffer more from not seeing enough of reality.

But just what truth is it that will set us free? And free from what? I think author Joanna Field expresses it so simply when she says that the obstacles to living freely and being happy in a deeper way all boil down to fear in one way or another. So really the quest is to find a way of being, that is freer from fear. And I think fears largely come about because of perceiving too little reality.

So, how do we form our perceptions? One way is through our senses. Our senses are wonderful and provide us with so much more information than we can explain logically. However there are ways in which our sense perceptions are distorted.

For example, we know from our schooling that the Sun is 93,000,000 miles away and is hugely larger than the Earth. If we judged the distance and size from our sight we’d think it was quite smaller and closer. So, we know we have to make adjustments sometimes to what we see, hear or feel.

On the other hand, we have the ability to know unspoken things about other people by an almost uncanny sensitivity. Malcolm Gladwell talks about this in his book “blink.” In the book he talks about the way we are able to assess people and situations very accurately and instantaneously. He also talks about how our unconscious cultural biases affect this innate ability and make our perception completely wrong sometimes.

He gives an example of this. On a Harvard University website, there is a test that measures your unconscious positive and negative associations with white or black people. Now, Malcolm Gladwell, is half black and half white. You’d think that he would test pretty neutrally, but no matter how many times he takes the test, it comes out that he has a preference for white people. Why? Because, our culture defines our values to a greater extent than we know. We have been inundated with images of racial violence, bigotry, and poverty and no matter how good our intentions, we absorb fears and negative associations with other races. I’m sure you agree that it is vital to know this about ourselves so that we can question our responses. How many things do you imagine that we have prejudices about from our upbringing and culture?

We also filter what we get from our senses according to what we believe is true and what we are used to seeing.

Temple Grandin an animal scientist who is autistic gives a great example of this in her book “Animals in Translation.” Autistic people are more visually aware of their surroundings; they see so much more than the average person. Here’s what Grandin writes about this:

“Normal people literally don’t see a lot of things. There’s a famous experiment by a psychologist … that shows you how bad people’s visual awareness is. In the experiment they show people a videotape of a basketball game and ask them to count how many passes one team makes. Then, a little while into the tape, while everyone is sitting there counting passes, a woman wearing a gorilla suit walks onto the screen, stops, turns, faces the camera, and beats her fists on her chest.

Grandin goes on to say, “That’s because normal people’s perceptual systems are built to see what they’re used to seeing. They have inattentional blindness.

It’s kind of spooky isn’t it? It really makes you wonder what we are missing, because reality doesn’t conform to our conceptions of what it should be. Between the limitations of our senses, our cultural biases, our tendency to project our own reality on others and inattentional blindness, we must be missing quite a lot!

A powerful example of missing reality in my own life became clear to me last summer. Through my daughter, I met a family in Framingham and the wife and I have become good friends. As we got to know each other, I disclosed that I was rather distant from my family and they didn’t seem to have much interest in me. She was shocked at this and said, “There is no way you could have come from a family that didn’t love you.” I had believed since childhood that I wasn’t loved although I came to accept this and have developed my sense of self in other ways.

Last summer, she offered to come with me on a trip to visit my family in California. She encouraged me to assume that my family cared deeply about me and wanted to see me. As I did this, the love and respect and connection I felt from them was so full and unexpected. Nothing actually new happened, but I saw the love in what they did and was able to receive it. This one experience opened the door for me to have a new relationship with each of my family members that is still growing. I wonder if this friend hadn’t come into my life, whether I would have ever come to this realization. Gratitude just doesn’t express how I feel about the gift she gave me of….more reality.

The late anthropologist, Margaret Mead is said to have “honored reality”. I love that phrase, “honoring reality”. Here was a woman that didn’t confine herself to preconceived notions. Margaret carried a notebook with her everywhere she went and kept detailed notes on everything she saw, heard or thought. Everything interested her. She actively worked to break through those unconscious barriers to truth and focused on reality in a joyful way.

We started out looking at how reality is a fearful thing for most of us. That fear could be behind most of our obstacles to living more freely. And I made the claim that it is seeing too little reality that we become afraid. When we allow in more of reality though, at first, we become more attuned to our fears. Everything in our protective minds tells us to turn back. If we don’t turn back then, if we go on with faith that there is more for us to see, more to know and more to feel, we will reach a point of light and of new life.

Let us each remember when we are feeling depressed, hopeless, chronically tired, or fearful, that we are not lost. Reality is in front of our noses like a gorilla at a basketball game if we have the eyes to see and the ears to hear.

And we do not have to beat ourselves up either for our blindness. Our ability to select is important to our survival. However we have gone astray in allowing that protective part of the mind to rule us rather than the other way around.

We have named that fearful mind, ‘I’, when there is so much more to us than that. We can take charge with love and appreciation for our protective mechanisms but with awareness that these are not the best of who we are.

We are co-creators in this universe in that we can access the very source of creation from within ourselves. When we do, we find our identity beyond our suffering.

Who we are is awake, intuitive, creative, vital, energetic, accepting and alive.

Meditation –
O Spirit of Life and Love, we greet this New Year with many feelings: joy, hope, fear, sadness, anxiety, contentment, resolve. We carry sorrow with us into this year as we grieve for those we’ve lost and for the difficulties of human existence. We carry our resiliency and resolve to grow and survive and to create the vision we have for ourselves and others. We carry love into this year for those without whom our lives would be dim shadows. We carry our hopes for change, for resolution of the intractable problems of our day. We are grateful for the chance to be part of it all. In this great ocean of life, we are lifted and carried by waves of love.

I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray.
When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones
dwindling toward the horizon
and the slow campfires trailing
from the abandoned campsites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.
Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.
Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go,
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.
In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through the wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
“Live in the layers,
not on the litter,”
Through I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.

It is fitting that at the beginning of this New Year we take some time to look back and acknowledge those souls that will not be going forward with us in to 2007, at least not in body. We may all be able to affirm that death is part of life, and many of us may know or have read about the ways that death creates diversity in living things. There is good that comes from leaving our place to another. But when a loved one dies, there is not one among us that doesn’t protest somewhere in their heart – that doesn’t ask, “Why would the universe or God or Goddess want to destroy someone so needed and wanted, so unique in all the world?” We feel the loss of this loved one so acutely we cannot imagine what living without them will mean.

Much of religion is based on comforting us when we feel this way about another or our own inevitable death. And myths and folk tales abound that tell of people seeking eternal life. In one European and Asian story told by Madronna Holden “a man searches for the land of ‘life without death,’ and eventually finds it. He sequesters himself in this land, where he does not age or die. At last loneliness overtakes him and he seeks to return to his family and friends, but he returns a desperate stranger to the world where those he loved have aged and died in his absence. Further, when he re-enters the real world, time catches up with him, and he crumbles to dust.”

We have all heard the story of Count Dracula, the vampire, who wanted eternal love but could only achieve it in darkness and depravity. In another Euro/Asian story, “Three Golden Hairs of Grandfather Wisdom” “we hear of the fate of a king who would defy aging—a defiance for which he expects others to pay the price. He doesn’t hesitate to plot the death of a baby destined to become his son-in-law and replace him as king, and when this plot fails, he sends his would-be successor on a life-threatening quest sixteen years later. However, the young man not only succeeds in this quest but also passes through a city in which grow the apples of youth. Hearing this, the king rushes away to find these apples for himself. But because he doesn’t wait for the end of the youth’s story, he lacks the knowledge to save himself from a trap. He winds up rowing others back and forth across a great river, a task he condemned to repeat forever since he has never learned to “pass on his oars to the next one.”” Holden says, “In life, as in this story, the obsession with eternal youth may trap us in compulsive, repetitive, and mindless behavior. In contrast, facing death adds substance and authority to our lives. If we become an elder by virtue of the length of our life, we take on an elder’s authority through our intimacy with death.”

If you have ever studied counseling you know the concept of the “wounded healer” the person who is able to help others heal from trauma because of their own psychological near death experiences. Intimacy with death not only gives us authority and the ability to help others, but can make clear for us our own individual calling. What has become the proverbial mid-life crisis is very much a maturing awareness of our own mortality that can lead to a renewed sense of purpose.

This can happen too with the death of a loved one. Ralph Waldo Emerson of this said, “The death of a dear friend, wife, brother, lover, which seemed nothing but privation, somewhat later assumes the aspect of a guide or genius; for it commonly operates revolutions in our way of life, terminates an epoch of infancy or of youth which was waiting to be closed, breaks up a wonted occupation, or a household, or style of living, and allows the formation of new ones more friendly to the growth of character.”

