Welcome Prelude Unison Words and Chalice Lighting Song #347 Gather the Spirit Not for Children Only Song #1008 When Our Heart Is In A Holy Place What I Wish for You Waving Goodbye by Wesley McNair Why, when we say goodbye at the end of an evening, do we deny we are saying it at all, as in We'll be seeing you, or I'll call, or Stop in, somebody's always at home? Meanwhile, our friends, telling us the same things, go on disappearing beyond the porch light into the space which except for a moment here or there is always between us, no matter what we do. Waving goodbye, of course, is what happens when the space gets too large for words – a gesture so innocent and lonely, it could make a person weep for days. Think of the hundreds of unknown voyagers in the old, fluttering newsreel patting and stroking the growing distance between their nameless ship and the port they are leaving, as if to promise I'll always remember, and just as urgently, Always remember me. . . . Yet in that moment before . . . all the others and we ourselves turn back to our disparate lives, how extraordinary it is that we make this small flag with our hands to show the closeness we wish for in spite of what pulls us apart again and again: the porch light snapping off, the car picking its way down the road through the dark.
It feels so strange to me to have reached my final sermon after all these years; to be moving on at the end of the month. We wave goodbye and we say I won’t forget you; don’t forget me. See you again sometime. We will always have a place in each other’s history, in each other’s hearts. I thought that this occasion, our last service together, merited a charge to you from me, who knows you well. I want, though, to express this charge in terms of wishes for you, and hopes for your continued happiness, health and growth. On the order of “Live long and prosper.” So here goes. But first, a word of gratitude. A simple, yet heartfelt thank you for what you have been over these years. Thank you for the energetic, eclectic, sincere, and vital community you have made. You have been a gift to me.
This is what I wish for you:
May the eyes of your eyes be open. May the ears of your ears be alert. First and foremost, may you see and listen to one another. May you be awake when you come here, ever mindful that this congregation does not exist simply to satisfy your needs. May you respond to one another’s needs and to the needs of the community itself. On a practical level, and to the extent possible, that means volunteer to help, take your turn at leadership, show up at events and Sunday services, make a pledge or financial contribution of record. On a spiritual level, it means practice generosity, practice gratitude, practice curiosity, and practice appreciation. Every day, give something, wonder about something, offer praise and thanks.
May you commit to the spirit of inclusivity and welcome. This is a covenanted community, which means that you have agreed upon how you will treat one another and what you wish the spirit of this congregation to be. Within the covenant, welcome the stranger. Within the covenant, welcome one another. May all that you do contain a mindfulness of the spirit of inclusivity. On a practical level, this means that the ways you organize your committees, the ways you make plans, the ways you communicate, all proceed with an awareness of including rather than excluding people. Ask yourselves always, if I do things this way, whom do I leave out? On a spiritual level, this means leaving our hearts open to learning, growing, changing. It means practicing courage and flexibility.
May this community commit to kindness in your treatment of one another. May you value understanding more than your own righteousness. May you value your differences. When you disagree, even when you disagree passionately, may you find ways to keep connected. Extend that spirit of openness and kindness to your ministers, as you have to me.
May your gaze ever be outward, as well as inward. May this congregation ever work to live up to its ethical ideals and values in the larger community. May you find a spirit of joy, and accomplishment, in planting trees whose shade other people will sit under; digging wells whose water will nourish future generations. May you always make the world a better place.
May your standards be high, even rigorous, but not impossible. May a spirit of accountability live peacefully within these walls. May you set out to do your best in all that you do and may you recognize that your sincere efforts have been good enough.
Finally, may you maintain confidence and trust in each other. Remember what you have accomplished: a major sanctuary, a tripling in size, burning a mortgage, installing a new rug, helping to host one of the best weddings ever, caring for members in need, an energetic religious ed program, small group ministries, and I could go on and on. Don’t forget what you can do when you are willing.
And you will do well. I know what a special people you are. I think you do too. Live long and prosper.
Song #123 Spirit of Life Meditation Special Music (11am) Joys and Sorrows OfferingSome Things I Have Learned
Catherine and Ella just sang one of my favorite songs, The Great Peace March, by Holly Near. It expresses some of my deepest beliefs: that life is a great and mighty march; that we were born for love; that we are together for love and for life.
One of my aims, this year and every year, is to learn something new. In my annual report I talked about my vision of ministry, my goals and accomplishments, and the areas I wish could have been different. Today I’d like to share one of the most important things I have realized recently. My learnings have to do with love and with life and with the great march.
At General Assembly I learned that I am a Unitarian. Duh. Here’s what I mean. I realized that my beliefs hold the same core as the Unitarian beliefs with which we began more than 500 years ago. I have begun to articulate my faith differently. I believe that there is something more than our particular lives, call it what you will: god, nature, energy, spirit, science. The nature of that something more than is a unity. This is where Unitarians started, calling that something “God” and asserting that God’s nature was a unity. Unitarian.
