In Ways Unexpected - A Christmas Eve Homily

“In Ways Unexpected”

A Christmas Eve Homily by Rev. Dr. Jan Carlsson-Bull

First Parish Unitarian Universalist
Cohasset, MA
December 24, 2008

In ways unexpected, Christmas comes. A young woman, at full term in her pregnancy, and a young man, seemingly her husband, made their way from the village of Nazareth to the city of Bethlehem, that he might pay his taxes. These were the years of Roman occupation. Commoners like Mary and Joseph did what the authorities told them to do. They were young, probably teenagers, and not even married. Yet they traveled together, he surely the father of the baby she was carrying.

As babies will, this one wriggled and squirmed and wanted out at the most inconvenient of times. Night was falling. Where would they rest, that she might give birth? All the inns of Bethlehem were full. Contractions were coming with alarming frequency, and they knocked on the door of yet another innkeeper, desperate for shelter. Not lacking hospitality altogether, this innkeeper directed them to a stable out back, a barn. And there, Mary gave birth to Jesus.

All the while, an angelic host was busy preparing a message—not for the media of the day, but for some raggedy band of shepherds far more attentive to their sheep than to the night sky. Legend tells us that the lead angel diverted their attention. After scaring the wits out of them, she sang a calming carol bidding them not to be afraid, but to make their way toward Bethlehem, the city of David, and to seek out a stable, where they would find the babe.

W hen I read as a child that the shepherds did indeed leave their sheep and journeyed without a second thought to Bethlehem and the stable, where they “found Mary and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger,” I wondered. How could Mary and Joseph and their new baby squeeze themselves into one small manger?” Well, I figured it out after reviewing a few illustrations of how it might have happened. I didn’t learn about funny syntax for many years, let alone confusing translations. It was enough though that the angels sang, that the shepherds went, and that this beautiful little baby was born in a barn and laid in a space where the animal inhabitants were accustomed to finding their sustenance.

Of course the shepherds couldn’t hold onto this news, so Luke, author of what we know as the Gospel—the good news—according to Luke, tells us that the shepherds spread the word of this birth, the birth of a hoped for Savior, who would presumably save his people from all the ills that had befallen them. Here at long last was the Messiah.

What a beginning for a story that was to unfold just as strangely!

Christmas comes in ways unexpected. Children arrive at times unexpected. It’s not about convenience. The miracles of birth rarely are.

Then there’s that star story, told surely by star struck story tellers. We who are reasoned are dubious. Perhaps some “super nova appeared in the heavens in its dying burst of fire.” We rationalize. Yet the star story tugs at us.

Christmas comes in ways unexpected. “Why not a star!” suggests Margaret Gooding, moving beyond her early belief and her later rationality. Why not?

“Some bright star shines somewhere in the heavens each time a child is born….Who knows what uncommon life may yet unfold, if we but give it a chance!”

Who knows? Perhaps the uncommon life of the Scovel children, millennia later, freezing in the Beacon Hill parsonage of their father, Carl, a Unitarian minister infused with more than his share of Puritanical scrimping on the heating bill. Who knew that his uncommonly imaginative children would plan a kidnapping of sorts, with a ransom ensured to warm their small shivering bodies?

Word came to their father, the esteemed pastor of the esteemed King’s Chapel, that the baby Jesus, in the form of the beloved doll in the Christmas crèche, was missing. “Uh-oh, what demented mind would run off with the baby Jesus?” he mused, unamused.

Christmas comes in ways unexpected. Carl was still learning about Christmas and children. With the ransom note found and the heat turned up came the epiphany brought home by his own uncommon children. Of course, of course, “No monarch, indeed no despot [myself even], can ever be so sure of his rule after a child has been born.”

Expand your geographical vision to the Nebraska plains on a harsh winter’s night many years ago. A lonely little girl named Betty hadn’t been asked if she agreed to her family pulling up stakes in Ohio and heading west as homesteaders. Christmas was coming and in spite of Betty’s longing for friends left behind, it seemed to be the best of Christmas gifts when a new family moved in across the way, with a daughter just her age. Then came the discovery that her new friend, Sarah, was Jewish. They didn’t celebrate Christmas, but lit candles on a glorious candlestick known as a menorah for a festival of lights known as Hanukkah.

All the while, Betty’s father was traveling into town—many miles away—to get candles for the tree. A plains blizzard came on, and he was not to return until dawn on Christmas morning. Christmas came in ways unexpected, for the lights that brought him home were those of the candles of Hanukkah burning bright in the window of their new neighbors, placed there by Betty’s friend, Sarah. Hanukkah had saved Christmas.

Holidays and holy days happen in ways unexpected. Children are born beyond our imagining. Children grow up in ways unanticipated and never cease to surprise us by means we surely couldn’t have taught them. Lights shine from sources unplanned and unanticipated, and the flame of candles from traditions of holiness over which nations have gone to war shine also in uncommon beams that bring us home to our common humanity.

In this time of anxiety, in this time of bewilderment, in this time of injury and illness for so many in our midst, in this time of violence among and within nations, in this time of mistrust between neighbor and neighbor, in this time when we would seem to do well simply to tend our sheep on our very own hillside thank you very much, we need more than ever to heed the echo of an angelic host. We need more than ever to warm our hearth and that of neighbors who can’t afford the heating bill altogether. We need more than ever to make friends beyond the conventions of sameness. We need more than ever to discover behind the façade of an inn a newborn child.

Ordinary miracles all, I invite you to trust that as we gather in this time and space of love and light and story and song, Christmas will come. Christmas is coming in ways unexpected, in ways we could never have imagined, tonight!

Amen.



Sources:

Betty Girling, “Holiday Candles,” in Treasured Stories of Christmas: A Touching Collection of Stories that Brings Gifts from the Heart and Joy to the Soul, The Editors of Guideposts, Inspirational Press, New York, 1997.

Margaret Gooding, “Why Not a Star,” in Singing the Living Tradition, The Unitarian Universalist Association, Beacon Press, Boston, 1993, 621.

The Gospel According to Luke in the Bible (King James Version)

Carl Scovel, “The Stolen Infant,” in Never Far from Home: Stories from the Radio Pulpit, Skinner House, Boston, October 2003, 44-46.

Do you see? Do you hear?

“Do you see? Do you hear?”

Reflections by Rev. Dr. Jan Carlsson-Bull
for Jim FitzGerald and Jan Carlsson-Bull
First Parish Unitarian Universalist
Cohasset, MA
December 21, 2008

First Reflection

Jan:
Do you see the flame of the candles flickering in the menorah? Imagine what it must have been like to expect the temple oil to last only a day….and then watch it burn for eight amazing days!

Jim:
Those Maccabee children had something to sing about! Do you hear the sounds of our own children’s voices, blending with the voices of our wisest, singing out our thanks that the light lasted? I love this time of legends and light and from our youngest, little coos and “gah-gahs” (and maybe some not so little coos and “gah-gahs,” that we don’t even count on, but somehow these cries blend right in with our Hanukkah music.

Do you see the eager faces of young and old watching the menorah? I wonder what kind of miracles are in store even today as we light our candles of hope.

Jan:
Hope shines atop our menorah and soon atop our Advent wreath as we hope against hope that happenings from so long ago will find their way into our hearts as celebrations in our own time. Do you hear the sounds of hope?

Jim:
I do. Sometimes they’re child-like murmurs. Sometimes they’re the soaring voices of our choir and our congregation. Sometimes I hear the silence itself. Do you hear the silence too?

Jan:
When I listen, when I really listen, I hear the silence. Do you see the faces turned occasionally toward the windows of the Meeting House. Our Common is blanketed with snow for the season at hand. The candles seem to burn even more brightly across the crispness of winter air.

Jim:
It reminds me that today is the shortest day of the year. Today is the Winter Solstice, when we’re farthest away from the warmth and light of the sun. Candlelight matters more than ever. Do you feel the warmth that binds us as we worship, like one big family?

Jan:
I do, and I feel it as our children light the candles of the menorah and as Laura lights our chalice; and I hear it in the words that we speak, in Susan’s welcome and Laura’s chalice reflection, and Steve’s story of how Hanukkah happened and how it’s still happening.

Jim:
I see it as Morgan and Jack light one by one all the candles of the menorah. I even smell it with the pine boughs nestled into the high pulpit. All our senses awaken to this time.

Jan:
It’s almost Hanukkah. It’s almost Christmas. Across the ages and across all ages, we celebrate these holidays and holy days of light, of religious freedom, and of the birth of a baby who was all about love.

Jim:
Our hearts lift to the sights and sounds of this holy time. Every candle lit is an act of hope, and each child born, each child here, is a gift of hope. The warmth of a candle tenderly kisses the joyous sound of the chime that echoes in our bell choir.



Second Reflection

Jim:
Do you hear the echo of the drum? I think all our youngsters stepped up as little drummer boys and drummer girls with the gift of their song.

Jan:
Did you see them as they raised their voices and lifted hearts? It’s like Marilyn said as she introduced her story: Everyone here shares a miracle. It’s the same miracle we celebrate at Christmas. Each of us was born.

Jim:
Each of us has his own drum beat, her own rhythm played out across the years. Can you hear all the rhythms pa-rum-pum-pum-pumming together this morning?

Jan:
I hear them, and as I look out across the congregation I see the hopeful drummer boy, the glowing drummer girl in each and every person here, and I see us all as children, some of us as long ago children, long ago babes, probably adored every bit as much as the baby Jesus.

