Rev. Megan Lloyd Joiner

Unitarian Society of New Haven

March 18, 2018

Call to Worship: Community Means Strength By Starhawk

Reading: Prerequisites for Preservation by Naima Penniman

Sermon: Balancing You, Me, and Us

 

Imagine you are escaping. Your persecutors are on your trail. You and your comrades come across a boat on the shore of a body of water. You pile in and begin to row. It becomes clear, soon after you push off, that there are too many people in the boat; it is beginning to sink. What do you do?

 

Do you “draw lots and toss the losers overboard?” Do you “set upon the elderly, the sick, the young and send them to their deaths?” Do you “decide who are the least productive members of the community
and force them off the boat?”[i]

 

The Rev. Scott W. Alexander tells this story of a boat and the people, a community of French Huguenots,
who escaped in it from France to England across the English Channel. These were the ancestors of a friend of his. She told him the story as it had been passed down through the generations of her family.

 

What did they do when the boat began to sink?

 

“I suppose, Scott says, “they could have decided on any of [the] more-or-less logical courses of action [that have been presented].” He goes on: “But these beleaguered Huguenots did something else, something far nobler and lovelier.  Without discussion or dissention, the people in the tiny boat decided that they would take turns

(several of them at a time) swimming alongside the craft. For the many hours of that cruel crossing, as swimmers tired, others would – quietly…willingly…as members of their tight-knit community – take their place in the numbing waters. And thus it was that the small boat – and everyone who had sought refuge on it –

survived the treacherous crossing.”[ii]

 

Can you picture it? The cold, the dark (I imagine this escape happening at night), the frigid waters. People swimming in their clothes. Those in the boat encouraging them with silent gestures. The joy of finally reaching the other side. The power of knowing that each person contributed to the success of the crossing.

 

Such an act – taking one’s turn in the Channel – is born of the balance between self, others and the community as a whole. Each person who swam that night knew that their survival, as much as everyone else’s, depended upon their swimming for a while. They also knew they wouldn’t have to do it forever – that someone would take their place when they could no longer go on.

 

It’s a moving story. But what does it have to do with us?

 

Well, I could make an analogy here to coffee hour. But that is trite, and I have promised Pam Niles that I will stop thinking about coffee, so I won’t.

 

The truth is, it’s far more serious than that.

 

For many of us, the past year has been a scary time, a disheartening time.

 

For some among us, though, especially for black and brown people, for differently abled people, for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and genderqueer people, for immigrants and refugees and indigenous people,
for Muslims and yes, for Jews, it has been a terrifying, dangerous, life-threatening time.

 

For these people and others, the politics of hate have nothing to do with politics and everything to do with life and death.

 

For many of us, what is happening in our nation – and in our world – the rise of right-wing populism, the closing of borders, the scapegoating of certain types of people, the lack of access to health care,
or the bias of the justice system is odious. For some of us, it is downright deadly. Let us never forget that.

 

This morning’s reading is not about what we should do or what we could do, but about what we must do in order for us all to survive. Prerequisites for Preservation the poem is called. The truth is: at stake is nothing less than the preservation of lives. And bodies. And spirits. And souls. How do we ensure that all of us –
not just the “us” that you or I belong to, but all of us – meaning all the us-es that are sparsely represented here
or not represented at all – how do we all survive – emotionally, spiritually, and physically intact?

 

Here’s what it’s gonna take:

trust.

and surrender.

 

“we’re gonna need to stay focused

we’re gonna need to be strong

tend our commitment to beauty

fuel our devotion to truth”

 

We’re gonna need to get out of the boat.

We’re gonna need to take our turn in the channel.

 

It starts right here. This congregation made a commitment to living together as a beloved community when you accepted our congregational covenant (https://www.usnh.org/about-us/our-covenant/) the year before I arrived to serve as your minister. The words of the covenant are written on the back of your order of service. This is not a list of rules. This is an articulation of how the members of this community agree that we will be with each other.

 

We pledge to each other that we will work:

to Be Open, to Value Differences, to Listen Deeply,
to Use Kind Language and be gentle with one another,
to Speak our Truths, Work with Conflict, be willing to forgive.
We pledge to Seek Humor and Joy.

 

The good people serving on our Permanent Committee on Right Relations are not, let me be clear, the “Right Relations Police.” Their work is not to “bring people before the Committee” or bring people up on “charges” of non-covenantal behavior. No, their work is to help us, as a community, live into the practice of our covenant,
to remind us of how we choose to be together, to address harm directly, to work with conflict, to seek restoration of right relationship.

 

This is not easy work. Not here. Not anywhere. The model the Permanent Committee on Right Relations has chosen to guide our covenantal community is one of restorative justice, using a circle process of open sharing and deep listening. We practice this kind of being together the third Sunday of each month in my office with a Community Circle to which everyone is invited.

And we make space to repair perceived harm in intentional circles with all those effected by an event or situation that has caused difficult feelings between members of the community.

 

We are learning how to engage this process. We will make mistakes.
We will start again.

