Environmentalism and a Culture of Caring – An Earth Day message

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Mark Skrabacz

Pastor – UU Church of the Hill Country

April 18, 2010

One morning, long, long ago—in fact, 120 million years ago, something incredible happened here on Earth: The first flower ever to appear on the planet opened up to receive the rays of the sun. Prior to this momentous event, the planet had been covered in vegetation for millions of years but none had ever before flowered. I imagine that this first flower probably didn’t survive for long, since conditions were not quite yet favorable for a widespread flowering to occur. One day, however, such conditions came about.  A critical threshold was reached, and our planet became filled with an explosion of color and scent.  It was an evolutionary transformation in the life of plants and all life.

Much later, flowers would come to play an essential part in the evolution of consciousness of another species: us!  Think about it: over the years, flowers have provided inspiration and insight to countless artists, poets, teachers, and mystics.  In the New Testament, for example, Jesus, himself, tells us to contemplate the flowers and learn from them how to live. And the Buddha is said to have once given a “silent sermon” during which he held up a flower and simply gazed at it.  After a while, one monk began to smile. It is said that this monk was the only one who had understood the sermon. According to legend, that smile (which has been interpreted over the years as “awakening”), that smile was handed down by twenty-eight successive masters and became the origin of Zen.

So it is no accident that flowers are included in so much Buddhist art.  Seeing the beauty in a flower can awaken humans, however briefly, to the beauty that is an essential part of our own innermost being, as the Buddha called it, our original face — our true nature.

This is one of the reasons why many of us like to garden and work with plants. They are serene and their energy is infectious.

This is all described by Eckhart Tolle in his book, A New Earth.  Tolle raises the possibility that important religious teachers like the Buddha and Jesus were some of humanity’s “early flowers,” so to speak. That is to say, they were our precursors. They were rare and precious beings who were as revolutionary in their day as was that first flower 120 million years ago.  And when they appeared on Earth, conditions were not yet favorable for widespread comprehension of their messages.  This, argues Tolle, is because humanity wasn’t evolved enough, hadn’t yet reached a critical threshold of understanding to grasp the teachings.  Thus, these great teachers were largely misunderstood by their peers.

This raises the question:  are we more evolved now, some 2,000-2,500 years since the Buddha and Jesus were alive?  How many of us think that we are?  Although this evolutionary growth of consciousness has seemed to come in fits and spurts—and even seems to regress at times.

In these days of population growth and climate change, of industrialization and shrinking natural habitats, the question becomes whether or not are we evolving quickly enough to preserve life as we know it?

I want to be clear: this is not going to be a doomsday Earth Day sermon.  Rather, I want to share with you this morning why it is that I am feeling hopeful in spite of the many problems threatening the health and future of our Mother Earth.

Let me start with the assertion that we already possess the technical knowledge, the communication tools, the ability to educate our fellow humans about population control, and the material resources to grow enough food, ensure clean air and water, and meet the rational energy needs of all of us.  We have everything we need to survive and thrive for generations to come. Everything, that is, except for the required shift of consciousness that will inspire us to implement changes on a global scale.  Many of us are still plagued by the old habits and understandings that have caused the mess in which we now find ourselves.

“The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be.” Thus began the famed astronomer Carl Sagan’s majestic 1980 television series, Cosmos. The epic grandeur of Sagan’s Cosmos—suffused with “billions upon billions” of planets, stars, and galaxies—captivated the imagination of viewers everywhere. But despite the almost sacred reverence for existence that permeated the series, some still took issue with its strictly scientific bias, finding little room for the numinous or the transcendent in Sagan’s naturalistic worldview.

Fifteen years later, the integral philosopher Ken Wilber issued an 800-page response to concerns such as these. Titled Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, Wilber’s grand tome argued for a more holistic conception of the universe—one that would honor the profound revelations of science and religion alike. He called the Universe “the Kosmos” (with a “K” from the Greek). So when some use the term “Kosmos,” with a “k”, it’s not only to affirm our appreciation for Sagan’s extraordinary universe but also to restore the spiritual depth and transcendent mysticism that the ancient Greek philosophers, who coined the word, duly acknowledged and revered.

Perhaps a more realistic synthesis of the two comes from renowned systems thinker Gregory Bateson,

“If you put God outside and set him vis-a-vis his creation, and if you have the idea that you are created in his image, you will logically and naturally see yourself as outside and against the things around you.  And as you arrogate all mind to yourself (Arrogate, from the latin arrogatus defined as claiming or seizing without justification.) Continuing with Bateson: as you arrogate all mind to yourself, you will see the world around you as mindless and therefore not entitled to moral or ethical consideration.  The environment will seem to be yours to exploit.  Your survival unit will be you and your folks or conspecifics against the environment of other social units, other races, and the brutes and vegetables.  If this is your estimate of your relation to nature and you have an advanced technology, your likelihood of survival will be that of a snowball in hell.  You will die either of the toxic by-products of your own hate, or simply of overpopulation and overgrazing.” Sounds daunting and all to familiar.

Here is the good news: although still relatively small, there is a rapidly growing percentage of humanity that is experiencing a shift in consciousness that many deem necessary if we are going to survive as a human species.  Some associate the shift to the theories and proofs of quantum physics.  Others attribute it to the emergence of the internet—which has brought connections and ideas into our homes from all over the world — our global village. Still others see it as a natural result of the end of imperialism or of the 2500 year epoch of the dark ages.  I personally think that all of these things are having their impact.  Just go to any bookstore and you’ll to find a number of books on the subject, some written by notable scholars such as Joanna Macy and David Korten.

These two writers differ greatly in their fields of expertise—Joanna Macy is a Buddhist scholar, and David Korten is an expert in business and economics.  But both are currently telling us the same thing: that we are now living in a defining moment in the course of our history. That the era of cheap oil is ending, climate change is undeniably real, and economies can no longer rest on the unsustainable foundation of financial and environmental debt.  Out of necessity, they tell us, we are collectively entering a new era.  We are moving away from the life-killing political economy birthed by the Industrial Revolution and we’re moving towards a sustainable, life-enhancing political economy that exists in harmony with the Earth.  They both refer to it by the same name.  They call it “The Great Turning.” Perhaps you’ve heard of it.