Jim:
Imagine the day of your birth. Each of you holds your own story of the time you were born. Imagine that “on the eve of your birth, word of your coming passed from animal to animal.”

Jan:
And “the Moon pulled on the ocean below, and, wave by wave, a rising tide washed the beaches clean for your footprints.” Do you see your very own footprints, tiny in the sand of your arrival?

Jim:
Do you see the Advent wreath, an evergreen holder of candles that remind us of an expected arrival? Soon it will be lit, candle by candle.

Jan:
….keeping company with the candles of the menorah. Can you close your eyes and still see all the candles burning bright?

Jim:
If I close my eyes, I can see in my mind’s eyes candles lit in the church of my childhood—especially at Christmas.

Jan:
And I see in my memory’s eyes candles of Hanukkah shining in the windows of city apartments, and if I go further back, the lights of Christmas twinkling through the windows of my small town and ablaze in the living room of my childhood.

Jim:
Of course this is a season of expectancy. We anticipate a miracle of light.

Jan:
We anticipate a miracle of birth, each one ordinary, each one amazing.

Jim:
Our hope is that with the sounds and sights of these holidays of legend and light, we will know peace and know it so deeply that we’ll carry it out from this shortest day of the year through the longest night of the year all the way into the rest of the year.

Jan:
….into all the years to come.

Jim:
We’ve kindled our candles of Hanukkah, with a story to guide us. At this time, Steve Brown will share an Advent story that will guide Sasha as he lights our candles of Advent.


Sources

Debra Frasier, On the Day You Were Born, Harcourt, Inc., New York, 1991.

All About Light

“All About Light”

A Sermon by Rev. Dr. Jan Carlsson-Bull
First Parish Unitarian Universalist
Cohasset, MA
December 14, 2008

Next Sunday, December 21st, the sun will be at its greatest angular distance on the other side of the equatorial plane from each of us, if we remain in the Eastern Time Zone of the Northern Hemisphere. A note of explanation: the “equatorial plane” is the imagined line on the surface of our earth that is roughly the same distance from the North and South Poles, a line dividing our earth into the Northern Hemisphere and the Southern Hemisphere. The precise moment of the greatest distance that we’ll stand from our sun is 7:04 AM a week from today. It is the Winter Solstice, marking the shortest day of the year and the longest night of the year.

“Do not go gentle into that good night,
…rage, rage against the dying of the light,”

wrote the impassioned 20th century Welsh poet Dylan Thomas. While Thomas spoke of resistance to the light of life itself, year after year we counter the dying of the light that we glibly call sunshine as we approach the shortest day and longest night of the current earth-arc around the sun. The sun rises later and later and sets earlier and earlier. As darkness encroaches, our yearning for light intensifies.

In our own lives this week, we have known that “rage against the dying of the light” as we bore the news of a member of this church community whose life hung in the balance and who even now is regaining her sense of light and life at a nearby hospital. We bore the news of a longtime member of this church community and beloved member of this larger community whose life hangs in the balance in the wake of harrowing diagnoses and emergency treatments in Boston. Even as we deck our halls, sing our carols, place candles in our windows, and check our shopping lists—however modest in the economic reality that is now—we know in our bones that we are placing at the very top of our to-do lists resistance to lights out.

We yearn for light. We lean into the warmth of the hearth kindled with a log reminiscent of the Yule log, that pagan rite of countering light’s seasonal waning. We light candles as in no other season. We might not rise to the passion of “rage against the dying of the light,” but we have our methods, we have our rituals, we have our remedies, and we have our faith that light will return to our inmost souls extending to the outer reaches of our habitat and back again to our inmost souls. We have faith hoped for and evidence-bound that light will return, in whatever slow doses, as we transcend the solstice. On December 20th, our day is 9 hours, 4 minutes, and 49 seconds. On December 21st, our day diminishes to 9 hours, 4 minutes, and 48 seconds. Then the next day it expands to 9 hours, 4 minutes, and 51 seconds—a 3-second leap into the rebirth of light.

Ironically, the Winter Solstice signals the birth of winter. We commonly associate winter with less light, yet its beginning is the signal of more light, earlier sunrises, later sunsets, more light to warm us, illumine us, resurrect our spirits, and remind us that it happens every year, every single year, this rhythm of light diminished and light reborn. No matter what cluster of hope, anticipation, anguish or dread we hold personally or communally or globally, the cadence of our planet in its cosmic dance with our sun-star assumes a confident recycling of light diminished and light expanded. Winter is another word for spring. Beneath earth’s hardened surface, roots swell in readiness, warmed by a few more seconds, a few more minutes, of our sun-star’s radiance.

Is it any wonder—wondrous as these rhythms are—that our holidays and holy days mirror earth’s light-dance and hold in cosmic form our oh-so-human resistance, rage even, against darkness with our equally oh-so-human welcome, celebration even, of the promise of light? We worship this morning amid a season resplendent with holidays of light. Today is the third Sunday of Advent, a time of approach to that day when Christian beliefs tell us the Light of the World was born in a lowly manger. This year on the night of the Winter Solstice, Hanukkah begins at sundown—Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights observed by Jews worldwide. Just twelve days from now begins that holiday of relatively recent origin, Kwanzaa, when the first of seven candles are lit, affirming principles of right living among those of us of African-American heritage with lessons of right living for all of us.

Hope is pervasive across all of these holidays. Hope for light, hope for illumination, hope for enlightenment even. It infuses our songs, our poetry, our stories, our symbols of struggle against oppression. Light is ever dominant even as darkness hovers with the approach of the Solstice. The very word Solstice stems from the Latin words, “sol” for “sun” and “sistere” for day—solstice, “Day of the Sun!”

What is the fear as we approach this day? That darkness will encroach until that’s all there is. Surely we in this community have felt that fear as lives and futures hang in the balance, with earthlight seeming to mirror it all, even to mock it.

Our great-great-and beyond great grandfathers and grandmothers feared, raged, and contorted themselves over this apparent dying of the light, no matter how many times they had experienced counter-rhythms. In Britain, they kindled bonfires and kept them burning for days…just in case. In the circles cast by bonfire glow, they sang and danced and feasted. Is it so different for us now with Christmas at hand?

Beginning in 13th century Peru, the Incans observed “Inti Raymi,” “Festival of the Sun,” honoring the sun god Inti and coinciding with the winter solstice. Incan priests performed a ritual “tying of the sun” to a large stone column to prevent it from escaping. The practice died out with the Spanish conquest a few hundred years later. Spanish Christians suppressed these rich earth-bound rituals and destroyed every remnant of them except for Machu Picchu, which, blessedly, remained out of their reach. Over the past half century, the rite of Inti Raymi has been dramatically enacted at a site close to Cusco, capital of the ancient Incan Empire, at the time of the Winter Solstice of the Southern Hemisphere. Just two years ago, Cusco was identified as the site “with the highest ultraviolet light level” of any place on earth. I wonder if subliminally perhaps, recent Peruvians have been honoring this sight where light is close to invasive!

From Cusco to Cohasset, from time ancient to this very morning, we yearn for light. We crave reassurance that darkness is not for good. If we grow dubious, if we succumb to the darkness, there’s even a name for it now—“seasonal affective disorder”—SAD, for short and an understatement for many who suffer from it. Our oh so human needs have inspired remedies that wind their ways through the celebrations of this time—Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa— each of them filled with light, commonly in the language of candles burning bright. In reverie and meditation, in story and in song, we anticipate. We dare to hope. We light our candles of Advent, of Hanukkah, of Kwanzaa. Our souls keep vigil. “Within the flame,” remarked Gaston Bachelard, “even time holds its vigil.”

We are attentive; we anticipate; we hope. On this third Sunday of Advent, we draw closer to that day when our Christian selves celebrate the birth of a child deemed by millions as the Light of the world and connected by myriad Christian theologians with the messianic language of the prophet Isaiah:

“The people that walked in darkness
Have seen a great light;
On those who lived in a land as dark as death
A light has dawned.” (Isaiah 9:2)

Dawn awakens seasonal hope, messianic imagination, and the custom of candles nestled in a wreath. This practice of placing candles in a wreath of pine boughs comes to us from pre-Christian Europe, where it was repeated annually as a rite of hope that days would once again grow long and the earth would once more give birth to flora and fauna. Christians draw on this pagan custom as a ritual of anticipation for the birth of the Christ child, born in humble circumstance, yet under a star guiding men wise and simple to the manger.

The Christmas tree itself is a legacy of our ancestors’ need to craft a harbinger of seasonal dawn. Arrayed with candle-like lights and originally live candles, it draws us into the magic of the moment. The Christmas tree was planted in our cultural habits in the early 16th century when the first decorated tree was placed in the Strasbourg Cathedral. The year was 1539, during the lifetime of Martin Luther, John Calvin, and the Unitarian martyr, Michael Servetus.

A tree itself is candle-like in stature, pointing skywards—a stance of hope and affirmation across the seasons. The fir tree forms a veritable spire of green during the briefest hours of winter light, like the vertical flame of a candle that inspires us to hope amid the oppressive force of extended night.

Hope is what the candles of Hanukkah signal. Some of us have menorahs, or Hanukkah lampstands, in our homes. Next Sunday we’ll light the menorah here, observing Hanukkah’s beginning at sundown. For the eight nights of Hanukkah, we lift the candle known as the shammash, the servant candle, to light one candle a night until all eight candles and the shammash burn brightly, reminding us of the ancient miracle of lights.