And likewise Judith Meyer says, “The work of grieving is a journey back to new life. The wound may be deep; it does not go away. Rather, the wound too becomes part of the new life; it gives us a new way of being ourselves. We become life going on after loss and grief, life going on to new experiences and joys, life going on to greater compassion and wisdom. These are hard-won gains, but they are ours and they make us who we are. For that reason we celebrate and give thanks for the dead, who have given us new life.”

And the poet Mary Oliver says, “Let sorrow be your sister, she will whether or no. Rise up from the stump of sorrow, and be green also, like the diligent leaves.”

When a loved one dies we feel as though some part of us has died never to live again. In fact part of the grieving process is integrating that person’s memory into our lives in a way that allows us to go on and continue to grow. Sometimes before we can really do this, we need a kind of permission or closure with the one who has died.

Recently the Unitarian Universalist ministers, in an online chat group, were sharing stories about visitations by dead loved ones. I wonder if any of you have had one of these experiences.

They seem to happen in three ways. The first was a recognition or knowing when someone dies or is about to die. There were many stories of waking in the night with thoughts of the loved one only to find out that they had died shortly after that time. This happened to me with my mother, who died last May. The night she died, I woke and sat up quite alert with an awareness that she would be dying soon. I certainly knew that she could die anytime, but I hadn’t had such a vivid awareness of that reality until that moment. I didn’t think of it as a communication but rather a growing acceptance within me, of what would inevitably happen. Then I got the phone call from my father in California a few hours later. One of my mother’s home health aides who was home asleep woke up early that morning and both she and her husband smelled the fragrance of my mother’s hand cream in the room. She called my father before he had a chance to call her and tell her the news of her death.

The second way this manifests is after the death of a loved one when some symbol or sign keeps appearing that reminds them of the person. For example, my partner Jennifer’s beloved grandmother died before her youngest daughter, Julia was born. One of the many things her grandmother was known for was finding Monarch butterfly cocoons in the late summer and hatching them in her dining room each spring, then letting them go. After her death when Julia was about 9 months old, the family was at the seaside and there was a Monarch butterfly that spent about an hour landing on or flying near Julia. Jennifer and the other adults joked about it being the grandmother come to visit her great granddaughter. Jennifer’s stepfather died in recent years as well and was a know collector and admirer of feathers. Inexplicably for months after his death, her mother would find feathers wherever she went. There was even one that fell out of the refrigerator when she opened it.

The third way this happens is some sense or vision of the person actually visiting after their death. I shared my experience with the other ministers of being visited by my mother. A few days after her death, I was walking our dog in Framingham, and I stopped at a lovely large oak tree and looked up into the branches. The light was filtering through and lighting up the leaves so beautifully. I suddenly had an inner vision of my mother – not a picture exactly but a sense of her as being present to me. She was young and strong and peaceful. None of the many emotional problems she struggled with in her life were disturbing her any longer. I felt quite relieved at “seeing” her this way and although I continue to grieve her passing, I think of her in the way I saw her then.

This seemed to be a common theme of many of the visitation stories, that the loved one was well and happy or was assuring the living that they were ok. Does it matter whether these are imaginary or real experiences? I’m not sure it does. They feel real enough to impact our feelings and yet certainly defy reason.

Thornton Wilder the American playwright in this excerpt from his play Our Town wrote, “Now there are some things we all know, but we don’t take’m out and look at’m very often. We all know that something is eternal. And it ain’t houses and it ain’t names, and it ain’t earth and it ain’t even the stars…everybody knows in their bones that something is eternal, and that something has to do with human beings. All the greatest people who ever lived have been telling us that for five thousand years and yet you’d be surprised how people are always losing hold of it. There’s something way down deep that’s eternal about every human being.”

Here Wilder agrees with 17th century philosopher Benedict Spinoza who said that we have the ability to see ourselves with a certain sense of eternity. When we get in touch with that part of ourselves that we call “essence”, it seems to have little to do with time and space or events. Since this essential part of ourselves seems timeless and ageless we have a hard time speaking or thinking about it. When people try and put language to it we end up with bizarre notions of people living in an afterworld with their bodies and memories intact.

So perhaps all of this is to allow us to find some way to feel ok about death. As the one species on this planet that knows it is going to die ahead of time, we are haunted by our emotions about death. Living in fear of it surely keeps us from fully living our lives and embracing our humanity. Holding onto myths of what it must mean might lesson the fear but might also keep us from really facing a reality that promises new life for us in our one and precious lifetime.

There is a wonderful little book about life and death you may have read called, Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom. It is a true story of conversations between a professor who is dying of ALS and one of his former students. They talk about many of the big questions in life: love, forgiveness, the fear of aging and death. Here is a passage from the book:

“I heard a little story the other day,” Morrie says. He closes his eyes for a moment and I wait.
            “Okay. The story is about a little wave, bobbing along in the ocean, having a grand old time. He’s enjoying the wind and the fresh air—until he notices the other waves in front of him, crashing against the shore.
            “‘My God, this is terrible,’ the wave says, ‘Look what’s going to happen to me!’
            “Then along comes another wave. It sees the first wave, looking grim, and it says to him, ‘Why do you look so sad?’
            “The first wave says, ‘You don’t understand ! We’re going to crash! All of us waves are going to be nothing! Isn’t it terrible?’
            “The second wave says, ‘No, you don’t understand. You’re not a wave, you’re part of the ocean.’”
            I smile. Morrie closes his eyes again.
            “Part of the ocean,” he says, “part of the ocean.” I watch him breathe, in and out, in and out.”

Let us do what we can do. Let us give thanks for those whom we loved and who loved us in return. Let us give thanks for the life they lived and for how they touched us, taught us and nurtured us. If they were unkind or cruel, let us give thanks that we learned what it is like to be harmed by another and can now have compassion for others that we might never have learned. In spite of our sorrow, let us give thanks for the gifts resulting from their death, unsettling us, unraveling our complacency. Let us embrace or look forward to that which has emerged or will eventually emerge in the space they’ve left behind. Let us keep in our vision of the whole ocean of life. For none of us is done with our changes. And there are many more people to come.

Closing Words - Kendyl Gibbons
…We have such a little moment out of the vastness of time for all our wondering and loving. Therefore let there be no half-heartedness; rather, let the soul be ardent in its pain, in its yearning, in its praise.
Then shall peace enfold our days, and glory shall not fade from our lives.

The idea for the sermon originally came to me as I attended the Interfaith Clergy Association in Framingham’s Thanksgiving Service last year. It was a lovely interfaith service held at the Greater Framingham Community Church. Clergy from Jewish, Muslim, Catholic, various Protestant Christian, Unitarian Universalist and B’hai faiths all participated. During the service there was a collection taken for the Salvation Army. The woman from Salvation Army that stood up to thank everyone for the offering, also made a declaration for Jesus. She spoke as though we are all Christians or should be at any rate. It was one wrong note in an otherwise harmonious symphony of thanksgiving and it made me wonder as I have often wondered before about the way we view our religious beliefs and what keeps us from being in dialogue with other faiths.

The experience brought to mind an essay I had read in a History of Christianity class at seminary by Lydia Maria Child, which I read from today, and I began to think about the irony of clergy appearing to come together from completely different faiths when our religions have developed along side each other and have changed each other for more than a thousand years.

The myth of interfaith dialogue is that we have distinct and separate religions that we bring to a table where we sit and endeavor to tolerate one another. I submit that this is simply not what is going on. What is going on is that we have been each touched by a complex network of spiritual, religious and life experiences. The religious traditions we associate ourselves with are each permeated with the influence of many cultures and religions—permeated thousands of years ago and even today are continuing to be imbued by cultural changes, scientific discoveries, and globalization. There is an irony in the fact that we come together as strangers when all the while we are closely related religious cousins. The other mythical aspect of this dialogue, which I think we all actually intuitively understand as false is the belief that in the encounter with another we can remain unchanged in our faith.

When Luther and Calvin generated the great Protestant movements they recognized as clearly as the Catholic Church the importance of eliminating freethinking and dissent. It used to boggle my mind that these radical thinkers would advocate the execution of men and women who thought differently than they did. But I “got” the fact that we cannot co-exist as separate faiths without influencing one another. There is great danger to our status quo in interfaith dialogue. We can start out with the idea that we are there to be tolerant and to hopefully convert our misguided friends, but look out! They turn out to be unique people who can shake us up and touch our hearts and we are changed in the process.

