many miles have been traveled

since last we spoke.

I'm in Massachusetts now, staying in a dormitory apartment on campus at Andover Newton Theological School. I'm a full-time student. Quinn is living with me as a service dog, and well, it's been a long road.

But what I wanted to share today is that I preached my first sermon as a student minister. It was in the Universalist Unitarian Church of Haverhill, Massachusetts, where I am doing my field education placement for the year. Field education means I spend 15 hours or so at the church or doing church things each week, I preach some, I do ministerial stuff, I learn how it goes. It's a lot like a practicum if you've ever trained to be a teacher. I'm really tired right now, so I'm just going to say that the people at this church are really pretty awesome. They even applauded when we finished the service today. I am so pleased and blessed to have found this congregation. Here's what I preached. I'll wrote more later.

What are we called to do?
Dawn Fortune

In seminary, I am surrounded by people who have been called to ministry in a variety of ways. I have friends who are in training to be ministers in a number of faith traditions, from evangelical Christians to Reformed Judaism, and from the pulpit to the classroom.

It is not surprising then, that we seem to spend a lot of time talking about this thing called “call.” What’s yours? When did you get it? What does it look like to you? I have heard as many stories about call as I have met people, and each is as unique as the individual describing it. Some describe their call to ministry as a slow-moving awakening of purpose, a gradual understanding of what they are meant to do with their lives. Others describe a transformative spiritual experience, being touched by the divine. I’ll tell you about my call experience in a moment.

But first some background. In order to know why my call experience was what it was, I need to let you know a little bit about me first. I was born just down the river in Newburyport, at the Anna Jacques Hospital, in the summer of 1965. I was baptized at Saint Louis DeGonzague Catholic Church in the south end, where I also made my first communion.

I received that sacrament in the requisite white frilly dress, clutching the pink plastic beaded rosary (the boys got blue), and thinking holy thoughts about the sacrament and unholy thoughts about the itchy white tights and uncomfortable patent-leather shoes. My grandmother was the guardian of my soul, making sure that I received all of the necessary sacraments before I graduated high school.

I believed the tenets of my Roman Catholic faith until I got into college and began to face some of the serious, scary questions that I had been privileged to not have to answer earlier. Suddenly issues about reproductive choice became important, as did questions about sex and relationships, and when I came out as a lesbian, it was at the height of the HIV/AIDS pandemic and the fiercest animosity between the church and the queer community. I knew where I was not welcome, and once I left, I found it much easier to look with a critical eye – indeed, a very critical eye – upon many of the tenets that I had accepted as a matter of faith before.

Years later, I was taking a humanities class that required as a homework assignment that I attend a church that was not of my faith tradition. I had heard things about those Unitarian Universalist folks, that they were liberal and all, so I took a deep breath and went inside to check it out. The UU church in Waterville, Maine is a white clapboard affair with a clock and bell tower and a stained glass window with a picture of Jesus and some sheep. It looked frighteningly traditional to me, and I was braced for the worst as I sat in the hard wooden pew.

Imagine my surprise when I flipped through the hymnal. Readings by Lao-Tse? Marge Piercy? A hymn by Holly Near?! My mind reeled. This could NOT be church, I thought. It made no sense. I don’t remember what the sermon was about that day, but I remember going home and crying. It was all too much. I had never been in church and heard the message that I was OK. I had never been in a church that affirmed me as a human being, as a woman, as a queer person, as a person with left-of-left-of-even-more-left-than-that-leaning politics. It was more than a month before I could go back. And then another month. And then a couple weeks. And then it was summer and you all did what?! Really? You close for the summer? This was the craziest church I’d ever seen. In September, I came back with everyone else, and stayed.

But that’s not about my call. That’s just how I got in the building.

Many years later, I started preaching. Mostly I was raising money for a political campaign, but what I was doing was preaching. I told stories to an assembled crowd of people who were interested in the topic, I made them laugh, I made them cry, and I did my best to make them write big checks. I had some success, and when the campaign headquarters got a call looking for someone to come preach on marriage equality at a UU church, well, a few fingers pointed at me.

Now keep in mind, that although I was a UU, I considered myself a mostly-lapsed UU. I wasn’t attending a church, and was living in a very secular world, where I polished and treasured a moderately scandalous reputation. The thought of me in a pulpit was, and remains, to a number of my friends, more than a little amusing. But I went and I preached and I did a fair job. I was beating a political drum. I signed up the volunteers I needed, and I went home.

