Creating Community

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
November 3, 2013

What kinds of things can we do to strengthen our community? Conversation, shared tasks, vulnerability, sacrifice, these are some of the elements of strong community. What makes a church a community for the people who belong to it?

How do you prepare for hard times? How do you protect your life against times when the rain dries up and the wind blows hard and everything is brittle and easily broken? When nourishment is hard to find and you aren’t sure you can face what’s coming next? If you are in that situation literally, what you need is to have a good deep well, a well that reaches way down to where there is nearly always water. Last month we had water communion, where we mingled our lives together by pouring water into the common bowl, talking about the places that fed our souls. Water is the basis for all life. Everything that breathes is largely made of water and needs water to live.

The poet Bryon says: “Til taught by pain, [we] really know not what good water is worth.” – Don Juan

On Friday we had a memorial service for Jenny Malin. She was rich in friends. Some of those friends were from her chalice circle here at First UU.

When we are in pain, or just in a long dry spell. Those things that sustain us – we don’t know what they are worth until we are in trouble. We need connections with people, friends, people who know not only our name but what moves us, what hurts us, what we love. Being here in this church community is a way of making connections, but Sunday morning is a time when having a conversation of any depth is hard.

One of the good opportunities here for building deep connections with people is our small group program – we call them Chalice Circles. In our Chalice Circles we talk together with 4-12 other people about big questions like

“What is an example of grace in your life?
When have you experienced a heartfelt truth, and how did it change your life?
What about your daily work do you find nourishing?
What is the meaning of life?
Why do we need religion?
Why evil?
How do we know what we know?
How can we face death?
Why do we suffer?
What does it mean to be human?”

The lessons have a structure for the purposes of sustainability and fairness. The format give us a way of structuring our interactions so that all of us, the quiet ones as well as the verbally quick, may be heard and made to feel a part of the whole. There is an opening reading. This is one from the topic of Listening:

I like to talk with you.

I like the way I feel
when you are listening
as if we were exploring
something in ourselves:

The plunge into a silence
and how you come up with words
I tried to find:

The otherness about us which makes
conversation possible.

When I talk with you,
the give turns into take
and borrow into lend.

Now and then, a phrase from you
will kindle like a shooting star;
the mornings in you rouse me from a sleep.

I like the babble and the banter when I greet you
at the door,
and when the room is filled with guests,
your quiet look,

as if there were a secret between us
of which nobody knows.

– from Raymond Baughan

After the opening reading, everyone briefly checks in, saying a few words about how they are that week. Then a bowl is passed around with lots of slips of paper with readings on them having to do with the topic of that lesson: forgiveness, hands, failure, hope, patriotism, views of God. After they are read, there are a few questions posed in the lesson. Participants choose one question or a few questions and talk about them in a time of sharing. Everyone gets a chance to talk, and no one interrupts or talks back to you or even asks you a question.

When you are through, they say “thank you.” That helps shy people feel safer sometimes. When everyone is through with what they wanted to say about the questions, there is a time of silence, where people just breathe together for a moment or two. Then the discussion starts, when you can comment on what someone said, ask questions, say what came to your mind as they were speaking.

There is a covenant of respectful behavior that is followed. Each group works out a covenant of how they want to be together, so there is kindness in the discussion, support, so no one person dominates the group. A facilitator is there to remind people of that, to hold the covenants in mind like a container for the group.

When the discussion is done, there is a check-out time. We usually say “How do you want us to hold you in mind this month?” It’s a way of getting to know and trust a few people you may never have otherwise had in your life. Another bonding experience is the service the Chalice Circles promise to perform together. One group painted the women’s restroom by the offices. Some might help set up or clean up after big events.

In order not to form cliques, the groups run for a year and then re-form, to keep attention on the fact that there are always more people who may want to be there, and that the groups will grow and change. Chalice circles are one way in which First UU is hospitable to people by welcoming them in to a space of friendship and conversation.

In the UU tradition, we believe in ongoing revelation. Everything that is knowable about the world, about the human being, about the truth, about the Spirit, about ourselves, about one another, is out there, still to be found out, still to be revealed. We believe that there is tremendous wisdom and beauty in the scriptures of the great religions of the world, but we believe the truth is still coming in, that it can evolve, that the story of each of our lives and the story of our lives together are as sacred as the story of the people of Israel or India. So the story of your life, the story of our lives together, is sacred scripture.

Dr. Thandeka, who teaches theology and culture at a UU seminary in Chicago called Meadville Lombard, says that it is in small groups that we practice the central ritual of our faith, the sacred act of being in right relationship with one another. She says that the power of people coming together to share their stories, to talk about ideas, to accomplish a service for others, that power is the central authority of our faith. I think that power is the water we use to quench our thirsty lives, and to quench the thirst in one another for being heard and known. In doing that, we help to put the world back together.

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.

http://itunes.apple.com/podcast/first-unitarian-universalist/id372427776