My home seminary is Brite Divinity School in Fort Worth, Texas. This is a liberal Christian seminary plopped in the middle of the Bible belt, and run by the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). There are quite a few students there who serve very conservative churches. At Brite these students go to classes and take classes from female and openly gay ministers. They are taught the radical notion that the Bible was written by many men, and a few women too, for various all-to-human purposes. They take courses where Christianity is placed in dialogue with Judaism, Islam, and the Eastern traditions, and they begin to question their own theology. They are often shaken up and some of them leave. The ones who stay are transformed. Rather than consider a move to a more open denomination, like ours for example, they have opted quite courageously to remain in their own churches. There they cannot directly challenge the deeply entrenched beliefs and prejudices of their parishioners, but they can have an on-going gentle influence that they hope will bring about change.

I have been very touched by the Christians that I’ve met at Brite. The depth of thinking, openness, and courage of many of my teachers and classmates has been a surprise to me. Previously I had only known very closed-minded Christians.

Diana Eck has written a beautiful book called “Encountering God: A Spiritual Journey from Bozeman to Banaras.” She is a religious scholar, a Christian and has dedicated a lot of her life to interfaith experiences. The book is about her travels and encounters with people of other religions starting in a small town in Montana all the way to India. In the book she writes about the categories used in discussions of interfaith dialogue.

The first category is exclusivity. People who view their religion this way think, “Mine is the only true religion; the rest of you are out of luck, too bad.” This has largely been the stance of Orthodox Christianity. It is a stance that uses generalities rather than openness. For the exclusivist there are no individuals only categories like Christian, Muslim, and Jew.

There has been a biography of Alfred Kinsey showing on PBS ever since the movie based on his life came out. Kinsey before undertaking sex research was an entomologist. He studied the individual differences between gall wasps. He noticed by collecting millions of wasps that no two were exactly alike. Out of allof his obsessive research entomological or sexual this was his really important contribution, that generalities about nature don’t even begin to encompass the incredible variety that is actually there.

The second category is inclusivity. People, who view their religion this way, believe that everyone is actually part of their religion without knowing it. Diana Eck uses a quote from C.S. Lewis that illustrates this very well. He said, “I think that every prayer which is sincerely made even to a false god…is accepted by the true God and that Christ saves many who do not think they know him.” This is the view of many Catholics and Protestants today. Although benign in intent, Eck points out that inclusivism uses its own religious language and concepts to try and understand the other. It does not attempt to reach for the self-understanding of someone in another faith tradition. In that sense it is rather arrogant, while allowing for a great deal of tolerance.

The third category and the one that Eck lifts up is pluralism. People who view their religion this way think, “God or reality is bigger than I know. Perhaps others have found a good or even better way than I have.” There are several aspects of this view that Eck outlines that will help us understand this category. She says:

All of these categories of interfaith dialogue take on a different look when we acknowledge the worlds religions are not distinctly separate, but bear traces of each other and each other’s ancient origins. This conversation then is not with strangers but cousins and second cousins and third cousins. We have far more common ground than we suspect.

For example, the use of prayer beads, incense, mortification of the body, and the monastic life are some of the ways Lydia Maria Child believes Catholicism has been infused with aspects of Buddhism and Hinduism. They correspond just a little too closely to be coincidence.

All of the world’s religions are infused with their own ancient nature festivals, Gods and Goddesses. Even Protestantism didn’t entirely divorce itself from pagan rituals that still surround Christmas and Easter upon which they are based.

Christianity is a stew of various influences starting with the Hebrew Bible itself, which has a number of references to very ancient Persian, Babylonian and Urgatic myths. Added in to the stories of Jesus and his teachings, are the Greek Platonic views of an eternal soul and afterlife, which didn’t exist in ancient Judaism at least not in the same way. The stories of the virgin birth and the resurrection abound in more ancient religions and mythologies and most scholars agree that they were added to the accounts of Jesus’ life as a way of honoring his memory.

This intermingling is not surprising really when we consider that at the time Christianity was being crystallized into a religion separate from Judaism, there were places such as Alexandria in Egypt where the world’s religions met literally in the marketplace and mingled their goods, practices and ideas. This continued over at least a thousand years.

It was never more pronounced than when the great Mongolian tribes conquered the better part of Asia, Russia, and a good portion of Europe. In his remarkable book, Genghis Kahn and the Making of the Modern World, Jack Weatherford tells the story of a low-caste, impoverished 12th century man of the Mongolian steppes, who from a young age had experienced the deprivation and fear that comes from living in a violent society. He made history by conquering more of the known world than any other person and named himself Genghis Kahn.

What I was surprised to learn from Weatherford was that he did this with a vision of creating a world government where harmony and peace would be the ultimate goal. He instituted many new ideas which survive today in our society. I’m going to leave it to you to read the book if you’d like to learn more about that. But, one of his key strategies from the very first campaign was to institute absolute religious freedom among his people. Riding with him were Buddhists, Christians, Muslims, Manicheans, and more. He would not even allow his own native religion to become a national cult. He created the first society of this kind in written history. What is fascinating to me is that it was about the same time the descendents of Genghis Kahn penetrated into Europe that ideas of religious freedom began sprouting there.

As the Mongols controlled more and more of the world’s goods and riches, they made their trade routes absolutely safe for travelers throughout Asia and into Europe. Never was the world more connected until the rise of technology. Where there is religious freedom there is religious diversity and co-mingling of scripture, practices and beliefs.

This network of influences makes for some interesting combinations. Why shouldn’t Native Americans who have embraced Christianity consider their ancient stories as valid an “old testament” as the Hebrew Bible? Why shouldn’t Haitian Catholics practice their ancient magic along with their prayers to Mary? Why shouldn’t a Unitarian Universalist pray to St. Christopher even after the poor saint was disappeared by the Catholic Church? Why shouldn’t a non-Hindu practice yoga or a non-Buddhist practice meditation?

There is a book called Unitarians in India by Spencer Lavan that describes the influence Unitarians have had on Hinduism and that Hinduism has had on Unitarianism in the late 19th century.

As Unitarian Universalists we are known for our syncretism because of the fact that we pull bits and pieces of other religious texts into our worship and religious education. We are also known for our respect for religious diversity. Diana Eck believes our services represent the opposite of pluralist in that we don’t stand firmly in a theology from which to be engaged with another. For her, this is a lack of identity and commitment. In other words we dabble rather than engage and really work to understand. I think we are guilty as charged, but I believe there is more to this than Eck has considered.

How we as Unitarian Universalists engage with other religions is a real question for us because Eck and other mainstream Christians are endeavoring to set the ground rules for interfaith dialogue. From their view it must be done from some place of authoritative tradition that then makes itself open to another tradition and where both are open to change. Our faith tradition is made up of individuals who haven’t fit in for various reasons to an orthodox religious identity. Ours is a tradition of heresy, of questioning, of standing alone, and of standing with others who want the freedom to think independently. Another aspect of our tradition is that many, many of us come from other faith traditions and some of us keep spiritual practices and even participate still in other traditions. There are many multi-faith families in our churches. Their children are certainly exposed to multiple faith traditions growing up. Thus we have perhaps the most diverse congregations theologically.

When I was growing up, my mother was a spiritual seeker. She brought home a wide range of religious, esoteric and philosophical ideas, which she never pushed on my brother and me in any way. But she had a way of making these ideas very intriguing by choosing colorful characters as teachers or dropping enigmatic phrases and questions at the dinner table like “the map is not the territory” or “who is the “I” that observes our thoughts?” One day we would hear Katherine Kuhlman the dramatic evangelist on the radio and the next the chants of Paramhansa Yogananda. We went to hear Krishnamurti and listened to Alan Watts talk about East meeting West on Public Television. We did Kundalini Yoga with Yogi Bajan as a typical family activity, and I devoured my mother’s books on Gurdjieff and General Semantics. We practiced bio-dynamic gardening with the Anthroposophists. And believe me there were many others. If you are sitting there wondering who all of these people and movements are don’t worry, you’re not alone. None of these people were in the mainstream although they were all more widely known 40 years ago than they are today. It was the 60’s of course and we lived in Los Angeles, California, which by the way is the most religiously diverse city in the entire world today.

Anyway, all of this led to my own spiritual journey, which is another story. But perhaps it is because of my mother’s influence that I view organized theology as more than a bit too confining. The only thing my mother did insist on my doing which I resisted as much as I possibly could, was to attend Sunday School at the Unitarian Universalist church. And here I am today. Go figure.

