“Castles and Foundations”
April 9th, 2005
Rev. Peg Boyle Morgan
West Seattle Unitarian Universalist Fellowship
"If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them." Henry David Thoreau
SERMON
As Unitarian Universalists, we universally by-pass the path to a cloud-based heaven, but leave the question of after-life open; we seek not bodily resurrection, but do seek to raise up the conditions of life for every body here on earth; we don’t see ourselves as a chosen, special people, but instead believe that all people are born with equal worth and dignity; we do not worship a defined God, but each Sunday we hold up what is of great value to us (which is after all what the word worship means –to hold up what is of value); we do not suggest that some of us are damned and others holy and saved, but that we all are empowered by a spirit of life that we did not earn, and thus is greater than ourselves alone; we put less stock in what we believe and more in how our beliefs influence the amount of love, compassion and charity of our way of life.
Not relying on dogma, we are a minority faith tradition. It has been said that there are more truck drivers in Missouri than Unitarian Universalists across the entire country. But though we are small in numbers, our tradition has always had big dreams and has offered influential moral leadership in our country. Our spiritual forebears have always been among the most outspoken leaders in the work to abolish slavery and racist policies, to get women the right to vote, to keep women in charge of their bodies, and to open doors to full civil rights to gay and lesbian people. Our own early Fellowship leaders worked to abolish segregated neighborhoods, marched in abortion and gay rights demonstrations, organized to end war, and have befriended the needy in many ways, right here in West Seattle. Such legacy fills us with pride, but must not make us content.
Since it is the month we consider our annual pledge giving to this faith community it seems to me that it is also the time to consider what dreams do we have? For the dollars we give are really the means to build the foundation for our dreams. Shall we, like our forbearers, dream big?
I ask myself this question as I review our Fellowship’s fine draft strategic plan, with its eight pages of strategies, and I ask myself about dreams as we approach our Celebration Saturday dinner in two weeks when we celebrate all we are and all we hope for our future.
Sylvia Porter has said that one of the best ways of forecasting the future is to remember that whatever is to happen, is happening already!
What is happening already? Fantastic things!
We have infants and toddlers learning that this is a safe, nurturing and fun community—that their safe world is broader than their home alone.
And this month we have children learning how a cow makes a difference for a poor family in Transylvania: our children have had the opportunity for hands on learning, experiencing shaking milk into butter and butter milk, and then eating bread and butter and milk and cookies—while learning how 3-5 gallons of milk from a cow each day provides the difference between just mere subsistence …and being able to afford better food and being capable of sending their children to school; This project is also teaching our children that service is indeed our prayer, and not just something we say in the unison affirmation, for our children are raising money to buy a cow for a low income family in Transylvania.
And this month our children are learning that peace starts within themselves, acknowledging that they all have bad days, learning what they can do with a lousy day—how to be peaceful. The children made these beautiful meditation bottles, learning to shake them and focus their minds and hearts in calmness; and they have made sand gardens as another kind of meditation.
And our 8th graders are being respected and encouraged to think their own thoughts in their Coming of Age program--about who they are and how they fit into the world, and they are bonding in safe healthy relationships with other youth and with their mentors; in a couple weeks they will go off to a sweat lodge and on a wilderness vision quest to ponder and write what they believe about life and what they hold dear. We will hear from them in a special service on May 14th.
And what is happening with us adults in the Fellowship? We are meditating together, we are reflecting on the meaning of books and our lives together, we are singing in the choir together, walking together, gathering in affinity groups together, cooking a meal for the underprivileged together, worshipping together, protesting and advocating for civil rights together, eating and laughing together, planning and dreaming together, and visiting each other in hospitals together.
So much richness is already happening in this fine and vital faith community, and thus bodes well for our future.
I would suggest that while we want to maintain all these marvelous ministries and activities in our Fellowship, we also want to move beyond their maintenance to more deeply and more extensively realizing our mission; beyond maintenance to more fully implementing our mission.
Now we can’t do that unless we know what our mission is, --a carefully worded and deeply felt statement that was created by this Fellowship through a democratic process.
Let me read it to you:
We are committed to being a caring community that celebrates and respects the diversity of individuals. We strive to nourish our spiritual, intellectual, and ethical growth, take personal and collective action to promote social justice, and inspire and encourage each other to live the values we share as Unitarian Universalists.