Simply put, this concept of The Great Turning encompasses all the actions currently being taken to honor, care for and preserve life on Earth these days—and there are lots of them.  But it is more than these, too.  It involves a new understanding of who we are and what we need to be happy.  In large numbers, people are learning the falsehood of the old paradigm that there is an isolated, competitive, solid self.   In its stead, we are beginning to embrace a new paradigm in which our selfish and solid separateness is seen for what it really is: an illusion.  We are discovering our inter-connectedness to everything, our mutual belonging in the web of life.  So despite centuries of mechanistic Newtonian conditioning, we are slowly learning to name, once again, this world—and everything in it—as sacred, as whole.

Whether these understandings come through Gaia theory, systems theory, chaos theory, or through liberation theology, shamanic practices, the evolutionary theology of UCC minister Michael Dowd, engaged Buddhism,or even Unitarian Universalism, such insights and experiences are now freeing growing numbers of us from the grip of the industrial-corporate-growth society. They are offering us nobler goals and deeper pleasures. They are redefining our wealth and our worth, thus liberating us—finally—from compulsions to consume and control everything in sight.

To me, I view this trend as a natural emergence of the Feminine (or Yin) Principle in a world that has been strongly skewed toward the Masculine (or Yang) Principle.  But however you view it, there is no denying the fact that something is sparking a transition around the world and it is giving me hope!

That’s because one of the best aspects of this shift is that there is less room for panic or self-pity.  No, with these new understandings of who we really are, it is gratitude that generally arises, not fear.  We become grateful to be alive at this moment, when—for all the darkness around us—blessings and awakenings abound. The Great Turning helps us stay mindful and steady, helping us join hands in community to find the ways the world self-heals — like our Sanctuary Garden and Hands on Housing.  The present chaos, then, doesn’t doom us but becomes a seedbed for a better, more sacredly connected, future.

This is a very exciting time to be alive: we have so much potential; we can make such a difference!  Of course that’s not to say that these coming years will be easy.  One can always expect resistance to change, especially when it affects profitability and patterns of dominance.   No, we are now encountering times of great suffering and uncertainty.  And at times our grief will seem overwhelming—like the type of grief so many of us are currently feeling about war, and genocide, and natural disasters, and over-population, of species extinction, and so many more disasters.

But like living cells in a larger body, it is natural that we feel the trauma of our world. So today — this Earth Day — we offer some balance to the paralysis of analysis and its intense anguish that we might be feeling these days.  These responses arise from the depth of our caring and the truth of our interconnectedness with all beings. After all, “to suffer with” is the literal meaning of compassion.  And this world could use a lot more compassion.

What if we were to understand our relation to nature and our environment in sacred terms or poetic terms or, with Emerson and Thoreau, in good old American transcendentalist terms, but there is no broadly shared language with which to do this. So we are forced to resort to what is, in fact, a lower common denominator: the languages of science and bureaucracy. These languages have broad legitimacy in our culture, a legitimacy they possess largely because of the thoroughness with which they discredited religious discourse in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. But many babies went out with the bath water of religious dogma and superstition. One of these was morality. Even now, science can’t say why we ought not to harm the environment except to say that we shouldn’t be self-destructive. Another of these lost sacred children was our very relation as human beings to the mystery of existence, as such. As the philosopher G. W. Leibniz famously wondered, “Why is there something rather than nothing?”

For St. Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century, this was the fundamental religious question. In the place of a medieval and renaissance relation to the world that was founded on this mystery, we have a mechanical relation that is objective and data driven. We no longer have a forest; we have “board feet.” We no longer have a landscape, a world that is our own; we have “valuable natural resources.” Avowed Christians have been slow to recall this sacred relationship to the world. For example, only recently have American evangelicals begun thinking of the environment in terms of what they call “creation care.” We don’t have to be born again to agree with evangelicals that one of the most powerful arguments missing from the 21st century environmentalist’s case is reverence for what simply IS. One of the heroes of Goethe’s Faust was a character called Care (Sorge), who showed to Faust the unscrupulousness of his actions and led him to salvation. Environmentalism has made a Faustian pact with quantitative reasoning; science has given it power but it cannot provide deliverance. If environmentalism truly wishes, as it claims, to want to “save” something—the planet, a species, itself—it needs to rediscover a common language of Care.

Here’s a valuable learning: you cannot defeat something that you imagine to be an external threat to you when it is, in fact, internal to you, when its life is your life.  The truth is, these so-called external threats are actually a great convenience to us. It is convenient that we can imagine a power beyond us because that means we don’t have to spend much time examining our own lives. And it is very convenient that we can hand the hard work of our resistance to these so-called externals over to scientists, our designated national problem solvers.

Environmentalism should stop depending solely on its alliance with science for its sense of itself. It should look to create a common language of care (a reverence for and a commitment to the astonishing fact of flowers and plants and existence) through which it could begin to create alternative principles by which we might live. As Leo Tolstoy wrote in his famous essay “My Religion,” faith is not about obedience to church dogma, and it is not about “submission to established authority.” A people’s religion are “the principles by which they live.”

I’ll close with this: The establishment of these principles by which we might live would begin with three questions. First, what does it mean to be a human being? Second, what is my relation to other human beings? And third, what is my relation to existence as such, the ongoing “miracle” that there is something rather than nothing? If the answer to these questions is that the purpose of being human is “the pursuit ofhappiness” (understood as success, which is understood as the accumulation of money); and if our relation to others is a relation to mere things (with nothing to offer but what they can do for us); and if our relation to the world is only to “resources” (that we should exploit for profit); then we should be very comfortable with the world we have. If this world goes to perdition at least we can say that we acted in “good faith.” But if, on the other hand, we answer that there should be a greater sense of self-worth in being a human, more justice in our relation to others, and more reverence for existence as a sacred Whole, then we must either live in bad faith with market-driven capitalism and other systemic “givens,” or begin describing a future whose fundamental values and whose daily activities are radically different from what we currently endure. The risk I propose, as our choir sang, is for us to rise to the nobility of a star. We should refuse to be mere functions of a system that we cannot in good conscience defend. And we should insist on living a new story, one that re-cognizes the mystery, the miracle, and the dignity of things, from flowers to frogs to forests to our fellow humans, simply because they are.

