My Altar in the World

My Altar in the World

Dr Gaye W. Ortiz

Worship can take place within four walls, like we are doing this morning, but it can also take place outside of them.

Sometimes I need only to stand wherever I am to be blessed.

This line in Mary Oliver’s poem ("It Was Early," Evidence, 2009, pp 20-1) is a source of great reflection and meditation – and challenge – to me. During the three decades I spent as a Catholic, I developed a real appreciation for the sacramentality of matter. The Mass is central to the Catholic faith, and its climax comes when Catholics receive the sacrament of the Eucharist. The idea behind the Eucharist – that it is the body and blood of Christ – draws upon the idea that plain, ordinary things can hold within them something of the sacred. So the bread, which is a food product that is made with flour, water, oil, yeast, salt – can with faith become flesh, and wine, one of the oldest beverages known to humanity made from the grape – can with faith become blood.

Now, I have italicized with faith in my sermon text, and the words ‘with faith’ are the crux of the matter. In coming to terms with the Eucharist Catholics have to be willing to suspend belief, succumbing to the irrational or mystical or mysterious, in order to go along with this central tenet of the Roman Catholic faith.

But sacramentality to me as a Unitarian Universalist is nothing to do with the Catholic notion of the Eucharist. It is my intuitive feeling that there is a special something to all of creation; it is grounded in my recognition of and commitment to the 7^th Principle, the interconnectedness of all existence of which we are a part. The belief that everything is connected suggests that there is something sacred, something of the divine in that connection…however each of us defines that in our own lives and experience. Sacred to some of us is a word we find hard to identify with: it can mean that we regard something with reverence, that has religious importance, that calls for veneration or respect.

Think of the Promised Land that the Israelites sought in the desert for 40 years…think of the sacred ground where Moses was commanded to take off his sandals…the Qaaba to which Muslims face when they pray…a tree, a mound or a stone for those who practice earth-centered religions. What is the feeling that we get when we are in a sacred place, a place we find special, for which we have respect? Think of a sacred place or space where you have felt called out of yourself, have perhaps connected with a larger sense of purpose; this is where we can begin to talk about spirituality. Maybe we use terms like ‘spiritual seeking’ or developing a ‘spiritual practice’ around certain things: prayer, meditation, other kinds of internalizing of a spiritual nature.

But for this morning we can broaden that idea of a spiritual practice to include being and doing, interior and exterior modes of spiritual practice. One day I will be able to sit down and write about my favorite spiritual practice, the spirituality of grandmothering. That is a ‘doing’ kind of spiritual practice, not in my head but certainly in my heart.

And the reason I feel I can say it is a spiritual practice is in part due to reading a book by Barbara Brown Taylor called An Altar in the World (2010, HarperOne). Taylor expanded the definition of a spiritual practice for me in her reflections on doing everyday things. Her idea of spiritual practice taking place within the context of a ‘geography of faith’ means encountering the holy in unexpected places, being mindful of the miracles and blessings that come to us in our physical environment. And by this I mean the sheer amazement and joy that we can have by looking at a leaf or an insect through a magnifying glass. It’s not that there is some magical power or supernatural element, but that the very existence of each created thing is a source of wonder. I felt that very keenly when we were in England earlier this month and got the phone call one afternoon that our daughter Molly’s best friend Helen had just had a baby boy…we went to the hospital and got to hold Freddy, just barely one day old. How perfect and precious he was! “Sometimes I need only to stand where I am to be blessed.”

Holding Master Freddy, 1 day old

This morning I want to use 3 of the chapter headings from Taylor’s book – the spiritual practices of getting lost, of encountering others, and of saying ‘no’ - in order to frame the experience of worshipping at my own altars in the world. These spiritual practices can take us out of our heads, where we spend so much of our time.

Taylor, a renowned preacher from north Georgia, is not perfect, and she is forthcoming in recalling times when she fails to encounter the sacred – this is a comforting thought for us who are amateurs in spiritual seeking. So, something to remember is that we should be open to the possibility of encountering the sacred where we least expect it. Last week Wilfred and I returned from the trip I just mentioned, back to the United Kingdom, where we lived for over 20 years. Our trip was confined to Yorkshire, and we had 9 lovely days to go to favorite places, eat favorite foods, and meet up again with old friends. We rented a car at Manchester airport, and Wil was an able chauffeur. As we drove from the airport to our friends’ house in Shipley, West Yorkshire, there were so many memories…of getting lost on those very roads!

In an earlier career working for Yorkshire Television as a program researcher, I managed to get lost practically every week on the roads and in the dales all across Yorkshire. It was my job to arrange shoots so I needed to know – in those days before Google maps – how to get to the locations and then give directions to the camera crew and my director. It was pretty embarrassing when I would get it wrong, but rewarding when at last I found what I was looking for. When I went off the beaten path I was often amazed at where I was being taken in my lost-ness.

Taylor says that if we let ourselves be lost, we can see the unexpected benefits that arise from our failure to navigate accurately. Of course, when we do get lost, we realize the need to summon up the skills that will help us on our way again – managing our panic, marshalling our resources, taking a good look around to see where we are and what this unexpected development might offer us (Taylor, 72).

