We Arrive Out of Many Singular Rooms
A sermon given September 10, 2006
Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Central Oregon
Homecoming Sunday & Celebration of Water Communion
Installation of Our New Minister
Heather Starr, Minister
Michelle Barry Franco, Host
CALL TO WORSHIP
“We arrive out of many singular rooms, walking over the branching streets.
We come to be assured that friends, loved ones, and newcomers surround us,
to restore their images on our eyes.
We enlarge our voices in common speaking and singing.
We try again that solitude found in the midst of those who,
with us, seek their hidden reckonings.
Our eyes reclaim the remembered faces; their voices stir the surrounding air.
The warmth of their hands assures us, and the gladness of our spoken names.
This is the reason of cities, of homes, of assemblies in the houses of worship.
It is good to be with one another.”
—Rev. Ken Patton
SERMON
We arrive out of many singular rooms. In my recent experience, we also arrive out of many singular boxes, suitcases and trunkloads. One day this past week I found myself in the kitchen of my new little home, putting away the dishes. As each plate, mug, and spoon found its place, I suddenly was overwhelmed with the embodied realization that I—and all my stuff—have arrived. There I was, standing by the kitchen sink, and suddenly this wave of comprehension washed over me that included re-realizing I’ve graduated from seminary in Berkeley, completed my year of parish internship in northern Minnesota and year of hospital residency in Portland, successfully interviewed with the Ministerial Fellowship Committee in Boston before being allowed to enter the search process, all of these things have happened, all of these moves and graduations and hurdles, all of this is finally, suddenly culminating in my being able to place this plate, this mug, this spoon into a cabinet in a house in a town where I am the Unitarian Universalist minister. What a wave of arrival I felt. And immediately following it, another wave: there is so much work to be done.
All of us here arrive into this sanctuary on this day to the beginning of a relationship and a journey together. Some part of me is still quite stunned to be here as your minister. How did this happen? Just last fall, I returned to my family home in Portland after 12 years away in five other distant states. I was tired, and so eager to be home and be near my family. I took a look at the search process and the sixty or so congregations that were in search for ministers, almost all some distance away from Oregon, in places like Indiana, Arkansas, Wisconsin, Maine, Ontario—wonderful places, to be sure, but far from family, far from any place familiar to me. I felt worn out from serving two congregations in northern Minnesota and from years of moving around. And so I decided not to enter the search process. I decided to stay in Portland, to look for a job to follow my hospital residency doing some form of community organizing.
In January I guest preached at Wy’East, a small congregation in southeast Portland, and revelled in my experience there. Maybe I could do this once and awhile, I thought. And then in March, a very part-time ministry at a congregation on the Oregon coast came open. I remember very clearly that when I told my supervisor at Providence Hospital about it, she leaned forward in her chair and said “Heather. Apply.” Okay, I thought. I slowly put together my search packet, sort of like putting together a resume-scrapbook combo documenting every word spoken in public in one’s entire life, and I sent it off. No big deal, I thought.
And then: this job here in Bend was announced. When I read the announcement it was like someone had asked me “if you could dream up your ideal ministry placement, what would it look like?” I was ecstatic. But there was no way it would all work out, I thought. I already had my packet ready, though—there was no opportunity for excuses. I applied. Five months later, I walk to the end of my short gravel drive and get my mail out of an old-fashioned black mail box perched on a wood post. I live in Bend, suddenly. I have two cats, suddenly. I am a minister, suddenly.
For me the heart of this reality, this arrangement between minister and congregation, is about relationship. I don’t mind preaching, but I also don’t mind you knowing that it’s not my favorite part of the job. I’m in the minority of ministers who feel that way, as it turns out. I’d much rather be getting to know each of you, one-on-one, somewhere where you feel comfortable talking with me about the celebrations and struggles in your life. And I hope we’ll each get to do that. What we are setting out on does indeed demand the covenant that we made together earlier: to walk together with resolute good will, constantly mindful of one another’s humanity, and also mindful of one another’s promise, and potential. I have arrived, gratefully and eagerly, and so have you.
Together, we have much work to be done.
American Muslim activist and Director of the Interfaith Youth Core Eboo Patel talks about what it means for people of many different backgrounds and beliefs to arrive in a community together. His Chicago-based Interfaith Youth Core brings together young people from different faith traditions to do service projects alongside each other. Afterwards, the youth and young adults listen to one another and learn what in each of their faith traditions motivates them to do this work, what undergirds their values. Through these activities young Muslims, Evangelical Christians, Jews, Unitarian Universalists and Buddhists work side-by-side with one another and then learn by getting to know each other what faith-based concerns for the world they share in common.