Happy Earth Day!

Excellence in Ministry

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Rev. Don Southworth

Executive Director

UU Ministers Association

March 28, 2010

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

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READING

From Why I Am a Unitarian Universalist

by Jack Mendelsohn

Who is a Unitarian Universalist minister?

A person who is never completely satisfied or satisfiable, never completely adjusted or adjustable, who walks in two worlds-one of things as they are, the other of things as they ought to be-and loves them both.

A UU minister is a person with a pincushion soul and an elastic heart, who sits with the happy and the sad in a chaotic pattern of laugh, cry, laugh, cry-and who knows deep down that the first time the laughter is false, or the tears are make-believe, his or her days as a real minister are over. UU ministers have dreams they can never wholly share, partly because they have some doubts about those dreams themselves and partly because they are unable adequately to explain, describe, or define what it is they think they see and understand.

A UU minister continually runs out of time, out of wisdom, out of ability, out of courage, and out of money. A UU minister is hurtable, with great responsibility and little power, who must learn to accept people where they are and go on from there. UU ministers who are worth their salt know all this, and are still thankful every day for the privilege of being what they are.

The future of the liberal church is almost totally dependent on two factors: great congregations (whether large or small) and skilled, effective, dedicated ministers. The strangest feature of their relationship is that they create one another.

SERMON

It is a joy to be with you this morning! I want to thank Janet, your excellent interim minister, for inviting me to be with you today and for the assistance and support of our service leader Valerie Sterne. Valerie told me this was her first time but I think she was just saying that to make me feel good because this is my first time in this pulpit.

As Valerie mentioned I am the Acting Executive Director of the Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association. I bring greetings and tidings of hope and anticipation to you from over 1600 active and retired Unitarian Universalist ministers from around North America. As I have read your newsletter the last few months I want to affirm something that Stefan Jonasson told you in January. Many of our UUMA members will be watching you in the next few months as you continue to do the work to lay the foundation for your new minister. I expect your search committee, when the time is right, will be hearing from quite a few of them.

The UUMA’s purpose is to support and nurture excellence in ministry through, mainly, continuing education and collegiality. I have the good fortune to serve, advocate for and occasionally lead those people who – in Jack Mendelsohn’s words – are “never completely satisfied or satisfiable, never completely adjusted or adjustable, who walk in two worlds-one of things as they are, the other of things as they ought to be-and loves them both.”

While I am not sure that all of us UU ministers, always love both of those worlds, I do know that Mendelsohn has one thing absolutely correct. “The future of the liberal church is almost totally dependent on two factors: great congregations (whether large or small) and skilled, effective, dedicated ministers. The strangest feature of their relationship is that they create one another.”

This morning I want to explore with you what happens when great congregations and great ministers create one another, or, to put it another way, what needs to be in place to enjoy excellence in ministry. Excellence in ministry – what might that be?

The Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association continues to develop and strengthen programs, training, expectations and standards of conduct to nurture excellent ministers but I hope you noticed that our purpose is not to support excellent ministers but excellent ministry. Because we know – what Jack Mendelsohn and I suspect most of you know – ministry is not something that is only done by ministers; excellent ministry takes ministers, of course, but it also takes all professional religious leaders and congregation members to make it a reality.

My late colleague Suzanne Meyer wrote, “A congregation is a cooperative institution; everyone is expected to participate in the creation of community and to share the load. The operative question is not what I can get out of this, but what of myself can I give? Faith communities exist not to serve us, but to teach us how to serve.”

Ours is a shared ministry. The word ministry, in its most ancient form, simply meant to serve. Gordon McKeeman, former president of Starr King School for Ministry, claims that ministry is a quality of relationship between and among human beings that beckons forth hidden possibilities and that it is inviting people into deeper, more constant, more reverent relationship with the world and one another. If we hold his words and the original definition of ministry to be true, ministry is to serve and bring forth the best in each other.

Defining ministry is easy; at least when we compare it with defining excellence. In December 2008 the UUA convened a summit on Excellence in Ministry. Ministers, educators, denominational and lay leaders were invited to reflect on the issues and challenges we face in achieving excellence in ministry. Daniel Aleshire, Executive Director of the Association of Theological Schools, told the group that excellence was a hot topic among religious denominations and seminaries representing every theological perspective. He said in his keynote address, titled The Tyranny of Excellence, “Being committed to excellence doesn’t make excellence into tyranny, of course. But if these many different schools, with their very different capacities, visions of the world, and strategies for theological education, can all use “excellence” as the descriptor of their identity, then it must have a very plastic definition. That is the tyranny. I have decided that “excellence” is one of those terms that everybody affirms because nobody knows what it means.”

We all know what mediocrity in ministry means. Hopefully we have not experienced it very often. But excellence, excellence is a little bit harder to define. Perhaps defining excellence is akin to what the Supreme Court declared when they were asked to define pornography decades ago. We known it when we see it. Or in the case of excellent ministry, we know it when we experience it. When we connect with something greater than ourselves, when we are transformed by serving others, when we find meaning and purpose and create a world with more compassion and love.

In the early 1980’s Tom Peter’s book, In Search of Excellence, was a rage in the corporate world. Six million people bought the book and I was one of them. Peters was recently asked to define excellence in a time when so many businesses in this country are falling apart, he responded, “The 1982 excellence was a static experience. But real excellence is always a moving target.”

Knowing that excellence always is a moving target, a target that we never really know we have reached and knowing that excellence in ministry is usually found in places which cannot be measured – our hearts, minds and souls; I offer you some lessons I have learned about co-creating excellence in ministry with the congregations I have served the last ten years. As you prepare for your new minister I hope you find them helpful.

