Guest at Your Table Kickoff

Rev. Marisol Caballero
November 24, 2013

We celebrate gratitude by engaging in generosity! The Unitarian Universalist Service Committee’s annual “Guest at Your Table” campaign kicks off this Sunday and continues through December. We learn about opportunities to support grassroots programs and organizers who are working to bring peace, justice, and compassion to communities worldwide.

Reading: “Declaration of Interdependence”
by Melanie Bacon

We hold these truths to be self-evident:

That all life is interconnected, and endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights and responsibilities,

That among these are presence, compassion, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights and responsibilities,

We open our minds and hearts to the needs of others, and our own true needs, We hear the sound of the living universe in our ears, and add our voices to the song, We live every moment with awareness of the purity and power of existence.

And for the support of this Declaration, we pledge to each other our love and our breath,

For the freedom of the one is the freedom of the all, and the pain of the one is the pain of the all;

The breath of the one is the breath of the all, and the breath of the all is the breath of God.

Prayer/Meditation

Spirit of Love,

Of families, of friends,

Wrap us in the warmth of our interdependence on this cold morning, As we cannot help but shiver, too

When some don’t have homes or heat on such chilly nights.

Despite our turkey and stuffing, Our bellies cannot help but ache, too When many go hungry.

Even as some rejoice in sweet reunions, We hold in our hearts those, Among us and unknown to us,

For whom the holidays are a time of great sadness

Due to distance, poverty, grief, absence of familial acceptance, or depression. God of many names, Protect all who travel.

Fill us with gratitude, hope, and love.

Amen.

Sermon: Guest at Your Table Kickoff

My earliest memory of what could be considered an international, intercultural exchange happened when I was just four years old. We had just moved from San Antonio to Alpine, TX, where my mother enrolled in Sul Ross State University after my parents’ divorce. We were living in these little white, crumbling cottages alongside the freeway that headed into town. They’ve long since been condemned and torn down. I was what our friends we stayed with in Africa last month called a “moveous” child, meaning I didn’t stay put very often.

I quickly made friends with another little girl, around my same age, who lived several cottages down. She told me that she was from “EgyptandKuwait,” just like that, as if it were one word. It sounded like a magical land because her house always smelled like smells I’d never smelled before, her mother worse a loose scarf, draped elegantly around her head and shoulders, and her dad, a geology student at the university, sometimes wore what looked like a dress over his pants.

They were cool. One day, I woke up; finished my frosted flakes with record-speed, got dressed, and ran to see if my new friend could come outside to play, only to discover that her whole family was still eating breakfast. They invited me in and I joined them on the floor, where they had spread newspapers out, and were eating a feast like I hadn’t ever seen! They had chicken drumsticks, rice, veggies, hot, freshbaked flat bread, and all before lOam! They were so cool. I often got a second breakfast before I ever knew what a Hobbit was. And often, my mom was none the wiser.

Since then, I have had the honor and pleasure, in various settings, of breaking bread with many people from various parts of the world and who have come from various circumstances. There is something about sharing a meal with someone that allows for a deeper understanding of our shared humanity.

Today, we are kicking off our Guest at Your Table program, which will run through the end of December. Many of you know about this program already. This congregation has participated in it every year for a while now. Many more of you do not, as this has been mainly a project of Sunday School children and their families, in years past. This year, we hope to get the whole congregation involved!

As great as it would be to actually host an international peaceworker at your dinner table, I should let you know, up front, that no one is actually coming to sit at your table as part of this program. Each year, the symbolic guests at your tabie are four individuals or grassroots organizations, vetted and chosen by the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (UUSC), that work to further the “spirit of gratitude and justice, equity, and compassion in human relations” that the UUSC promotes. This year, the UUSC has chosen to work with and feature four people who are all working to empower others to recognize and work toward their own basic human rights.

The way the program works is simple: a small bank is set on the dining table and, each time there is a meal in the house, a donation (no matter how small) is placed into the bank, as if an extra meal has heen paid for. At the end of December, the banks are returned to the church and the collected money is sent to the UUSC, who continues to work with and financially contributes to our four “guests.”