Hanukkah means “dedication” and marks the rededication of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem after Judah and his fellow warriors, the Maccabees, triumphed over their oppressors almost 2,200 years ago. A scant portion of oil had been rescued from the original temple, only enough to burn for a single day. Yet when the Jews began the rite of rededication and kindled the oil, it lasted eight days. It was this miracle of lights that led Judah to proclaim a holiday, originally called the Festival of Lights.

It is a holiday of hope against hope. Through the centuries, those who are Jewish among us are called to light the menorah, no matter how trying the circumstances. In a cramped garret in Holland, a young girl wrote in her diary on December 7, 1942.
“‘We just gave each other a few little presents and then we lit the candles. Because of the shortage of candles, we only had them alight for ten minutes.’”

Lighting a candle in community is an act of hope and affirmation for all who know oppression.

It was in a struggle against oppression that Dr. Maulena Karenga created the rites of Kwanzaa almost half a century ago. Kwanzaa is Swahili for “first fruits of the harvest.” It’s celebrated through food and story and song and candle over a period of seven days, from December 26 through January 1. In a candleholder called the Kinara, seven candles are lit over the span of these seven days, symbolizing the principles of Kwanzaa—Unity, Self-determination, Collective Work and Responsibility, Cooperative Economics, Purpose, Creativity, and Faith. In the words of Dr. Karenga, these are principles by which “Black people must live to…rescue and reconstruct our history and lives.”

Bonfires blaze, trees are adorned, candles are lit—candles of Advent, candles of menorahs, candles of kinaras—as luminous signals that the light will not go out, that light will return and with it, hope for a world reborn as spring, as a baby, as a shift in the angle of earth in our Universe, as possibility. In the words of Dori Jeanine Somers that we spoke earlier this morning:

“…there is that in me which reaches up toward light and laughter, bells, and carolers, and knows that my religious myth and dream of reborn joy and goodness must be true, because it speaks the truths of older myths; that light returns to balance darkness, life surges in the evergreen—and us.

And babes are hope, and saviors of the world, as miracles abound in common things.”

As we approach the darkest time of year, what hovers in our midst feels like a taunting mirror-like “dark night of the soul.” It is our time of times to light our candles, hold hope, and know that the darkest of times is all about light waiting, approaching, shining. Amen.


Sources:

Gaston Bachelard, The Flame of a Candle, translated from the French by Joni Caldwell, The Bachelard Translation Series, The Dallas Institute Publications, 1961, 1984, 16.

Miriam Chaikin, Light Another Candle: The Story and Meaning of Hanukkah, Houghton Mifflin Company Trade & Reference Division, Boston, MA, 1981.

Ronald M. Clancy, Best-Loved Christmas Carols, Edited by William E. Studwell, Christmas Classics, Ltd., North Cape May, NJ, 2000.

“Equator,” from wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equator.

Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl, Edited by Otto H. Frank and Mirjam Pressler, Translated by Susan Massotty, Doubleday, 1947.

The Book of Isaiah, The Bible, Revised Standard Version.

Liley, J. Ben and McKenzie, Richard L. (April 2006) "Where on Earth has the highest UV?" UV Radiation and its Effects: an update NIWA Science, Hamilton, NZ, in Cusco, from wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cusco.

Dori Jeanine Somers, “Reflections on the resurgence of Joy,” in Singing the Living Tradition, The Unitarian Universalist Association, Beacon Press, Boston, 1993, 653.

“Sunrise and Sunset for U.S.A. – Massachusetts – Boston – December 2008,” http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/astronomy.html?n=43&month=12&year=2008&obj=sun&afl=-11&day=1.

Dylan Thomas, “Do not go gentle into that good night,” The Poems of Dylan Thomas, New Directions, 1952, 1953. Copyright © 1937, 1945, 1955, 1962, 1966, 1967 the Trustees for the Copyrights of Dylan Thomas. Copyright © 1938, 1939, 1943, 1946, 1971 New Directions Publishing Corporation.

Christy Thorrat, “The Winter Solstice,” in Celebrating Christmas: An Anthology, Edited by Carl Seaburg, Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association, 1983, 2004, Authors Choice Press, New York, 251.

“Winter Solstice,” from wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_solstice.

http://www.chiff.com/home_life/holiday/winter-solstice.htm

Chalice Reflection & Expectations

Chalice Reflection of Jane Goedecke
First Parish Unitarian Universalist
Cohasset, MA
December 7, 2008

My first reaction to this morning’s theme “Expectations” was that expectations bring anxiety. The word does connote a “looking forward” but with standards to be met, promises to be kept, goals to be achieved. I don’t know what Jan has in mind for this morning, but I started getting nervous!

Life sends us too many expectations and I, and perhaps, some of you, too, have a tendency to believe things are “expected” of me even when they’re not. I’m going to try using the word “anticipation” instead.

I am anticipating a beautiful winter wonderland after the snowfall. I am expecting the plow man to show up. See the difference?

And this time of year I need to be especially vigilant in eliminating the “E” word. In years past I let the holiday become a mountain of expectations for me. Age and fatigue have helped me become more realistic, but it is an ongoing battle. I invite you to join me in the struggle. Let us anticipate the blessings and joys of this holiday season and let go of the expectations.

I light the chalice this morning in the spirit of anticipation.

“Expectations”

A Sermon by Rev. Dr. Jan Carlsson-Bull
First Parish Unitarian Universalist
Cohasset, MA
December 7, 2008

“If there were no Advent, we would need to invent it,” remarks John Taylor of this season marking the four weeks before Christmas. On this second Sunday of Advent, I’m reminded that we don’t need to invent it; it’s with us to the extent that we tend even to some of the dimensions of this story of the birth of Jesus. We may though need to re-invent it.

Advent means “coming to” or simply “coming.” We speak of the advent of an era, the advent of a new course of action, the advent of a person. Birth is an advent, a coming, a new beginning, an arrival. From the first observance of Advent into the sixth century, it referred exclusively to the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. Then its meaning shifted, and it was observed as the season of expectation, of preparation, for the coming of the child Jesus—or, in Christian terms, the Christ child. Advent has become a season of expectation, a spiritual pregnancy of sorts, permitting us to prepare for whatever Christmas means to us. Again, in Christian terms, it is preparation for the marking once again of the birth of him who was deemed by so many to be God become human in the form of a humble baby—a form to which we can all relate, since this is how we all began.

Advent in our time commences on the fourth Sunday before Christmas, but if we consider this a time of approach, why not turn to one of the New, or Second Testament, Gospel stories for those first indications of expectation? The Gospel of Luke is the only Second Testament Gospel that records what many term “the Annunciation.” Sometimes we Unitarian Universalists need to pay serious attention to biblical text, even though we can rationalize it away as being one of many stories about a story whose lines have blurred immensely over the centuries. We can revisit that story and discover anew its richness for faith marked by a belief that this was about the Son of God coming into the world and faith marked by an understanding that a child was born who would make his mark on the world in ways that were downright revolutionary—Love being the rare Gospel that it is and indeed, the Gospel, the “good news,” that described the core teaching of Jesus in his brief adult life.

To get a firmer grip on this story, let’s revisit Luke’s account of how Mary discovered she was about to become pregnant. Now this sounds like something that Mary should have learned in a class akin to our OWL series—the Our Whole Lives series in which our Unitarian Universalist youth learn the basics of sexuality from trained and trustworthy adults who are not their parents, which enhances the credibility for almost any adolescent. Mary wasn’t quite a candidate for OWL in time or tradition, but the story goes that she did have what we might freely call a “trained and trustworthy adult” in the form of the angel Gabriel.

Before we jump to metaphor or mythology to describe what happened, let’s check out Luke’s more or less original story, albeit written almost a century after Jesus’ birth. With the oral tradition in full play, we can surmise that the story had been told and retold before being cast into the written word. Storytellers were the historians of their day and took great pains to memorize what had been passed to them that they might pass it with maximum accuracy onto the next generation of those who would keep the story alive, a story that some still call “the greatest story ever told.”

Luke in the early part of his first chapter describes another pregnancy, that of Mary’s relative, Elizabeth, with John the Baptist, a formidable figure in his own right. Luke explains that Elizabeth was six months pregnant when:

“the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph…”

NOTE that Mary isn’t yet pregnant, so it just might make sense that as a young engaged Jewish woman, she was indeed still a virgin, though not for long, since it’s a rare virgin who gives birth to a baby. In fact, a virgin birth deserved feature story status in some ancient edition of the National Enquirer.

Back to Luke…
[Joseph was] “of the house of David: and the virgin’s name was Mary. And he [that is, the angel Gabriel, who served as a messenger of God] came to her and said, ‘Hail, O favored one, the Lord is with you!’ But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and considered in her mind what sort of greeting this might be. And the angel said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus.

He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High;
And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David,
And he will reign over the house of Jacob forever;
And of his kingdom there will be no end.’

And Mary said to the angel, ‘How can this be, since I have no husband?’ And the angel said to her, [and this is where it gets iffy!]

‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you,
And the power of the Most High will overshadow you;
Therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God.

And behold, your kinswoman Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month with her who was called barren. For with God nothing will be impossible.’ And Mary said, ‘Behold I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.’ And the angel departed from her.”