It’s not hard to figure out really. This movement allows me the freedom to continue my explorations unimpeded by the dogma of others. We are not respectable in the eyes of society because we do not give up the right to explore and explain from within ourselves.

“Make a light of yourself,” the Buddha said. If we are following our own faith questions using our inner guidance rather than established authority the world becomes our proverbial oyster. Pearls of wisdom are available to us from many sources and when we come together in dialogue with other faiths we have real and dynamic questions to offer rather than a ‘show and tell’ of conclusions. “Make a light of yourself.” Rather than being ashamed of our willingness to view various sacred and secular texts on a common playing field, let us recognize our strength in being able to stay with the questions unafraid, or perhaps in spite of our fears, until they are truly answered within our own hearts and minds.

Channing speaks to us across the ages:
“I call that mind free which jealously guards its intellectual rights and powers, which does not content itself with a passive or hereditary faith: which opens itself to light whencesoever it may come; which receives new truth as an angel from heaven.”

Welcome Guests
I’d like to welcome any newcomer’s here today. Please be sure to sign our guest book near the front door so that you can receive a copy of our newsletter and a nametag. Would any visitors like to stand and introduce themselves this morning? You are all invited to stay afterwards for coffee and conversation.

Concerns, Joys and Milestones
You have all come here to create a spiritual community where you are known and know one another. This is a time in our service for sharing the most significant concerns, joys and milestones of your lives. Raise your hand if you’d like to share something and the greeter will bring a mike to you. Please say your name.

Unison Affirmation
Love is the doctrine of this church
The search for truth is its sacrament,
And service is its prayer.
To dwell together in peace
To seek the truth in love
So that all shall grow into harmony
Thus do we covenant with one another.

Offering
“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” these words attributed to Jesus tell a psychological truth. Our treasure, our money represents our energy, our work, our very life force. What we do with it affects our heart and where we put it becomes a part of our life. Now is the time in our service when we take up the offering for the work of this congregation. Give as your heart dictates. Gifts of all sizes are needed and welcomed and we thank you.

Meditation
Please take a moment and get a little more comfortable if you need to in your chair. Take a couple of deep breaths. Breathe in….and breathe out. Breathe in again…..and breathe out. I invite you now to close your eyes.

Let us take a journey back in time. Travel back at your own pace to place in the recent or distant past where you had a particularly meaningful or enjoyable Sunday experience with a church or fellowship. Just let your mind drift back into the past. Keeping in mind our broad definition of worship, answer the question, what was your most meaningful worship experience in a Sunday service or gathering? It might have been an enlightening discussion. It could have been a time when you realized something important about yourself or your life. Perhaps you experienced a new sense of high resolve. Maybe you found an answer to a question that you’d been asking yourself for a long time. There may have been a strong sense of joining together with others who share common values. Or, it may have been a very quiet inner experience of new understanding or peace. You may have been listening, or singing, or speaking, or waiting. Visualize it as clearly as you can. Savor this experience. Remember who else was there. Remember what you were feeling. Remember what you heard. Remember what you saw. Remember any fragrances or other sensations. Let yourself recall as much as possible about the experience. Don’t worry if you can’t recall all of the details, just capture what you can.

Now allow your mind to come back to the present moment bringing this experience back to your life now. Reflect for a moment on what that experience meant for you in your life. And slowly open your eyes and return to the room.

Reading
“Worship is a human activity. Though it is often defined as reverence given to a divine being or power, worship need not have supernatural implications. The origin of the word "worship" is in [an] Old English [word], meaning to ascribe worth to something, to shape things of worth. We worship, then, whenever we ascribe worth to some value, idea, object, person, experience, attitude, or activity -- or whenever we give form or shape to that which we have already found to be of worth.
A worship experience can occur at any time -- while one is alone or part of a group. Whenever something beautiful is perceived; whenever there is a deep sense of connectedness with other persons, with the natural world, or with the transcendent (however defined); whenever one gains insight or a new sense of wholeness; whenever one perceives an ethical challenge; whenever life is deliberately focused or ordered -- in all these situations one is worshipping.”

I wanted to thank the mockingbird for the vigor of his song.
Every day he sang from the rim of the field, while I picked blueberries or just idled in the sun.
Every day he came fluttering by to show me, and why not, the white blossoms in his wings.
So one day I went there with a machine, and played some songs of Mahler.
The mockingbird stopped singing, he came close and seemed to listen.
Now when I go down to the field, a little Mahler spills through the sputters of his song.
How happy I am, lounging in the light, listening as the music floats by!
And I give thanks also for my mind, that thought of giving a gift.
And mostly I’m grateful that I take this world so seriously.

There are probably many of us here who if stopped and asked would have a hard time talking about what worship means to us. We most likely would answer as Bee Behr did when I asked her, “We don’t think much of worship here.” I join you in that attitude if the definition of worship is the usual worshipping of God in any definition of God that suits your sensibilities. It isn’t that I object to the idea of God. But rather I object to the notion that God or nature or the Universe needs us to worship her, him or it. I have always found it very hard to wrap my mind around that idea.

I wonder if you enjoyed the much broader definition of worship that I read a minute ago as much as I do: “ascribing worth to some value, idea, object, person, experience, attitude, or activity -- or whenever we give form or shape to that which we have already found to be of worth”

By this definition, sharing our deepest values with each other is worship. A worship service puts into words and forms that which we value most. As soon as I say this though I’m in trouble, because I’m apparently making the assumption that we all value the same ideas, objects, attitudes and activities. But perhaps we don’t. So maybe there is more to worship than meets the eye and ear. I’ll come back to that problem in a moment. But first let’s look at how we worship.

Worship Web talks about different kinds of worship experiences. The first is called sacramental worship consisting of dramatic rituals designed to invoke through our senses that which we worship. They give the example of a Roman Catholic Mass. Years ago, when the mass was always said in Latin the experience of worship for Catholics was very sensory. The priest might wear beautiful robes, there would be the smell of incense in the air, bells would be rung, candles lit and the participants would hear the chanting of Latin prayers. They would kneel, sit and stand at different times of the service. These patterns were consistent following a liturgical calendar that has existed for centuries. The whole experience was meant to provide an embodied sense of reverence and awe for a supreme being.

Here, you have an invocation as part of your chalice lighting. The purpose of an invocation is to demonstrate the presence of the divine by the spoken word. Using the broader definition of worship, the invocation becomes a way to say in words what we most value. You also light the chalice as a sacramental ritual. Prayer, meditation and the closing words which are really a benediction or blessing are all sacramental forms of worship.

Educational or interpretive worship is the form that most Unitarian Universalist services take reflecting our puritan origins. Calvinists believed that the purpose of worship was to interpret the Bible to the congregation. Sermons were quite long and were either extemporaneous or memorized rather than spoken from notes. Here is an interesting excerpt from an account of a Puritan worship service:
“When he came to preach he found himself so unaccountably at a loss that after some shattered and broken attempts to proceed, he made a full stop; saying to the assembly, That everything that he would have spoken, was taken both out of his mouth and out of his mind also: wherefore he desired them to sing a psalm, while he withdrew about a half an hour from them; returning then to the congregation, he preached a most admirable sermon, wherein he held them for two hours together in an extraordinary strain of both pertinency and vivacity.

I imagine if I told you I planned to do that today for you, you’d head for the door. I read this to you so that you can appreciate how lucky you are that minister’s today only preach at you for 15-20 minutes.
“Most Unitarian Universalist worship today is thematic, expressing a particular idea or message. Its goal is to move people, and through them, society -- to help create community, justice, equality, and to widen personal horizons” The texts that we use range far from the Bible to include other religion’s sacred texts, other literary and non-fiction secular texts, and maybe most importantly, poetry. Poetry is a bridge between the intellect, the heart and the intuition.

The last form of worship talked about is “celebratory worship”. The intent is not to create anything lasting but to experience a sense of aesthetic beauty and celebrate the realities of life. Singing hymns or other songs, listening to music are all aspects of celebratory worship. There are others such as creating an aesthetic altar or chancel. The service can include dance or praise sounds. Joy and Concerns might be considered a celebratory form of worship although it does create community as well as celebrate the milestones of your lives.

But you haven’t always worshipped in this way in this congregation. I asked a few of your longer-term members to share the history of worship services here. This is the story that I gathered from their collective offerings for which I thank Bee Behr, Edie and Carroll Webber, Sylvia and Don English and Terry Shank.
This church started as a fellowship of progressive thinkers who got together in the mid-1950’s to form a Sunday discussion group. They wanted to be fellowshipped with the Unitarian Church since it seemed like a good fit in terms of values and purposes. So they started meeting on Sundays wherever they could find space. Originally they met at the Y-Hut. The children played outdoors while the adults engaged in meaningful conversations which had a broad range of topics mostly not related to religion.