People started suggesting that I might make a good minister or preacher over the course of the campaign, but I brushed off such ideas as ridiculous. I was a radical sex educator, a political hack and a writer with strong opinions and a big mouth. I could not see myself in a ministerial role, working with boards and committees, being polite to people I thought really needed a sound thumping, verbal or otherwise. It just didn’t seem reality-based. I was not, as we say in seminary, “a non-anxious presence.”

A month or two later, I did join a church, and in a perfect storm of life experiences over the course of a couple weeks, I became single, started some deep spiritual reflection, joined the church and got a job after more than a year of unemployment. One Sunday morning during this time, I was sitting in my new church home. In the pulpit was our new Director of Religious Education and Lifespan Curriculum, a man of Irish Catholic extraction from eastern Massachusetts. He told us the story that morning of how he came to enter ministry, how he ended up in seminary, and how he experienced his call to serve in our church.

As he spoke, the most amazing thing happened. The sun moved gradually across the sanctuary to where I was sitting. It enveloped me in light and warmth, I felt something I can only describe to this day as a physical presence pressing down on me, but not in an unpleasant way, and words came to my mind unbidden. I hope you will forgive my language, but the words that came to me were “well shit. I’m going to be a minister. I have to go to seminary.” I figure the profanity was the divine’s way of letting me know that this message was specifically for my blue-collar self and not the polite young man to my right. Unable to move, I sat and cried through the rest of the service.

Now I know that this kind of experience is not typical of what we expect in Unitarian Universalist churches, but there it is. It is what happened to me. To tell the story in any other words would be inauthentic to my experience and dishonest to you.

What I have learned about my call is that it is the thing that takes over. My call is the thing that will rearrange my priorities. Studying is my priority now.

Call is the thing that I describe as a seed knowing which way to grow when planted in the dark earth. My call is like that – all else is becoming less and less relevant, as I know that what I am supposed to do is push skyward, somehow trusting that the color and shape of the blossom will make itself known when I have grown enough.

Historically, we have understood call to be something similar to my experience – a lightning bolt from out of the sky. The risen Jesus appears to Saul on the road to Damascus and knocks him blind from his horse; Jesus tells the brothers Simon Peter and Andrew to “come follow me and I will make you fishers of men.” We tend to think of call as involving hair shirts, suffering, sacrifice, and discomfort.

I think it is dangerous thinking to believe that a call must mean some sort of brilliant, vaguely unbalanced passion for a thing that causes a person to give up all their earthly belongings and take off into the wilderness to pursue it. That version leaves a lot of us out of the running. Saint Francis of Assisi heard a call from god, renounced his title and wealth, took off all his clothes and walked into the wilderness naked to live on grains and honey that nature provided. Not all of us can do that. Some would argue that not all of us should even try. But I think we are all called to do the work of the divine.

Our Unitarian Universalist faith calls us to action in a unique way. We are called to uphold our principles, based upon their own moral value. In our non-creedal, non-doctrinal faith, we do not have the threat of eternal damnation as a motivator. As Universalists, we do not have to worry about being separated from the love of the divine. By definition, we believe in universal salvation. There is no threat of punishment to compel us to right behavior and right relations with the world around us.

We draw our living tradition from Jewish and Christian teachings, but we do not respond well to demands for strict adherence to edicts from long ago. Our Humanist sensitivities require us to pass things through a lens of reason to see if they are relevant and appropriate in our present world. Tradition is good, but it had better have some science to back it up or we resist it. We believe in transcendence and the power of the divine, but we believe in reason, too. In the words of Ronald Reagan, “trust, but verify.”

Our Unitarian Universalist Principles call on us to do lots of things: To affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of all people, to act with justice and compassion in human relations, to accept one another and encourage spiritual growth, to search for truth and meaning, to use the democratic process, to work for peace and liberty and justice and to respect the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

That’s no small order. Christians and Jews have the Ten Commandments. You’d think seven principles would not be as challenging as something as very authoritative as The Ten Commandments, but I think our principles call on us to be as vigorous in our moral behavior as those edicts from the Hebrew Bible.

It is not easy to uphold all of our principles every day. We live in a world that makes it singularly inconvenient to practice these principles on a daily basis. Respect for the interdependent web of all existence is jeopardized every time we get coffee at the drive-though, either by the Styrofoam cup with distinctive pink and orange letters or by the mere fact that we’re sitting in our idling automobile, spewing greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere.