Luke goes on to tell the story of Mary visiting Elizabeth and her husband, Zechariah, and of Elizabeth proclaiming upon Mary’s arrival that Mary is “blessed among women,” followed by Mary’s spontaneous proclamation of what God had set in play through her and how generations would call her blessed. Then we’re told that Mary remained with Elizabeth about three months, just enough time for Elizabeth to give birth to John and for Mary to get through her first trimester in the trusted company of her kinswoman.

Luke sets the scene for expectation writ large. If anyone is pregnant even now, we commonly say, “She’s expecting.” Pregnancy is all about expectation, all about advent, an anticipated arrival of a child. I don’t doubt that any of us here who have given birth to a child or adopted a child or experienced this vicariously through family and friends know how heightened this expectation is, how keen our senses are, how hyper-vigilant we are to who is to come…that “who” being a big question mark for the span of time from confirmation of pregnancy to birth.

Advent describes a season of expectancy, a season of hyper-attentiveness to what is to come. Every birth, every arrival, every coming of a child shakes our universe—perhaps less so in magnitude than did the arrival of Jesus or Moses or Mohammed or Abraham or even Mahatma Gandhi or Eleanor Roosevelt, but nonetheless each and every child is preceded by a season of Advent.

We are expecting. We mark this in the tradition of our Christian roots by the lighting of Advent candles set into an Advent wreath, a relatively recent tradition said to have begun among German Lutherans. Once again, what has become a religious rite had its roots in pagan rites—specifically, the pagan fire wheel. The circle or wheel or wreath symbolizes eternity, a “world without end,” an “everlasting to everlasting.” Each of the four purple candles—purple being the emblematic color of royalty—is lit week after week until all four candles are burning bright on the Sunday preceding Christmas itself. On Christmas, the pink candle, the center candle, is kindled, indicating that Jesus, the presumed “light of the world,” has come. The waiting is over. Here he is! No more full nights of sleep for Mary or Joseph! Yes, there was Joseph, that back burner partner who hung in (after, most of us assume, getting Mary pregnant in the first place) and helped to parent what would prove to be one challenging youngster.

But let’s back up. Let’s back up to this seasonal time of expectancy. What we know about the story of Luke that has come down through the ages is that Mary was expecting and that she had enough sense to be wary, to be vigilant, to know that life is never the same once a path has been taken that is for the most part irreversible. Remember, you can’t be a little bit pregnant. You’re either expecting or you’re not.

What, I wonder, are we expecting, amid this season of Christmas—and not just Christmas, but the lights and re-enactment of the story of the miracle of Hanukkah and the lights and observance of the recent story and rites of Kwanzaa and the lights and observance by Hindus worldwide of Diwali, a festival of lights that pays tribute to the pantheon of Hinduism. What are we expecting and what can we learn from this ancient account by a fellow named Luke, who received it from his first-century predecessor story tellers?

Expectation is a state of vigilance. Expectation is often accompanied by anxiety, occasionally by the strategies of reflection and meditation, and almost always by some planning that usually goes awry because the path to all our Bethlehems is rife with potholes. Sometimes we escape them; sometimes we don’t.

In John Taylor’s reflection on Advent, he observes that “we are always expecting.” And he writes a nano-breath later that we are “hopeful.” We are hopeful creatures and “hopefulness deserves a festival.”

Maybe so, but expectation and hope don’t completely overlap. Expectation is indeed a state of vigilance and planning. Hope, on the other hand, informs our expectation with a sense that all will ultimately be well. Hope transcends anxiety and hyper-vigilance and even meditation and reflection and lifts our souls into spiritual resilience—not la-la land thinking, not denial, but a resilience of our very souls, a readiness to ride the waves and discover gifts unanticipated in whatever happens.

Let’s go back to Mary. Here she was stuck with a child Jesus who would later be said to run off from his parents at the age of 12, when they took him to Jerusalem. Who did he hang out with? The sages in the temple, whom he confounded with his questions and commentary. Who did he hang out with as a young adult—not accounting for a good two decades that we know nothing about—but a band of brothers who were not exactly perched on the highest rung of Galilee’s social ladder. How did he end up? That’s for another season, another time.

How do we remember him and why? For those of us who are of liberal faith, we connect again and again with his teachings, with his parables that spoke of loving folks who are despised, bringing wholeness to folks who have lost any remnant of hope, sharing what wealth we have—spreading the wealth in fact—so that none will go hungry or become homeless, forging a course as peacemakers blessed as children of God. It’s so much easier to chalk up the arrival of Jesus as the arrival of the Son of God and let that notion occupy center stage so we don’t have to wrestle with the rugged teachings that he imparted and for which he paid dearly. Hope is held by trusting that each of us can move through whatever lies ahead with grace and graciousness that is even remotely akin to what we learn from those accounts of who this babe of Bethlehem grew to be. Hope is held by letting go of rigid expectations and letting be what is and letting how what is evolve into what will be.

This is a season of expectation, but let it not be a time of rigid expectation. The news of our world intimate and global suggests we loosen our expectations and hold hope. All we know is that a child was born. All we know is that we were once children. All we know is that most of us in this Meeting House this morning are grown-ups, riding the waves of what is, marked with scars and souvenirs of waves that were, anticipating but uncertain of what turbulence lies ahead. What to do but light a candle. With every child, a light comes into the world. That light burns brightly, flickers, and is consumed, becoming once again part and parcel of the substance from which we sprang.

As we light our candles of Advent, let us be no less jubilant about a season of anticipation, a season of expectation, and the reality of hope held in each child we cradle, each manifestation of love we practice, each ray of light that illumines our souls as we move through each precious day. Amen.


Sources:

“The Advent Wreath,” in Celebrating Christmas: An Anthology, Edited by Carl Seaburg, Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association, 1983, 2004, Authors Choice Press, New York, 235.

The Gospel According to Luke, The Bible, Revised Standard Version

John A. Taylor, “If there were no Advent...,” in Celebrating Christmas: An Anthology, Edited by Carl Seaburg, Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association, 1983, 2004, Authors Choice Press, New York, 235.

“Winter Festival and Celebrations,” Church of the Larger Fellowship, in Celebrating Christmas: An Anthology, Edited by Carl Seaburg, Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association, 1983, 2004, Authors Choice Press, New York, 235.

Chalice Reflection & Grateful Guests

The Thanksgivings of My Life
Chalice Reflection of Kay Mixon
November 23, 2008

This past week I have been thinking a lot about Thanksgiving in preparation for this chalice lighting reflection and I realized that I could divide the Thanksgivings of my life into two parts: The first part would be the Thanksgivings of my youth and I call these Thanksgivings, “My Norman Rockwell Thanksgivings.” They were held in my hometown in Arkansas and were always at my Aunt Catherine’s house. Most of my uncles and aunts and cousins were there and I think that we must have looked very similar to the Rockwell painting, “Freedom from Want” with the grandparents holding and presenting the big turkey to the expectant family. But my strongest memory of those holiday celebrations is not of the big turkeys, nor my dear relatives, – it is of Pearl’s yeast rolls, called angel rolls. Even now my mouth waters when I think of them. My sister got the recipe from Pearl in 1974 and we have been trying off and on ever since then to duplicate these rolls – but with scant success. Pearl passed away many years ago and I like to think of her up there in heaven serving the angels her divine angel rolls.

During my adult years, I’ve never lived near my family. And since my immediate family agreed years ago to always get together around Christmas and not to get together at Thanksgiving, my Thanksgivings became a not too important holiday to me. But over the years an interesting thing happened. Various friends and neighbors and people in church, reached out and invited me (and Arthur when he lived at home and now Larry and me) to participate in their family Thanksgivings. So more often than not, as an adult I spend Thanksgiving with other families. I call this part of the Thanksgivings of my life, “The Guest at Your Table Thanksgivings.” I’VE been the guest at YOUR tables. And what a gift, a joy and a privilege it has been. We have our invitation for this year and I am really looking forward to sharing Thanksgiving with a new family. And apropos of Jan’s sermon today, I plan to be a “Grateful guest.”

Kay Mixon
November 23, 2008

“Grateful Guests”

A Sermon by Rev. Dr. Jan Carlsson-Bull
including the words of Ellen Snoeyenbos,
District Coordinator of our Unitarian Universalist Service Committee

First Parish Unitarian Universalist
Cohasset, MA
November 23, 2008
Guest at Your Table Sunday

Ten years ago this December I was in Berkeley, California, trekking my way through a rare unscheduled morning and waiting to meet with our denominational Ministerial Fellowship Committee, the last step on my road to ordination as a Unitarian Universalist minister. I’d never been to Berkeley, but it was an iconic place in my coming of age history. My heart led me ultimately to the center of Sproul Plaza at the University of California, Berkeley, where the Free Speech movement was launched years before by Mario Savio. Marking the spot was a hubcap sized medallion embedded into the sidewalk and upon it, this inscription:

“This soil and the air space extending above it shall not be a part of any nation and shall not be subject to any entity’s jurisdiction.”

A tiny space that long-ago free speech activists pledged should never be subject to anyone or anything. Free speech, free space.

On this November morning ten years later, I find myself in a different space and a new time. They connect. Just moments ago we dedicated the completely adorable Michael Rahal Shannon, and I tapped the wisdom of the Lebanese poet, Khalil Gibran. Gibran reminds us:

“Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.”

What a reminder! Our children are not our own, but the very offspring of Life’s longing for itself.

Jeffrey Lockwood, a Unitarian Universalist whose professional focus is the linkage between the natural sciences and the spiritual and aesthetic dimensions of life, reminds us that we are all transient on this planet.