Taylor mentions the fact that for women, it is easier for us than it is for men to get out a map to see where we need to go. “Why does it take thousands of sperm to fertilize a single egg? Because the sperm refuse to stop and ask for directions” (80).

Let’s broaden out from being literally lost and think of how we got to where we are today. Sometimes we set our life’s path squarely on what we want to be. When I mentioned to a student recently that it took me many years to know what I wanted to do in life, he snorted, “I can’t understand those kinds of people who do know – my girlfriend knew she wanted to be an optician when she was 11.”

We never expect life to turn out the way it does; sometimes we lose our way through divorce, loss of loved ones, illness and addiction, career changes…Taylor says that, after getting lost in life a few times, she has decided to stop fighting the prospect of getting lost and to “engage it as a spiritual practice instead” (73). 

Setting out on our path in life, and assuming that it will take us directly to where we want to go, we may become very disturbed by anything that deflects or delays that arrival.

Think of the Promised Land that the Israelites sought in the desert for 40 years…

There are many biblical stories of people losing their way, most notably the Israelites after their escape from years of bondage in Egypt.

“Think of the Promised Land that the Israelites sought in the desert for 40 years…” They learned the ‘holy art’ of being lost and endured so many misfortunes in their 40-year wandering that, Taylor says, “when they finally arrived in the land of milk and honey, they knew how to say thank you and mean it” (75).

Getting lost means that we become vulnerable, and Taylor tells us that there is “something holy in this moment of knowing just how perishable you are” (76). Maybe we can accept that there are ‘spiritual fruits of failure’ (78) and that consenting to be lost can build up the spiritual muscles we need for radical trust: trust that we can rely on our own resources but also find value in being a stranger in a strange land: the Hebrew Bible calls on its people to love the stranger, for they were once strangers in the land of Egypt. Taylor wisely tells us, “Those most likely to befriend strangers are those who have at some time been strangers themselves. The best way to grow empathy for those who are lost is to know what it means to be lost yourself” (83).

Love your neighbor as yourself

Now to what has been described as the ‘hardest spiritual work in the world – to love your neighbor as yourself’ (93). In our UU congregations we strive to live in covenant with each other, and perhaps a way of making this a spiritual practice is to reconsider our patterns of everyday interaction with people. Can we aim to make every encounter with a human being a holy one? Is that what our first principle, to affirm the inherent worth and dignity of every person, is all about? Barbara Brown Taylor suggests that a lot of the time we fail miserably to love our neighbors as ourselves, especially in our daily routines when we treat others as means rather than as ends. Think of the casual encounters you have each day, with the person behind the counter at the gas station; the server who takes your lunch order; the receptionist you speak to on the phone to arrange a medical appointment.

These people often melt into the background of our busy lives, and sometimes the last thing we need is to use up our precious time to make eye contact, say thanks as if we really mean it, risk engaging with another human being…then think of what Jesus said in his story about God telling the righteous they can inherit his kingdom because when he was hungry they gave him food; when he was thirsty they gave him something to drink; when he was in prison they visited him; and when he was a stranger they welcomed him. They replied, “Lord when was it that we did these things?” For even the righteous, these encounters had melted into the background of their busy lives. But then Jesus gives us the punchline of the story: “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’ (100)

Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks says “The supreme religious challenge is to see God’s image in one who is not in our image”. Taylor echoes this when she says that “What we have most in common is not religion but humanity”… “the degree to which we believe that our faith is what makes us human is the same degree to which we will question the humanity of those who do not share our faith” (99).

A challenge then for us UUs, many of whom have found this faith later in life and who cherish its liberating force in our lives, but who still bear spiritual scars that make it hard to be accepting of those who profess other faiths, especially the faiths from which we are liberated. Jonathan Swift’s comment cuts to the quick of our self-assured tolerance: “We have just enough religion to make us hate one another, but not enough to make us love one another” (99).

The spiritual practice, then, of letting an encounter with another person change you, is a challenging one; it challenges us to get over ourselves. It challenges us to love our neighbors as if they were ourselves.

And there was evening and there was morning, the seventh day.

The final spiritual practice is that of saying ‘no’ – specifically, of creating a Sabbath space in our lives so we can say ‘no’ to busyness and yes to doing less. “And there was evening and there was morning, the seventh day.” Remember where the idea of the Sabbath comes from? The creation took 6 days, according to the book of Genesis, and so on the 7^th day even God had to rest!

The chapter by Taylor on saying no recalls for me growing up here in Augusta, part of the American South where the Sabbath really was a day of ‘no’ – no riding bikes, no going to the movies, no store open for shopping…and, as Taylor says, the commandment about keeping the Sabbath holy might as well have read, “Remember the Sabbath and keep it boring” (127). Those Sunday afternoons were sandwiched by church services morning and evening, and they were the times when I would sit on the front porch of my grandmother’s house with my aunt and sing through the Southern Baptist hymnal.

Taylor suggests we develop a Sabbath ‘vision’ where routines of the week give way to one day of family get-togethers, worship, and rest. The rise of consumerism and television since my days on the front porch have completely transformed the way we Americans spend Sundays. We have added more and more to our lives, but there is a quote from the mystic Meister Eckhart that we should pay attention to: “God is not found in the soul by adding anything, but by subtracting” (121).