 

Because if we cannot do this here – directly address the times we are not living fully into our covenant

or being together the way we aspire to be – then what hope do we have to change the world beyond our walls?

 

This community is a laboratory for covenantal living – as congregational communities have been for ages.

We work to balance the needs of the individual with the needs of the entire community; the desires of each one of us with the mission and vision of the collective.

 

Again, this is not easy. It requires each of us to “look at ourselves,” “to make amends” when necessary;

it requires forgiveness and trust. It asks us to “soften our hearts,” and “release our control” and it requires that we “talk to each other!”

 

Some of this may sound familiar to some of you – depending on how closely you listen to Sunday morning sermons. It was sounding familiar to me as I prepared it, so I looked back in my files. Turns out, just over a year ago, I preached on the balance of the individual and the collective. It’s fascinating to revisit old sermons to see where we were and where we have been and what we are still wrestling with.

 

A year ago, I introduced you to the Rev. Fred Muir’s lecture entitled “From iChurch to Beloved Community.”
(If “church” is not your word, I ask you to bear with me on this one and listen for the meaning of Fred’s work.)
The “i” here stands for “individual.”

 

“Individualism,” Muir writes, has “not only shaped American culture writ large, but [has] shaped Unitarian Universalism.”[iii] We took our cues from Unitarian Transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson who famously said: “men are less together than alone.” We built a religion on the ideal of individual autonomy – spiritual and otherwise.

 

And today, Muir says, “we [Unitarian Universalists] comprise the church of Emersonian individualism;
we are the iChurch.”[iv]

 

But “individualism,” Muir says, “will not serve the greater good, a principle to which we have committed ourselves. There is little-to-nothing about the ideology and theology of individualism that encourages people to work and live together, to create and support institutions that serve common aspirations and beloved principles.”[v]

 

Instead he proposes a different model for thinking about congregational life: The Beloved Community.

 

And here’s what I know is true about what happens when we see our congregation not as an “iChurch” but as a Beloved Community:

 

• We model the relationships we want to see in the world.

 

• We begin to think together about who we are called to be collectively, about how we can transform lives:
  our own and those in the community beyond our walls.

 

• We are open to new ideas that further the mission we share,
  that allow us to reach more people, touch more hearts,
  and make effective change in the world.

 

• We come to trust each other.
  We learn new ways to support each other.
  We nurture programs and activities that lead us together,
  collectively, into a shared future full of possibility.

 

To make this move, requires our attention to the fine balance between ourselves, others and the community as a whole. This month, we are exploring this theme of Balance, and we are also determining what our pledges – monetary and otherwise – will be to this community in the coming year. We are balancing what we want to do with what we can do, what we are called to give with what is possible, our dreams with reality.
We are balancing how much we care for others with how much we care for ourselves. How much we tend to our family and to our spiritual home and to our work and to our passions. How much work we do for social justice and how much work we do that pays the bills, and how we maintain some semblance of balance in our lives if those two things are the same. We are in a constant state, not of balance, but of balancing.

 

Being a part of a congregation is about living in a state of balancing – balancing give and take, what is offered and what is received, understanding that we all give what we can, when we can, and we will all have seasons in which we need to receive more than we can give; understanding that we may not exactly want what another can offer, and yet, when we can, we receive it with grace.

 

Author Erin O. White writes: “When you are part of a [congregation] you accept people’s offerings, even the ones you don’t necessarily want. One week their announcements will bore you and the next week they will make you weep, and sometimes it will be the same announcements. And sometimes during a hymn they’ll start a harmony and you’ll join, and your voices will become a conversation, an expression of love between people who by many measures barely know each other at all.”[vi]

 

I wonder how well the Huguenots in the boat in the Chanel knew each other…or if they knew simply that their liberation – and their destiny – was bound up with that of those with whom they swam.

 

We are a community seeking safer harbors – for ourselves, for those we love, for our beloved siblings who are persecuted and oppressed in our society. It’s time to take our turn in the channel – here at USNH –
and beyond our walls. It may seem that, here, the stakes are relatively low. But let us not forget that how we are together here, how we build a beloved community here reverberates. And there is much work to be done if we human beings are all to survive intact: body. mind. spirit. soul. There are lives at stake, friends.
There are lives at stake.

 

[i] “Taking Your Turn in the Chanel,” Rev. Scott W. Alexander, Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Vero Beach. Sunday, April 18, 2010. (Thanks to Rev. Claudia Elferdink for introducing me to this sermon.)

[ii] Ibid

[iii] “From iChurch to Beloved Community: Ecclesiology and Justice” by Fred Muir. June 20, 2012. http://www.uuma.org/BlankCustom.asp?page=BSE2012

[iv] Ibid.

[v] Ibid.