They occasionally had a speaker from the University or a member would talk about their particular interests, talents or hobbies. Carroll remembers Geology Professor Stan Riggs showing them how he built a bass fiddle from scratch for example. Meanwhile they were working hard to establish themselves as a group here in Greenville. And they did this in very significant ways. They were deeply concerned about the Black Movement and wanted to make a contribution. And they did. They promoted and sponsored the first public discussion of Black rights ever held in this area. Bee tells the story of their next project:

“Then ‘to our shores’ a family of four came -- the Webbers. Their presence here helped our group in our next endeavor with the Black population, for on the north side of the river lived many black [people], one of whom, Fannie Jackson, taught at Sadie Saulter elementary school. Fannie was extremely dedicated to her children. So, as she drove to school she would bring with her as many children as she could accommodate. These children were not all school age -- there was no one home to care for the younger ones. Again, Fannie helped solve the problem. There was an unused church across the street from Fannie's house on Moore St., so we immediately saw that that building could be used for the children who had no one to care for them!” Terry Shank remembers, “The fellowship had a big time renovating [the] abandoned church across the river to be used for a…pre-school. It took weeks and much labor, but we enjoyed the bonding with the black community and the painting and scrubbing!!”

Bee goes on to say, “This was the busiest group of Unitarian Universalists, and we [ guided by Don Durland] painted the walls with designs from Mother Goose etc. With almost no assets we laid the groundwork for which, a couple of years later, Fannie Jackson was credited with having the first childcare center in eastern North Carolina. Three of our members (Edie, Jean Lowry, and I) were members of the center's board. Situations like this seemed more satisfying than more religious avenues.”

Was this worship? You bet it was of the highest order. It is living one’s faith. This congregation has been founded on a passion for social justice. Many of you may know that Terry Shank headed up an effort to improve conditions for women after attending the International Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995. The deep interest in helping the disenfranchised is evident in the mission statement you have which on the back of your order of service. This has been an important theme for this church. And one we’ll talk a lot more about I hope throughout this year.

As this small but mighty fellowship grew you were able to purchase a building and then another when that one had to be sold to the city. And here you are now with a very different format for your Sunday worship services. With the expansion of the membership, the influences of several lay leaders and ministers and the development of the organization, your services now look a lot more like what we think of as a church service. And they look a lot like many other Unitarian Universalist churches throughout the country. There may be many of you who share the sentiment I’ve heard that you’re “getting too churchy.”

Carroll Webber recalls, “[the format of services] changed when President Gene Brunelle took office, and he led a name-change from "Program Committee" to "Worship Committee". I don't think we had a chalice or chalice-lighting at first. After Don and Sylvia [English] came back from visiting a daughter in India they brought back that lovely small bell that we still ring to start the service ceremony. Our first, not entirely satisfactory minister, Cynthia Edson, may have started us singing hymns for the first time. I think our present format may have gotten established with our second minister, Bob Murphy. Our last minister, Karen [Day], wore a stole when she was in the pulpit, the first leader to dress formally.”

You have however not lost your love of discussion and social action and make time and place for those activities regularly. It is appropriate that as your numbers have grown that these activities take place in smaller groups so that you have the kind of intensity and intimacy needed to generate new ideas and actions. These are every bit as vital to the life of this church community now as they were at its beginnings. If these are neglected, these Sunday services will be empty and meaningless no matter how heartfelt the sermon. Worship that doesn’t inspire you, afflict you, or bond you together is mere pomp and circumstance.
These services then now, offer a chance for you to stand back figuratively speaking, get in touch with and name for yourselves your deepest values.

A good worship service may be entirely a subjective concept. What’s good for you may not be good for your neighbor. I tend to think that a good service should include all of the types of worship to feed the senses, stimulate the mind, and open the heart. It should have the potential to be thought provoking, enlivening, bonding, and transformative.

Don English said, “At the time, I think there were several services that may have resonated intellectually, but I think it's the emotional ones that stay with me. By emotional, I mean the ones that strike an emotional chord. Probably the ideal service would be one that brought me a new insight at an emotional level.” Sylvia English expressed that she appreciated services that addressed the meanings of the holidays and current events.

I’ve noticed as have many ministers, that people have very different experiences participating in the same worship service. Different parts will stand out to different people. The most interesting part about this is sometimes people will hear something in the service that was never said. Even when confronted with a copy of the sermon, they will insist that they heard what they heard. Well they probably did. We extract from any experience what we are receptive to; what we are hungering for; or what we need, even if we have to plant it there ourselves. So for most of us, perhaps we don’t have to worry too much about getting the elements of the service just right to meet our needs.

There may be though a service that just passes a person by because it didn’t speak to them in their language. People receive information in different modes – some through hearing, some through feeling, and some through seeing. If the mode you use to receive isn’t present, you may find yourself bored and untouched by the service. You spent some time earlier re-experiencing a special worship service. Think about whether the ways in which it touched you fit a pattern of being in a mode that you tend to enjoy especially.

It falls upon the Worship Committee and the minister to create meaningful, engaging worship services for you each week. It falls upon you to participate in those services actively by listening, by taking in what is said, trusting in your own thinking and intuition, and being willing to be affected.

That being said, I wonder if you have ever been asked what you like and don’t like about the services as they are today? Changes have been made here and there and perhaps you’d like a way to voice your response to them.

The Worship Committee and I have put up two easels at the back of the room. On one pad is a list we put together of the elements we could think of within a worship service. The other pad is blank for you to add things we didn’t think of. You’ve received some stickers with your order of service. If you didn’t get them, there will be more at the back. I’d like to ask you to take a moment and put a sticker on each of the items listed that are most meaningful to you. This will allow me and the Worship Committee to have some sense of what kind of services you like the best. You might be able to draw upon the experience you visualized during the guided meditation if you thought of one. I hope you will continue to share your thoughts about worship giving feedback to me or the Worship Committee about our services.

William Willimon writes, “Worship is an integrative act of the community.” “…in worship, all the community’s concerns meet and coalesce. Here word and deed, [theory] and [practice], past and present, humanity and divinity, meet.”

Minister’s do their best to keep their fingers on the pulse of the community and provide sermons that are integrative. Services like the one the Board presented last week do that perhaps even more so.

Like Mary Oliver and the mockingbird we are brought together for this hour to share what we love most. How seriously do you take this time? Are you willing to make it your own? When you hear the minister’s or another speaker’s song, do you allow it to resonate with you. Do you then bring your own to share? Will you then experience gratitude for your mind that thinks of giving such a gift?

We may think our tribute is paid in
secret in the dark recesses of our
hearts—but it will out.

That which dominates our imaginations
and our thought will determine
our lives and character.

Therefore, it behooves us to be
careful what we worship, for what we
are worshipping we are becoming.

http://www.uua.org/worshipweb/commonworship/howandwhy.html

http://www.uua.org/worshipweb/commonworship/purpose.html

Davies, Horton The Worship of the American Puritans, New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 1990

Storyteller Time
singing the children out
Go now in peace,
Go now in peace,
May the spirit of love
surround you…everywhere,
everywhere, you may go.

Offering
Here is a Valentine’s Day UU joke. A woman went to the fabric store and asked for 6 yards of a filmy material which she said she wanted to use to make a nightgown. “M’am,” the clerk said, “You don’t need that much material to make a nightgown!” The woman answered, “Well, I do. My husband is a Unitarian Universalist and he would rather seek than find.”

We do treasure our seeking here and if you would like to keep this place of seeking and finding deeper meaning in your life, please give generously to its continued efforts. We will now take up the collection for the work of this church here and in the larger community. Gifts of all sizes are needed and wanted and we thank you.

Meditation
To-day there have been lovely things
I never saw before;
Sunlight through a jar of marmalade;
A blue gate;
A rainbow
In soapsuds on dishwater;
Candlelight on butter;
The crinkled smile of a little girl
Who had new shoes with tassels;
A chickadee on a thorn-apple;
Empurpled mud under a willow,
Where white geese slept;
White ruffled curtains sifting moonlight
On the scrubbed kitchen floor;
The under side of a white-oak leaf;
Ruts in the road at sunset;
An egg yolk in a blue bowl.