“We are all visitors…. We are passing through… We might think of ourselves as uninvited, but not unwelcome, guests of the planet.”

How to be a good guest muses Jeffrey: “Ask little, accept what is offered, and give thanks.”

None of us or the earth beneath our feet or the air extending above it belongs to any of us. We are guests, and the space we occupy is ultimately free space. How then to live? Curtail what we ask for, accept with grace what is offered, and give thanks.

Now there’s the stickler. “Give thanks.” It’s a tight paradox. We’re thanking whatever or whomever for whatever, and we’re giving even as we’re acknowledging receipt. The “thanks for something” is commonly what we hold up at this season. I invite us this morning to hold up the other end of that paradox, the giving.

Why now, you might ask? We’re in economic crisis. Some of us are terrified of losing our jobs. Some of us have already lost them. Many of us have seen our pensions and investments nosedive. Why now?

Through it all, we remain guests, guests of this planet and guests at the table of one another. Like the tight paradox that is thanks giving, the art of being a good guest calls us to acknowledge another paradox. We are at the same time guests and hosts. This planet is our host. We are one another’s host. We are guests of the planet. We are hosts of this planet as long as we can lift a finger to partake of its care.

Let’s start with the basics. Life isn’t possible without water. It just can’t happen. What do we look for when we check out the prospect of life on distant planets? Any sign of water. Any sign that there has ever been water. In this faith community, we dedicate our children by dipping a flower into this primal substance of nurture and possibility. As we celebrated the nurturing of all our children, water and sand were the media used to illustrate how this happens and how our children grow. Stories rise up out of water, and no story is possible without it.

Imagine if your water tap were cut off, if authorities with more power than you said, “No, that’s enough. You must pay for anything more.” Imagine! It’s not far-fetched for millions upon millions of our fellow-guests on this planet. A story comes to us from South Africa, where the water company determines how much water flows to each home. Is your family poor? You get less, not more, even though the law of the land dictates otherwise.

Consider the power of one to make a difference. A woman named Serafina was fed up with what the water company was doing and decided to work with a group of her fellow villagers to make sure that everyone had enough water to drink and cook with and bathe in and launder with. Serafina is 71 years old.

Her neighbors know her as Makoko, or Granny. This Granny inspired her neighbors to work with her and stand up for their rights. Serafina’s group of advocates grew and grew. One of them is our Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, which partnered with this grass-roots cluster of villagers and took the matter to court. The case went to the Supreme Court of South Africa. Stories were told. Songs were sung outside the court as lawyers and judge deliberated inside. After months of deliberation, the case was decided. Serafina and her neighbors won, in partnership with our Service Committee. Together they continue to teach other South African villagers about the basic right to water. Our Service Committee’s annual Guest at Your Table Campaign helps make it happen.

We are guests at Serafina’s table of love and justice making. Serafina is a Guest at our Table along with all the Serafinas who struggle and persevere. Our Unitarian Universalist Service Committee and you and I make it possible and have done so for the past 68 years that the Service Committee has partnered with indigenous groups in this nation and globally to open hearts, change mentalities, and save lives.

Why will I take this little box home and place probably two to five dollars in it each night as my husband, Dan, and I enjoy dinner together? Why will I bring it back, as many of you will bring yours back, on January 18, Dr. Martin Luther King Sunday, with a check representing the bills that we’ve poured into it night after night between now and then? Because we understand that we’re among the guests of our world who can, and this is one wonderful way to be a grateful guest.

If we let go of $20, $100, $1,000, consider that it wasn’t ultimately ours to begin with. Consider the notion that if we are transient, our resources are even moreso. If by sharing who we are and what we have, we become more gracious and grateful guests, then that is cause for singing song upon song of Thanksgiving, because our gratitude will be given and received.

I welcome this morning Ellen Snoeyenbos, who serves as our district coordinator for our Unitarian Universalist Service Committee. Ellen is also a member of First Parish UU in Kingston. It’s probably tough to take the word of your minister when I ask you to give at a time when we’re all wondering what we have. Ellen will help us all with that question, “Why now? Why our Unitarian Universalist Service Committee?”


[Ellen Snoeyenbos speaks.]

Hi Folks,

I am very happy to be here. Thank you, Jan, for your kindness in inviting me.

As the Ballou-Channing District Regional Coordinator for The Unitarian Universalist Service Committee I get to visit many wonderful UU communities in this area as they deepen their faith and commitment to a better world through their participation in Guest at Your Table – the primary membership vehicle of our historic service organization.

As my kids grew up in the Kingston UU church, our family tried to make a little ritual of adding our money to the box before every meal and imagine inviting the people on the box to share our meal at our table. At the Kingston church, during our holiday season, we set at place for a Guest at our coffee hour table every Sunday – a reminder to adults and children alike that many people who are not physically with us count on us to reach out to them in meaningful ways with respect, honor and dignity.

Now in a family of adults I try to continue the ritual as it becomes an act representing far more than charity – it has become an act of empowerment. These are times of difficulty and economic strain. We are all re-evaluating how we spend our limited resources. Now is the perfect time to maximize your investment. By participating in Guest at Your Table, filling your box and signing up on the side of the box before you bring it back to church, in one fell swoop you become a crusader for economic justice, environmental justice, civil rights, and humanitarian relief. It’s one-stop shopping at a market of social justice that never gives up, never gives in and looks for every opportunity to support local organizations in fulfilling their goals through practical, grassroots action. Your UU values are put directly to work.

My membership last year helped win a civil rights case in South Africa resulting in turning on water spigots all over a Johannesburg Township. I helped a group in Ecuador pass an amendment to the Ecuadorian constitution guaranteeing the right to clean, accessible, and abundant water! I helped women on the Gulf Coast get their daycare licenses so they can care for the children of neighbors struggling to rebuild their homes. I helped win landslide victories for ballot initiatives that achieved minimum-wage increases in six states: Ohio, Colorado, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, and Arizona.

Please check out my table at coffee hour to find out more about the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee and ways you can connect more deeply in the work of UUSC. Thank you!


Jan:
Thank you, Ellen. Now I should warn you that as you explain Guest at Your Table to your children, who are receiving their boxes during religious education classes this morning, there’s a risk. In one of our congregations, a family took their box home, placed it on their dinner table, understood that their daughter was clear why it was there, and during dinner one night caught their daughter trying to cram part of her dinner through the slot in the top of her box, so that she could help feed the guest at their table! But she understood, and so might we at this time of Thanksgiving and giving thanks.

For each and all of you, I am ever grateful! Amen.


Sources:

“The History of UUSC,” http://www.uusc.org/history.

Jeffrey Lockwood, “The Fine Art of the Good Guest,” a guest of the world: Meditations, Skinner House Books, Boston, 2006

Story 1: Serafina, in Stories of Hope 2008-1009, Guest at Your Table/Celebrate UU Faith in Action, Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, http://www.uusc.org/files/guest_storiesofhope.pdf

Chalice Reflection & Beliefs and Perspectives

Lessons from My backyard
Chalice Reflection of Susan Etkind
November 2, 2008

I was pondering this chalice reading while gardening and when I wasn’t thinking of the reading I was worrying about the economy and the upcoming election. During tense times I find I retreat to the backyard and wanted to share some simple wisdom absorbed from my parents, hearty New Englanders, Conservationists, and Unitarians.

This year I’ve doubled the size of my garden to increase the months we feed the family from 3 months to 6 months inspired by the Green Sanctuary people and the book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. My father, however, was into this in the 1950’s. He revived former Victory Gardens from WWII and eventually had 20 neighborhood families under his tutelage- recommending ladybugs, praying mantis and his own organic compost over pesticides, assigning the rows and urging them in their weeding.

Starting at age 8, I was planting/weeding and harvesting and probably complaining a bit too. As a teenager I did all of these jobs in a bathing suit working on a tan.
At age 5, I remember hiding my peas under the table. By age 9 I loved most vegetables…eventually even brussel sprouts and turnips.

Appreciating animals was also something I learned. He urged everyone to use “Have a Heart” traps instead of killing the animals. He would then take them over to the woods of the Wellesley College campus and let them go. Jane Goedeke, you may have seen some of these critters if my dates are right.

Another lesson was about patience. My father said, “If you make this particular chirping sound and bring seeds to the stone wall where the chipmunk lives, he will eventually eat from your hand.” I saw this with my own eyes.

“If pheasants, turkeys or other unusual animals land in the backyard, wake everyone up to see them- even the teenagers.”

My father lived just long enough to help Steve and I plant our first garden in our first house. He was able to convey his excitement to my husband. They planted our first garden together. Two things Steve remembers are 1.) Start planting on Memorial Day, and 2.) Don’t harvest until just before you are going to eat the vegetables. 10 minutes is ideal.

We have carried on the gardening. It is a wonderful legacy. My kids have it in their bones. Zach wandered the gardens as young as 3 munching on broccoli and peppers. He wants to be part of planting even now at age 21. As young adults Alex and Zach have become my human rototillers and they are both studying environmental conservation.

No matter what kind of garden you have: flowers, vegetables, grass, indoor plants, my father and I say: “Engage your children in the process. Imprinting works and the earth will benefit.”

