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