I like to shorten these words, because I can’t remember them all; so when I extract the important themes, I sometimes say: We are a community of people who care about each other, who nourish each other’s growth, and who act together for justice.
Or, even shorter: Caring Community, nourishing growth, acting for justice.
Ok, so that’s our mission. But what does it have to do with our lives? Because if it doesn’t feed us, if it doesn’t provide us with moral guidance, and if it doesn’t help us get up in the morning to face the day, helping us to decide what of this world to savor and what to try to save—then what good can it be? If it doesn’t help us figure out who we are, what we love, and how to live our precious lives, then the mission is of no value.
But I would maintain that our mission and this Fellowship does all of that and more. And in order for us to deepen and extend the realization of our mission I would suggest five dreams--
1) First, we owe ourselves a community that is an oasis of safety, caring and joy. We owe ourselves a place where we can come weekly to grow our inner strength and to share inspiration for how to meet the personal challenges of our lives.
I would suggest that our Fellowship ought to be a refuge, a garden of nurturance and support, a help through sadness and fear, and a place to be reminded of what is of ultimate importance and priority in our lives. Our Fellowship ought to be a place where we have the opportunity to offer support to others, as well as a chance to learn how to accept the care of others when we need it. In short, our Fellowship ought to be a place of heart, and so it is already, and so it may become even more so as we realize the potential of our neighborhood caring groups and as we covenant together this fall for how we promise to speak to and treat each other, and how we wish to resolve conflicts.
2) And secondly, we owe ourselves a Fellowship community that is a place which takes us deeper and deeper into an awareness of what it means to be human in our post modern world. Our language and worship here should truly embrace a pluralism of belief where humanists, agnostics, theists, and mystics all feel welcome and supportive—realizing that ultimately, when all conversation of thought and beliefs are completed, “we do not have to believe alike to love alike” (Francis David, Transylvania 1500’s)—a message the whole world needs right now. Let’s show the world how that works! and in this community differing beliefs do not keep us from shared values: of compassion, freedom of belief, intuition honed by reason, inclusive welcoming, generosity, and acting together for justice. Our worship should engage our whole selves, each week enjoying listening and participating in word, music and movement, and appreciating the beauty of our aesthetics.
In this third millennium we have moved from a modern world with its focus on provable facts, science, and individualism--into a post modern world consciousness which gives validity also to human experiences of feelings, intuition, interdependence, community and mystery. Our Fellowship ought to continue to honor and explore all these elements for they are part of our humanity, and we ought to integrate them into the growing of our soul. A. Powell Davies, UU minister said that "Life is just a chance to grow a soul."
Now he didn't mean it in the traditional sense as a separate spiritual entity that goes somewhere after we die. Soul is a problematic word for us. And as one Unitarian Universalist said, "You always know you are in a Unitarian church when people believe that animals have souls but people don't."
And it is a bit of an oxymoron to try to even define soul, for it is not something you can touch and define, but if I were to try I would say that our soul is a conscious sense of ourselves, of who we are and our relationship with other life—a blending of our thoughts, our heart, and our intuition. As we move into the world we lead with our souls—with that sense of ourselves. To me that is what soul means, a blending of all that we are, what it means to ourselves to be human, what humanity we offer to the world.
3) A third dream, we owe it to the West Seattle community to be a the faith community where more people can bring their children and youth to help them grow their sense of what it means to be good humans in this complex world. I hope the word can go out far and wide throughout our community that there is an alternative to teaching dogma; where stories here are metaphors to teach moral values of love, interdependence, self care, and justice. Our children and middle school programs are absolutely excellent. Many more local children and their parents need us, but don’t know about us. Our future looks exceedingly bright if we are able to provide the staffing we need.
4) And a fourth dream, we owe it to ourselves to make great strides in our active involvement in social action in the West Seattle community. In many ways this becomes the soul of our Fellowship, where it all comes together in service to the world, for a congregation that serves its own is good, but a congregation that then gives food, shelter, tutoring and other hands on help to people beyond it’s doors—such a congregation has learned truly what it means to be human. Plans are already being conceived of here for how we can become much more organized and active in the local community, celebrating our first principle of the worth and dignity of all people by an exciting program of choices for ways each of us can actually help real people here in West Seattle. I hope we all find time to participate in our community service programs. Such programs serve not only those we help, but deepen our own experience of life and meaning. As Gandhi said, “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.”