[vi] Erin O. White, “Church is What We Create With Each Other” https://onbeing.org/blog/erin-white-church-is-what-we-create-with-each-other

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Jim Peters

Reflection #2:  The Spiritual Balance Sheet

Reading:

“For everything in this journey of life we are on, there is a right wing and a left wing: for the wing of love there is anger; for the wing of destiny there is fear; for the wing of pain there is healing; for the wing of hurt there is forgiveness; for the wing of pride there is humility; for the wing of giving there is taking; for the wing of tears there is joy; for the wing of rejection there is acceptance; for the wing of judgment there is grace; for the wing of honor there is shame; for the wing of letting go there is the wing of keeping. We can only fly with two wings and two wings can only stay in the air if there is a balance.”

C. Joybell C.

 

As we continue this morning’s series of reflections on our theme, let’s turn to an accounting of balance — here I’m thinking of a balance sheet or of balancing our checkbooks.

 

I’d like us to consider a spiritual, or essential, or personal, balance sheet. Please hold the word that works best for you.

 

So we are going to become our own accountants for a few minutes.  Reflect with me as we take stock together and look for the balance inside.

 

We’ll begin with tallying up our personal assets.  In your mind, with eyes open or closed as you prefer, think of that which you value most in this world.

 

• The people you love.

 

• The people who love you.

 

• Your communities of caring– places of friendship and connection.

 

• Those acts, those choices about which you are most comfortable, proud, which uplift you when you think of them.

 

• Are there objects of art, or works of music, or performances which you’ve created, or collected or attended, which give you special pleasure or hold special meaning?

 

• Are there places in the world that bring you special joy or peace when you visit them, or even when you think about visiting them?

 

• Are there qualities of character in yourself that you honor — ways in which you persevere, ways in which you are courageous, in which you extend yourself, when you were particularly compassionate or generous? Let’s put those in the asset column too.

 

Now I may have missed some entire asset class in the list I’ve just shared.  If you value something positively, put it in your personal asset column. Be as inclusive as you can.  In short, if some part of your life experience contributes to your being your best self, by your own reckoning, it goes here.

 

Now I want to shift to the next piece — to our liabilities, our faults, our misgivings.

 

• Here I would ask us to reflect on the shadow side of all that we’ve just been thinking about.  For it is certainly true that in every life lived, there are paths not taken, or taken in error, relationships that did not flourish as we had intended or hoped, choices that fill us not with pride or satisfaction, but with regret…or worse.

 

• I am here reminded of the “un-resume” — a listing of goals or accomplishments that were not achieved — some job that turned out not to be the right fit, some school or program that we were not admitted to, some new year’s resolution that didn’t make it past the Ides of March, some recognition or award that might have been due but for one reason or another didn’t come our way.

 

• And as we are all human, there may be within us qualities of character which we may not consider to be reflective of our best selves..  We may at times be less patient, and more judgmental, less other-regarding and more self absorbed, less empathetic and more inconsiderate.

 

Again, here I may not have named explicitly something you feel belongs in the liabilities column — if you can identify it, include it.

 

So, next, if we were doing some traditional accounting, at this point we would total our assets, and we would total our liabilities, and we would subtract one from the other. Depending on their relative value, we would then determine if we were “in the black” or “in the red.”  Central to this understanding is the process of subtracting — the greater our liabilities, the deeper a hole we are in, and the greater our assets need to be to keep us balanced.

 

Well, I would like to suggest an alternative accounting system here today.  I do believe we should indeed add up our pluses and our minuses, but then, and I think this is essential, we shouldn’t subtract one from the other.

 

Instead, I believe, we must add it all together.

 

For life is not a zero-sum game in which our strengths can be credited against our weaknesses.  That’s not how we balance things out. We are, instead, the sum of all of it. Our good acts don’t cancel out our mistakes any more than our poor choices are expiated by better ones.

 

We are all of it.

 

We are our acts of thoughtlessness as much as we are our kindest deeds.

 

We are all of it.

 

We don’t read from the book of Joys OR Sorrows.  It is the book of Joys AND sorrows.

 

Because we are all of it.

 

If we have a net worth, I think of it like a fisher’s net cast into the water.   As that net is dragged along, it catches everything — the keepers and the small fry, the flotsam and the seaweed, the edible and the inedible.

 

The net catches it all — that which was intended and everything else.

 

We are that net, and our worth is everything in it.

 

I just think this is true.  I think it’s part of being human that we’re better understood as a mixture of the good and the not so good.  We are fabulous. And we are faulty. We are beautiful. And we are broken. We are our greatest accomplishment and our deepest regret.

 

So I’d like to ask us all to balance our spiritual accounts with this in mind.  Try to hold everything together. Try to find the forgiveness in the midst of guilt. Try to find humility within the pride of achievement and success.

 

I believe that we experience balance in the wholeness of our being — our strengths plus our weaknesses, our successes and our failures, our experiences of genuine love alongside those relationships which were fatally flawed.

 

And so my friends, let us remember that we can only fly with two wings, and two wings can only stay in the air if there is balance.  And let us find the balance in the additions, not the subtractions. Let our net, cast into the ocean of life, be strong enough to hold the widest range of our experiences and our choices.

 

Let us be.  All of it.