To love is good, too: love being difficult. For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation. For this reason young people, who are beginners in everything, cannot yet know love: they have to learn it. With their whole being, with their forces, gathered close about their lonely, timid, upward-beating heart, they must learn to love. But learning-time is always a long, secluded time, and so loving, for a long while ahead and far on into life, is—solitude, intensified and deepened loneness for him who loves. Love is at first not anything that means merging, giving over, and uniting with another (for what would a union be of something unclarified and unfinished, still subordinate--?), it is a high inducement to the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become world, to become world for himself for another’s sake, it is a great exacting claim upon him, something that chooses him out and calls him to vast things.

Valentine’s Day is coming up this Wednesday and you have the great fortune or misfortune of having a minister speak to you today who is wildly, madly and completely in love. In this postmodern world we are asked to tell our biases ahead of time so you can somehow take them into account as you listen to my words. I have no idea how you do that when the subject is love and in fact if I were you I would resist doing that and allow yourself to be taken over and enjoy. I plan tell you the story of my love and of the love of Eros and Psyche. As you listen perhaps these stories will sound familiar either because you have lived them or are living them in some way or because you long to. I don’t think you will be affected by them at all if they aren’t for you. Perhaps they will morph for you into something else altogether which will be just fine.

I’ll start with my story. First let me explain that I have always considered myself and acted as a heterosexual woman for most of my life. I have had questions about my sexual orientation because I have had very close but platonic relationships with women before but didn’t have any desire to cross that line into what seemed like a different world and one where I might find myself ostracized.

I deplored the fact years ago that one of my close women friends decided to start dating women after three failed marriages to men. I suggested that she try meeting men who weren’t alcoholics before moving on to another sexual orientation. Then I watched as she got involved with one and then another alcoholic woman (thinking ah you see…it didn’t help) and but then finally she met a wonderful woman with whom she’s been partnered for over 10 years now. I thought of her defection into a lesbian relationship as a kind of immaturity—not willing to accept the differences that men offer and work to bridge the gap through communication and so on. But I couldn’t help but see how perfect her relationship was for her and how much the two of them thrived together.

Meanwhile my love life for various reasons had consisted of short term relationships with men and my attachments to men, like my friend’s had been, were not that conducive to something healthy and long term. The men I was drawn to were all unavailable in various ways. The last one was not only unavailable emotionally but we had some serious religious and ethical differences that finally ended our 3 years together. What followed for me were many years of being a single mother, work on my own spiritual growth and going to seminary. During that time I was neither attracted to nor did I attract men into relationship. I joked with a male friend who was also single, saying “let’s see I’m the mother of an emotionally disturbed child and soon to be a minister…if one doesn’t scare them away the other surely will.”

Then I met Jennifer. We met on the telephone. We met because her 13 year old son and my 13 year old daughter wanted to go bowling together. I remember having that phone conversation but don’t remember exactly what we talked about. She remembers the whole conversation. When we hung up she thought, “I don’t think she liked me very much.” I hung up thinking, “I really like her.” That we got to be such close friends so quickly is due to first to providence which allowed me to stay in Massachusetts long after I had planned to leave, second to Jennifer’s strong need to know her friends well and third to my hunger for closeness after years of isolation. After about a year and a half of being close friends we realized we were actually in love with one another.

I have to say this was very upsetting to both of us at first. Neither of us had considered this a possibility, in fact we’d had many conversations trying to convince ourselves it wouldn’t happen. We had many a good laugh about the friends and family who mistook us for lovers. When we finally did admit to ourselves that we loved each other without reservation and accepted it enough to tell our friends and family, they all said, “Oh good! I’m glad you finally figured it out.”

At one point after this Jennifer was asked by someone how long she had been gay. She said, “I’m not gay!” And they both started laughing. And this is the dilemma we both have. After years of thinking of ourselves as heterosexual, how can we be lesbians now at this late date? Well I suppose the fact is we are but what we feel in our hearts that seems more real to us than categories is that gender doesn’t really matter. We love each other and theoretically we feel we would love each other if one of us was a man or we were both men. We won’t know for sure if that is true. But the sexual aspects of our relationship follow from our caring for each other rather than the other way around. The fact that we were willing to allow this relationship to become more than a friendship was a choice that we made fairly consciously but not without some soul searching. Loving each other in this way was not a conscious choice but something that moved through us as a result of the way we’ve related.

I’ve known people in committed relationships that went through transgender surgery. One woman I knew that became a man had been partnered with another lesbian woman. When she was asked about how his gender change affected her she said, “I love Andrew, it doesn’t matter to me what gender he is.”

And so it seems that gender doesn’t matter except to those who would demonize relationships between people that don’t harm anyone and in fact are life-giving. I have to believe that these people are afraid just as Jennifer and I were afraid at first. They think “if we sanction people crossing this gender line, what is next? How do we know where to stop?” I’m sure you’ve heard arguments against homosexuality that include fears that sex with children or with animals will be legalized next. I for one, would much rather those folks focus on these harmful acts rather than trying to keep adults from loving one another. But their fears are deep and the battle will undoubtedly be a long one.

What is much more interesting to me is the mystery surrounding this notion of ‘true love.’ Is there such a thing? I now would say “yes” after having experienced a lot of “untrue” love over the years, in contrast with knowing Jennifer.

The author of a collection of poems and art related to love wrote “I have come to feel…that true love—which is unique in that it is reciprocal—is not difficult to describe, nor is it a complex, mysterious emotion. Rather, it is exquisite, simple, and definable. Love is the act of extending oneself to nurture another. One can learn the art of loving well, as a craftsman learns a craft. But it takes a conscious act of will to learn to love. Love is a discipline.

“…jealousy, inconstant love, or unrequited love…In my view, these are not true love, but distortions of love—aberrations that have long been confused with love. Forget what the songs tell you. …at the very heart of love [are the processes of]—honoring, nurturing, hallowing and affirming.”

I would add teaching and knowing to that list. Jennifer has taught me a great deal about how to be engaged with the world. I have taught her to take risks in making her own happiness important. Most of all I feel that knowing another and being known are what makes relationship true.

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skillfully, mysteriously) her first rose

This unclosing of the soul, of our very being is what we hunger for in relationship. To be loved even though all of our vulnerabilities, blemishes, and struggles are known. To have our essence known and joined with another lifts us out of all categories and worries into the realm of pure being. This is the sublime nature of love that so easily becomes tarnished over time by disappointment, miscommunication and the struggle to make a life together in spite of differences. And so I affirm what this woman says that love is a mutual discipline involving a conscious act of honoring, nurturing, hallowing and affirming. The struggles we go through to do this through hurt feelings, anguish, the work to understand one another, and the chores of daily life—slowly create a stronger bond both to the other and an awakening within ourselves.

We come to this discipline of love in many ways. Some people find their love early in life and grow into it over time. Some go through a number of failed relationships before finding one that really works. Others have many years of aloneness and development before they find the love that sustains and uplifts them. That was true in my case. And those years of aloneness were vital to having the relationship I have today. Those years remind me of the labors of Psyche in the ancient Greek myth.

The story goes that the Greek god of passion, Eros, travels between heaven and earth bringing beauty, meaning and love to humans. He also brings chaos and destruction by igniting unexpected and intense passions. Eros is the gateway to the divine. One day Psyche encounters Eros and is accidentally pricked by one of his golden arrows causing her to fall in love with Love. She flings herself at him with intense longing but as she does some hot oil falls from her lamp burning him and he flees. Psyche is then trapped by Aphrodite the cruel goddess of love and beauty and who is Eros’ mother, and she is not re-untied with Eros until she is made to perform four intense labors. She approaches each of these labors with great fear and confusion. She is definitely not a self-assured heroine. Harriet Eisman writing about this story in Parabola magazine says, “The powers that help Psyche are not “hers”: it is a simple fact that our true inner guide does not and cannot use our ego’s storehouse of knowledge, because it is taking us to places beyond our ego’s present functioning.”

The lessons Psyche learned with each labor made it possible for her to approach Eros in a new way. The first labor taught her the spiritual duty of caring for her body. The second labor taught her to tame and contain the destructive wildness of her passion—to be able to look away from her beloved and see with her heart. In her third task she had to be able to face love with the cold eye of reason. Psyche had to learn to bear the stark truth. Her last labor takes her into Hades where she must face the death of all images of and all illusions about beauty. There she succeeds in her quest and falls into a deep trance. She awakens to a state that is vast and still, still enough to allow Eros to return. Eros is also transformed by the wound from the burning oil that is now healed. He is ready to come out of the shadows where he has always lived and be known by Psyche.

