“Where We’ve Been”
Rev. Megan Lloyd Joiner
Unitarian Society of New Haven
March 3, 2018
Reading: Untitled by Nikita Gill
You are not small.
You are not unworthy.
You are not insignificant.
The universe wove you from a constellation
just so atom, every fibre in you comes from
a different star.
Together, you are bound by stardust, altogether
spectacularly created from the energy of the
universe itself
And that, my darling,
is the poetry of physics,
the poetry of you.
Sermon:
You are not small.
You are not unworthy.
You are not insignificant.
You are made of stardust.
Spectacularly created from the energy of the universe itself.
You are intimately and ultimately beloved.
And each of us is a reminder to each other of where we come from – the stars, the universe. The atoms of our bodies the ultimate recycling success story.
I’ve long been fascinated and enamored by this fact – that we are born of stardust; that the stuff of our being has been in existence far longer than our presence here on earth.
Because it means that we’ve seen some stuff. We’ve done some things, we’ve been places, and gained understanding – far beyond four years, or forty or eighty or ninety. We are part of the eternal, part of the wideness and longevity of the universe, and our seeing and our doing and our being and our knowing will live on long after we are gone.
I suppose it’s natural that I’m thinking about longevity now, just over a month after I let you know that I will be concluding my ministry with you at the end of this congregational year.
We have done powerful work together over these past four years – structural and institutional work, cultural and emotional work.
We have welcomed children and families in new ways by expanding our welcome during worship and increasing our multi-generational programming
We have increased our program and administrative capabilities by hiring staff that work together and with the congregation with a high degree of professionalism and dedication
We have strengthened the functioning of the USNH office by tightening up our administrative policies and procedures
We have increased financial stability including transparency and processes at nearly every level
We have solidified our governance structure and worked hard to clarify the roles of minister, Management Team and the Board of Trustees, not to mention our numerous committees, the Council of Chairs and our many social justice task forces.
We have conducted three successful Stewardship Campaigns and prepared, this year, to take our Stewardship work to the next level by working with a consultant and building a broad-based team that has committed to multi-year service.
We have increased our effectiveness in Social Justice by joining with over 25 other congregations through the congregation based community organization, Congregations Organized for a New Connecticut or CONECT.
We have increased our membership by welcoming over 100 new members and integrating them into the life of the congregation
We have declared our commitment to multi-culturalism in our faith by demonstrating our support of Black Lives of Unitarian Universalism through our fully-realized pledge of $3500 to BLUU and engaging the Beloved Conversations curriculum.
We have worked to integrate our covenant into the life of the congregation through regular readings of it, community circles and healing circles, workshops and trainings, sermons and discussions. We have looked at the ways we are together and the ways we treat each other as paramount to what kind of religious community we want to be.
We have a new website and also redesigned our newsletter a few years ago.
When I arrived at USNH, the parking lot was being replaced. Since I’ve been here, we have added new, high efficiency boiler and built a new roof. We have a new floor beneath our feet here in the Sanctuary and new skylights above our heads. Countless projects that had been delayed or postponed or otherwise put off for many years have been completed thanks to the hard work of so many of you.
You are amazing.
And to top it off, you have raised over $100,000 for a new kitchen and the plans for that project are well underway.
We have shared dozens of Sunday services that were planned with an innovative worship committee and through a shared process between staff and lay people.
And we have shared powerful one-on-one moments together: at the bedside and in your homes and in my office.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we have come to know one another and come to love one another in the special way that is only possible between a pastor and her congregation. This love happened because you opened your hearts to me and I to you, and it is a love for which we can be forever grateful.
So, we have seen some stuff. We’ve done some things, been some places, and gained understanding together during this time of shared ministry.
Our theme for this new month of March is journey, and this congregation has certainly been on one. Today’s sermon is titled “Where We’ve Been,” and I invite you to journey with me as we look at where we’ve been over the past few years.
You said goodbye to your longtime minister of 21 years in 2012. You completed two years of interim ministry only to embark on another interim year with a different interim minister after the disappointment of an incomplete search for a settled minister. I arrived a year later and six months after that had to step back from the ministry here for eight weeks for health reasons. I returned shortly after, but some of you weren’t sure I would, and that was terrifying.
We regrouped. We settled into a rhythm. We worked hard, and we worked well together. We made our way along a path with its own twists and turns, navigating as we went, learning as we moved forward, reminding ourselves along the way that we are human and flawed and doing our best.