To have a day marked off as different from the rest – as Jews have with the ritual of the Friday evening Shabbat service – might remind us that in the story of creation God rested on the seventh day and even called it not just good but holy, “making the Sabbath the first sacred thing in all creation” (130).

Not only that: Taylor says that “if Bible lovers paid as much attention to Leviticus 25 as to Leviticus 18 then we might discover that God is at least as interested in economics as in sex. Because in that chapter there is a command for a Jubilee Sabbath once every 7 years when slaves are freed, debts are forgiven, property is restored, and there is “a year of complete rest for the land” (132). So while sitting on the front porch is not economically viable, it is a spiritual practice that gives rest “to each of us individually, our families, our faith communities, our neighbors, our systems of justice, our human economies, and our planet” (134).

Some of us are unable to say ‘no’ and can find ourselves regretting the constant state of stress that it causes. I once knew someone who would become ill every Sunday afternoon; Taylor names that tendency in many Americans as Sabbath sickness, the feeling of queasiness when you are enjoying your weekend but begin to realize that tomorrow it is back to the grind. You are enjoying your Sabbath too much! Taylor suggests that if we resist the idea of making the Sabbath holy, that we make 2 lists on one piece of paper: on one side list all the things you know that you want to do but never take time to do. On the other side, make a list of all the reasons why you think it is impossible for you to do those things. Then keep that paper where you can see it…and start small if you can’t give yourself a whole day of spiritual freedom.

“Sometimes I need only to stand wherever I am to be blessed”. Are you ready to worship at the altar of your world? Can you navigate in your own geography of faith? Can you lose yourself along the path of life – make time for encountering the stranger – say no to seven days of busyness? The blessings that we receive from our own spiritual practices will help us slow down, live with purpose and pay attention to this wonderful, sacred world in which we live.

May it be so. Blessed be. Amen.

Gaye W Ortiz

July 2012

The Most Loving Thing...

The Most Loving Thing

Dr Gaye Ortiz

Aiken Unitarian Universalist Church

June 10 2012

“A man drove through an unfamiliar neighborhood that he considered shady. Its residents were of a different class and race than he.

And, sure enough, as soon as he drove down the first block – having carefully locked his doors – he noticed that people on the sidewalks were yelling and gesturing at him as he drove along. The further he drove, the more outraged and outrageous the angry communication sounded.

This behavior confirmed all that he had suspected and disliked about ‘these kinds of people’.

But then he realized he had been driving the wrong way down a one-way street! People were trying to draw his attention to his unsafe wrong-way driving! If only he had paid more attention to his own actions!”

[Arthur Paul Boers, Never Call Them Jerks: Healthy Responses to Difficult Behaviors (1989), p.121]

Boers ends this story by saying we need to understand how we contribute to undesirable situations and how our behavior can be changed (122).

This is probably a sermon that not many people want to hear; some people may have voted with their feet when they saw the sermon topic…maybe some of those might be people who need to be here the most. Because it is hard to stay in right relation with people, especially people who we’re close to and with whom we have a covenant that ties us together.

Right Relation is a huge topic, and I have had to work hard to keep this sermon to just over an hour – only kidding! When we talk about right relations, we are really talking about the first UU principle, affirming the worth and dignity of every person, and the 2^nd, affirming justice, equity, and compassion in human relations. And those are tough principles to attempt to affirm, let alone carry out!

Meg Barnhouse knows it’s hard; she wrote back in 2009, in an article for UU World, that “the UU Principles are demanding enough to make me whine.”

She says, “The first one asks me to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person, which means that I can no longer subscribe to the cheerful Calvinist doctrine of the total depravity of human nature. It sounds grim, but really, if you are in fact starting with a totally depraved nature, the opportunities for self-congratulation abound: 'Hey, I didn’t knock over a 7-Eleven this afternoon, even though money’s pretty tight. I’m doing well!'Now I have to struggle with the worth and dignity of people who do unspeakably awful things, whereas the doctrine of total depravity made that one a no-brainer.”

Barnhouse suggests that at the end of each principle we add the phrase, “beginning in our homes and congregations”; and she goes on to say:

Justice, equity, and compassion in human relations, beginning in our homes and congregations” is a sobering ideal. I don’t know about you, but I have sat in meetings about right relations and seen people get testy with one another. Some of the nastiest behavior I’ve seen was long ago at a community workshop for peace activists.”

Lao Tse, quoted in the back of our hymn book, says peace in the world begins with peace in the home, which begins with peace in the heart. If I start with my own heart, the demands of our Principles get even heavier. Peace and compassion in my heart? Justice too? Freedom as well? Affirming the worth of every person all the time, not only with my words and my behavior but in my secret heart? If we added “in the heart” to the Principles, they might as well just say “Be Jesus” and be done with it. I’m sorry I even brought it up.” (Meg Barnhouse, “Who says Unitarian Universalism's Principles are easy?” 11/23/09, uuworld.org).