Patel teaches that “Interfaith work has been constructed as if it is primarily about belief, about converting one another….” He says that instead—and I find this profoundly Unitarian Universalist of him: “Somebody’s belief is their own business. It is not my right to tell you how to think about God. It is not my right to tell you how to think about heaven. But it is my right to say: hey, we live on the same block together.
We live in the same city together. We’ve got to get this right. Can we at least wave at each other when we walk down the street? Can we coach each other’s son’s or daughter’s Little League team? Can we maybe start a block club together? There’s [an imperative] public square aspect to religious identity today.”
As each of us, each day, arrive in this rapidly growing community together, how can we continue to welcome and reach out to each other and those now unknown to us? How does our identity as Unitarian Universalists, life-long or brand-new, influence our participation in this wider community? How can we build, not just more streets and more houses, but also equally strong bonds of cherishing this place that is home and community for all of us? We have arrived, and still, we have work to do.
We are also arriving today into a congregation, a community, and a world which has more and more women leaders. The water communion ritual which we will join in together shortly was created by Unitarian Universalist women in 1980 who were frustrated that women’s voices and ways of worshipping were not being integrated into our denomination’s services and practices. At the Women and Religion Conference in Michigan that year, Carolyn McDade and Lucile Shuck Longview created a simple ritual that symbolically honored nature and the community. McDade writes “the creation of a sacred space for and by women happened with [water] and a simple bowl.”
As they visualized it, “the water symbolized the birth waters, the cycles of moon, tides, and women, and all the waters of this small blue planet. The ceremony was also designed to demonstrate solidarity with women globally, as women the world over traditionally draw and carry water. Twenty-six years after its creation, Longview and McDade’s ritual speaks to a deepening awareness of our solidarity with people globally who lack the most basic and precious resources.”[1]
We are arriving in a moment in our own denominational history in which rituals such as these are more familiar, in which women entering the ministry make up well over half of our seminary students. A recent article in the New York Times indicates this--that “Women now make up 51 percent of the students in divinity school. But in mainline Protestant churches that have been ordaining women for decades, women account for only a small percentage—about 3 percent, according to one study—of pastors who lead large congregations, those with an average Sunday attendance over 350.”[2] This tread is similar in our Unitarian Universalist congregations—there are many more ministers who are women than there used to be, and we still, for the most part, serve smaller congregations and receive less financial compensation than men. We have arrived—and still, we have work to do.
We are an intergenerational community, and I believe this is one of the great gifts of church, that it can lift us out of our age-specific daily activities and invite us into interaction with one another of all ages. We must let the momentum of the congregation do this, through intergenerational services and activities that we’ll be incorporating this year, and through your involvement in the religious education of our children and youth. This intergenerational conversation is something we take into our interactions after the service and into our lives beyond this church building, too. We can, if we choose to, engage people of all ages in conversations about what is most meaningful to them and what is most significant in their lives. In this way we build deeper connections with one another with every exchange, and we get beyond generational stereotypes. We have arrived, and there are so many wonderful things that we can learn from each other.
We have arrived in body and we must continue to make the space for each other to arrive fully in spirit. We must ask: is all of who we are welcome here? How can we invite not just more people, but more of each other’s whole selves to show up and be known in this community? What questions can we ask of one another that allow for more of each one of us to show up, whether it is our skepticism or our deep belief in God, our secret passion for late night TV or our unspoken fears about dying? How can we welcome more of one another? Each of us have arrived here in body today, and still there are parts of everyone here that are unknown and hungering to be known and to be loved. We have arrived, and still we have so much more to do together.
This, then, is the moment we have arrived in. We live in an interfaith, intergenerational, globally-internet-connected, interdependent world. As a Unitarian Universalist faith community, we must ask ourselves, individually and collectively: how will we participate, and why? What is it that people known and unknown to us
are searching and longing for? These are religious questions. This is spiritual work. This is the reason for cities, for homes, for assemblies in the houses of worship. May we take these questions seriously, for this is the moment in which we have arrived, and there is work to be done.
I would like to close with these words by Rev. Kok-Heong McNaughton:
“I am but a drop of water.
Alone, I would disappear,
dried up by the scorching sun
or sucked up by the dry, thirsty earth.
But together, we can wear out stones,
carve out the Grand Canyon,
make streams and rivers,
and find our way to the sea.”
May it be so.
BENEDICTION
May your days be filled with grace, and may you extend this flowing grace to all those you encounter. Go in peace.