“Beliefs and Perspectives”

A Sermon by Rev. Dr. Jan Carlsson-Bull
First Parish Unitarian Universalist
Cohasset, MA
November 2, 2008

The year was 1568. John Sigismund was king of Hungary. Sigismund was history’s only Unitarian king—that’s right a Unitarian king. You never thought we were cut out for royalty, but John was, and he ruled as Hungary’s king from his birth in 1540 for the next 30 years, with a little help from his mother until he grew up. In the later years of his reign, Francis David became his court minister. Through careful biblical research, David had arrived at the belief that God was not three but one. David had begun as Catholic, converted to Lutheranism, converted then to Calvinism, and landed finally in the “God-is-one” theology that is Unitarianism.

Unlike many converts, Francis David respected the beliefs of those with whom he disagreed and urged his king to do the same. Inspired and encouraged by David, King John Sigismund held a forum at which various religious views were openly discussed, and in 1568 he issued the Edict of Torda, a proclamation of religious tolerance inspired by David’s conviction that “We need not think alike to love alike.” The Unitarian Church of Transylvania was established, but it was okay to worship as a Catholic or as a Lutheran or as a Calvinist. The qualifier was that the choices were limited. Judaism or Islam, for example, would not have had equal standing. As with the founding fathers of our own nation, liberty was not quite “liberty for all,” but nonetheless a stance was taken 440 years ago upholding the ideals of religious liberty and the right of conscience.

In 1570 the Hapsburgs assumed the kingship of Hungary and John became Prince of Transylvania. A year later, the once and only Unitarian king and prince would be dead, and another ruler, not as tolerant, moved quickly into the vacuum. Under this less progressive monarch, David’s views were no longer sanctioned; he was thrown into prison, and he died there. Yet the Edict of Torda that established religious tolerance, the courage and perseverance of David, and the brief spell of relative religious liberty are part of our legacy as Unitarian Universalists.

Freedom, reason, and tolerance are, dare I say, the “trinity” of beliefs that surfaced through the centuries to our own. Just like the 4th-century Council of Nicea, during which Arius the Unitarian lost out to Athanasius, the Trinitarian; just like the forum at Torda, where Unitarianism won out and tolerance carried the day, however short-lived, religious matters for centuries have been at the mercy of political bodies in Europe and other continents. In our own infant nation, churches were for many decades financially supported by the state. It was not until the early 19th century that the separation of church and state took firm hold in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Neither religion nor the state could call the shots of how government should be run or how we should worship.

As Unitarian Universalists and as Americans, we uphold the ideals of freedom, reason, and tolerance. As Unitarian Universalists, we add to those three the ideal of inclusiveness—a large tent of opinions, a never-ending story of spiritual paths, an open door of welcome, and yes, civil marriage as a civil right. From tolerance, we are moving to celebration of the wide-ranging perspectives of the human family invited to find a religious home in our midst.

How is it, I sometimes wonder, that we are dubbed the people who don’t believe anything? Belief in the historically unpopular ideals of freedom, reason, and tolerance has cast our forebears into prisons, into the flames of the heretic’s stake, and onto vessels of escape from one nation to another in search of the liberties that we seek to uphold and sustain.

In our own country many of these liberties have been honored in the breach in recent years. Many of the spiritually honed values that every person has some worth, that we’re all connected, that justice and compassion go hand in hand, that global peace is a state to which we aspire and toward which we are called to work—have been honored in rhetoric only. It would be cowardly of me not to remind us of this at a time of pivotal choice, a time when we who value religious freedom and political freedom are choosing who presides at the helm of this nation. It would be cowardly of me not to remind us of this at a time when our nation has lost its grip on even the idealized principles of the founding fathers, even those principles that were so long honored dishonorably when it came to people among us of color, people among us who are women, people among us seeking asylum from nations where their fates were sealed if they did not find it.

Revelation is not sealed, either in our faith or in the principles and practices of this nation. We are an aspiring democracy. We aspire to inclusiveness. We are not yet there, and we are struggling.

“We do not need to think alike to love alike.” No, we don’t; but we do need to think; we are called to love; and we are challenged to meld our reason and our love in actions that shape a legacy for our children and our children’s children.

Our beliefs as Unitarian Universalists are not for the faint of heart. Our ideals as Americans are not for those who aspire to anything less than an inclusive democracy.

As a Unitarian Universalist, I believe in a loving God, a force in the universe that does not micro-manage, does not do our work for us, but breathes the wherewithal for love and compassionate justice into each of us and trusts that humankind just might be kind, might be reasonable, might affirm inclusive love, and might withhold judgments and practices harsh and fatal.

As a Unitarian Universalist, I believe in the capacity of humankind to be kind—not “nice” within the genteel limits of good manners, not “tolerant” within the grudging limits of “putting up with so and so,” not “charitable” if charity trumps compassionate justice.

As a Unitarian Universalist, I believe in the capacity of our nation to turn from its foolish ways, to turn from practices of civil liberties constricted, to turn from practices of torture sanctioned, to turn from practices of war precipitated by lies confessed far too late to bring back the hundreds of thousands who have been downwind of our folly, to turn from a veritable chasm between those of us who have and those of us who have not, to turn from a jaded understanding that the wealthy deserve all that they claim to own and the poor and quickly-becoming-poor deserve the anxiety and devastations that some of us know because after all we just didn’t use good judgment.

As a Unitarian Universalist, I believe in truth telling. I believe that truth hurts and heals, but that it heals more than it hurts. I believe that our citizens and leaders alike are accountable for rendering truth visible and accessible. I believe confession has a place in our relationships intimate, communal, political, societal, and global. We screw up! We sin! We violate the miracle of life in which we find ourselves. Truth and reconciliation as practiced from Rwanda to South Africa long for a home in our United States of America. Truth and reconciliation is the hardest of spiritual practices. “Lead us not into temptation, and deliver us from evil, especially the evil of our own lies to ourselves!”

As a Unitarian Universalist, I believe in a covenantal grounding over a creedal grounding for our religious community. Covenant considers that we’re each and all flawed, that we don’t always live up to our ideals for ourselves or for one another. Covenant is like a patchwork quilt that reminds us we are carefully and sometimes carelessly stitched together; that we’re not all one fabric but connected by intention and by resilient strands of thread and fabric, each with their own stories, each emerging from their own historical garments. I believe in a covenantal grounding for our national community, albeit with a fresh look at our Constitution and our Bill of Rights. Whenever a state or a nation considers rescinding a basic right through a proposition wrought by that perilous notion “I and the other” or “we and them,” we are selling the soul of our aspiring democracy to brokers who have no role in the marketplace of caring community.

As a Unitarian Universalist, I believe with the late Unitarian theologian and scholar James Luther Adams that our goal “is the prophethood and priesthood of all believers, the one for the liberty of prophesying, the other for the ministry of healing.” Prophets are not the most popular folks in the neighborhood, but they don’t’ mince words. Priests defer to the common good, the healing and wholeness of not just you and me, but of this nation, this world. I believe with Adams that we are accountable as, in Adams’ words:

“the prophetic liberal church…in which persons think and work together to interpret the signs of the times in the light of their faith, to make explicit through discussion the epochal thinking that the times demand, …in which all members share the common responsibility to attempt to foresee the consequences of human behavior (both individual and institutional), with the intention of making history in place of merely being pushed around by it.”

As a Unitarian Universalist, I believe with Forrest Church that a two-hour sermon in the Puritan tradition doesn’t cut it today and that our Puritan forebears held a standard of moral perfection that none of us could attain. I also believe with Forrest that come Tuesday, “we will be casting the most critical vote of our lifetimes,” and that “the choice we must make, not just with our vote, but with our lives, is a choice between hope and fear.” And like Forrest, I’m not telling you how to cast your vote. I am not and will never tell you how to exercise this precious right.

As your minister, I concur with the mission of this congregation that we are called “to affirm our Unitarian Universalist principles and put them into action by worshipping together (as we are doing right now), caring for one another (as we do week after week, year after year), and working for a safe, just, and sustainable world,” for which our work is just beginning.

“We need not think alike to love alike;” but we need to think and we need to love.

We share core beliefs of love and compassion and justice, freedom, reason, tolerance, and inclusiveness. As to how we realize them, there lies the venue of perspective. Your perspective may not be my perspective may not be his or her or their perspective. We have varied angles of vision as we answer the question of who will lead this nation honestly, justly, and compassionately for the next four years. We have varied angles of vision as we debate the particulars of how to realize the beloved community in a world that aches, simply aches, for that caring and compassionate community which I understand to be the most realistic hope imaginable if we are to know “a safe, just, and sustainable world.”

As people of faith, we are called to draw on that which we believe. As people of faith and practice, we are called to choose. And then we are called to act through the balance of our days with all the hope and love we can muster to sustain or resist or renew or reform the harvest of our choices.

I love you, each and all! Amen


Sources:

James Luther Adams, “I Call That Church Free,” in Singing the Living Tradition, The Unitarian Universalist Association, Beacon Press, Boston, 1993, 591.

James Luther Adams, “The Prophethood of All Believers,” in The Essential James Luther Adams: Selected Essays and Addresses, Edited and introduced by George Kimmich Beach, Skinner House Books, Boston, 1998.

Forrest Church, “Election Sermon,” October 26, 2008, Unitarian Church of All Souls, New York City, Mark W. Harris, “Unitarian Universalist Origins: Our Historic Faith,” http://archive.uua.org/info/origins.html

Mark W. Harris, “Unitarian Universalist Origins: Our Historic Faith,” http://archive.uua.org/info/origins.html.

John II Sigismund Zápolya, from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_II_Sigismund_Z%C3%A1polya.

Chalice Reflection & Fear and Spirit

Chalice Reflection
Joan Kovach
October 26, 2008

Good morning!