The first lesson is that the mission and health of the congregation is the most important work and ministry that ministers and congregation members must be about. -. I am pleased to see that you are are doing the work of revisiting your mission and asking questions such as “what is our saving message?” Too often our congregations, ministers and religious professionals forget the mission of the congregation and focus too much on individuals and not enough on the health and well-being of the congregation’s mission. This is one of the reasons that we have not grown as a religious movement and is one of our greatest causes of conflict in our congregations. Ministers need the freedom and courage to challenge congregations into living the church’s mission and congregations need to expect their ministers and their members to pay attention to the mission of the congregation more than their own satisfaction.

My colleague Julie Ann Silberman-Bunn says this well. “A church is not a place where you are catered to and pampered. Our congregations are religious communities, sanctuaries for those in need, safe heavens, and respites from the chaos of the world. Churches neither expect nor guarantee satisfaction.” Excellence in ministry and mission aren’t about satisfaction they are about transformation – in ourselves, in our congregations, and in our communities.

Lesson #2 – A congregation must always remember they are both a sanctuary from the world and a sanctuary for the world. Every congregation is first a place for people to come to heal, to rest, to connect with something greater than themselves. The world is often a difficult place and we all need a place to come home to where we are known and loved for who we are and not what we do. But once we find a religious community like this we must not forget that we are not simply a sanctuary from the world but we are a sanctuary for the world as well. Congregations spend far too much time dealing with internal challenges and issues and far too little time reaching out to the world. A healthy congregation will not only have a care team for its members but will have a care team for the members of its community; a vibrant congregation will not only have a membership team to assist and integrate new people into the life of the congregation, they will also have a team and strategy for how to serve more people outside the doors of the congregation.

Reaching out to another is at the core of the religious life. Being in community with other congregations, other faith traditions does not only add new perspectives and learning to the congregation, it gives congregations the joy of serving and teaching someone else.

Lesson #3 – Remember that we are Universalists too. In 1961 two religious traditions came together as one. Our new name put the Unitarians in front of the Universalists and for most of our congregations Unitarianism is the primary theology and the main identity they carry. We call ourselves Unitarians far more than Universalists. In most of our congregations we seem to value the intellectual stimulation and rational debate of our Unitarian heritage far more than the heart centered passion and love of our Universalist faith. But excellence in ministry, especially in the multi-cultural world of the 21st century, must speak to the body, mind and spirit. Marlin Lavenhaur of All Souls in Tulsa Oklahoma, Senior Minister of one of the largest and most diverse congregations in the country, says he is not sure if Unitarian Universalism will survive the 21st century but he knows Universalism will. If we truly want to be more diverse and reach out to more people with the saving message of our faith Universalism will be far more attractive than Unitarianism. Embrace mystery, redefine God, language and worship that unites and moves the heart and the head.

Lesson #4 – Covenant is not optional. To build the beloved community and practice excellent ministry, we must make promises to each other about what we value and how we wish to be with each other. We are a covenantal and not a creedal faith. If we are to grow in our spiritual and emotional maturity we must agree on how we will be together. Every thing does not go. Being part of something larger than ourselves means that sometimes we must sacrifice something for the greater good. Covenants are not rules of behavior; they are promises about how we will be in relationship with another and how we wish to be challenged and comforted into being better selves and a better community.

Covenants – when done right – create and nurture trust; and trust, or rather lack of trust – is one of the shadow sides of Unitarian Universalism that too often quietly destroys the morale and connections of a congregation. We do not trust our leaders and our leaders do not trust us. Instead of assuming best intentions we fear and criticize those who are paid and volunteer to lead us. When we speak about the benefits of building and taking part in a religious community it is easy to get carried away with the ideals of what a community can be and forget the realities of how difficult building, and taking part, in a community truly is. But nobody said that congregational life – or excellence in ministry – would be easy. But it is worth it.

Lesson #5 – Be more religious and be more spiritual. To be religious – by definition – is to be bound together. It is to be aware of the sacred and to be willing to manifest the holy more fully in our lives. It means participating in a community and learning how to be guided and how to teach on the path of life. Spirituality is a commitment to embracing and enhancing spirit – literally, the breath of life. Religion without spirituality is community, rules and tradition that become meaningless and even lifeless. Spirituality without religion can become self-centered and bereft of connection and caring for the world around us. The words in your vision – “as an inclusive religious and spiritual community” – tell me you understand this. Of course, the challenge is to keep on living it.

Lesson #6 – Spiritual practice is foundational to Unitarian Universalism and congregational life. Spiritual practice is the regular act of doing something – hopefully every day – that connects us with the spirit, the sacredness, the joy, the depth that lives within and outside of us. Ministry – and especially excellent ministry – demands we have a deep well to draw from. Spiritual practice, drinking from the springs that quench our thirst, is essential. Two fundamental spiritual practices are gratitude and generosity. There are many ways to acknowledge and celebrate these two both in our lives and our congregations but I have seen that the congregations and individuals who are able to cultivate and create these spiritual practices live happier, more meaningful lives. Regular spiritual practice and sharing the fruits and techniques of that practice with others in your congregation should be an expectation of membership and if it happened would transform not only every life but every congregation as well.

Lesson #7 – Cultivate and develop leaders. To practice excellent ministry, to create the beloved community, the congregation that transforms lives, that makes a difference in the lives of those in the larger community demands strong, compassionate, competent leadership. Leadership development, training and support is not an optional practice it must be a fundamental priority of any congregation. To serve in leadership, to assist and support your leaders, paid and unpaid, to spend money to make sure people get the best training they can is what every member and every minister must to be committed to. It is not okay for nominating committees to have to ask 20 people to find one who will serve, it is not okay for congregations to elect members to serve on boards and not give them the skills and tools to be effective, it is not okay for religious professionals to not be held accountable to leadership and spiritual development plans and/or not being given the budget to do them right.

