Being a People of Welcome

Quotes

“The heart of [being a people of welcome] is about creating space for someone to feel seen and heard and loved. It’s about declaring your table a safe zone, a place of warmth and nourishment.”   Author and blogger, Shauna Niequist

 “[Being a people of welcome] is marked by an open response to the dignity of each and every person.”   Best-selling poet and essayist, Kathleen Norris

 “[Welcoming people do] not try to impress, but [they try] to serve.”   Author, Karen Burton Mains

[Being a people of welcome means] invit[ing] strangers to become friends, to get to know their inner selves more fully, and even to dare to be silent with you.”   Dutch Catholic priest, professor, writer and theologian, Henri Nouwen

 [Welcoming people don’t] have to be perfect, just heartfelt.”   Counselor, Susan Karas

People of welcome offer not wisdom, but love.

 [A people of welcome offer] the exceptional blend of love, humility, hospitality, and persistence [that] can overcome …barriers…”   Christian Apologist, Nabeel Qureshi

 [And finally, as people of welcome we remember that:] “The places in which we are seen and heard are holy places. They remind us of our value as human beings.”   Author and Integrative Medicine Professor, Rachel Naomi Remen

Sermon

            So what does it mean to be a people of welcome?  For us here at DuPage Unitarian Universalist Church to be a people of welcome?  Well, first I encourage you to read the newsletter this month, Mary Law, our Congregational Life Director, Steve Cooper, our Director of Religious Education and I have offered some ideas about the practical aspects of being welcoming.  Effective ways to engage a visitor to our congregation, strategies to help them feel at ease in this unique faith of shared values, but different beliefs, and tips about how to connect them with the various affinity groups here—from the humanist group to the pagan group, as well as the chalice circles and covenant groups.  You might think that how you engage with a visitor doesn’t make much of a difference in the long run, but it does.  A few weeks ago Martha was telling a new church friend where she goes to church, and the person replied, “Oh, I visited that church years ago—I remember they actually talked to me!”  So yes, you do make a difference.  These kinds of positive interactions are part of being a people of welcome.  The quotes that I shared today all speak of welcome, but I think there‘s more to it than being friendly to strangers on a Sunday morning, something that pulls all those quotes together.   And just the other day I found it.

            As background to how I found what I was looking for I want to tell you that I am going to Washington, D.C. to take a course offered by the American Humanist Association called The Humanist Lifestance.  I will be in class from 9 AM to 5 PM for a couple days with two leaders from the Ethical Society and take a field trip to the Hall of Origins at the National Museum of Natural History. In preparation for this course, I have to read about 5 books, 8 or so articles, and write four papers.  It seems very much like a college course.  It is in one of those books, The End of God-Talk: An African American Humanist Theology by Anthony B. Pinn, that I found what I was looking for.   

            Just to make sure we are on the same page this morning, I offer this definition of humanism.  Humanism is living in the here and now, focusing our lives on making ourselves and our world the best we are able in the time we have been allotted to live on this planet.  Pinn would add that humanism includes a “quest for complex subjectivity…[and] a push for greater life meaning.”  I really have no problem adding that to the definition we will use for humanism today.  Pinn describes theology as a “method for critically engaging, articulating, and discussing the existential—[what it is to be an acting, feeling, living human individual]-- and the ontological – [the nature of being, becoming, existence, or reality—in other words, theology is engaging the] issues that are part of every human life.” Then he begins a theological exploration of the history of the African American religious experience.   He delves into two different types of humanism, and these are his terms: weak humanism and nontheistic humanism.  I don’t particularly like the term weak humanism or weak humanist, probably because I am one.  Weak humanism allows for the possibility of a belief in a divine or god while at the same time living according to humanistic values.  He rejects transcendence and supernaturalism, while exploring how humanism can embrace a sense of awe and wonder in the everyday experiences of life, and he describes how ritual and celebration can enhance those mundane experiences.  Pinn experiences awe and wonder in the world and explains this by explicating the works of theologian Howard Thurman, author Alice Walker (she wrote The Color Purple), and Transcendentalist and Unitarian Henry David Thoreau; he also finds inspiration in the lives of Harriet Tubman and Fredrick Douglas.  One of his ideas is to consider place, spelled p (l)ace, as both a physical space and a place in time.  The physical space is embedded in time place embodying complex subjectivity—thus the world embodies complex subjectivity and how we experience and make meaning of it cannot be a simple process.  I will probably expand on all that in a later sermon.

