“Sanctuary Hearts”
Rev. Megan Lloyd Joiner
Unitarian Society of New Haven
October 14, 2018
Call to Worship: “We are All Longing to Go Home” by Starhawk
Reading: “Red Brocade” by Naomi Shihab Nye
Sermon:
We are all longing to go home. How true is that?
This month, I attended two clergy gatherings, one of Unitarian Universalist ministers from Connecticut and Massachusetts and one of interfaith clergy leaders with CONECT, Congregations Organized for a New Connecticut, of which we are one of 27 member congregations.[i] At both gatherings, the conversation turned to politics, but not in the way you might think. We discussed how each of us is navigating this complex political landscape in which we find ourselves, if and how we preach about politics, and how we attempt to meet the diverse needs of our congregants.
One of the Black pastors in the CONECT gathering made the crucial point that, for Black clergy, for the Black church, talking about politics is not optional. It’s not a choice to be made whether or not to do it like it is for some white congregations. The question is not “whether?” it’s “how?” Because the very existence of the Black church is a political statement.
For different reasons, I believe the same holds true for us as Unitarian Universalists. First of all, I don’t think you would let me get away without talking about the issues of the day. I’d hear about that for sure.
But seriously, we share a prophetic imperative that comes with this faith that some of us were born into and many more of us have chosen. The question is not whether or not to engage the political and social issues of our day. The question is how will
we do it?
Well, we’ve been doing it. This year we’ve been holding services for a little over a month and have already talked about transgender issues and race and racism and Israel/Palestine and the Kavenaugh hearings.
(If you didn’t catch it in my less-than subtle meditation text last week, that’s what I was talking about.)
And for today’s service, I wanted to engage the Sanctuary Movement, to talk about immigration policy, to lift up the stories of those living in Sanctuary here in Connecticut – Nelson Piños in New Haven, Sujitno Sajuti in Meriden, Malik Naveed bin Rehman and Zahida Altaf in Old Lyme. These are real people with real stories, with families and jobs and homes. These are people who have not set foot outside the churches where they are living in months. These are people who are longing for a home that has been taken from them. These are our neighbors.
And there is work to be done and actions to take and letters to write. Our Immigration and Refugee Task Force has been unstoppable over the past couple of years, and, if you have not already, I encourage you to join their efforts. So many of you have. Every time I see Rev. Jan Carlsson-Bull of the Unitarian Universalist Church in Meriden, where Mr. Sajuti has been in sanctuary for over a year, she thanks me profusely for the generosity of our congregation: gift cards to buy groceries, overnight volunteers, extra funds for heat and other expenses.
We have supported our sister congregation in their sanctuary effort. As they have opened their doors, we have opened our hearts.
And that’s what it takes.
An open heart.
I realized not too long ago that when I think about issues related to immigration and sanctuary, it is so easy for me to get into my head. I wonder if the same is true for some of you?
What would effective yet compassionate immigration policy look like? I ask myself. What alternatives should those of us opposed to the current situation propose? I haven’t known the answers. I am not a policy expert.
I am a pastor.
The word “pastor” comes from the Latin, meaning “shepherd,” “one who sets a flock to be fed.” A pastor is a guide. A pastor’s job is to care for, to feed her people,
the people.
A pastor’s job is to light the way, not to be an expert on immigration policy. A pastor’s job is to point toward a different path, to remind us of our common humanity, to remind us that we are all connected, that we are all neighbors and our work is to care for one another in our time of need. A pastor’s job is perhaps to prepare a physical sanctuary space in her congregation, but even more so, a pastor’s job is to help her people prepare a sanctuary space in their hearts.
What does that mean?
Ever since I thought about this idea of “sanctuary hearts,” the song by Greg Brown has been ringing in my ears:
Oh Lord, I have made you a place in my heart
Among the rags and the bones and the dirt[ii]
“I’ve tried to fix up the place,” he sings, “I know it’s a disgrace. You get used to it after a while.”
The truth is, whether we are working to prepare a space in our heart for God, or simply trying to prepare our hearts to make space for our fellow human beings, we all have some rags and bones and dirt lying around in there.
Now I’m not about flogging oneself or self-deprecation, but I think we forget sometimes as Unitarian Universalists, the freedom inherent in admitting the places where we fall short, in not holding up an image of perfection, in laying bare the places where we fail to be who it is we hope to be. And yet, let us remember that we are not alone in this.
We may have doubts or negativity that take over our hearts – and our minds. We may have thoughts that are less than hospitable; we may have times where we find we are far from living our values and have work to do to get back on track. Rags and bones and dirt. But we are not alone.
