Reading
This reading is from a sermon that was
given by the Rev. Marlin Lavanhar minister of All Souls Unitarian Church (Tulsa,
Oklahoma). Reverend Marlin said:
The last time I had this privilege to deliver a sermon to
the General Assembly was in 2008 on Sunday morning in Ft. Lauderdale.
It was just two years after I had lost my daughter, who died
at the age of 3. I remember talking about her, Sienna, …and how very raw it
still was then. She would be 12 this year if she had lived.
I’m going to admit something. Sometimes, even now, when I’m
visiting a person from my congregation who’s dying, if it seems appropriate
I’ll ask them,
“When you finally die, if it turns out there really is a
heaven on the other side of all this, and you see my little girl Sienna, will
you give her a big hug for me and tell her that her mom and brother and I are
doing alright and we love her?”
And I’ve discovered that it doesn’t matter if the person is
a Humanist, a secular-rationalist, a Buddhist or a Theist…
There is something in the very humanity of that sincere
request (from a broken-hearted father) …together with the humility of facing
our mortality …that allows us to suspend our disbelief. It allows us to let go
of our own literalism. So that we can bathe together in the warmth and
tenderness of the deep longing and the love that begged the request.
Whatever that is… that sacred place where people can meet…
that binds us together in our love and our naked humanity.
Sermon
Emily Esfahani Smith, author,
speaker, journalist said in her TED talk: “Belonging comes from being in
relationships where you're valued for who you are intrinsically and where you
value others as well. But some groups and relationships deliver a cheap form of
belonging; you're valued for what you believe [or] for who you hate, not for
who you are. True belonging springs from love. It lives in moments among
individuals, and it's a choice -- you can choose to cultivate belonging with
others.” Where have you experienced a
sense of belonging, true belonging?
Where have you cultivated belonging with others?
Last Christmas Holiday, I was
fortunate to gather with some of my old High School friends. We hadn’t met up, all four of us, for more
than 30 years. We fell in sync with one
another as if we had never been apart.
We joked about Dave holding his wedding outside during a Houston summer
afternoon, the temperature hovering around 100 degrees with a sweltering 100%
humidity, all of us groomsmen wearing heavy powder blue polyester tuxedos. I probably sweated out 5 pounds that
day. As we joked and laughed about old
times, it came to light that one of our group, Tim, had been holding onto a
resentment for most of these past 30 years.
He had once asked Dave to house him for a few days while he was moving,
but Dave had refused him. As we walked
along that winter Galveston beach, Tim and Dave were finally able to make peace
with each other, and the stress fractures that we hadn’t even realized had been
straining our friendships healed. Tim’s
guardedness, which had affected the group like a mysterious itch that could
never be scratched, melted away and the relationship the four of us shared was
at long last as genuinely open as it had been when we were kids. We belonged together then, and we belong
together now.
That sense
of fitting in. Feeling like we’re a vital member of the group. Knowing that these are the people with whom
we can risk being utterly ourselves, accepted and loved for who we are, exactly
as we are, and for whoever we will become.
That is the sense of belonging that we all yearn for. Isn’t it?
I believe that each person who
walks through the doors of a Unitarian Universalist church for the first time
(and hopefully at least a few times after that first time) enters wondering
“could there be a place here for me?” A place where:
We sit together and I tell you things,
Silent, unborn, naked things
That only my God has heard me say.
You do not cluck your tongue at me
Or roll your eyes
Or split my heart into a thousand thousand pieces
With words that have little to do with me.
You do not turn away because you cannot bear to see
Your own unclaimed light shining in my eyes.
You stay with me in the dark.
You urge me into being.
You make room in your heart for my voice.
You rejoice in my joy.
And through it all, you stand unbound
By everything but the still, small Voice within you.
I see my future Self in you
Just enough to risk
Moving beyond the familiar,
Just enough to leave
The familiar in the past where it belongs.
I breathe you in and I breathe you out
In one luxurious and contented sigh.
In sweet company
I am home at last.
(By Margaret Wolff, In Sweet Company, Hoboken, NJ: John
Wiley & Sons, 2006)
Many times
there is something specific a person is yearning for, some specific risk that
needs to be shared, before that person can feel they authentically belong to a
faith community or any community for that matter. I got to know a man who had been on the
fringes of my church for a few years.
His wife had joined, but he had not.
He told me he liked what he heard, but just wasn’t sure he
belonged. On a whim, I invited him to
attend a Christian Theology and History Book study that I was starting. After some hesitation, he accepted. After attending a few meeting of the group,
he felt safe enough to say something he had been feeling for a long time. Something he didn’t feel would ever be fully
accepted in a Unitarian Universalist church.
He said “I am a follower of Jesus, but I don’t believe Jesus is
divine. I accept Jesus as a moral
teacher, a human being, and I believe in a personal god. I just don’t fit in any Christian church.” He had taken a risk, and the group didn’t
blink, didn’t minimize what he said, and no one made a sarcastic comment about
Christianity. One of the members of the
group simply responded, “Thank you for sharing that with us.” After a pause, the man seemed to relax. The group went on discussing the Gospel of
Thomas. He told me later that at that
moment he finally felt the church could be his home. He joined.