            So what does all this have to do with being a people of welcome?  Pinn writes: “Non theistic humanistic theology wants to avoid any tendency to essentialize community, while still retaining a sense that [community] means something akin to the substance of the uncertain, a misty recognition of ‘and’.”  What he is getting at here is the idea that we cannot make a community be what we want it to be.  A successful sense of community comes from embracing the “uncertain…misty recognition of ‘and’”.  I need to unpack this a little.  He feels that many Christian communities--or really any community-- that tries to enforce like-mindedness is counterproductive.  Pinn believes that people really shouldn’t be molded or shaped or even nudged to think a certain way.  He encourages us to embrace the idea of community that is enriched by the diversity of thought that is created when people think for themselves.  He believes there is value in being in that kind of community, but also that we should still avoid any sense of needing to be part of a community in order to have a fulfilling life.  We join a community because we are enriched by it, we grow from being in it, even as we have an awareness that community is not perfect and never will be.  Being part of a community lays “bare the limits and importance of the empty spaces in its geography…[and] exposes [us to] what is and what is not [in our lives and in our world].”  In this type of community we live in the tension of what we label as community and the feeling that there is something absent, some need/want not being fully met by the community.  Thus in a community, we learn how complex our lives and our world are and that is a good thing, an important function of the community.  Pinn writes that community “does not override the ability to achieve personal ends [but provides an opportunity for] collective vision, loyalty, and recognition.”  For him community is a p(l)ace both physical and spiritual.

            Our Unitarian Universalist third Principle states that we affirm and promote the acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth within our congregations.  Our Principles are not doctrine.  I agree with this Principle and try to live it in my life because it makes sense to me, and it’s congruent with my values, not because it is doctrinal to our faith.  Members of any Unitarian Universalist church do not have to be in agreement with any of the Principles to be a Unitarian Universalist.  Here is the truth, the Principles are descriptors.  They were created to describe the values of the people who generally come to and remain members of a Unitarian Universalist congregation.  They were created to describe Unitarian Universalism to people who are not Unitarian Universalists.  The minute they become a litmus test for being a Unitarian Universalist or a member of this church, we are on a path to both essentializing this community and forcing this community to become like-minded—in other words trying to get people to accept that there is one and only one right way to think or believe and they must understand that in order to be welcome. 

            So what is it to be a people of welcome? Being a people of welcome means that we’re not here because we have to be.  We’re here because we want to be.  And we understand that the people who visit us do so not because it’s Sunday morning so they have to find a church to be in; they’re here because they want to be.  As people of welcome we affirm the importance of an uncertain ‘and’, understanding that uncertainty that is intrinsic to a diversity of belief and thought.  We are aware that embracing this uncertainty allows anyone who joins us to know they can belong to this community.  Being a people of welcome means we realize that we will be enriched by anyone who joins us.  As people of welcome we are imperfect and our community is imperfect and that is the way of life.  We are a people of welcome when we understand the complexity of our lives and our world, while understanding that anyone who joins us is just as complex as we are and they have the capacity to help us understand more about the complexity of life.  As people of welcome we need to hold our Principles loosely—understanding that they describe the values of many, but not all of us, and that we use them to help others understand what many of us as Unitarian Universalists value.  And as people of welcome, we do not try to mold, shape or nudge each other, or anyone who visits us, into a particular way of thinking or believing. 

            In Kreves Hall there is a sign that says Welcome at the top.  Welcome to anyone who is Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Questioning, Intersex, Ally, black, white, Hispanic, latino/a, Asian, biracial, multiracial, Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Interfaith, Pagan, elder, adult, young adult, teen, child, infant, native born, immigrant, humanist, atheist, agnostic, theist, conservative, liberal, single, partnered, special needs, a visitor to our church, and each of YOU!  But this is an incomplete list.  After the service I invite you to add more descriptors to the list.  After you write those descriptors of others you feel should be welcome here, think about how we can make it so and share your ideas.  This is another way we can be a People of Welcome.

Welcoming Diversity (welcoming people with emotional and mental health issues)

            I don’t think there is a person in this room who doesn’t believe they are welcoming.  We all have a pretty good idea what it takes—make eye contact, say hello, answer some questions, invite the person into Kreves Hall after the service for some coffee and conversation. Boom. They feel welcome.  And while some of us here might have some mild confoundment with the inclusion of preferred pronouns on some of our name tags, people here have embraced this extra step toward radical inclusiveness.  Same with the signage on the bathrooms—for the most part, most everyone here has been supportive of the subtle yet oh so important and meaningful change from “men” and “women” to “those who identify as male” and “those who identify as female”.