Lesson #8- Ministers are not your friends so treat them better than that. The congregant/minister relationship is a unique one. Intimate without being very close; formed in large part by past experiences and projections that have nothing much to do with who the minister really is. Whoever you call next year to be your new minister, they will have some of the stuff that delivers excellence in ministry and so will you. And you both will have stuff that gets in your way. The challenge will be what will you do with and for each other to bring out the best in both of you. Shower your minister with gratitude and generosity and most importantly the gift of telling him or her your truth. Don’t expect her to be your friend – do expect him to tell you the truth – as they see it – and not only the truth that will make you feel comforted all the time. Take a risk. Give cards and presents even when it is not a holiday or birthday. Be more generous and give more money so that your minister – and all your paid religious professionals – know you are as serious about this place as they are. And most importantly create a congregation that enables and supports excellent ministry in all its glorious forms.

Good luck in your work. May you know the peace, joy and transformation that ministry, especially excellent ministry, can bring into your life and the lives of others. May it be so. Amen.

Freedom with responsibility

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Rev. Kathleen Ellis

Co-minister of Live Oak Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin

Ministerial Settlement Representative

March 14, 2010

Thanks so much for your warm hospitality! I’d like to express special appreciation to the Reverend Dr. Janet Newman and the Worship Committee for turning the pulpit over to me this morning. Together you have learned a great deal, you have been through tempest and storm, and you look ahead to further challenges in ministry. It’s an awesome task, but the rewards are great.

I am also grateful to the Rev. John Weston, Transitions Director, who has provided much of this information and excellent training for representatives like me. We are fortunate to have him as a guide for the search process. As for me, it is a real pleasure to be here, just across town from my home.

You have been through incredible transition and upheaval over the past year or so, yet here you are, poised on the threshold of still more change. The process for calling a settled minister has been honed through generations of experience for the benefit of congregations and ministers alike.

[Describe the difference between the search for a settled minister and the selection process for an interim. Clarify that I will be neither of them-just a guest preacher; just a consultant.]

The freedom we enjoy as Unitarian Universalists extends to multiple areas of congregational life. We are free to follow our spiritual paths where they may lead, free to decide whether and how to support the church with our resources of time and money, and free to call our own ministers. Other congregations and denominations revolve around holy scripture, sacred creeds, and lectionaries that recommend the readings and themes for worship. They seek a spiritual depth that comes when the ongoing study of familiar text sinks into one’s psyche over time and this is a great spiritual practice. Have you ever fallen in love with a poem and read it over and over until it seeped into your very bones? That’s the spiritual depth I’m talking about.

Traditional churches have doctrine to defend their beliefs and practices. They have bishops and hierarchies of authority to whom the minister is responsible for what he says, as well as how he conducts himself. Unitarian Universalist churches have very few of these controls. We have the freedom and the responsibility to govern our own affairs plus plenty of traditions of our own!

Some of you may wonder about Unitarian Universalist headquarters in Boston, our District Executive Susan Smith, your consultants Peter Steinke, Stefan Jonasson, Walter Pearson, or even me, your Ministerial Settlement Representative. Do we represent authority and control? Actually, we represent service to you, a member congregation of the Southwestern Conference and the Unitarian Universalist Association. You have autonomy and independence, but also the good sense to call in consultants as appropriate.

As for ministry, there is no external control over the content of sermons or the religious education that goes on here. Only the most out-of-bounds ethical behavior by a minister that is brought to the attention of the Ministry and Professional Leadership Staff Group, will warrant any attention.The Unitarian Universalist Association works for you, more like a trade association that forms a network for the benefit of its members. You the congregation have the power and the authority!

A great deal hangs on the choice of a minister. Your minister has enormous power in setting the tone and direction of worship, and even the tone and direction of the congregation. And you, the members of the congregation, have an opportunity to call a minister who best fits your mission and vision. The minister serves at your pleasure for as long as he or she remains in covenant with you. It is a sacred trust you hold for the people who are not even here yet. Ministers come and ministers go, but the congregation remains.

All of us are called in one way or another to serve the highest ideals we can achieve. Some of us are called to serve as professional ministers, with an intention to forge a bond with a congregation over the long term. You as a congregation will have a chance to call a minister presented by your search committee after hours of careful deliberation. I know that Austin in an attractive place to live and this is the largest UU congregation in town, so I am fairly confident that the search committee will consider a dozen or more ministerial prospects.

Settled ministers may have the good fortune to bless the children, then the grandchildren; celebrate their coming of age; officiate at their weddings; stand at the threshold of dying and death; partner with you in the ministry of the church. The letter of agreement between minister and congregation is open ended, to allow for the fullness of relationships to develop over time.

Jack Mendelsohn once said “The future of the liberal church is almost totally dependent on two factors: great congregations (whether large or small) and effective, dedicated ministers. The strangest feature of their relationship is that they create one another.”

Your Search Committee of 9 members will represent you as a congregation, selected with the greatest of care. Basically, you will want people who represent the congregation as a whole, not just special interests. In other words, you want Senators instead of lobbyists who advocate for one program like religious education for children or a particular social justice cause. You want people who are thoroughly steeped in Unitarian Universalism. You want people who have the time to spend.

Committee members can expect to work hard-about 400 hours over the course of a year-although someone told me recently that 400 hours is an understatement. But however daunting their task, a good Search Committee will reap spiritual benefits along the way. It’s an opportunity that comes along only rarely. If you are interested, find out from your Board about the application process.

Once the committee is in place, the rest of you will want to support its work by answering questions, filling out surveys, sharing your dreams for ministry, and preparing the way for new leadership. On rare occasions a committee decides not to make a recommendation according to their original timeline because they have not found the right match. However, the greatest risk is to call someone who is not a good match for who you are and where you hope to go.

A secondary risk follows when anxiety about the process gets the upper hand. Anxiety can generate risk-aversion and self-doubt to the point of paralysis. Look on this as an adventure! The committee will have wonderful ministers to consider and their challenge will be to narrow the field.

The Search Committee as a whole should get to know the congregation as thoroughly and intimately as possible so that they become a microcosm of the congregation. When they do the work of culling through ministerial records, when they conduct interviews of interested ministers, and when they meet ministerial pre-candidates in person, the gifts and qualities of Search Committee members will stand in for the congregation, as though all of you were in the room.

You as a congregation will benefit from this kind of representation. Your trust in the Search Committee will become a healing balm not just to the committee, but to each other and to the congregation as a body.