Well, if you are like Meg Barnhouse and secretly whine when you think of what is asked of us when we affirm the principles, then this sermon is for you. Because, even though we in this congregation may sincerely try to relate to each other in a positive and supportive way, we all know that there are bound to be times when we misunderstand each other, when we do not assume good intentions, when we approach a situation with perceptions and prejudices firmly in place, no matter if we are in fact driving the wrong way down a one-way street…

Over the years, misunderstandings, disagreements, and hurt feelings can cause a ripple effect of dis-ease and discontent moving outward from the people originally involved to an entire congregation. That the members can learn - on the whole - to try to respond in a healthy fashion, rather than leave in a huff or just never talk about the problem, is something to commend; I think this Aiken church has been fairly successful in this regard. 

Building the Beloved Community means taking our lumps and dealing with them: Tom Owen-Towle says, “Our chosen church is our principal tilling ground, sacred ground, battleground, common ground, and growing ground” (Tom Owen-Towle, Growing a Beloved Community, 2004, p.5). And although we may welcome people to explore their own individual spiritual paths, that doesn’t mean that they have no responsibilities to the congregation; this faith is built on a common enterprise over centuries.

I think that trust is one of the biggest issues that we might confront in our little community. We saw in our Time for All Ages that when we are not in control and we need to put our trust in another person, it can be a scary thing (a member was blindfolded and tasted something given to her by several people; she described what it was she thought she tasted, but also was asked what it is like to trust the person giving her these things and how it feels not to have control). And if we can’t do that in this congregation, then we are in trouble.

Because, when we trust another person, we know that when we fall short – or, using the original meaning of ‘sin’, when we miss the mark – that we can make it right again, we can forgive each other and forgive ourselves. Jesus is quoted in Matthew 7:4 as asking, “How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?” It is an amusing image when you think about it, and I do believe Jesus had a sense of humor when he communicated to his disciples and followers. But it is so true that when we’re upset by someone, we often neglect to look at our part in the situation.

David Miller, a UU minister in California, drew up a list of questions that might help us to reflect on the extent to which we are in right relation with each other in this congregation. We will not go through the entire list, but I’ve selected seven of the questions he asks.

1.   Am I assuming the good intentions of the other? Consider practicing the philosophy of ‘namaste’, the Hindu salutation that literally means “I honor that which is sacred in you.” Can we think that in our minds each time we meet folks here every Sunday? Can you look at someone in the eyes fully, directly, and not think that? In order to stop privileging our own virtuousness while approaching others with suspicion, we have to give up our self-image of being right all the time. How many of us have had a negative encounter this week? How long did it take you to realize that you didn’t trust the other person? Where do the roots of that suspicion lie? If we assume good intentions many of our misunderstandings would never even happen.

2.   Am I communicating directly with the person with whom I’m having an issue? Avoiding that person is not going to solve the problem, but again, this is easier said than done. And that’s often because we have a lack of disclosure trust: if you speak to the person, will they interrupt you before you can finish what you need to say? Will your words be twisted and used against you? Our fragile sense of ego sometimes puts up defenses us before we even begin to speak to the person…and it may not even be a person, but a group or a committee.

For example, you may have the experience of being asked to provide input to a committee, only to find a decision that has already been made by an inside group. No wonder we hang back from speaking...but if we don’t, how will we ever change the dynamic of conflict? But take the story of an 18^th century Quaker named John Woolman, at the height of the anti-slavery debate, who was upset that some Quakers were slave-owners. As Tom Owen-Towle tells the story:

To change that state of affairs, he didn’t censure the slaveholders. Instead, he traveled on horseback, visiting each slaveholder individually and sharing his moral concern. It took Woolman some thirty years to persuade all of them. But in the end, not one Quaker owned a slave. Passing laws would probably have brought about faster results but not without pain and lingering bitterness. As servant-leaders and as prophetic parishes, our job is to transform people, not merely to enforce rules, always remembering we won’t necessarily be as successful as Woolman. Therefore, we’re called to be conscientious, even when we fail. (Owen-Towle, 82)

3.   Am I reflecting on what personal wounds, issues, and tendencies of mine that are contributing to the issue? It’s the old story of the wife who makes her husband a cup of coffee in the morning, and when he tastes it he rips into her about how awful it is, and starts a full-blown fight. It ain’t about the coffee, you can bet! When I was in lay leadership in Augusta, there was one person who could push my buttons – it didn’t take much, maybe one sentence, before I was fuming. Until I figured out that this person reminded me of the way my father would speak to me when he was angry, I was reacting to the person very negatively. It helps to figure it out, and then the next step is to desensitize yourself to prevent future knee-jerk reactions.

In Pema Chodron’s book The Places That Scare You (2001), she explains that the formal practice of loving kindness has 7 stages, beginning with “engendering loving-kindness for ourselves, then expanding it at our own pace to include loved ones, friends, ‘neutral’ persons, those who irritate us… [and then gradually we broaden the circle to include] all beings through time and space” (Chodron, 43). She says that if we don’t question our feeling of irritation, it is easy to let emotions hook us in and shut us down.

