A Chalice Reflection & "At-onement: A Circle Ministry Sunday"

Chalice Reflection
of
Jack Martin
First Parish Unitarian Universalist
Cohasset, Massachusetts
September 27, 2009

At sunset this evening our Jewish friends will begin celebrating Yom Kippur – the Day of Atonement - the holiest of all Jewish holidays. Yom Kippur is designed to provide an opportunity for self-reflection for what has occurred over the past year - a time to own personal responsibility for any shortcomings, mistakes, and misdeeds made during the year and to make amends for wrongs and injuries committed.

Our UU faith tradition does not have a day intentionally designated to process our atonements for misdeeds or shortcomings. However, the past four years, at First Parish we have founded and cultivated a ministry that in many ways mimics many of the intentions of the Jewish day of atonement— self-reflection, holding ourselves accountable, being the best we can be for one another. It is Circle Ministry. Circle Ministry is not a one time a year event, but occurs twice each month. It is not an individual, solitary process, but involves engagement, feedback, and support from others. In Circle Ministry carefully chosen topics and evocative questions prompt the discussion and self-reflection for each two-hour session. In every group, as our stories are told, insights into self and others are gained, and bonding of group members occurs.

The joy of Circle Ministry comes in sharing our personal stories. Because our stories generally make us feel vulnerable to being fixed, exploited, dismissed, or ignored, most of the time we tell them only gradually or not at all. Neighbors, coworkers, church friends, and even family members can live side by side for years without learning much about each other’s lives. Circle Ministry is a corrective to this fear of making ourselves vulnerable. Members of the group speak from their own experiences; they tell their own stories from their heart and soul; criticism, fixing, and advice giving are avoided; and deep, generous and respectful listening is the central principle that makes the process work.

Sharing time matters. Sharing time provides rare moments in our lives when we get below the surface. The more we know about another person’s story, the harder it is to dismiss, marginalize, distance or harm that person. Sharing time works because we come to understand ourselves, others, and our world in more complete ways. Sharing time has been rippling through our church community for the past three years. Calls have been heard; needs have been acted upon; and support, care, and hard work have been given to our church and to our community by Circle Ministry groups. Our faith community here at First Parish has been greatly strengthened and enormously enriched because of Circle Ministry. It is my hope that more of you who have not yet experienced Circle Ministry will take advantage of this shared ministry program and join with us this fall.

“At-onement: A Circle Ministry Sunday"

A Sermon by Rev. Dr. Jan Carlsson-Bull
First Parish Unitarian Universalist
Cohasset, MA
September 27, 2009

Just a few days ago, a good friend died. He was also a mentor, a colleague, a scholar, a preacher, a public figure, a husband and father, and a prophetic teacher for all of us. At the age of 61 and a day, shortly before sundown, we lost Forrest Church.

It is a time of turning. The leaves are turning. The birds are turning south. Creatures of field and forest are scampering about to store food for the cold months ahead that they might tuck into the earth for warmth and shelter. We humans turn reflective as the remains of a day swell into a burnished montage that mirrors the horizon of treetops, as a harvest moon shines like a pumpkin lit from within. I ponder what it means, this letting go, this turn of direction, these celestial orbs that all but tease with the arresting magnificence of their settings and risings, and this loss of life and presence to which we’ve grown accustomed.

When I did my first memorial service, it was a graveside rite, and I turned to Forrest to ask his counsel. I was then Assistant Minister at All Souls in New York City, where Forrest was Senior Minister. It was just over a decade ago. My learning curve for ministry felt frustratingly slow. But I had a master teacher. He offered these words:

As we stand now together under the rounding dome of the sky, with the resilient Earth beneath our feet, washed by air and sunlight, we recount things timeless and reassuring.

We know, deep in our flesh, the sure cycles of nature, the fit of a human life span into the seasons of the generations, the Earth, and the Universe: a sublime and elegant design.

From dust to dust; from spirit to spirit; from eternity to eternity: Between these spans, a human life fits.

Many of you know that Forrest had a lot more to say—about love and life and death and the universe and what it means to be Unitarian and Universalist. As for Unitarian, he used to quip that ours “is the religion to have when you’re having more than one.” Forrest was a consummate Universalist. He recognized the inclusiveness of it all. He understood that we are woven. His gospel was love. He understood the God he described as “greater than all but present in each” as a loving God. And he didn’t hesitate to use God language. After all, he was a preacher whose last name is Church!