My adherence to the first principle is sorely treated when I see some of the recent political debates and the things people there have said. Inherent worth and dignity of all people? Really? Yes, really. All of them.

This is not a religion for the faint of heart or conviction. There is nothing wishy-washy about believing that there is inherent worth and dignity in people who behave in hurtful ways.

Let me phrase it this way: What is it we do that serves love, justice, grace, and peace?

When we serve on a committee that helps raise money for a shelter for victims of domestic violence, are we not doing god’s work? When we volunteer to help with a church committee, are we not doing the work of the divine? When we speak up when someone tells a racist or sexist or homophobic joke, are we not doing the work of the divine? All of these things are examples of things we do that are part of living in right relationship with each other and the world around us. Is that not what our principles call us to do? To live in right relationship with each other and the world? Is this not where, as Rumi said, we “return to the root of the root” of our own selves?

Sometimes I think we don’t give ourselves enough credit. I think we do what we can, wish we could do more, get frustrated that we are not perfect, and treat ourselves badly as a result. I think it would do us no harm to be as compassionate with ourselves as we are inclined to be with each other. We are called to justice, and freedom, and peace, yes. But we are called to compassion, too. And humanity. And we are human.

I want to challenge you this week. I want us to be mindful of our behavior. What we do, what we say, how we act. Let us notice what of our behavior and words serves what we are called to do. Let us be mindful of the good in ourselves and in others. Let us think, too, directly and with consideration, about what our personal calling might be. How do our personal calls mesh with what the covenants of our faith call us to do and be?

We are all called. In one way or another, we all have a call. To service, to justice, to compassion, to peace, to love, to each other, to ourselves. Let us each answer that call as we are able.

Blessed be. Amen.

sermon: gifts

What is a gift?

The first thing many of us thing of when we hear the word is a package, a three-dimensional object, generally decorated in festive wrapping denoting some kind of special occasion.

Our second thought is often of the more nebulous “gift” – a seemingly effortless, natural ability to play the piano, to paint, to nurture those in need. People with these talents are often referred to as being “gifted” or “having a gift.” Wayne has a gift of languages, or instance.

We think about gifts and giving and all that generally in December. March is not known by the folks at Hallmark Cards as a big giving month. Not many people buy St. Patrick’s Day cards. There is no major holiday in March that requires us to purchase presents for our loved ones or our co-workers. It’s just March. That long, desolate place between Valentine’s Day and Easter in the gift-giving calendar.

But I want to talk about the gifts we encounter every day.

What makes a thing a gift? Must it be something unexpected? That seems more the definition of “surprise” than gift. I think a gift is a thing that have, or perhaps receive, and we are glad for it. That can mean a gift of a new sweater or an ability to do a particular thing. The term “gift” indicates that he thing carries with it some positive emotion, that we are pleased to have this gift. If we are displeased, then it is a curse and not a gift. The status of “gift” then, is within us.

I am reminded of a story told by my Italian-American godfather. He was a construction worker, a proud member of Local 3, the Laborer’s Union in Boston. And he had been hurt. He lived with chronic and debilitating back pain, and he had to go to court to secure the benefits that were his. The opposing lawyer was casting aspersions about the legitimacy of Carlos’ injury, when my godfather told him “I am gonna give you a gift. I am going to put a hurt on you so that you can know what it is to feel what I feel. I am going to give you that gift of empathy.”

Now, in the true spirit of that exchange, my godfather was not promising that lawyer a gift. He was threatening to beat and cripple him so that he could know what it was to live with chronic and debilitating pain. I am sure the lawyer did not think Carl was offering a gift. The judge did not think that Carl was offering a gift, either, but Carl had couched his language so carefully that he could not be charged with threatening assault on an officer of the court because, technically, what he had promised to do was “give a gift.” He was duly warned by the magistrate not to actually “give that gift” to the opposition’s attorney.

I don’t think that really counts in the world of gift-giving. Nasty or unpleasant things are not generally considered gifts. By the same token, we must be careful about giving gifts and make sure that the person we wish to give to actually wants what we have to offer.
I am told that I give good hugs. Many of us are proud of our hugging skills and would like to share our gift with others. But we cannot simply approach someone whom we think needs a hug and embrace them. That is the kind of thing that requires the consent of the recipient, the hug-ee, if you will. Otherwise, it is being done to meet our own needs and not the needs of the person we purport to give the hug to. Then it is assault, or touch without consent, and not a gift at all.