4.   Am I actually trying to live the principles and values of Unitarian Universalism by acting with compassion, respect and  high value of our interdependence? The author Stephen Covey (The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, 2004, p.277) says that we can lower our expectations of independence and raise our level of involvement in order to develop unity between people: “The more genuine the involvement, the more sincere and sustained the participation in analyzing and solving problems, the greater the release of everyone’s creativity” (Covey, 283)

In this excerpt from his book Savor, the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh says that there is a human need for meaning, for purposeful connection, for community, and for real engagement in the world:

All of us have a great capacity for compassion. We want to help those who are really in need, who are suffering…But how do we begin? Transforming the world starts with oneself. It is through attending to our own well-being and staying in touch with what is happening in our own personal lives that we can have a greater capacity to understand and address the world’s suffering. We are then on a sturdier foundation to contribute to improving our world. (Thich Nhat Hanh, Savor, 2010, pp.224-5)

5.   Can I let go of my need to control the situation? Barbara Brown Taylor tells a story about the Desert Monks, early Christians who lived apart from society but had a strong sense of community. Two elders decided that they should try to have a quarrel like ordinary men; but since they had never had one before they did not know where to start. Even after agreeing how to argue over ownership of a brick, one of them gave in almost immediately, and so they “failed to get into an argument at all” (Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World, 2008, 89-90). Normally, we don’t have any problem getting into an argument! And we can tell when conflict escalates to become destructive because we feel we have no control and we begin to think and behave irrationally. We try to control a situation in order to avoid failure or losing face.

6.   Can I have disagreements with an individual or group, do so in love and respect, and continue to stay in community? The Native American activist Catherine Attla speaks of “the big law of respect.” A respectful church “is one where boundaries are kept, saboteurs are confronted, crises are faced” (Owen-Towle, 67). But how can we fight and still stay together? When we realize that conflict is normal and that the key to success is to find healthy ways of dealing with it, we can actually develop rules for fair fighting. Here are some ground rules that you may already use: (Boers, p.73)

·      Don’t label or name-call

·      Don’t attack or question motives

·      Propose positive changes, so not just offer negative complaints

·      Speak specifically, not generally

·      Speak up for yourself and not for others, using ‘I-language’

·      Consider and respect different perspectives; gather plenty of information

·      Be open about differences

·      Be responsible for your own feelings

·      Act accountable

·      Work for win-win situations

·      Value everyone

·      Be open to change and growth

·      Stick with the process

·      Take a break when things get too heated

·      Admit mistakes

·      When the group makes a decision, comply with it.

We need to stay connected through communication: listening and talking and being willing to be vulnerable without giving in to sabotage. When we feel defensive, we tend to want to withdraw, but if we can keep talking we can learn together through our experience.

7.   And finally, can I remember to ask the question, ‘What is the most loving thing I can do or say right now?’ The practice of loving your neighbor as yourself includes the responsibility to be mindful that how you treat another person, even in passing, can make all the difference. Barbara Brown Taylor calls this a spiritual practice, and she gives one example: “Next time you go to the grocery store, try engaging the cashier. Here is someone who exists even when she is not ringing up your groceries, as hard as that may be for you to imagine. It is enough to acknowledge her when she hands you your change. Just meet her eyes for a moment when you say, ‘Thanks’. Sometimes that is all another person needs to know that she has been seen – not the cashier but the person.” (Barbara Brown Taylor, 94-5).

How much more important is this question when we are in conflict with another person! Words can hurt or heal, gestures can comfort or ridicule. If we try to respect change, difference, and even conflict, we can avoid destroying - and may even salvage - relationships. How can we manage the conflict and manage to keep our relationship intact? Caroline Westerhoff makes an interesting point about the root word of manage:

The root of 'manage' is the Latin for hand – manus – and when I think of hands, I recall Michelangelo’s great work from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, The Creation of Adam… In my imagination, a spark fairly sizzles in the space between them as God sets it all in motion for the very first time: ‘Be different, Adam. But you will not be alone in that differentness. There will be other different ones. Create with them.’ God’s hand is open…It is not shaking Adam into life but is energizing him by invitation…

Perhaps Michelangelo’s genius has provided us with needed fresh perspective. Hands – management - can be perceived as instruments either for controlling, checking, holding, taking, restraining and even strangling or for guiding, pointing, stroking, kneading, giving away, letting go. To manage conflict then would be to allow it, not suppress it; to open our doors and windows to its fresh wind. (Westerhoff, “Conflict: The Birthing of the New” in David B. Lott, ed., Conflict Management in Congregations, 2001, p.57)

Maybe something you’ve heard this morning will come back to you when you are confronted with a situation where conflict may be about to erupt. You have a choice as to how you respond; be mindful about the power that entails. The relationship you save may be worth so much more than the momentary satisfaction of a sharp word, an insult, or an insult. And when someone tries to engage you in a disagreement or an argument, think about what may be going on in that person’s life; Plato said, “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”

Change is inevitable, and often with it comes conflict. Tolerating difference, respecting diversity, practicing empathy and compassion, normalizing conflict, and fighting fair can help us, as Hosea Ballou says, “keep the unity of the spirit in the bonds of peace.” NAMASTE.

Gaye Ortiz

You Are Cordially Invited...

“You Are Cordially Invited…”

Gaye W. Ortiz

June 3 2012

Aiken Unitarian Universalist Church

Introduction

I am sure if you try, you can recall an invitation that was very special to you; maybe it drew you into a new friendship, a new conversation, a new activity, sport, or hobby that had never caught your interest before.