He also volunteered to facilitate Spiritual Direction groups at the
church. He wanted to hold space for
others just as it had been held for him, space for others who needed a safe
place to risk being their whole selves, exploring all their spiritual beliefs,
without judgement.
Every little thing that
breaks your heart
Is welcome here
We'll make a space for it
Give it its due time
and praise
for the wanting it represents
the longing for something more,
some healing hope that remains
not
yet
We promise no magic
no making it all better
But offer only this circle of trust
This human community
that remembers
Though imperfectly
that sings and prays
though sometimes
awkwardly
This gathering that loves,
though not yet enough
We're still practicing
After all,
still learning,
still in need of help
and partners
Still becoming
able
to receive
all this beauty and
all these gifts
we each bring
(by Reverend Gretchen Haley, UU Worship Web)
Sharing this experience with him
changed me. I came to understand that some who join us don’t feel they can
safely express their whole authentic selves, which is so central to our
yearning to belong, in our Unitarian Universalist congregations. They are afraid of our uniformity. They look at us and don’t see much cross
pollination going on. I came to realize
that anchoring our Unitarian Universalist identities in our like-mindedness
often results in a sort of spiritual blandness.
Think in terms of cinnamon cookies.
And the truth is not everyone feels
that they can belong when they visit us.
They wonder “is there a place for me in this Unitarian Universalist
congregation?” and the answers they come up with range from “I’m not sure” to
“I don’t think so.” You’ve seen it; I’ve
seen it. Folks come, they stay for a
while—perhaps they serve on a committee or teach a religious education class. They attend some social functions, retreats,
parties. And then after a while—maybe
their kids age out of the religious education program or they get tired of
waiting to feel fully accepted— they leave.
I’m not talking about the folks who move away, I’m talking about the
folks who still live nearby. They just
stop being in relationship with us, and we stop being in relationship with
them.
So I
wonder: what really sparks that sense of belonging in a Unitarian Universalist
congregation? Belonging is so much more
than taking an Introduction to Unitarian Universalism class, making a pledge,
and signing a membership book. It’s so
much more than volunteering to make coffee or teach a religious education
class. All of those—and they’re
important, don’t get me wrong—but all of those are things we do, and they’re
part of belonging, but they’re not the whole of belonging. They’re outward expressions of commitment to
the community, and we need them in order to function. But belonging is an affair of the heart. Our actions of belonging are the sinews that
knit our corporate body together as one; our sense of belonging is the life
blood that enriches and strengthens those sinews, that gives them heart. Belonging is rooted in a transformation that
sparks inside us, a transformation that flares into life when we realize we can
be our whole selves and evolve into whoever we have yet to become in a Unitarian
Universalist congregation.
Each of us comes to a UU
congregation with our own hurts, some of which we received in other religious
communities or from people we trusted.
Some of us arrived with our own prejudices based on our hurts or
misinformation or fear. Some of us may
arrive with a belief system that already feels safe, real, and right, and we
don’t want to risk opening ourselves up to others whose beliefs feel too
different from our own. Beliefs that rub
up against what we believe to be true. And some of us arrive yearning to
belong, eager to be our whole selves, but not ready to risk sharing some
aspects of who we are. We all have some
broken parts and a need for belonging, a belonging that can open us to change
and transformation, a belonging that can heal and knit us into a community for
a lifetime. What needs to be in place
for you to feel safe enough to risk sharing all of who you are in a Unitarian
Universalist church? (pause)
In his
General Assembly address Reverend Lavanhar wondered if Unitarian Universalist
congregations could be “that sacred place where people can meet… that binds us
together in our love and our naked humanity…” I think that as a covenanted
people, as Unitarian Universalists, we can be that sacred place if that is who
and what we really want to be. I believe
our congregations can be places where people freely search for truth and
meaning. Where my spiritual yearning and
your spiritual yearning can meet and merge and enrich both of us. Where we can express our whole selves/all of
who we are: our pains, our joys, our hurts, our griefs, our doubts, our
oddities, and our failures, using the languages of our individual hearts. Truly safe places that extend past mere
tolerance into a sacred expanse of authentic acceptance of each other’s
radically different ways of responding to the unfolding universe around
us. Where someone like Rev. Marlin can
say: “When you finally die, if it turns out there really is a heaven on the
other side of all this, and you see my little girl Sienna, will you give her a
big hug for me and tell her that her mom and brother and I are doing alright
and we love her?” and is utterly loved for who he is. Just as he is and as whoever he may become.
Where you are utterly loved for who you are.
Just as you are and whoever you may become. My friends:
It is not by chance that you arrived here today.
You have been looking for something larger than yourself.
Inside of you there is a yearning, a calling, a hope for more,
A desire for a place of belonging and caring.
Through your struggles, someone nurtured you into being,
Instilling a belief in a shared purpose, a common yet
precious resource
That belongs to all of us when we share.
And so, you began seeking a beloved community:
A people that does not put fences around love.
A community that holds its arms open to possibilities of
love.
A heart-home to nourish your soul and share your gifts.
Welcome home.
(By Kimberlee Anne Tomczak Carlson)
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