We have accomplished huge things. We have strengthened the foundations – quite literally – of this beloved community.
Now, I say “we,” and, yes, I’m included in that we. But in reality, it’s “you.” Because a congregation is so much more than a minister. A congregation is a people, gathered in love, committed to saying yes to love and to life, committed to being more together than any one person can be individually, committed to taking care of each other and our world in ways that make radical differences in people’s lives. That is what you are doing here. That is why I wanted to join you. That is why I have walked alongside you. And that is why I know you will carry on long after I am gone.
We – you – accomplished this long list of successes because of the dedicated people in your midst: your Board and your Management Team, your Finance Committee and Membership Team, folks who have worked on Stewardship and Building and Grounds and the Kitchen Project Team. There are so many people here who make this place what it is – from the Sunday Morning Team to our office volunteers, our Religious Education teachers and Youth Advisors to members of the Adult RE Committee and the Social Justice Council. You – you! – are the congregation. You are USNH. “You are not small. You are not unworthy. You are not insignificant.” You hold within in you the “energy of the universe itself.” Sometimes it literally feels that way with everything going on around here! The “energy of the universe itself!”
Now, many of you – not all of you, but many of you – are familiar with interim ministry. In fact, some of you have expressed great trepidation at embarking upon another interim period. An interim minister is usually with a congregation for one or two years between settled ministers. The interim time is not always easy for a congregation. I’ll be the first to admit that. But it can be an important time for a congregation. It’s time to take stock. To think carefully about who you are and who you want to be. It’s time to grieve the departing minister, the dreams deferred, the impermanence of all things. It’s a time to learn that ministry can look different with different people and still be good.
I will never forget the interim minister the year my family joined First Unitarian Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. It was 1989 and the interim was the Rev. Marilyn Sewell who later became the minister of the First Unitarian Church of Portland, OR and a powerhouse in our association. The year she was in Cincinnati, I was 10 years old. And she was magical. We invited her over for dinner and I still remember her sitting at our table. I felt like the luckiest kid in the world. The minister was at our house for Sunday dinner. Wow! She was thoughtful and insightful and shepherded the congregation through that transition beautifully. And she inspired a little girl to become a minister. You never know what might happen during an interim period.
Most of us can understand the need for an interim ministry. But you might not be as familiar with the concept of “developmental ministry.” This is a relatively new idea in our Unitarian Universalist Association; it came into fashion around 2014.
A developmental ministry takes place after an interim ministry. A developmental minister usually stays with a congregation 3-5 years. And the aim is for the congregation and minister to work together on three to four specific goals, to strengthen the foundation of the congregation, to make some cultural changes, to address some specific concerns or problems.
I want to share this concept with you because I think it might be helpful as we think about our time together and where we’ve been and what we’ve done. Because I think we have, in a way, done a developmental ministry. We didn’t set out to do this, and we might not have wanted to do it this way, but we have worked hard together over the past four years to put this congregation on solid footing for a successful future. That is work I am proud of. And I hope you are too.
Sometimes a journey takes us in unexpected directions. Sometimes we have a detour we hadn’t planned on. Sometimes the journey takes longer than we’d planned.
In the mountains of North Carolina, where I spent summers as a child, the mountains are green and rolling. And from the valley, when you look up at them, you see comforting curves sloping up to soft peaks. But as you begin to hike those mountains, you realize that they are full of lookouts. You hike a while and you come to a lookout – a perfect stop for a snack or a meal, a pause to catch your breath. You know you aren’t to the top; that there is more of the journey ahead, but it feels good to have gotten this far, and the view is spectacular.
Perhaps we can think of our time together like a mountain hike to a significant lookout. I have been your companion for the one leg of the journey. I know many of you are disappointed that we won’t travel together to the summit. I know it’s scary to not know who will walk alongside you next – and whether or not they will have an accurate map.
The truth is, you have the map. This is your congregation. It always has been. This is your journey.
Your ministers – longtime, settled, interim, developmental – whatever the case might be – we are sojourners in your land. Our task is to travel faithfully alongside you for whatever time we can and then to say goodbye with grace and integrity and love as you continue on.
~
We are – all of us – people who come from the stars.
Our journey to this time and this place has been long and winding.
And it will continue long after our time here is past.
May it be that during our precious time together we make a difference in each other’s lives, live with love as our guide, hold the dialectic of disappointment and resolve, and savor the journey as it unfolds.
May it be so and Amen