Freedom and liberation and the term “liberal” flow from the same stream. A liberal education gives us a broad appreciation for literature, history, public speaking, music, philosophy, and mathematics. Liberal arts and liberal religion have been closely related. Both of them aim to crack open our minds to new possibilities, new horizons, and escape from narrowness of vision, ignorance, and prejudice.

When I was a young woman, the best thing that could have happened to me was to participate in an international Girl Scout encampment in North Carolina, then to move from a southern upbringing in Shreveport to college in Missouri. My liberation from childhood had begun.

The late Rev. Forrest Church points out that the Church as an institution is conservative by nature. It forms boundaries, maintains traditions, and in association with other churches, provides a stabilizing force in society. On the other hand, it models and incorporates liberal values such as “hospitality, neighborliness, forgiveness, compassion, and tender loving care.” [from God and Other Famous Liberals, p. 122]

You would do well to select a minister who is generous in spirit and deeply immersed in the task of being and becoming a whole person. Technical expertise is not enough. To know how to preach a sermon or facilitate a group; to excel in scholarship or organizational development; all these are elements of ministry-pastor, prophet, rabbi, preacher, storyteller, midwife, juggler. But ministry is even more about the whole person, knowing what it is to be human and recognizing the humanness in others-that everyone is a juggler!

As you get to know your new settled minister, you will grow in the depth of your relationship. The minister may challenge your preconceptions and call you to account, and both of you will grow spiritually over time. With the right chemistry, your spiritual growth will be an inspiration to your minister, who will be the better for it. The congregation and the minister will shape each other.

Ministers are called to serve their Higher Power and to serve their congregations with their entire being. It doesn’t matter so much whether they are theists or atheists or any other theology; their task is to honor yours and to help you reach your fullest potential. To paraphrase Peter Lee Scott, ministry requires scholarship, yet it must be grounded in people’s lives. It is a social profession, yet often a lonely one. It involves finding meaning and making meaning; acknowledging human frailty while trying to rise above it; providing a shoulder to cry on, yet sometimes being the one who cries. Ministry is what you will do-together.

The ministerial search process has come about through years of experience in best practices, and in the past decade the process has also become much more open, thanks to technology. Both ministers and congregations prepare a record that is posted on the web. Every UU minister who reads your profile and is interested in checking you out further can indicate interest with a simple click on the keyboard. In the old days, the Transitions Director had to consider all the congregations and ministers looking for each other, play the role of matchmaker, and send a list of potential candidates to the congregations.

Now it’s more like “Match.com” or “EHarmony.com.” You are free to present yourselves as honestly as you can, and nothing stands in the way of a minister who likes your profile. Likewise, every Unitarian Universalist minister in search must answer a series of questions through the settlement web site such as why they are seeking a ministry and what kind; how they wish to work with staff and volunteers; and a mistake they have made and how they approached it.

Here’s a typical timetable: Once the search committee is formed, they will go on a retreat for team building, bonding, understanding each other’s personalities and skills, and deciding on a process for making difficult decisions. Then they will launch surveys and group meetings to find out what you want in a minister. Alas, no minister can walk on water or leap tall buildings, so you will need to set priorities. Remember the good qualities of your previous ministers as well as characteristics that seem important for the next decade or more.

The search committee will absorb all this information and post a congregational record on the web by Oct. 31. While they are waiting for interested ministers to indicate interest in serving you, they will put together a packet of information about you, various aspects of congregational and spiritual life, lots of photographs, and info about the City of Austin. This is typically ready by the end of November.

At that point, the process enters a phase of confidentiality. The committee will start reviewing the Ministerial Records of prospective candidates, exchange packets with the most promising ones, conduct phone interviews, and narrow the field to 3 or 4. Each of the pre-candidates will meet with the search committee for a weekend of interviews and a sermon at a neutral pulpit. The committee will sift through all available information, check references, and receive an interpretive summary from the Transitions Office that reflects everything in the minister’s file. In this way, any important information that is known to the UUA will be provided to the committee.

The committee then will decide on the one minister who is the best match for this congregation-someone with solid experience, a good track record, and a religious leader who can work with you toward your dreams. Ministers want a place where they themselves can learn and grow in spirit and where they can have a positive impact.

Be forewarned, however: No minister, however well qualified, can do this work alone. You need a mission and you need commitment. Unless you as a congregation, along with your minister, understand why you are here and what you are called to be, the best ideas and any amount of “busyness” will keep you static and uninviting. Then you need to own that mission, take responsibility for it, and carry it out into the world.

That’s what will get you excellence in ministry. The quality of worship, education, care and outreach will rise accordingly. Remember the idea of Jack Mendelsohn-that great congregations and great ministers shape each other. May you travel this transitional year with high spirits and a healthy sense of humor along the way.

Amen

House Rules for our UU Game

by Posted in Audio available, Guest Speakers, Sermons

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Corinna and Dale Whitaker-Lewis

February 28, 2010

Readings:

Dale: We have two short readings. The first is from William Butler Yeats…

THE SECOND COMING

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity

Corinna: And this, from the instructions on a box of cards..

Fluxx, a perfectly simple card game for 2-6 players.  Simple? Fluxx has but one rule: “Draw 1 card and then play 1 card.” What cards could you play?  Well, you could play Time, or War, or perhaps Love. I shall play Chocolate. It is a fine thing to have Chocolate.  What’s this? You have played the card “Play 2.” Well, then, play a second card!  Don’t you know the rule of Fluxx? It is this: “Draw 1 card and then play 2 cards.” Well, that’s what it is NOW.  Perfectly simple.  The goal of the game?  Oh, I’m terribly sorry. No one has played a Goal card yet.  Enter the World of Looney Labs Games.” (Now that’s a fitting name, isn’t it?)

Corinna: Good morning everyone!  My name is Corinna Whiteaker-Lewis,

Dale: and I’m Dale Whiteaker-Lewis, and we have been coming to this church for almost 20 years.

Corinna: We have two daughters who delight and challenge us every day, Audrey who you just heard reading the children’s story, she’s 13, and Bridget’s here as well, and she’s 10.