This summer it will be 10 years since our entire family survived a massive move from the north of England; when my husband and I decided we would leave so he could retire – and take up a new job at Ft Gordon in our hometown, we told our grown daughters of our decision. We said, “You both have lives and relationships here; we’ll come visit you and you can come visit us’…and they said ‘No! We’re coming too!’ We didn’t invite them to join us – but we were thrilled to have them come with us, and it was no small feat to move them, their partners, children, and pets across the Atlantic the summer of 2002!

So Wil and I both had new jobs, our children and their families had settled into life in the South after more than 18 years in North Yorkshire…but we were without a spiritual home. Not long after I began to teach at Augusta State University I was invited to speak at the UU Church of Augusta. I had only a surface knowledge of Unitarian Universalism, but I was primed by several conversations with the church member who invited me, who was a fellow academic at ASU and on the worship committee at the church; she told me about the kind of church it was and I was excited. I was flattered to be asked to give a guest sermon on my academic area of expertise, theology and film. I prepared to give a dynamic talk, knowing that I would have to repeat it twice because at the time the church had 2 Sunday services.

I proceeded that Sunday morning to completely wreck the first service! When the minister, Dan King, invited me to come up to give my opening words I simply launched into 20 minutes worth of sermon. I didn’t realize just how big a boo-boo I’d made until I sat back down and Dan took the podium, and he said something about how he was sure I respected the order of service and that we would continue with the offertory. Then I looked at the order of service and saw that I had bushwhacked all the other parts of the service between the prelude and the offertory.

Dan then bravely invited me to share some closing words – and I did, off the cuff – and then we had a debrief and a good laugh before I took on – and totally respected – the order of service at 11am.

You would think that after flubbing an invitation so blatantly as a visiting speaker that I would have been too embarrassed to show my face again…but the next Sunday I was in the sanctuary again, as a visitor; the Sunday after that I approached the music director to ask if I could sing in the choir; the next Sunday I asked about the women’s group and how I could join in the upcoming croning ceremony. And so on, and the rest is history, and now I stand before you having created our order of service this morning as your minister!

What held me in that UU community since that first mortifying day is what I want to talk about this morning: the potential of a congregation to transform lives and make the world a better place. It transformed my life to find a welcoming, caring atmosphere within which I was free to ask questions, make mistakes, and be a seeker for my own spiritual path. It liberated me and I will be forever grateful.

My first year as your consulting minister – and as a ministry intern – is quickly drawing to a close. At the end of this month I will be away for two months until the second Sunday of September for our in-gathering service.

When I was invited to serve this congregation I really didn’t know what to expect, and neither did you, frankly! Some of you have been members since the initial formation of what would become the Aiken UU Church, and some of you walked in the door for the first time during this past year and decided to keep coming back.

In reflecting on what makes this Aiken community so special, I needed to consider what has made our members accept the invitation to join this congregation: what are your hopes and visions for belonging to a progressive religious community? What are you contributing in terms of your time and talent and treasure? And why is it that each of you feels empowered to keep on giving, feels encouraged to exercise your own unique ministry to keep the Aiken UU Church going?

Our Goals

In 1985, Latin American liberation theologian Leonardo Boff looked at the institution of the Roman Catholic Church and said that, as it was currently realized, it “ appears to have not much hope for survival” (Boff, Church: Charism and Power, 1985, p. 3). He was criticizing the reactionary model of the church that, after the brief era of promise of the Second Vatican Council, became concerned “with a narrow aspect of reality controlled by the hierarchy”. In other words, the power of the bishops was keeping the church from its true mission, that of “service for the good of the community”(164).

Fr Boff called for the Catholic church to be liberated so it could become a church ‘born of the people’s faith’, ‘rising to human challenges’ and called to be universal in achieving those goals.

Now, some of us in this sanctuary have very little knowledge of the Roman Catholic Church; and several of us may have quite a lot, by virtue, at some point, of having that faith as part of our personal religious journeys. But I would propose to you that those universal goals of Father Boff – being a universal church born of the people’s faith, rising to human challenges – are very close to what our goals have always been in Unitarian Universalism. We don’t have some of the handicaps, like a patriarchal hierarchy, that Fr Boff alludes to in regard to Catholicism; in fact, Unitarian Universalism prides itself on being a free church in which democracy guides its polity.

As James Luther Adams states in ‘I Call That Church Free’, his version of William Ellery Channing’s ‘The Free Mind’: “I Call that church free which brings individuals into a caring, trusting fellowship, that protects and nourishes their integrity and spiritual freedom; that yearns to belong to the church universal.”

“Being Religious Together”

I want to reflect upon that image of our church as a caring trusting fellowship of individuals – indeed, it’s worth noting that, as Rebecca Parker observes, “There is no life apart from life together” (“Life Together” in A House for Hope, Buehrens and Parker, Boston: Beacon Press, 2010, 33). The reason a religious community exists is so we can “be religious together” and not alone.

When we connect with others in an act of common worship we are attempting to nurture the relational aspect of our spiritual path. Many of us have a cherished private, personal spiritual discipline, be it praying, meditating, chanting, reading, drumming, singing, walking in nature. But something drives us to be here together; it may be, in part, because we have a vision of what we want this liberal religious community to be and become.