Well, Friday is Halloween. Saturday is All Saints’ Day. And in the Catholic tradition, Sunday is for the rest of us who don’t reach the status of saints, All Souls’ Day.

Our Circle Ministry groups ponder fear. Jan’s sermon today is on fear and spirit. And our children wonder about what is scary and what is not.

So, what is this about, this juxtaposition of things scary and considering those of us who have already died?

As I prepare the house and yard for trick or treaters, I’m reminded of a time about 15 years ago when I fashioned a grim reaper from black plastic trash bags and propped him on the fence along my driveway. I felt terrible when a friend, very recently widowed, pulled in my driveway, greeted by this dark apparition.

Now that I’ve suffered some deaths in my own family, I think the grim reaper probably went unseen by her. When somebody you love dies, it isn’t about fear, but about the huge loss, the void of their absence.

Again I wonder about this: things scary and death. What’s the connection?

I honestly don’t know. And I think it’s some not knowing that is an essential element of our fear. And then I think, not knowing is also what allows us to experience awe and wonder, even surprise and delight.

When our group spoke about fear, it was fear of death or harm to our loved ones and ourselves that came up. Yet Annie Lamott calls death just “a major change of address.” An unknown, but not that scary.

I light the chalice today, our day of acknowledging spirits and fears, in the hopes that when we need it, we will all have the courage we need to explore the unknown, to face the scary, and to travel through fear to get to awe.

“Fear and Spirit”

A Sermon by Rev. Dr. Jan Carlsson-Bull
First Parish Unitarian Universalist
Cohasset, MA
October 26, 2008

To nurture the spark of your precious life—
we hold you in our love as you go—

we sang just moments ago to our children, garbed in costumes enchanting, endearing and downright scary. What is it about the delight our youngsters take in donning different identities, REALLY different identities? Some fancy themselves fairy princesses; others aspire to be high-tech heroes. And there are always a few who opt to masquerade as villains and vampires so chilling that they’ll be sure to scare all the “little kids” half to death and maybe even send a chill down the spines of some of the “big kids” like us.

Halloween is a time when fear and spirit walk hand in hand, propelled by whimsy, imagination, and a fascination with fright! I became acutely attuned to this many years ago during my seminary field education at a church in New York City’s East Village. Part of my portfolio was teaching a 4th grade class. Sunday after Sunday these 11-year-olds resisted with amazing determination whatever conventional curriculum was on my agenda and for weeks upon end took up the topic of monsters. Were monsters real? Did ghosts really prowl about the churchyard just outside, that churchyard that served as a deceptive lid for what can only be described as catacombs? Beneath this churchyard, where these same 11-year-olds romped and ran during Sunday morning coffee hour, sprawled a labyrinthine cemetery where Peter Cooper himself was buried. It was a landmark graveyard and part and parcel of this historic church.

Perhaps through what Carl Jung termed the “collective unconscious” these children and our own pick up on the dual qualities of the demonic, death scary and death benign. They don’t run from their shadow side. They prepare or purchase costumes to lift their shadow side into the light of day and the amber lights of Halloween night. Our young put their monstrous dimensions on parade, processing down the aisles of this Meeting House, prancing about town and boldly knocking on doors with even bolder, “Trick or Treat’s!” This year on Halloween night, our First Parish children and youngsters from our wider community will grace our own Trueblood Hall, transformed into a Haunted House. Count this morning as a dress rehearsal!

What a peculiar time it is, this series of spirit days known as Halloween, All Saints Day, and All Souls Day. Light grows less in this part of the planet; we might say “light dies.” We can thank the Irish for the pagan harvest festival that gave rise to Halloween. Called Samhain—“Sowin” or “Sa-ven”—it means summer’s end. It marks the transition between the season of growth and the season of decay, the season of lush greens and vibrant pastels and the season of stark whites and somber greys. It’s exactly the right time for something to slip through a crack dividing those seasonal archetypes of life and death. Up through this crack come the dead, time for a quick visit.

Suspend your rationality; suspend your disbeliefs. Those Celts knew what was good for them. They honored their long-gone visitors with a festival and built huge bonfires to keep any evil spirits at a distance. The tradition continues with children carving grimaced smiles into vegetables like turnips and pumpkins and dressing up in the likes of what we witnessed this morning to keep the scarier spirits at bay. Children learn from their elders the difference between scary and scarier and as children will, opt for scarier!

Halloween is actually All Hallows’ Even, the evening before All Hallows’ Day, sometimes called All Saints’ Day. First established by the 7th century Pope Boniface IV as a festival honoring the Virgin Mary and all Christian martyrs, it was moved a century later to November 1 so that Pope Gregory III might tap its fierce mysteries for the dedication of All Saints Chapel in Rome. An even later pope made November 1 the standard for celebrating All Saints’ Day throughout Christendom. A crescendo of possibility reaches into All Souls’ Day. Celebrated on November 2, the legend spread that living souls can intercede for the dead souls stuck in that worrisome waiting room known as purgatory and help them on to Heaven.

A crack in time, a slant of light separating the seasons, the human obsession with that ultimate uncertainty called death, the human penchant for taking all possible precautions to pave the way for those already on the other side and our own inevitable journey in that direction! ‘tis best to make friends with villains and vampires, ghosts and goblins!

Like jack-o-lanterns carved from turnips and pumpkins, like costumed children dancing through the streets, knocking on doors, striking bargains with neighbors willing to play along, we play along and retreat a few degrees into our own pagan origins. I do not use “pagan” pejoratively but rather to call up the beliefs and rituals that have risen from people past and present living attuned to the cycles of nature.

Like a haunted house in Trueblood Hall, like munchkin projections of our own restless spirits processing costumed down the aisle of this Meeting House, we do what we can to make our peace with fear and spirit. We do what we can—mindfully, imaginatively, whimsically, and yes religiously—to keep hope alive through these festivals of seasonal transition bound in our deep knowledge that we are mortal creatures. We do what we can.

We even build immense cathedrals with plumbing devices fashioned of stone-hewn visages known as gargoyles. Gargoyles, fantastical in appearance, hold form and function. Crafted with open mouths, they serve as downspouts for rainwater to run down from and out from the sanctum that is the cathedral itself. And they multi-task. While protecting cathedral walls from the sure and steady erosion of rainwater, their demonic faces scare away “real demons,” as real as our religious imaginations can muster.

While we hold our own little goblins in our love “as they go, as they go,” we might also pay tribute to the vigilance of the macabre stone-souls known as gargoyles. Both are scary—our kids and our gargoyles. Neither is terrifying. Fear and spirit conspire in wondrous ways amid this seasonal transition from light to dark, from nature’s vibrancy to nature’s rest.

What strikes me in the cadences of Dav Pilkey’s “god bless the gargoyles” is the heroic quality of the scary, the almost martyr-like quality of these intentionally frightful faces leaning sentinel like on the ledges of cathedrals and even my own alma mater seminary! We can all use an angel or two, and gargoyles are no exception.

…now, angels have ways of making things right,
so they stayed with the gargoyles all through the night,
patting their heads and wiping their tears
and whispering life into gargoyle ears.

And soon all the gargoyles did magical things:
they gurgled and coughed and shook out their wings.
then together the angels and gargoyles took flight,
and they soared through the clouds on a blustery night.
and while over pastures and hills they were winging,
the voices of angels were radiantly singing
music of healing and songs of rebirth
to all of the creatures in all of the earth:

Fear and spirit wing their way across the earth issuing blessing upon blessing:

…god bless each soul that is tortured and taunted,
god bless all creatures alone and unwanted.

And the gargoyles beheld wherever they roamed
that the souls of the lost weren't really alone.
each one had an angel, each one was protected,
and each one was cherished and loved and respected.

Sounds like one of those principles we spout as fluidly as any Notre Dame gargoyle spouts rainwater! “Each one was cherished and loved and respected!”

Yes, it’s fantasy, yes it’s imagination, yes it’s an appeal that rises up in each of us from our childhood recognition that fear and spirit walk hand in hand. The shadow that accompanies each of us becomes far less scary when the angels of our higher nature befriend it.

Amid this time of fear, may we turn to that which scares us most and find there a partnership of blessing. It takes trust, layered reflection, and that transcendent state that comes when fear and spirit at long last merge—awe!

Let us issue blessings with reckless abandon upon our little ghosts and goblins. Let us forge a partnership of spirited imagination with what haunts us most fiercely. Let us bless the possibility that we might remember what it was like to be eight or nine or ten or eleven and relish a night when we morph into forms designed to inspire fear and yes, candy. I wish us each the imagination, the daring, and the love to rise into the arc of our own lives with a new blessing, buoyed by this season of blessings beyond reason. Amen.


Sources:

Dav Pilkey, god bless the gargoyles, Harcourt Brace, 1996.

Kathleen Tracy, words and music, As You Go.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Souls_Day

Intersection

“Intersection”

A Sermon by Rev. Dr. Jan Carlsson-Bull
Association Sunday
First Parish Unitarian Universalist
Cohasset, MA
October 19, 2008

“Out of the stars in their flight,
out of the dust of eternity, here have we come,
stardust and sunlight,
mingling through time and through space.

Out of the stars have we come,
up from time;

…Earth warmed by sun, lit by sunlight:
This is our home;
Out of the stars have we come.

…Out the stars, rising from rocks and the sea,
Kindled by sunlight on earth,
Arose life.