We hope we will live up to Janet’s expectations today –we are very honored she asked us to speak, and also quite a bit daunted! Please forgive our need to read quite a bit of what we will say to you today.

We have reflected much over the years on this church, this congregation, this religion called Unitarian Universalism.  Having been raised without a religious tradition, this church is the only one I’ve ever known, so it’s all new to me.  We found this church in 1991 because we wanted someone to marry us, but leaving it at just that felt wrong.  We needed to make a connection here, and we did – we made good friends and have left sermons feeling recharged for the week ahead.

Dale: I grew up attending an Irish Catholic church in Cedar Falls, Iowa.  I didn’t connect strongly with the faith or rituals of my parents, and came to hate being forced to attend.  Millions of people have gained purpose and direction from that religion.  But, I came away as a teen bitter and—except for my love of a good hymn—feeling like I had escaped something unpleasant.  When we started coming here in ’91, I overcame my childhood resentment with a bargain.  I would be OK attending church if I: A. Don’t have to dress up –and— B.  Don’t have to “remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.” I could miss a week or two.

Corinna: And for a while, that was all we needed—inspiring sermons, a casual dress code and no truancy policy. But, our family’s participation in the life of this church has also really waxed and waned, waned and waxed over these last 18 years.  Some years, we maybe came to service once a month. The old bargain didn’t make our church life meaningful by itself.  But seeing that you all accepted our approach made this a safe spiritual environment for us.  In the vocabulary of logic, this was a necessary condition of our growth, but not a sufficient one.

Dale: We sometimes fell back on that basic bargain, but over time both our involvement and our unconscious expectations grew. Over the years we have taught in summer camps, chaired the Social Action Committee, helped form an Amnesty International group, served on the Board of Trustees and worked on the church’s computer network.  My resentment of religion faded, and we enjoyed most of our church activities.

Without thinking about it, though, our expectations grew: for a cleaner RE wing, for support of our personal causes, for a well-oiled volunteer process, and the like.  So, our minimum requirements for church life expanded, but I can’t say that we ever spelled out the new bargains clearly, even to ourselves.  At the same time, we often didn’t know what the church and its members expected of us, and so we weren’t always very engaged.

Corinna: Looking back, the inconsistency of our attendance seems strange to me.  I guess there were reasons why we didn’t come much some years: newborns, new houses, new jobs. So, while I think an expressed tolerance and acceptance drew us to this place, the absence of a request for commitment kept us from making one. Asking for a commitment would have meant this church would have to know itself, and be able to describe that to us.  And then tell us what our role, as church members, would be.  Because to ask us to figure out what this place meant to us was waayy too much work, I mean that’s just waayy too many choices.

Does that mean we were lazy? Does that mean we were not good UU material? I mean, this is all about everyone finding their own truths, right? I think it’s a lot to ask someone new to our church to do on their own, though. I mean, it’s just the kind of work you join a church to do together with others–developing relationships and, dare I say, some rules. I am one of those who work better with constraints than without, and I wonder if that doesn’t have something to do with it. I mentioned this to my friend Natalie, and she talked about how some of the most creative costumes she’d ever seen were for the black and white ball in San Francisco.

Multiple choices tend to stymie me, and I don’t think I am alone in this.  Dr. Barry Schwartz, in his book, “The Paradox of Choice, Why More Is Less” argues that too many choices can erode our psychological well being. He cites a study where shoppers will buy more jam when offered fewer varieties. He argues that after thousands of years working towards the simplification of providing for the necessities of life, the trend is reversing back to foraging behavior, as we are forced to sift for ourselves through more and more options in every aspect of life. I know that after shopping exclusively at little Wheatsville for a while, entering an HEB can feel like climbing Mt. Everest.

Dale: Fast forward to February of 2006, when our minister delivered the only sermon we’ve ever walked out of, about the responsibility for the 9/11 attacks.   The experience helped reveal hidden assumptions and expectations we had.  And, understanding those new expectations matters more to us now than what was said, or how it made us feel.  We had made new bargains and had new, necessary conditions for our church life.  We had strong expectations that weren’t being met, about what other church members believed or would accept.

I have been an alcoholic in recovery for nearly my whole adult life—I spent my 20th birthday in rehab.  The lessons of sobriety have shaped my whole life, including church.  I have been taught that, when I have resentments, it helps to look relentlessly at my own part in the matter.  This serves two main purposes, first to take the focus off the offender, since I’m never going to change them.  Second, it helps me see where—to quote recovery literature—I’ve made decisions based on self which later put me in a position to be hurt.

Corinna: After 2006 and through the dismissal to this year, we have thought a lot about our role in the hardship we now face together.   In the example of the 9/11 sermon, Dale and I found we had developed unspoken assumptions about how others must support us, about the type of sanctuary you were required to maintain for us here.  We had built the walls of our sanctuary well inside the walls of the church, and left a lot that we didn’t like outside those walls.  We both feel now that for our church to heal, we must come to see not just a part of the church as our sanctuary, but the whole church body.  Not doing so sets us up for disillusionment.

For example, if you are very in touch with the music program, or the RE program, or the Forum program, and that changes suddenly and drasticly, will you still find peace of mind and sanctuary here?  We were convinced that we personally needed to expand our concept of sanctuary, but we weren’t sure how to accomplish that.  So, we were both relieved and excited when Janet started emphasizing covenant, especially developing something like a “covenant of right relation”.   It seemed to provide an opportunity for us to look at our relationship to the church as a whole.

Dale: To us, it seems like creating a good covenant is a lot like deciding on how to play certain games among friends.   Preparing to play a game might start with months of training for a marathon, or a casual invitation to play cards.  Just so, our activities at church might be well-planned or impulsive.  In each case, though, a lot about what happens and how we experience it depends on the rules of the game.  The rules might all be agreed and well-known ahead of time, as with the marathon.  Or, they might be last-minute, the way kids often make up new rules for each backyard game.  More likely, there are some of each: “standard” rules and “house” rules.