This morning these words that he offered during my early years of ministry invoke reverie on the cyclical nature of each of us and the cyclical ways of earth and sun, moon and stars.

“As we stand now together … we recount things timeless and reassuring.
We know, deep in our flesh, the sure cycles of nature, the fit of a human life span into the seasons….”

His words sound amid the holiest time in the Jewish calendar, the Days of Awe, ushered in with Rosh Hashanah, literally the beginning of the year, and observed by Jews worldwide. Today’s sunset marks the beginning of the day that concludes these Days of Awe, Yom Kippur, Day of Atonement.

Yom Kippur is the holiest day of the Jewish year. “This moment of most intense spiritual experience,” observes Arthur Waskow, “is the moment of atonement—the moment when all misdeeds are covered over.” Waskow compares Yom Kippur to the prayer shawl known as a tallis, describing this day as “a kind of tallis in time—a prayer shawl to cover the confusions of the year. As worshippers…pick up the tallis, they cover their heads for a moment so as to wipe away the pointless, pathless wanderings of the world,” making it possible “for a moment to look toward God, ….to stand face to face with God.”

There are elaborate rituals for worship on Yom Kippur, and they vary from synagogue to synagogue. Some are ancient and some, innovative. One ancient rite that finds its way into contemporary practice reinforces the belief that on this day it is possible “to stand face to face with God.” The priest speaks aloud the name for God not spoken at any other time, the name that may be rendered YHVH/Yahweh, an apparent acronym for the identity of God revealed to Moses through the burning bush as told in the third chapter of the Book of Exodus. While some render Yahweh as “I am who I am,” Waskow explains it as “a kind of distillation of ‘I Am Becoming Who I Am Becoming.’” It’s a name “that was not a name in the sense of a label by which God could be called and controlled, and therefore the Name which could not be said aloud…. Only on Yom Kippur was the Name said, aloud, in all its original awesomeness.”

Central to Yom Kippur rituals ancient and modern is a turning, tshuvah, “repentant return,” and “for all human beings.” According to Waskow, the centrality of tshuvah survived the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE with added strength. The rabbis held that the very arrival of the day invoked God’s forgiveness, but with a critical qualification:

“If someone said, ‘I will sin and repent, and sin again and repent,’ he will be given no chance to repent. If he said, ‘I will sin and Yom Kippur will effect atonement,’ then the Day of Atonement effects no atonement. For transgression between human beings and God, Yom Kippur effects atonement; but for transgressions between a person and his fellow, Yom Kippur effects atonement only if he has made peace with his fellow.”

This Day of Atonement is thus a day of “at-onement.” There is a paradox here. One stands as an individual before God and all that is holy and turns, repents, of all that is unseemly across thought, word, and deed in the year that is past. One also stands as a member of religious community before God and all that is holy and can do so credibly only if one “has made peace with his fellow.” There is no allowance for hypocrisy here, no crack in the ritual that allows a person to be at-onement with God while hiding unreconciled discord with fellow humans. At-onement with what is holy, with what is ultimate, with “that which is greater than all but present in each,” happens only from a well of right relationships with one’s family, with one’s friends, and yes, with one’s presumed enemies.

It is a time of reflection, of turning, of reconciliation, of at-onement. It is apt that our first Circle Ministry session of this church year will take place a week from today, so close to this time of at-onement.

Also known as small group ministry, the premise is that we gather in a circle—that most inclusive shape—and listen deeply. Yes, participants speak, but out of a covenant that underscores deep and respectful listening. “Silence” is the first topic of the season, for it is in a circle of silence that we quiet ourselves, that we diffuse our inner noise that cuts us off from our fellow humans sitting around us. Each person checks in. What is happening in your life? What is happening in my life? No commentary, no expressed sympathy or advice or murmurs. It’s all part of the behavioral covenant of this ministry of circles. And when the topic is introduced—in this case, “Silence”—silence is held for a moment before anyone speaks. I suppose it’s a tad ironic that we do deign to speak about silence, but as stories are heard and told, we enter a sphere outside of our own egos. The very sequence of holding silence, listening deeply, hearing, and being heard is a form of reconciliation that permits us to know an at-onement that is rare in the rhythms of our daily lives.

Within each of us there is a silence-
a silence as vast as a universe.
We are afraid of it- and we long for it.

When we experience that silence, we remember
who we are….