Not everybody wants the gifts that we have to offer. Sometimes that can be difficult to hear. We are so happy about the gifts we have and want to share them with people we care about, but not everyone is always pleased with our gifts. My family recipe for creamed salt cod comes to mind. For me, it is wonderful food. For some, it is delicious. For others, not so much.

Let me tell you about a job I have been doing recently and some of the gifts that it has involved. Many of you remember David and Bill who first visited us here a couple weeks ago. Nice guys. They’ve bought a house in Ellsworth and have hired me to do some renovations. Well, the house was not lived in for a long time, at least by people, that is. A local population of raccoons did move in and seem to have lived pretty comfortably there for several years. It is quite possible that the raccoons thought the house to be a gift from whatever rodent gods there are – a sheltered, large place to live with relatively easy access and no humans to pester them, good neighborhood, hospital and restaurants nearby, plenty of foraging opportunities -- – truly, what more could a raccoon desire? See? Gifts are what we make of them.

So anyway, when Bill and David bought the house, the raccoons had to find other places to live, and they did. I came in with my tools and saws and a heater and lots of noise and proceeded to tear apart some portions of the house. Codes require certain kinds of construction in apartments, so that’s what I am doing.

When I tore down the ceiling though, in the upstairs apartment, along with the petrified remains of many years’ accumulated litterbox leavings, down came a petrified raccoon. CLUNK. On my head. And then onto the scaffold where I was standing.

The raccoon was petrified and hardened like an oversized rawhide dog chewie. Upon closer inspection, we discovered that he was in fact inside out. His head was on backwards. There was much speculation about how he came to be inside out, and none of it was pleasant. It is still relatively early on Sunday morning. I will spare you the details of that conversation. Suffice it to say, we had one very dead, very inside-out raccoon carcass on our hands.

I looked at Bill.

“This is gonna cost you extra,” I said.

He nodded.

Then I got out my cell phone.

“I know someone who’s gonna want this.”

Bill’s eyes grew wide. “Leave it to the lesbian to know someone who wants a dead raccoon.”

The person I called was not home, so I left a message. We named our new friend Rocky, of course: Rocky Raccoon in tribute to the popular Beatles song – and I protected him from being tossed unceremoniously into the Dumpster by either my employer or my helper.

The next day, my helper found suspicious bits of fur in a pile of litter mouldering behind the chimney. She pulled out a bone. And called for me to come inspect what she had found. Firmly wedged in an impossible spot was what remained of another unfortunate creature. I extracted him from his (to this point) final resting place from below, resulting in my second shower in dead rodent parts in two days. I called Bill and explained that there would be further adjustments in the week’s charges.

This guy had not had the opportunity yet to dry out and become rawhide like his peer. He was still composting. Ahem. I believe the term that most adequately describes the aroma is “cloying.” It is the kind of smell that gets into the sinuses and simply will not leave. Oh, it was bad.

BUT, the skeleton was in tip-top shape. The skull was perfect, the teeth all intact, and there was even enough of the pelt left to show the raccoon’s mask and some whiskers. It just looked like it was attached to a carpet that had been through the Boer War. This lamentable collection of degrading parts was dubbed “Rocky II” in homage to that regrettable series of boxing movies featuring Sylvester Stallone.

Cell phone came out again. This time I called our own Toby Alley Manring. See? I actually know MORE than one person likely to be interested in receiving a dead raccoon. In fact, the more I tell this story, the longer the list becomes of women (indeed – all women) who would like to receive a dead raccoon when next I find one.

So. Toby came and collected the raccoons with much appreciation and delight. I was nearly as happy to be rid of them as she was to receive them. We parted, both feeling as though we had received gifts. Toby got two cool raccoon carcasses that she will render (that’s a poor word here, isn’t it?) at some future date into beautiful art, and I got to get to know Toby just a little bit better, and that was very cool indeed.

We have since discovered Rocky III, and the body count seems to have stopped there. A friend from Portland has speculated that one more could make the Four Raccoons of the Apocalypse, but then I have very odd friends.

So this is where I talk again about how not everyone is going to be excited to receive the gifts we have to offer. Not everyone is going to be thrilled and excited to receive an inside-out raccoon carcass. Go figure. There’s no accounting for taste, I guess.

Emerson spoke of giving of ourselves, and truly that is the best gift we can offer. We can give of something that is inherently ours. We are often unaware of our own gifts, of what we have to offer. I am blessed to have an aunt who reminds me often of how fortunate I am. I can write. I can do a little public speaking. I can do a little organizing, I can rouse some rabble on occasion. I can tell stories. I am generous with my time and energy and my spirit. These are my gifts. They are as much a part of me as my pale Irish skin and my gray hair.