Jealousy, inconstant love, unrequited love, aloneness, perhaps these are aspects of our labors needed to teach us the lessons Psyche learned, preparing us to know and be known, to honor, nurture, hallow and affirm another. Perhaps the experience of loss and loneliness, alienation and longing is what motivates us to ripen, to become something on our own, to become world, and eventually to become world for another’s sake as Rilke says.

Jacob Needleman, the spiritual and philosophical writer, talks about the deeper aspect of Eros or the erotic. He says: “We can say that there is a deep yearning for the truth that is part of our essential nature. But we do not have the access to it we imagine. There is another wish in our social self, not as deep as the other. That wish comes when life seems shallow and contradictory, when all our assumptions are challenged, our hearts are broken, and our hopes for happiness seem to be fading away: all those things which make up the disappointments of life. This is a first stage, surface-eros, and it is important not to confuse it with the deep one. We touch the deeper eros in moments of great shock and grief, or extraordinary joy. But it is the other one that often first ignites our search to find how to live and how to contact ourselves.”

I think Needleman is highlighting the fact that Eros is a force that lifts us out of our ego and into a sense of meaning beyond our social existence. It is the sense of wonder when we look up into the stars on a clear night. It is the feeling of being carried by great winds through the sky or of surprise at having our lives turned suddenly in a direction we never anticipated. Needleman points out that falling in love can be “an opening in all directions,” not just toward the beloved. This opening is inhibited by the ego and the craving for satisfaction evidenced in Psyche before her labors. We are not happier the more we give license to our desires, but rather the more we are able to care about our whole development and then eventually about the whole being of another person.

I was reading an article in Oprah’s magazine as my car was being inspected this week about loneliness. In it they talked about studies that speculated on the necessity of loneliness to keep us from wandering off on our own and dying on the side of some mountain. Enough of us have the need for close relationships to keep our society together. Valentine’s Day can be particularly painful for those who are longing for love and haven’t found it. I wonder if there can be any comfort in seeing this time as a call to ripen, to deepen our individual connection with the divine. As Rilke says how can be give ourselves over to another if there we do not have enough of a self to give. We can learn the lessons of Psyche – that if we care for ourselves, are true to ourselves, can face reality squarely and come to terms with death, we can face Love not as a romantic fantasy or a salve for our wounds but as a creative force in our lives channeled through a mutual, nurturing relationship.
If we do this work, loneliness becomes a delicious aloneness--a potential for opening that will attract Spring to us and before we know what has happened we will have bloomed.

Closing Words
May your love for one another enlarge your embrace—
to love people, the earth, life and yourselves.
--Barbara Hamilton-Hollway

CHILD DEDICATION CEREMONY

Minister:
Today we celebrate the coming of two new lives. When a child is born we feel both extraordinary joy and love, and an awesome responsibility for the baby’s care and nurture.
We celebrate the miracle of birth, and the wonder and unique holiness of each child’s life. We want so much for our children, they are so important to us, and our responsibility for them is so immense.
On this sacred occasion, we pause in awe and thanksgiving for the lives of all our children, rejoicing in the hope, the promise, and the sacred spark which is resident in every child – opening ourselves to that spirit which may hallow our joys and give meaning to our responsibilities.

Director of Religious Education:

As a church community, we offer support and an extended family to parents as well as love and nurture to our children as they grow. We recognize that in transmitting the best we know to the next generation, all of us who touch the lives of children are giving of ourselves to the future. Therefore in this service of dedication, we signify our respect for tradition and we express our hopes for a better world to come. We recognize our children as ends in themselves, born in original blessing. We gathered here represent the larger world into which this child is entering.
On behalf of all humanity, we bid these children welcome.

Minister:
Charge to the Parents
Teresa and Shannon, Brooke and Chuck to you the parents have been given the sacred trust of nurturing, guiding, and encouraging your son as he grows. The serenity, optimism, honesty and courage that you display in your own lives are reflected in the outlook of your child. It is your charge, to the best of your abilities, to instruct him, that he might be taught love by feeling love, taught justice by the guidelines that rule his days, taught wisdom by the way in which you live, and taught to love all people and serve them fairly, by seeing others served with the same care that he receives. Will you, to the best of your ability, help your son to an appreciation of truth and beauty, and dedicate yourselves to nurturing and protecting him? If so, please say, “We will.”

Charge to the brother:
Taylor you have a special love for your brother. Will you promise to continue to love and care for him as you grow up together? If so, say “I will.”

Charge to the Godparents:
An old Jewish proverb says, “In time of travail, go to the friend of your parents.” From this ancient wisdom comes the idea of Godparents, or special people who dedicate themselves to watching out for the welfare of another’s children. It is a noble and loving tradition.
Bradford Merriweather Jones and Maj Hendrickson have been chosen to be the Godparents of Hayden. They couldn’t be here today, but they have given their vow to Brooke and Chuck to watch over Hayden ethical and spiritual well being and to be there for him as he grows up.
Sue and Fred, you have been chosen as godparents for Daniel.
To you, the godparents, are given the responsibility of watching over Daniel’s ethical and spiritual well being. It is your charge to support and encourage him, by your words, actions, and example, to give him a place to turn when he needs to talk, and to always let him know that you are there for him. Will you help him to grow with an understanding of the depth and breadth of life, and with a sense of humor and joy for the future? If so, please say, “We will.”

Director of Religious Education:
I ask the congregation now to rise:
Will you, the members and friends of this church, receive Daniel and Hayden into your love and care, and will you uphold and encourage them and their parents in the fulfillment of their vows? If so, please read the affirmation printed in the order of service.
“We, the members and friends of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Greenville, welcome Hayden and Daniel into the world and into our church family. Here we will provide a church school of quality, and an intergenerational community of love and hope. We will support these children and their parents in an ongoing search for widening knowledge, genuine understanding, and unfolding love.” ((Please be seated.))

Minister:
By the act of naming we confirm the uniqueness of a child’s personality. We signal our awareness that he is a person distinct and apart from all others, who will grow with the guidance and love of parents, godparents, all those around him, and all the experiences of life, to fulfill his own potential.
Daniel Lynn Sparrow, you are a much loved little boy. You were named Daniel after your mommy Shannon’s mother’s father, your great-grandfather, and Lynn after Shannon’s beloved aunt and Sparrow to have mama Teresa’s family name.
Daniel, your parents have wonderful hopes for you. They want you to be happy; to know yourself and be confident in who you are. Daniel, we bless you with water, as a symbol of the purity with which you were born. May you always remember the blessing of innocence.

DRE: Daniel we give you a rose today, as a token of the beauty of life that we wish for you. May the unfolding blossom be a symbol of the potential of life you have before you.

Minister:
Hayden Jack Cundiff, you are also a much loved boy. Your mother and father waited as long as they could to have a child to be sure you would have a stable home. Finally they couldn’t wait any longer they so wanted to share the love that they have for each other with you. You were named Hayden because your parents loved the sound of the name, and Jack after a beloved friend of the family they called Grandpere. Their deepest hope is that you will grow up open to the whole world with all of its cultures, religions and diverse peoples. They wish to support you in whatever you want to do with you life.

Hayden, we bless you with water, as a symbol of the purity with which you were born. May you always remember the blessing of innocence.

DRE: Hayden we give you a rose today, as a token of the beauty of life that we wish for you. May the unfolding blossom be a symbol of the potential of life you have before you.

Minister: Hayden and Daniel,
We wish for each of you a healthy body with strength to stand against all that may threaten you.

DRE: We wish for you the courage and skill to do whatever is required of you and what in good conscience you most desire to do.

Minister: May you have the intelligence, to learn what you need to know, and may you have the power to pursue the truth you seek.

DRE: May you be patient, fearless, tender and fair. May you enjoy the warm sun on your face and the flow of wind and water on your body.

Minister: May you love the beauty of the world, its flowers and its trees, the mountains and the flowing streams, the animals, and the movement of all living things.

DRE: May you know the music and the rhythm of nature and the drama and the poetry of human creation.

Minister: May all those whose lives you touch be enriched by you, and may you be enriched by them, in a circle of ever widening love and friendship. May the longtime sun shine upon you, all love surround you, and the pure light within you guide you on your way.

MEMORIAL SERVICE

Chalice Lighting –
We light our chalice today in celebration of the life of Roland Frederick Becker, father to Richard and Dusti Becker, Great Uncle to Curt and Kerry Becker, and friend to all gathered here.