5) And fifth, we owe it to the world to speak out against injustice. While we will never tell you how to vote, and who to vote for, when I see evil operating in our world, I pledge I will speak out from this pulpit. Let us be clear and bold in our speaking out for the conditions of peoples lives, and for freedom of conscience, because we want to build “a land where we bind up the broken..., where the captives go free..., where the oil of gladness dissolves all mourning.” We’re here to build a promised land that can be.
So my dreams: a very caring covenanted community, serving our children well, helping us to grow our souls, and helping us to bring our light and love into the wider world. I don’t think it gets any better than that.
This spring we are poised to blossom into a community that can be so much more than we are now—poised to go beyond maintenance of our very good community to realizing our mission in deeper and broader ways--much beyond keeping the doors open, to opening new doors; beyond keeping the good things we have, to creating something greater.
We value our religious tradition because it is a faith that embodies the value of religious freedom, at a time when strong elements in our country are converting us to a theocracy; while our Founding Fathers debated religious freedom and ultimately wrote it into our constitution, that freedom is at risk today.
We come here in part to share the wisdom we have gained from the living of our lives, and to learn the wisdom of others. We come to be reminded to marry our principles to our lives – we come to consider how to do this, and to be supported in our path. We come to gain insight from our services and our classes, wanting desperately to leave changed in ways we don’t even have words for but we know will make us stronger – we come to know how to be more at home in the wider world and more capable of bringing our light out into it.
Can you feel these hopes and dreams of this congregation around you? I can feel them.
SUMMARY
This future is already happening in the many diverse plans and active groups of the Fellowship. And it has been nurtured all along by those who came before us--but now our future requires OUR support. For we have spoken of our dreams in our Futures Report, and now we must take these high ideals and enthusiasms, and heed the wisdom of Ralph Waldo Emerson when he said: “If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”
So let’s all be a part of the flourishing of this congregation, moving us beyond the good we are, to an even deeper and wider realization of our mission. Let us find ways to open our doors wider so that more spiritually seeking people can find us, and let us continue our very fine record of being a welcoming congregation. Let us do more than preserve what is good here; let us move forward to realize the fine ideas you all have contributed in our futuring meetings.
There are several ways in which we each can put the foundations under our dreams:
1) by dedicating our time, each of us finding some area of Fellowship life to support with your energy.
2) by inviting at least one friend to come with you some Sunday to check us out.
3) And let us move forward by making the Fellowship a primary focus of your financial charitable contributions, for we alone can fund the requirements and foundations of our dreams. Wayne and I have committed to increase our pledge by 35% this year because I know this year is the year that the Fellowship is poised to make the difference, to make the leap to become a vital moral and social action force in this community, or whether we will only decide to maintain who we are and serve who is already essentially closing the doors to the hungry—effectively denying our mission’s vitality.
We need your financial pledge more than ever before, your willingness to offer your money so that our future can flourish, --to put your resources behind our futures planning, to ultimately support our UU principles—which the world needs desperately now to survive.
In particular, our children’s program requires much more than 13 hours per week of paid staffing. This next year we want to move that position to half time to capitalize on the very positive momentum we have gained and to better care for the children and parents who have come saying they too want to raise their children in a faith that respects their children’s genuinely wise souls, a faith that offers a moral guidance in a world full of selfish indolence and violence.
Let’s declare our light to the world, allowing our principles to be known throughout this West Seattle community by the way we live and move, and have our being, by how we serve those who need food, and love, and freedom from discrimination. We know how to do this folks. Let’s make this next year a year that will be marked as a turning point in the history of this Fellowship.
Let me close with the words of poet Anne Hillman:
We look with uncertainty
Beyond the old choices for
Clear- cut answers
To a softer, more permeable aliveness
Which is every moment
…;
For something new is being born in us
If we but let it.
We stand at a new doorway,
Awaiting that which comes
Daring to be human creatures
Vulnerable to the beauty of existence.
Learning to love.
May It Be So. Amen