Silence reveals. Silence heals.
Silence is where God dwells.

writes the poet, Gunilla Norris.

You may or may not use the term God to describe your experience of amazing silence, of attunement to the day, of reflection in this season of letting go. You may or may not find the term God meaningful in this season of imminent death all around us though you would never know it to look out the window or walk on the beach or stroll through a park or lie back into a pile of leaves vividly costumed and newly arrived from their downward dance. You’d never know that in this glorious silence, this all-out beauty fest, gardens and friends were so close to deep slumber. “God” might not work for you, but try “awe,” days and days of it.

Turning, tshuvah, reflection, reconciliation, is so naturally the holiest time of year. For Jews, yes, but for all of us who are creatures of the phenomenon we call nature. Summer’s boldness is becoming autumn’s brilliance is becoming winter’s bones is becoming spring’s buds. We are creatures of cycles.

“So goes the year,” writes Waskow, “the circle-dance of life in tune with the music of the sun.” And yes, in harmony with the moon, as we’re reminded by these Days of Awe, these holy days that take their calendar cues from the moon as it circles the earth even as the earth swings elliptically about the sun.

We gather in the solo reflections of our hearts in this house of meeting to reflect, to meditate, to wonder, to sing, and to hold silence. We gather in the community of this congregation to affirm and be affirmed that we are not solo acts, but gossamer strands of a cosmic web. We gather in circles to listen and discover that we are heard. We move through our days and become story after story after story. And on a holy day some among us pause and dare to see “face to face” an essence whose name is spoken aloud only on that day. Some of us pause and don that prayer-shawl that “the confusions of a year” might be diffused through a holy glance at what matters most, a holy act of turning and transformation that mirrors this season of turning and transformation.

History merges with timelessness. A life merges with eternity.

From the eternal to the specific, from the arcs of celestial bodies to the circles in which we sit together to the circle of hearts present here and now, we discover the holy.

“When our heart is in a holy place,” we sang moments ago,
“We are bless’d with love and amazing grace.

…. [When] we hear our voices in each other’s words,

….When we share the silence of sacred space,
[When] the God of our Heart stirs within,
[When] we feed the power of each other’s faith,
Then our heart is in a holy place.”

So it is as we consider this imminent Day of Atonement, as we experience a ministry of circles, as we worship together, and as we seek to live out our lives in “inclusive spiritual community.” We stretch our souls. We discern our roots in the traditions that are Christian and Jewish. We revere by participation or consideration a holiday, a holy day, that moves in its own arc across the sunset and sunrise of consciousness that we are all turning, willfully, willingly, but as surely as summer turns to autumn; and in turning, we find ourselves amid “the seasons of the generations.”

“The very interweaving of the themes of history and nature, the human life cycle and moments of spiritual experience—remind us that in some sense all the realms of life are dancing with each other. The circles of the sun, and of the moon; of a single human life between the generations, and an entire people’s history of renewal; of every quiet act of newness, birth, creation—all are echoes of One Circle.”

So writes Arthur Waskow, affirming Judaism’s celebration of festivals as reverence for “the Unity that underlies all life.”

I lost a friend this week. We all lost a friend this week. Some would say his death was untimely, that 61 is too young, far too young, to die. We speak out of our own yearning for life. We take again and again that first deep breath and cry out in our longing for life. What is enough? What will ever be enough as we consider our own life span? Forrest died surrounded by family and friends, surrounded by a congregation called All Souls, embraced by an even greater family of all souls.

Into “the seasons of generations, the Earth, and the Universe….from dust to dust, from spirit to spirit, from eternity to eternity,” his life fit magnificently and will echo throughout eternity the One Circle that embraces us all, the great silence from which each of us have emerged and into which each of us turns with all possible grace and gratitude.

Let us hold together a moment of silence.
………………………………

Amen

Sources:

Forrest Church, quotes from sermons and books and conversations, www.allsoulsnyc.org

Gunilla Norris, Inviting Silence: Universal Principles of Meditation, Bluebridge, 2004.

Joyce Poley, “When Our Heart Is in a Holy Place,” in Singing the Journey: A Supplement to Singing the Living Tradition, Unitarian Universalist Association, 2005.

Arthur Waskow, Seasons of Our Joy: A Celebration of Modern Jewish Renewal: A Creative guide to the Jewish Holidays, Beacon Press, Boston, 1982.