Rebecca Parker’s book with John Buehrens is called A House for Hope; in her chapter “Life Together”, she examines our drive as humans to be relational, and attempts to understand the challenge that is the contemporary religious community. Ecclesiology is the study of religious community, its Greek root is ekklesia, meaning ‘called together’ (34). Parker notes that the early Christian church drew upon the Pauline teaching of different people having different gifts in order for the church to function - just as a body continues to live because its different parts work together.

In his letter to the Corinthian church, the apostle Paul said that if I am one part of the body, I should realize that my contribution is just as important as that of another part of the body. It sounds simple - but we all know, continuing with that metaphor, that sometimes being a little toe or a sweat gland doesn’t get a lot of respect as far as body parts go!

So it’s difficult to envision the unity of a religious community, and we have to look at another root word to give us help, that of the word ‘religion’: religio in Latin means to bind, to tie together.  So we come to this place to bind ourselves together, and the beauty of it is that we choose to be bound together; we accept the invitation held out to us. Some of us need that security of being bound together, tying ourselves metaphorically to other people in this congregation.

Rebecca Parker recognizes the attraction of being in a religious community when its walls give us shelter – shelter from our insecurities, and our fears, but we also seek shelter with like minds when we face persecution because of our difference to those outside these walls. But walls that close us in can sometimes be suffocating, as the Reformers found when they wanted to correct the abuses of Christendom.

Protestants fought for the right to have access to holy scriptures in their own language without priests reading it to and for them; they rejected the clerical abuse of the practice of granting indulgences, the hierarchical power to literally take money from the faithful for their salvation in the next life. Some of those who rebelled went overboard and did away completely with ritual and hierarchy, smashing statues, stained glass and other sacred art along the way. But we know that eventually the freedom they preached became a Protestant sacred cow; new ecclesial power structures were built, new obligations constrained church members, and new methods were created to punish members if they broke church laws.

Parker refers to the ‘perils of religious community’ that continue to exist today, which include shunning or excommunication, or even the threat of eternal damnation for those who don’t toe the ideological line of their religious leadership. The distrust of religious community, especially by religious liberals like us, may be because we have had disillusioning, or even traumatic, experiences in oppressive religious communities. We may have exacting standards, and judge religious communities as all too often failing to practice what they preach.

Rebecca Parker reminds us that we are in good company – for example, “The Hebrew prophets condemned religion when its priests soothed the privileged but neglected the poor” (35). But maybe we need to remember what the famous reformer John Calvin said about the church, that it is “a house always under reconstruction”(35)… maybe, because it’s a human creation, we can see that religion is necessarily flawed in practice if not in theory.

Parker urges us to ‘rebuild’ the walls of community so that we can continue to have “meaningful connection with one another” (37). She identifies two ways of being church for ‘liberal and progressive people of faith’: one is that congregations can “provide an embodied experience of covenant and commitment among people; they can foster freely chosen and life-sustaining interdependence” (37). This to me is another iteration of Leonardo Boff’s wish for a church ‘born of the people’s faith’.

The Covenant Tradition

For Unitarian Universalists the covenantal tradition is broad in human and historical terms; there is a lengthy strand of connection, grounded “in a 16^th century Left-wing Reformation interpretation of Jewish and Christian covenantal scriptures… the scriptural interpretation of 16^th century English Congregationalists is reflected in the Pilgrim Mayflower Compact of 1620 and the Puritan Salem Covenant (1629) among many others, and adapted by the Puritans to the American colonial circumstances in the Cambridge Platform of Church Discipline (1648). It has been influenced by the 18^th century Enlightenment and by the 19^th century Transcendentalists, …by Unitarians (and other religious associations) at the end of the 19^th century, and by the 1961 consolidation of the AUA and UCA to form the UUA.” (James A. Hobart, A Prologomena: Regarding an Understanding of Our UU Ministers Covenant, October 2006, 2). Let’s unpack that timeline a bit:

Writing about the Covenant, William Johnson Everett says that we can see in the Bible the earliest form of religious covenantal agreement. (Everett, “Recovering the Covenant”, http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=1495) 

Everett says there is a constant need to balance power and justice within human relationships because human beings are frail and because they aspire to be powerful: certainly if you’ve read the Bible you know it does not shy away from recognizing the full range of human faults, from Adam and Eve to King David. Everett says that the exercise of just power in biblical times needed to balance “the bonds of kinship with the freedom of consent”. When we’re trying to figure out how we behave with people who are not in our “family, tribe, ethnic group, and race” we need to build that relationship in a way that balances trust with diversity. This was one of the radical things that the new Christian communities did as they began to operate first in Jerusalem within the Jewish culture and then, as a separate but growing network of faith communities, began to welcome Gentiles into their midst.

Features of Covenant

By the time of the Protestant dissenters in England and New England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a covenant theory was revived, based upon an understanding of the primitive Christian church derived from the New Testament. Each member of a dissenting congregation had both right and responsibility in matters of decision-making, including shaping church policy. 

This was a revolutionary change from the practices of the established church, and it is still a feature of UU covenants today: “active participation in constituting the covenantal community” (Hobart, 3). Defining ourselves as Unitarian Universalists means that the individual, in balance with the institution, can enrich the common good.