Today I want to talk about how we can be radically inclusive and welcoming to those who struggle with mental and emotional health issues.  What’s the most affirming and least derogatory way we can even bring this subject up?  I don’t think any of us would want to be referred to as mentally ill, nor would anyone who struggles with their mental or emotional health.  This is not language that helps a person with mental or emotional health issues feel very welcome.  Some folks prefer language like mental health consumer, user of mental health services, person with a mental health history or a person with mental health issues.  Some people who have been diagnosed, prefer a person with the such and such diagnosis, for instance a person with the diagnosis schizophrenia rather than being labeled a schizophrenic.  I remember when I first started working as an aide at a psychiatric hospital back in 1979, a young man was admitted who had the diagnosis of schizophrenia.  One day I sat down with him to talk.  He said to me that he had no reason to take any responsibility for his life because everyone had labeled him a schizophrenic.  He was seen as an illness, an aberration, boxed up, labeled, and shelved under a category with specific expectations of how he will think and behave.  So he was just going to do whatever he wanted and to heck with everyone else.  His family was aware of his do-whatever attitude and very concerned about this young man, but continued to call him a schizophrenic, not realizing how the label was contributing to the issues that he faced.  A diagnosis is not who the person is, it is a diagnosis.  It makes me wonder what other labels we use that are not helpful, like being labeled a diabetic rather than a person with diabetes.  Labels seem very black and white; like once you have been labeled there is no going back to just being a plain old person.

According to one study 55% of the respondents reported that churches are widely perceived by outsiders, people who don’t attend a church, to be unwelcoming places for persons with mental or emotional issues. (research done by Life Way Research in 2013, Mental Health and Christian Churches) And there is probably some truth to that.  In my 15 years as a Unitarian Universalist minister, I have heard stories from ministerial colleagues about parents saying that their depressed/bipolar/anxious child was not very welcomed by the teachers or the other kids in the religious education program.  This is an issue that is routinely raised in different UU churches across the country.  And even though I think many of our congregations are trying to be more sensitive to issues like this, I think we still have much to learn about how to be welcoming to people with mental or emotional health issues. 

The same study I mentioned earlier, found that the response of people in church to an individual’s mental or emotional health issues caused 18% to break ties with a church and 5% to fail to find any church to attend.  And 17% of family members in a household of someone with acute mental illness reported that their family member’s mental or emotional health issues impacted which church their family chose to attend.  One more statistic from the study: 65 % of church going families with a member with a mental health diagnosis want their church to talk more openly about mental health issues. (research done by Life Way Research in 2013, Mental Health and Christian Churches)

            One in five people has some sort of mental or emotional health issue (NAMI).  According to this statistic it is very likely some people in this room have struggled with mental or emotional health issues.  And yet how often do we talk about mental and emotional health?  We do some.  A few classes offered by our Pastoral Care Ministers, but probably do not do it enough.  And how do we support our members and friends with mental and emotional health issues?  In my time here we have tried our best, sometimes more successful than others, to support our members and friends with mental and emotional health issues.  Is there more we can do? 

            Here is one of the conundrums we face in trying to be more welcoming to visitors to this church with mental or emotional health issues, we may never know if a person is a consumer of mental health services, because they may not feel safe sharing that part of themselves, or they may not hear this congregation talking about mental or emotional health issues.  Mental or emotional health issues are generally very difficult to recognize.  Wheelchairs and walkers are easy to see, but you cannot see if a person is taking an anti-depressant.  And someone who has a mental or emotional health issue has to hide it in the world outside our walls, so they are unlikely to talk about it until they trust that this is a safe place for them to talk about it.   You see many people with mental or emotional health issues face stigma and real discrimination in the world outside this church.  When I was a psychotherapist, I saw many active military personnel and commercial pilots.  These people always paid for their sessions in cash.  They didn’t want anyone to know that they were seeking help, because of the chance that their livelihood would be taken away from them was pretty high.  And they were afraid to take any medication because if anyone found out or it showed up in their systems they would be discharged or their licenses revoked.  It’s been several years since I’ve practiced psychotherapy, but I’m pretty sure these continue to be real issues today.  I strongly feel I would rather have a pilot who is receiving mental health care when he/she/they need it, rather than one who doesn’t get the help they need.

And there is still real stigma out there.  Imagine moving into a new house in a new neighborhood, and your neighbors discover you have a diagnosis of "psychosis." What do you think might happen?  The myths about mental health issues feed the stigmas and are deeply entrenched in our culture.  Some of the myths are: people who are mental health consumers are dangerous, mental instability is evidence of character flaws or weakness, the mentally or emotionally impaired have nothing of value to offer to society.  And it is all too often that I hear people wondering if mental health issues are contagious, if being around someone who is depressed will make you depressed.  

___________________________________________

These are passages from An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness by Kay Redfield Jamison.  Jamison is Professor of Psychiatry at John Hopkins School of Medicine and has been diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder or what used to be called Manic Depressive Disorder.