I don’t think I have a name for this something more than, although the word “life” suits me most closely. This “life,” whose nature is unified, holds all of us, holds the earth and the universe. However, this “life” appears to us in diverse forms, even contradictory forms. It plays hide and seek with us, showing itself in a thousand ways even though its nature is unified. If you call your god Jesus and I say I don’t have a god; if you call your god Allah and I call mine the goddess, it’s not that we are all talking about the same thing. Allah and Jesus are not the same. The differences are real because we are seeing different, smaller parts of one thing and thinking that we see the entirety. It’s the blind men and the elephant. Each felt a part of the elephant and asserted that their piece was the whole, without realizing that all of them were touching quite different parts of one animal. I too experience a part, and I call it “life” and I cannot say that I really know all that it is. But it unifies us. Because it is the unity we live in, it unifies us. We experience that unity through our sense of connection and inter-dependence.
One way to talk about connection is to speak of it as love. Love seeks connection. It is the giving of our presence and the recognition of the presence of others. Love makes its presence known and seeks connection through the practices of loving kindness, compassion, joy, understanding, and inclusivity. Long ago early Universalists asserted that love lay at the core of life and therefore must also lay at the core of our beings. I am a Universalist. I too believe that the connection, the love, that arises from the unity of life, lies within the core of life and that we have it in our beings to touch that core, and live in it, and from it. Our purpose in life is happiness and happiness arises when we know the core, the love embedded within life.
(In case you’re wondering, I still adhere to Buddhist philosophy and beliefs. Today I am speaking in Unitarian Universalist language. If I were to say this to other Buddhists, I would use other words to convey the same meaning.)
Out of connection, out of the love that seeks connection, arise our ethics. Our Unitarian Universalist Principles and Purposes, that expression of our ethical values, all promote connection. Every person has value, each person searches for truth and meaning and we encourage one another in that, justice, peace, freedom, democracy, compassion and fairness must govern human dealings, with other humans, other beings and with the very earth. All about connection. All about love. This Unitarian and Universalist understanding of life leads us to value connection and love and we find beauty and goodness in what we value. As that unity, that something more than, which I call “life” and you might call by another name, as that unity presents itself to us as diversity, the complex inter-relationship of all the diversity we see around us is experienced by us as beautiful because we know that somehow it’s all connected. Last week the joys and sorrows at the 11am service ran longer than usual. (Much longer than usual.) As I stood at the pulpit and watched the microphone go around and around, worried about the time, all of a sudden, in all the different things that different people were saying, I felt a great sense of love for all of you. I saw how you simply brought yourselves here, in all your struggles and triumphs, for others to see. We were a microcosm of the macrocosm of humanity. And I loved you. This is what I am talking about: connection, diversity, unity, love. Our ethic, because it promotes connection, often tends toward the counter-cultural because the dominant ethic of our country appears to promote disconnection rather than connection. Disconnection of mind and body, disconnection of groups of people from other groups, disconnection of one class from the other classes, one race from other races, one religion from other religions, one gender from other genders, and so on. Greed, fear, anxiety arising from scarcity mind, every person out for him/herself, disconnect us from one another. They enable us to do violence and harm to one another because we do not value one another. We cannot practice generosity, gratitude or appreciation when fear occupies our hearts. One of the greatest spiritual challenges of our time is to move away from the control of fear and move toward our love and connection.
In the moving toward my own heart of love and connection I’m finding that I have a need for direct experience with that something greater than, which I call “life.” For those who call it god, or spirit or the like, prayer might serve that communicating function. For those of an earth based spiritual bent, communication with nature and the earth might do it. But for me, the dialogues exist within. As Mary Oliver says in The Summer Day, “I don't know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention.” I pay attention to the presence of beings inside me, beings of wisdom, of compassion, of action, of nurturing, and more. They are me and they are more than me. They connect me to life. I kind of think of them as Bodhisattvas, enlightened beings who stick around to help others find enlightenment. Anyway, I can call up their images and, in my mind, speak with them. Sometimes they answer directly, sometimes not. But the connection with them satisfies my need for connection with the larger whole, the life in which we live. I need that.
And today this is the state of my spirit. I believe something greater exists; I call it life. The nature of life is a unity that reveals itself to us in great diversity; it holds us and thereby connects us in our diversity. Love is a way to talk about that inter-connection. Understanding, joy, inclusion, kindness and compassion are some of the important hallmarks of love and from these hallmarks grow our ethics, our chosen ways of being in the world. Our connections with each other, the relationships we form, the communities we create, all contain the opportunity to mirror the larger, connected nature of life itself. When we do mirror it, we touch it, we know its beauty. Another way to touch it comes through more direct communication with it, whether through prayer, images, intuition, dreams, creativity, or some other way. These are the roots and wings Carolyn McDade writes about in Spirit of Life.
How is the state of your spirit? What do you believe about the nature of life? What practices nourish you? I hope you will always pay attention to your spirits. I hope you will know when your hearts are in a holy place, and celebrate it.
We have been together for love and for life on this great UUCC journey for eighteen years. People have come before us and people will come after us. And now our paths diverge. You do know, don’t you, that because we have been together, we will be together still, although changed? Let the changes come. All will be well.
Song “No coming no going” No coming, no going No after, no before I hold you close to me I release you to be so free Because I am in you And you are in me Because I am in you And you are in me (2x) Closing words a quick kiss goodbye each hug a thousand farewells and in those moments eighteen years of ministry gently, tenderly, closes