With prior campaigns, the UUSC sent each participating congregation colorful cardboard banks that featured pictures of each of the peacemakers on the sides. This year, for the first time, in an effort to be more environmentally conscious, the organization has decided not to print any more such boxes. Instead, folks are encouraged to be creative in acquiring their loose change receptacles. So, in that spirit, our children have taken up that challenge and have repurposed water bottles to create not-your-average piggy banks! We have doggie banks, and froggy banks, and flamingo banks… all for fifty cents each. In fact, I’m not sure that we actually had many piggy banks made, come to think of it. To invite one of our guests to your table, you may purchase one of these wonderful works of art and imagination at the Lifespan Religious Ed. Table after church. The whopping proceeds will benefit the Children’s Religious Education Fund. Or, you may choose to use an old coffee can or a mason jar for your table, something less animalistic.

It’s a great program that can provide wonderful fodder for not your normal, everyday dinner conversation. Unless your household is anything like mine, in which Erin asked me the other evening, “Can we have one night without talking about conquest!?”

I would like to introduce you to one of your dinner guests and their work. In the pamphlet, Stories of Hope, available at the Lifespan RE table after service, we learn about Danielle Neus who, through her organization, the Bright Educators of Delmas (GEAD), is teaching people in the most devastated areas of Port-au-Prince, Haiti how to grow personal gardens in recycled tires. Haiti has a plentitude of garbage, such as discarded tires. What it doesn’t have, however, is easy access to affordable, healthy food.

“Their initial project trained 60 families to make tire gardens, which allowed them to grow cabbages, eggplants, spinach, and other food that’s healthy to eat and valuable to sell. And GEAD uses popular education, which invites Haitians to work together – to learn from each other, combine their resources, and find solutions that benefit the entire community. Danielle shares the GEAD motto: “We are all one, we remain one, and we will die one.”

Danielle says that, in order to achieve common goals, honest communication is everything. The group that started GEAD finds success because each member is able to speak freely about their dreams and their fears. She believes that community members must talk openly and work together, because they may all have the same goals and never know it if they don’t speak up.

The next step for GEAD is to open its own training center in the city, so that they can train more families at a faster rate. It would also allow GEAD to locally produce compost, a vital material that currently must be brought in from the countryside. Danielle believes that providing training for youth is especially important, because moving communities forward is a responsibility shared by every generation. Her goal is not just to teach her fellow Haitians to plant seeds and grow food, but also to plant the seeds of community organizing and empowerment so people may rebuild their lives.”

Please pick up a copy of “Stories of Hope” or download it from the UUSC website to learn more about: Nelson Escobar, who came to the United States from El Salvador as an asylum-seeker, only to discover, first-hand, oppressive working conditions. “Nelson now helps others to overcome barriers, learn about their rights, and access support from workers’ centers and other organizations.” “Malya Villard-Appolon works to end gender-based violence in Haiti and provides support to survivors. Malya is educating and empowering women to know their legal rights and to talk to one another to create safer communities.” George Friday trained in community organizing and began building coalitions as a teen and now helps people realize the strength of their combined voices and “the value of their grassroots knowledge and expertise.”

Around the time that I was discovering that Chicanos didn’t own the monopoly on delicious breakfast food, (chicken drumsticks for breakfast does rival chorizo and eggs), I was also being taught the importance of neighbors by a Mr. Rev. Fred Rogers. He stood in my TV and asked me daily, through song, if I would please be his neighbor and he modeled how to be a good neighbor. It was not until adulthood, upon learning more about Mr. Rogers, that I realized he probably wasn’t only talking about your friends who live next door when he spoke of “neighbors.” This Presbyterian minister was speaking of being a neighbor, of “neighbor” as a verb –neighboring.

Mark 12:28
And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, asked him, “Which commandment is the most important of all?”

Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, 0 Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.

And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’

The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”

Mr. Rogers continues to teach us, as this quote grew viral after the Sandy Hook shooting, “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’ To this day, especially in times of ‘disaster,’ I remember my mother’s words, and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers – so many caring people in this world.”

Our neighbors might live across the street, across the country, or across the world. Who are the helpers?

This week, we recognized the fiftieth anniversary of the death of another prophetic soul who taught us about this type of neighboring. In his famous inaugural speech, President John F. Kennedy reminded us that, “With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking his blessing and his help, but knowing that here on earth, God’s work must truly be our own.”

We declare our interdependence. We must be the neighbors. We must be the helpers. Sometimes, we must be the guests at someone’s table. Always, we are God’s hands.

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