Thus pondered the late Robert Terry Weston on whence we have come and how we have come to be here. Each of us rose from a speck of cosmic dust. And all this time you thought it was the stork—or enjoyable human interaction, maybe. Well, on that last guess, you’re half right.

As for life itself and how the strands of life wound and found their way across barely imaginable distances of time and space, we’re here, precious specks in the universe of here and now, each of us star-marked. With a little help from the cosmos, earth, air, water, and fire have conspired the miracle that life is, that we are.

So consider, if you will, that each of you is a star-beam. And consider the not too far-fetched premise that somehow you have found your way to this space this morning, this Meeting House, where we wonder and speak and sing about such matters, and grow sometimes silent in reflection and even confusion. We’re here. Our star-beams have intersected.

Why? How?

Well, there’s free will. There’s also coincidence. There’s also chance. But I believe we’re here this morning because each of us longs to ponder such matters. Each of us shares amazement at this creation and that we’re a part of it. Each of us probably shares amazement that having the gift of life in common, we as humankind have contorted ourselves into a shape that can only be described as a mess. From miracle to mess is our human condition. Not only mess, of course. There’s celebration. There’s affirmation. There’s caring. There’s all that good stuff that matters so dearly. We really don’t want to be in a mess; we don’t. So we seek each other out. We look for a place where we’ll be heard and respected, even a place where we have different opinions, different perspectives, a place where we can be ourselves, given the standard of basic civility.

For me, that place is church, this church, this Unitarian Universalist congregation. Here we find our star-beam selves intersecting as we make our way across the trajectory that is our life. We question together; we wonder together; we matter together; and we go forth from this intersection of faith to live the questions, wonder aloud, behave as if every creature alive matters dearly. This is how we live our faith.

But wait, let’s coax our souls back into this Meeting House. As Bill Sinkford reminds us:

“In this room there are folks in many different places in their hearts: there are those whose spirits are light today, and those who arrive bearing the sadness of the world. Some are on the edge of adventure, beaming with energy from…a new loved one, new understanding, or a new peace, while others gaze toward the past, and wonder where they will find the strength for another step. Some come today for communion. This may mean connecting through the rituals of worship, or it may be found in a simple conversation over coffee. … To all these seekers we hold out a shared vision. We say, yes. Come on in, and know you are not alone.”

In this time and space of intersection, we move toward wholeness of heart, mind, and soul. We lean into our larger selves, knowing we’re not alone.

Sometimes we come here thinking that it’s only we who are so anxious, so overwhelmed with matters intimate and global. At this time of intersection, we discover it’s not just us. We realize that we’re not alone.

Yet it’s not easy being us. It’s not easy coming together with folks who question as relentlessly and seek as fervently as we do and come up with such a disarming array of approaches, such a pluralism of perspective, each of us tempted to espouse our approach or our perspective as if it might work for everyone. This is our signal that it’s time to listen, time to hear each other’s stories, time to open our hearts and minds to how those stories illumine an approach or a perspective that didn’t initially make much sense to us. We count on those stories for religious community that matters. Intersection has no meaning if we’re only talking about one approach, one path. Dynamic religious community depends upon what we might call “religious traffic,” “social traffic” even, “political traffic” even. No one has the final word.

It’s the intersection that counts. It’s what happens when our paths cross that allows each of us to pass through that intersection so much more intact than we were when we approached it, when we got up out of bed this morning and whined a bit about how wouldn’t it be nice to just have a leisurely breakfast, pick up the newspaper, and declare time out. Then maybe we did something as foolish as picking up that newspaper and spouting a quick, “Uh-oh! These headlines aren’t what I need. Maybe I’ll take myself, even my whole family, off to church after all.”

So here we are. Our paths have converged.

But is it enough, just this crossing, just these intersections over the years since 1721 that we’ve been First Parish in Cohasset, then First Parish Unitarian, then First Parish Unitarian Universalist in Cohasset?

We’re a congregation in historical motion. We’re a congregation learning, sometimes slowly, sometimes reluctantly, that the quality of our religious community, the quality of our religious intersection, is enhanced by being in association with other congregations.

Just yesterday three of us from this congregation—Mary Parker, President of our Parish Committee, Ron Wallace, our Treasurer, and I headed to Worcester for the Unitarian Universalist New England Fall Conference. What a gathering of congregations from every state in New England! Imagine roughly 500 New Englanders, let alone Unitarian Universalists, in the same space for a day of concerted dialogue and worship and discernment about who we are and who we can become. It was moving and powerful. Such are the benefits of religious traffic! You’ll surely be hearing more in the days ahead about the ideas exchanged and what can help us at First Parish Unitarian Universalist in Cohasset move through this time and beyond it, what can help us at First Parish Unitarian Universalist in Cohasset rise into the larger reaches of who we can be as faithful seekers, teachers, justice makers, and stewards of the gifts we are given.

We each began as stardust. Stardust by itself is good maybe for a little light—actually an infinitesimal speck of light. But when we find ourselves here and alive, when we stretch our souls into beams of light, when we intentionally come together with other religious seekers, then something extraordinary happens. We discover that our specks of stardust kindle into a larger light. We discover that our beams of light intersect in ways that make us each the richer in discerning what our lives are all about and can still be about. We discover that the light that we kindle Sunday after Sunday—here and in over a thousand Unitarian Universalist congregations in this country alone—ignites into a flame that is the essence of that which burns in our flaming chalice, symbol of the dynamic truth, the luminous love, that we are about in this faith that we share.

What makes it possible? Each of you makes it possible by showing up, by letting your light shine, by sharing your resources so that you can stretch into your larger self. Each of our congregations makes it possible by coming together at intersections such as conferences that are above all about conversations that matter, worshipping together across the habits of how we worship as individual congregations, and discerning and acting together so that what emerges is an intricate web of activity made possible by an association of interdependent congregations.

This is our Unitarian Universalist Association. This is not some edifice on Beacon Hill. This is the flaming chalice that is ignited by each individual, each congregation, each district, each child, each person who walks into a Unitarian Universalist church hopeful, hopeful for a sanctuary in which she or he matters, hopeful for a community of loving listening folk who say through our deeds, “You matter. Whoever you are, you matter. Welcome!”

Now we have one, at least one, sticky problem. Excuse me, challenge! It comes to mind through the story told by my colleague Kathleen McTigue. And it hinges on the notion of spirituality and discipline. Spirituality is that term that tends to evoke a quick nod of complicit wisdom when we hear it cited. Some of us are even inclined to say, “I’m not really religious; I’m spiritual!” To which I say, “Oyveh!” because that notion commonly carries a very light backpack. Specifically, being spiritual without being religious holds an easily implicit assumption that I’m not accountable. It’s about me and my spirit and the Spirit of Life, and that’s quite enough, thank you very much. So folks who want only spirituality tend not to return when they’re tapped on the shoulder in coffee hour, let alone when they’re reminded in the Meeting House that the spirit of our faith calls us to act differently in the world.

Discipline is another matter. Discipline often goes against the grain of progressive thinkers such as we fancy ourselves to be. Thus, Kathleen’s telling of the folk tale of the “saintly Brother Bruno.” Engaged in solitary prayer, he was rudely interrupted by a frog. What did he do, but lean out the window and tell that sub-human specimen to pipe down. The bullfrog went instantly mute. Then Bruno’s conscience began to gnaw away at him. Maybe Bruno’s own prayer hit God’s ears like the “arrogant croaking of another frog!” Bruno was not ambivalent for long. He again leaned out the window, and bid that bullfrog to “Sing!” Soon a grand chorus of bullfrogs was singing a full-throated anthem. And Bruno learned to pray.

Bruno discovered that the human spirit is not the only one that counts. Bruno discovered that his conscience was more accountable than he’d counted on. The only thing that has me worried is what the bullfrogs thought of Bruno’s prayers.

Spirituality, however, that amorphous notion that carries as many gossamer threads as a cosmic spider web, glistens, simply glistens, in caring religious community.

And so do we. Our spirits soar; our souls awaken; our minds open wide, when we know it’s not just about us. Individually, congregationally, it’s not just about us. It’s about the miracle in which we find ourselves asking, wondering, worshipping, praying, learning, making justice, being awake and attentive, and greeting new beams of light even as we bid farewell to old stars, ready once again to become stardust.

For me, religion, this religion that we know as Unitarian Universalism, shines with the fire of countless stars when kindled in the chalice that is our Unitarian Universalist Association. Some call it the UUA. I call it OUR UUA. How can we not support this amazing convergence of stars, this amazing intersection of light beams that we are, as individuals and congregations? Together, in association, we can grow and learn and touch one another. We can “nurture our spirits and help heal our world.”

I ask this morning that each of you give as generously as you can to support our Association. As your minister, I’d love to give more, but you can count on me for $100 from my personal account and $100 from my ministerial discretionary fund. Let’s give what we can, and know that our chalice will burn all the brighter because we do so.

…Out the stars, rising from rocks and the sea,
Kindled by sunlight on earth,
Arose life.

At this morning’s intersection of light and life, know that I love you, stars all. Amen


Sources:

Kathleen McTigue, on spiritual discipline, in Association Sunday 2008 Organizing and Worship Resources, Unitarian Universalist Association, 2008.

William Sinkford, on in this room there are folks, in Association Sunday 2008 Organizing and Worship Resources, Unitarian Universalist Association, 2008.

Robert T. Weston, “Out of the Stars,” in Singing the Living Tradition, The Unitarian Universalist Association, Beacon Press, Boston, 1993, 465.