“Others imply that they know what it is like to be depressed because they have gone through a divorce, lost a job, or broken up with someone. But these experiences carry with them feelings. Depression, instead, is flat, hollow, and unendurable. It is also tiresome. People cannot abide being around you when you are depressed. They might think that they ought to, and they might even try, but you know and they know that you are tedious beyond belief: you are irritable and paranoid and humorless and lifeless and critical and demanding and no reassurance is ever enough. You're frightened, and you're frightening, and you're "not at all like yourself but will be soon," but you know you won't.”

“No amount of love can cure madness or unblacken one's dark moods. [But] Love can help, it can make the pain more tolerable…”

          ____________________________________________

            In an Unquiet Mind by Kay Redfield Jamison, you hear her speak of a couple of problems that people with mental or emotional health issues and those who want to help or support them face: a difficulty in communicating and a struggle with empathy.  I can’t emphasize enough that saying to someone who is going through a difficult time that you understand what they are going through is not helpful.  Really the only way you can begin to understand what person is going through is to ask them.  Your role then is listening and asking questions of clarification to help you understand what the person is saying to you while being careful not to be intrusive.  And doing this with a loving spirit, expressing interest, and demonstrating a willingness to be with them.  Not to offer helpful suggestions.  Not to try to “fix” them.  Your role is to listen and engage with them in a loving, non-judging, supportive way. This may sound familiar because this is what our Pastoral Ministry Associates do when they visit a person who is in distress.   And here’s one other thing, you don’t have to be perfect with your language or in your listening skills, you just have to be willing to try to understand and continue to show them lovingkindness even when the person you are talking to says something like, “You know I really don’t like it when you use the term mental illness.  I wish you wouldn’t use it when you are talking with me.”  Don’t react defensively.  Listen and show them respect.

            You heard Steve Cooper earlier mention our Accessibility and Inclusion Ministry.  They are exploring how we can make this church more welcoming to all people who join us.  But I wondered how other Unitarian Universalist Churches are trying to be more welcoming to people with mental and emotional health issues.  I found Mission Peak UU Congregation in Freemont California; they have a Mental Health Ministry. The mission of this ministry is compassionate service to people with mental health challenges and to their families, within and beyond the walls of their congregation.  On their website they have a link to a Caring Congregations Curriculum developed by their community minister Rev. Barbara F. Meyers.  This curriculum aims to help congregations be more welcoming and includes a guide called: Resources for Welcoming and Supporting those with Mental Disorders and their Families Into Our Congregations.  What was particularly interesting to me was that Reverend Barbara felt it was necessary to start the curriculum with definitions of religion and spirituality.  She wrote: “The terms ‘religion’ and ‘spirituality’ both have many meanings, and there is sometimes a distinction made between them. For the purposes of this curriculum, we define ‘religion’ as: An ongoing process of restoring personal wholeness. In a more universal sense it is the process of restoring one's relationship with the world, with the universe, with Ultimate Reality, the Sacred, or God, however conceived.  ‘Spirituality’ we define as: a form of religion, but a private and personal form of religion, that which a person feels internally that relates them to the sacred [as they understand it].”  I thought this was interesting that defining these two terms took precedence over getting to the nuts and bolts of welcoming and supporting those with mental and emotional issues and their families into the congregation.  I can only speculate on this, but it seems to me that presenting these definitions is another way of being welcoming.  You see the definitions offer hope.  No guarantees of healing, just the hope that with a loving and supportive Unitarian Universalist religious community walking beside them, that a person with a mental or emotional health issue may find a path to personal wholeness.

            Within this curriculum are recommendations on how to help people with mental or emotional health issues feel that they are part of the church community by including them in decision-making, encouraging them to join committees, offering them positions in leadership; all this empowering them to be active members of the church community.  The curriculum also addresses how a church can provide ongoing mental health education and mental health community resources to church members and the community.  Another aspect of the curriculum discusses how important justice work for mental health issues is—from lobbying to speaking up in social situations when a person with mental health issues is harassed.  The curriculum mentions some things that make a person with mental health issues feel unwelcome: minimizing the severity of a mental or emotional illness, questioning the validity of a specific diagnosis, and questioning the legitimacy of licensed professionals. 

            Each person who joins us wants to experience us as a welcoming community that can be a spiritual home to them.  I believe that each person who walks in our doors needs something specific to make them feel truly and deeply welcomed.  And we will only know what that is if we ask, and then listen to what they have to say.  We may not be perfect at meeting the welcoming needs of every person who joins us, but I don’t think we need to be perfect.  We just need to be authentic and make a good faith effort.

So as we continue this journey together, may we welcome all those who wish to join us, understanding that anyone who joins us will bring value and worth into this community.  So let’s travel light, bringing with us the spirit of love and expectation and our hopes and dreams as we bear witness to the future breaking in. Come along with me sojourner, seeker, pilgrim secure in the knowledge that we never travel alone; we are here with and for one another.