Another UU thinker, Alice Blair Wesley, sees the spirit of love, at work in covenantal organization, as the transforming factor in a congregation (Wesley, Our Covenant, 2002, Chicago, Meadville Lombard Press, 7). She stresses that a church needs a doctrine that flows “from mutually shared loyalties of the members…seen at work in everything the members do together as church people” (16).

This idea brings us back to the goal of Fr Boff for the church to rise to human challenges. It is what characterizes Rebecca Parker’s second way of being church for liberal and progressive people of faith, that they can be “communities of resistance” (37). “Resisting and even transforming an unjust dominant culture” through membership in a group is often more effective than trying to do it alone: Parker gives one example: of African American churches that “functioned as countercultures to white supremacist culture” (38).

Another example is of Unitarian churches in Hungary. Boasting a continuous presence over 450 years, these Transylvanian communities offered dissidents and freethinkers refuge, especially when religion was persecuting science in Europe. The 20^th-century threat of extinction by the Ceausescu regime was overcome by the spirit of dissent that had long been nurtured in these communities. And Parker observes that “such community is established less by a historic creed or by apostolic tradition than by covenantal relations among the members” (41). This is what Alice Blair Wesley means when she calls for a doctrine of love at work in everything the members do together as church people.

Is ours a community that can nurture itself through love and renewal? In the words of James Luther Adams, do we embody “the priesthood of all believers” that works for the ministry of healing? Are we a community that is - or can become - a community of resistance that is helping to transform our world? Again in the words of Adams, do we embody “the prophethood of all believers” that works for the liberty of prophesying?

Our Community

Let’s just think for a moment and consider how we nurture ourselves and work to change the world. Our children’s RE program, for a start, is how we renew our energies and ensure our future.  Our future generations will need the kind of nurturing and prophetic witness that our children are learning from us here. We invite them to follow us in building up our church.

Our affinity groups help to nurture our members – whether you enjoy the Sisterhood of the Spirit, the Buddhist meditation group or the men’s group, or even the new Adult RE Sharing Circles, you can agree that this congregation invites us all to share in the wealth of relational opportunities in smaller groups that foster bonds of friendship and common interest.

And when we look to the goal of becoming a community that resists the dominant cultural status quo and works to create a better world, we can see progress here too.

Our Share the Plate monthly collection comes out of a desire to reach out to the wider community with our resources, and its success is a sign of our members’ and friends’ generosity. It is, by extension, our work in the community, along with all the wonderful projects from the Service and Outreach Committee.

Our participation in the UUA advocacy project, Standing on the Side of Love, has brought us into contact with others in our wider community who want to work with us in affirming the human dignity of every person. We have begun the work this year of being designated a Welcoming Community, and that process will continue with a variety of workshops, service and other activities for all members and friends.

My enthusiasm for this congregation knows no bounds, and I could happily stand here and spout forth on more achievements, more projects, more goals…but in our Annual Meeting today you will hear the reports from committees that have been engaged in making this church a transforming and loving community. And you will hear about people who have stepped up and have accepted the invitation to leadership. This day, once a year, makes me proud to be a Unitarian Universalist who can have a real say in the governance of this church. Our shared ministry is something as a minister that I value.

Conclusion

Again I ask the question, why do the members of this church continue to accept the invitation to do this work? And those of you who are not members, who may have been coming for some time, I want to ask you “What is stopping you from accepting the invitation we hold out to you to help us do this work?” If being here with us is worth your time on Sunday mornings, then become a member and commit yourself to share fully in the transforming work we do. I can bring out our membership book right now, and you’ll be able to vote in the Annual Meeting after this service – instant exercise of your membership rights and responsibilities! And seriously, having been a member of a religious faith tradition that does not treat its members like grown-ups and does not give them any meaningful say in how their church makes decisions, I consider the polity of Unitarian Universalism a valued privilege of my membership.

The UUA president Peter Morales puts it this way: “When you and I focus on what we love and what we long to create, something almost miraculous happens. We are energized. We form lasting bonds. We become eager to commit ourselves and to work together. We become more generous. We come to care more about ‘us’ and less about ‘me’. In other words, when we focus on what we love we ‘get religion’ (‘Hand in Hand’, UU World Spring 2010, 7).

So…you are cordially invited again this morning to be an active part of our church family – and whether metaphorically you feel sometimes like a little toe or a sweat gland, remember that all of us are important in making this church body not only function but thrive. Together we can nurture this church and its members, its friends, and the wider community. Together we can rise to the challenges that the future holds; together we can create a vision that transforms our lives.

Gaye W. Ortiz

6/1/2012

Sources:

Boff, Leonardo (1985). Church: Charism and Power. New York: Crossroad.

Buehrens, John and Parker, Rebecca (2010). A House for Hope. Boston: Beacon Press.

Everett, William Johnson. “Recovering the Covenant”, http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=1495

Hobart, James A. (October 2006) A Prologomena: Regarding an Understanding of Our UU Ministers Covenant,2.

Morales, Peter (Spring 2010). ‘Hand in Hand’, UU World, 7.

Wesley, Alice Blair (2002). Our Covenant. Chicago: Meadville Lombard Press.

Wright, Conrad (1989). Walking Together. Boston: Skinner House.