What would it look like to fix up our hearts, heal them, open them, make space for that which is painful, take people into them, and – because we must – protect them, too?
Because, these days, a fully open heart is hard to maintain, and we have to remember that part of the idea of sanctuary, part of the space we are preparing is for ourselves as well. We are all longing to go home.
Our hearts can be that home – for others, and for ourselves.
Author Marielena Zungia tells a story of a knock at the door one afternoon while her mother was making tortillas. A young child, Zungia clung to her mother’s skirt as she opened the door.
A man stood on the porch with holes in his shoes and rips in his shirt. “Could you spare a bite to eat?” he said.
Zungia remembers her mother telling him to wait and going into the kitchen to make three peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and pour a tall glass of milk, place it all on a tray and take it back out to the man.
Later, the little girl asked her mother why she had given the man food. “Because he was hungry,” she said, “and you never know when you might entertain angels unawares.”[iii]
In her reflections on this memory, Marielena Zungia writes: “We can only welcome others as much as we are welcoming to ourselves — to all of our being. So we begin by offering hospitality to those parts of ourselves we have distanced.” What parts? “The fearful edges of our being that need smoothing; the inner child of old wounds that yearns for comfort; the workaholic adult who needs to give herself permission to rest. Indeed, we can learn to welcome those orphaned parts of ourselves with gentleness, without judgment.”[iv]
From what parts of yourself have you become distanced?
To what parts of yourself have you closed your heart?
How might you extend hospitality (a red brocade pillow, rice, pine nuts, fresh mint) to these parts of you so in need of love and care?
Because I think that the way to deal with politics in our congregational life, is both prophetic – to remind each other of the need for action and resistance – and pastoral. I’m a pastor, after all.
I want to know how you are taking care of your sanctuary heart these days.
I want to know how you are being gentle with yourself.
Now there are some who might feel like saying: who are we to be gentle with ourselves when people are dying in the desert and children are separated from their families and people’s lives are on the line because of their gender identity, people’s ability to vote is at stake because of the color of their skin, when livelihoods and lives and homes have been destroyed by storms made so much stronger by the climate change that our president still denies? So much.
There is so much.
Who are we to be gentle with ourselves?
But friends, we simply won’t make it if we are not.
Our hearts can only open to the world to the extent that they are open to our own bruised and battered parts.
We can only create a sanctuary for others if we have a place to go ourselves – even if it is to the stillness of our own hearts.
Zungia writes: “When we learn to be more present and hospitable to whatever is happening in our inner world, I believe we then can more freely extend a welcome to our outer world.”[v]
Only when we attend to our inner selves, can we offer what the world asks of us.
Parker Palmer writes: “self-care is never a selfish act – it is simply good stewardship of the only gift I have, the gift I was put on earth to offer others. Anytime we can listen to true self and give the care it requires, we do it not only for ourselves, but for the many others whose lives we touch.”[vi]
These times in which we find ourselves call us to remember that resistance is a marathon, not a sprint.
And we can’t afford to have any of us drop out of the race.
So, in the week ahead, I urge you to continue, to deepen, or to start your self-care practices. Your time for meditation or prayer. Your time for exercise or a balanced meal. Your time in the garden and with friends.
Think about what it looks like for you to make room in your heart for the parts of you that are tired, weary and worn out. Think about what you might need to prepare your sanctuary heart that it might be open to another – a stranger, a friend, a neighbor – in need.
The reference to entertaining angels unawares comes from Genesis Chapter 18 in which Abraham and Sarah meet three strangers outside their tent.
Abraham says to them: “Let a little water be brought, and then you may all wash your feet and rest under this tree. Let me get you something to eat, so you can be refreshed and then go on your way…”[vii]
And he brings them food and drink and they rest a while there with him. Only later does he learn that they are divine messengers.
How are we called, friends, to welcome the stranger? To offer food and drink and a little rest without judgment, without asking where they are from or where they are headed. To offer spiritual food, emotional pine nuts and mint in their tea? And might not we offer the same to our beloveds and to ourselves?
Let us imagine a world in which all are fed, none thirst, and all are rested. It begins with you and with me, with the smallest act of kindness and an open heart.
This is the way we will never be claimed.
This is the way we will give each other hope when it is hard to find.
This is the way we will find our way home.
[ii] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OF0EzU2nFo4
[iii] https://mezuniga.wordpress.com/2015/10/22/welcoming-the-stranger/
[iv] Ibid.
[v] Ibid.
[vi] Parker Palmer. Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation. Jossey-Bass, 2000.
[vii] Genesis 18:1-5