Welcome and Introduction
Dear family and friends of Fred Becker welcome to this memorial service. When someone we have cared for dies, especially as in this case after a long and fulfilling life, family and friends gather with sorrow in their hearts. At times when we must face death and loss, we need one another’s company for understanding and support. Just to be together, to look into one another’s faces, takes away some of our loneliness and draws our hearts together in the healing which we can offer one another. At such times, the various faiths that sustain us separately come together in a harmony that acts across all creeds and assures us of the permanence of human goodness and hope.

I am Rev. Frieda Gillespie, minister of this church. I met Fred in September when I arrived here to serve this church for one year as they get ready to call a settled minister. I have to tell you my first news of Fred was a warning. I was told that Fred was regularly disruptive in services because of his poor hearing. When he couldn’t hear what was being said, I was told, he would complain loudly and not too kindly either. I was expecting to meet a very crotchety old man. The Fred that I met and knew for this all too short period of months was a surprise. He was lively, charming, and even slightly flirtatious. When he found out that my home is in Framingham, MA, he told me the beautiful story of how he met and fell in love with his wife, Florence there over 60 years ago. I don’t think I will forget the image of him driving across the state to see her each weekend while they were both in school. Fred told me just some of his many stories, but I enjoyed them all. He was so happy to be alive and well. He clearly treasured his life. I think he’d very much agree with the words of George Bernard Shaw who said, “I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live.” But he was about much more than work, he was about relating. As grouchy and difficult as he could be, he was also generous in his affection and made connections easily and warmly with people. Fred never disrupted my services. He said he liked my sermons because he could hear me. His last words to me the day before he died were, “Tell them all I’m doing great.”

Song - “Ravens and Butterflies” by Dusti Becker

With digging sticks and stone tools
they planted the mesas.
For five hundred years in the Anasasi way.
Pit houses, cliff homes, grinding stones, and kivas
suddenly they all disappeared one day.

Was it the water or was it the soil?
Did it get too hot? Did it get too cold?
Did Mesa Verde suddenly turn brown?
Did the July lightning burn it all down?

No one knows the answer.
The rocks hold no clue.
But the Pueblo and the Hopi say they changed and flew.
They are ravens and butterflies, that’s what they say.
Ravens and butterflies around us each day.
They are ravens and butterflies, that’s what they say.
Ravens and butterflies…

Released from our logic,
we search with soul eyes.
Where are our loved ones and where does time fly?
How we remember becomes how we feel.
Defining ourselves by what seems real.
But who is to say where our ancestors roam.
And is it not beautiful to keep them at home?

As ravens and butterflies that’s what they say.
They are ravens and butterflies around us each day.
They are ravens and butterflies that’s what they say.
Ravens and butterflies…..

Musical Interlude – “Just a Closer Walk with Thee” – Mort Stine and Bob Jeffcott

Spirit of life and love, be of comfort to all of us who mourn the loss of Fred from our lives. We are grateful to have known him. We will cherish the memory of his lively face and eager conversation. May we feel peace knowing that even in the time of loss and sorrow, life remains precious and good. May we also on this day rekindle in our hearts an appreciation for the gifts of life and other persons. Amen.

Dusti Becker shared with me that she likes to think of Florence and Fred together again. I love that image also. Personally, I don’t know what happens after death. I trust that if our spirit continues or joins with the All of all, that it is a natural and joyful event. I do know that a person’s life doesn’t end for those they leave behind. For we become part of one another and you will always know or continue to discover the part Fred Becker played in your life. Your memories of him will influence your life ahead. As I read this last poem by John Hall Wheelock, perhaps you can enjoy imagining Fred with Florence walking hand and hand.

The day is ending.
The journey is ended.
Give me your hand.
-- John Hall Wheelock

It is fitting to end this celebration of such a joyful life with the kind of music he would have wanted to hear. This is for you Fred.

WEDDING CEREMONY

Opening Words
Welcome to this sacred space and to this special time in the lives of Tracie and Robert. We have come together to witness their marriage, to acknowledge the commitment they have made to one another, and to celebrate the joy of this occasion with them.

We are here to take part in an event that is at once, one of the most public and one of the most private in all of human experience. A wedding, as a private moment, requires the intimate commitment of two persons to one another—it is an act of communion between their spirits that no one else is privileged to share. A wedding, as a public event, is a declaration made to those who gather to witness it—a celebration in which we all participate.

Tracie and Robert, we are delighted to be part of this ceremony. This company of family and friends has already shared much with you; they know you well; they love you and wish you every happiness.

Prayer of St. Francis
"O Lord, make me an instrument of Thy Peace!
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is discord, harmony;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light, and
Where there is sorrow, joy.
Oh Divine Master, grant that I may not
so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand; to be loved
as to love; for it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life."

As marriage is meant for the happiness of each, so also is it a source of discipline and growth of those inner resources of life, which may be known only through the intimacy of this companionship. It is, consequently, to be entered into with the deepest love and respect; with the determination to bear with each other through all those experiences of life which are now of necessity unforeseen; with the readiness to comfort each other in sickness, in trouble, and in sorrow, to provide for each other and to uphold each other in every worthy endeavor.

To this end, there must be a consecration of each wholly to the other, and of both as one to life’s most sacred purposes.

This ceremony recognizes a life process that began long before this day and will continue long after it. In a sense you are not being married here and now—you will make your marriage commitments each day of your lives; you have already made them to each other in the tenderness of your love. You will make them again by your presence and your love, and by your speech, your touch, and your actions.

I charge you with the responsibility to keep love, to grow, and to increase your capacity for wonder, for spontaneity, and for humor; to remain flexible, warm and sensitive. I charge you to give of yourselves fully, to show your real feelings and to save time for each other, no matter what demands are made upon your days.

I charge you to ask the meaning of life through your love; to nurture each other to fullness and wholeness, and in learning to love each other more, to love the mystery out of which your love had grown.

I charge you to know each other through the depth and breadth of life’s experiences, to be sensitive to each other’s concerns and decisions; to share in thought, word, and deed in order that you might know the comfort and strength that comes to you from companionship.

Introduction to Vows:
Robert and Tracie, it is a great joy and pleasure for me to be standing here with you on this momentous day, sharing in your marriage ceremony, and witnessing to the life-long commitment you are making to one another this day.

I must remind you that the vows you are about to say to one another belong entirely to you. The words I speak have no magical powers, and nothing that I can say or do on this day can ultimately make your marriage endure with beauty, fidelity, and joy. Only you, by the integrity and diligence of your love, can make these vows last.

Robert, will you take Tracie to be your wedded wife, to live together with constancy and devotion? Will you love her, comfort her, honor and keep her, from this day forth?

Tracie, will you take Robert to be your wedded husband, to live together with constancy and devotion? Will you love him, comfort him, honor and keep him, from this day forth?

To the congregation: Will you, friends and family gathered here, honor these two and pledge them your love and acceptance? If so, say ‘We will’.

I, Robert, take thee, Tracie,
to be my wedded wife,
to have and to hold
from this day forward,
for better or worse,
for richer or poorer,
in sickness and in health.
To love, honor and cherish
all the days of my life.

I, Tracie, take thee, Robert,
to be my wedded husband,
to have and to hold
from this day forward,
for better or worse,
for richer or poorer,
in sickness and in health.
To love, honor and cherish
all the days of my life.

Sand Ceremony
Tracie and Robert, today you join your separate lives together. The two separate bottles of sand symbolize your separate lives, separate families and separate sets of friends. They represent all that you are and all that you’ll ever be as an individual. They also represent your lives before today. As these two containers of sand are poured into the third container, the individual containers of sand will no longer exist, but will be joined together as one. Just as these grains of sand can never be separated and poured again into the individual containers, so will your marriage be.

May these rings be forever the symbol of the unbroken circle of love. Love freely given has no beginning and no end. Love freely given has no giver and no receiver—for each is the giver and each is the receiver. May these rings remind you always of the vows you have taken here today.

Tracie, I take you as my wife.
Accept this ring as a symbol of my love
and commitment to you.

Robert, I take you as my husband.
Accept this ring as a symbol of my love
and commitment to you.

Eternal God, creative source of life, in the midst of which we live and move and have our being; in thy name are we met together, to witness and to bless the union of these two lives. May they be a blessing and a comfort, each to the other, sharers of each other’s joys, consolers of each other’s sorrows, helpers of each other, in all the chances and changes of the world. In perfect love and creative peace, may they keep themselves, fulfilling in their very beings the law of creative life. May the peace beyond understanding, the peace, which the world can neither give nor take away, be among us all and abide in our hearts today and forevermore. Amen.

Robert and Tracie, you have come here today to join your lives together in marriage. By virtue of the vows you have given each other in the presence of God and this company, I now pronounce you husband and wife.