Standard rules to tell us things like which of the 100’s of card games we’re playing with that same old deck.  And House rules to fit the game to the players or circumstance.   Maybe we have younger or inexperienced players that need a break, or less than the usual time to play, or maybe we just think our rules will be more fun, just as we might spice up an old recipe.  If we don’t agree on some rules, though, can we even play a game together?  Or, are we just in the same place at the same time?  Think of that tense feeling we all know from childhood, when a player tries to change the rules to his or her favor in the middle of the game.

Corinna: Our family has always enjoyed playing games together.  In BK times, before kids, we had a lot of fun playing the video game Myst with our friends Karen and Michael, Rod and Carol.  We also had way too much fun with a free CD of Boggle that we got off a box of Cheerios. (Geeks that we are.) The girls started out on these cooperative board games where no one actually loses.  Harvest Time! Let’s all help each other bring in our crops!  But there’s one thing we always do, and that’s set up some house rules.  Do-overs might be allowed.  You can start your turn before amassing 30 points.  Sometimes there are very strict time limits on (some player’s) turns!  Or, you can have all the time you want.

Dale: Amazingly, as you heard in the reading, you don’t need to know the goal to start playing the card game Fluxx! The goal comes in somewhere along the way, and often changes.  What makes it playable is that people sit down together and agree on a single rule, just to start with.  People walked in the door of this church.  It’s reasonable for a person to first experience this sanctuary and our services when they start coming here.  But it’s a church,we are the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin, so we don’t think of this place as a lecture hall.  It is a sacred space, for inspiration, for meditation, for transformation. And much of that transformation happens in the relationships between each other, as a people sitting here together, sharing life.

Corinna: I don’t think I was looking for spiritual growth, really, when I started coming here. I was just looking for a group of people who shared my beliefs, so I could feel good and comfortable about having those beliefs. I was tired of being the outsider, the one who isn’t like everyone else.  At 6’2”, as a lifelong vegetarian, as a liberal in Texas, I’ve been in the minority often enough.  Being different was something I long had turned into a strength and used as a defense mechanism.

It served me well for quite a long time, but ultimately it was an easy out, with no opportunity for change.  My spiritual journey now is to be the best person I can be, while contributing to something bigger than myself.  Something that is meaningful, uplifting, and a catalyst for good. So, I make a commitment to this community.  But to adhere to a commitment you make to other people is hard work, and you have to work at it.  It is not easy, but from that hard work comes growth.

Dale: To my mind, the most important rules for a covenant of right relation are the most minimal.  What standard of behavior can I, on my worst day, still commit to uphold.  If some morning I didn’t have time for breakfast, and I just found out a loved one was ill, and my shoes don’t fit right and my car is acting up and I’m late to church and you stop me in the hall to ask me about a problem with a church computer.  Then, what behavior should I tell you to expect of me?   That minimum standard of behavior says:  if I don’t meet even this, you are right to be concerned for me, and it is OK to be upset with me.   You should expect better, and you can and should help me to do better.   I may not be pleasantly receptive to your correction, but the heart of the covenant is that, even on those occasions where I miss the mark, I commit to stay engaged while I try to get my behavior back in line.

Corinna: When you are in community with other people, when you’ve shared a covenant on how to behave, the hardest thing is to call someone on not honoring it.  The fact that we don’t have a covenant yet makes it even harder, since we don’t even know if we agree on what’s acceptable.  I experienced this just recently. I had an exchange with someone here at church that made me feel uncomfortable and maybe even a little bit threatened. This person spoke very judgingly, told me I was wrong, raised her voice, and seemed very irritated and exasperated with me.  I remained calm, and restated my point of view, but ultimately did not let this person know how she was making me feel. I then turned around and talked to someone else about had happened!

Fortunately, my confidant gently let me know that my silence only allowed this person to think that the way she treated me was ok.  And on top of that, I was developing a negative opinion of this person without giving her any chance to explain herself. So, while I upheld a personal commitment to be polite, I also have the harder job of standing up for that value with someone who may not share it. This is the very difficult part of living honestly with other people, of being in community.  But, this experience would have been easier for me if I had known that we both agreed to a covenant, as members of this church, to be caring toward one another.

A covenant of right relation, or some agreed-upon house rules, allows us to leave our suspicions at the door, and have meaningful experiences in an environment that may strain or break our expectations about things that matter to us.  Having that commitment to each other about a minimum standard of my own behavior and yours, even helps me tolerate situations where the commitment is breached, because we have a standard to get back to that is a community standard that we can remind each other of.  Bringing this out of the realm of the implicit helps expose assumptions we have about “normal” or “acceptable” behavior.  And I make the promise here and now, before you all, that I will get up the nerve to speak to this person!

Dale: And, just to give you an idea of how disciplined we were in preparing for this sermon, a very timely article came in yesterday’s UU World magazine.  Written by a consultant with the Alban Institute, Dan Hotchkiss, it talks about covenant, mission, and vision.  When discussing who the board of a church must serve, he says they must serve, quote, “the congregation’s mission, the covenant the congregation has set its heart to and the piece of the Divine Spirit that belongs to it.” He then goes on to ask and what is the mission?  “The great management consultant Peter Drucker wrote that the core product of all social-sector organizations is “a changed human being.” A congregation’s mission is its unique answer to the question, “Whose lives do we intend to change and in what way?” …. Growth, expanding budgets, building programs, and such trappings of success matter only if they reflect positive transformation in the lives of the people touched by the congregation’s work,” unquote.

Corinna: You know, what we have here is such an incredible opportunity.  There are not many chances for a group of people to get together and determine for themselves how they want to be with another.  Like the children in Roxaboxen found, this is a freedom.  But it won’t happen; we can’t be healthy here, unless we are willing to be vulnerable and say that we’re not perfect and would like to change.We must start with ourselves.  And then dare to think that we might know what we would like to be, and that with each other’s help and love, we can get there.

Dale: In the meantime, come play some games with us! The Open Minds Covenant Group is hosting an all ages Games Night in Howson Hall this coming Saturday night at 7 p.m. Snacks. Drinks. Surprises. Childcare provided in the nursery (need to RSVP for that), but there will also be supervised games for kids 5ish and up. But you’ll have to follow the rules, and we know you will! We’ll bring Fluxx…