“You have so many gifts,” my aunt says to me “it’s a shame you can’t get someone to pay you to use them.”

It seems I may have found that vocation in ministry. But that is another story for another day.

Today we are talking about sharing our gifts, and I – and many others – would argue that the best gift we can give is that of ourselves. Like the little drummer boy in the children’s Christmas story, we can give of what we have. The kings brought gifts to the Christ child, gifts that were made by others, as Emerson described “ a cold, lifeless business when you go to the goldsmith’s. This is fit for kings, and rich men who represent kings, and a false state of property, to make presents of gold and silver stuffs, as a kind of symbolic sin-offering, or a payment of black mail.”

The drummer boy had no material wealth to share, but he had his drum and his hands and the music in his heart, and he shared that, without reservation. Who gave the greater gift in that story? The three men with enormous wealth who went to the equivalent of the Hallmark Store or the Middle Eastern Jewelers? Or the boy who had nothing but himself, which he offered completely?

Our hearts and our love can only grow as we share them. When love flows without interruption or impediment, we can feel the divine in it, in us, and in our works. When we give for the sake of giving, sharing of our hearts for the joy of the sharing and for no other reason, it is the work of the divine and worship in its purest form.

It is a delicate dance that we must do to know how and when to share of ourselves. We have to first recognize our gifts. We need to acknowledge that we have worth and that we are a blessing in our own right. We spend a lot of time fretting about affirming and promoting the inherent worth and dignity of every (other) person, but how much time do we spend affirming and promoting our own inherent worth and dignity? I suggest that such an effort would do us no harm. We are as worthy as any we seek to affirm. We each have our gifts. We each have something to offer of ourselves to our fellows.

The trick, of course, is that balance. How to give of ourselves without becoming a doormat? How to share of ourselves without becoming that unfortunate (and I would argue terribly codependent) Giving Tree so lauded by Shel Silverstein. The trick, I think, is to learn to be present with ourselves, and to be open to the opportunities that the world lays before us. To be ready with our drum to play from the heart, as the situation requires.

My gift to you this morning has been my storytelling, and your gift to me was your patience and attentive ear. It is not everywhere, I know, that I can tell a story of dead raccoons and make worship out of it, but this sacred space, and this community of souls makes it possible. This is our gift to each other and to ourselves.

Blessed be. Amen.


CLOSING WORDS:

It is thanks – gratitude – that makes gift-giving and gift-receiving run smoothly. Gratitude is of course, and inside operation. We can choose to be thankful for the things around us and count them as gifts, or we can bewail our circumstances as not being ideal. As we leave here this morning, as we retire to the sumptuous repast that is made up of the many gifts of the many hearts and hands of the people in this room and others who could not join us for whatever reason, let us be grateful for the gift of self that each represents and receive it as the work of the divine in each of us. Let us breathe our own gifts into the air like the a flower offers its sweet smell to any who pass close enough to smell, and to the air when no one is around.

New Year Resolutions, failure and success

Yesterday I preached at the UU church in Pittsfield, Maine. It was the first time I have done so since receiving a call to ministry. It was very different from what I did in Belfast back in November. That was politics and fun organizing. Yesterday was thoughtful worship. And I was keenly aware of just how untrained I am. Bless the host minister for being there to nurse me through and to chat afterwards about ministry and seminary and all manner of things.

I need to leave the house early this morning, so I am going to post my sermon and hope you like it. I'll try for more profound writing later. Please be patient with me.

D

Sermon:

So let’s talk about those New Year’s resolutions.

How’re they coming?

Lots of people I talk to say they don’t do resolutions any more. Not on New Year’s anyway. Too much pressure. They fail and feel bad and give up before Valentine’s Day.

Resolutions are serious business.

Town Councils pass resolutions. The Legislature will make resolutions and issue proclamations. “Be it resolved … such and such and so forth.”

We are frightened of grand things. We think we should try something big like that, but we stumble. We fall. We get discouraged. The task is too big. Too much. We cannot succeed.

So we quit. We give up.

Resolutions we make affect our lives.

I resolve to eat healthier. I resolve to lose weight, to exercise, to be more kind and patient, to recycle.

I resolve to tithe 10 percent of what I earn to my church and give 10 percent of my non-work time to charity.

These things involve a re-wiring of how we operate, and perhaps our finances and how we live within our families. That’s a tall order.

New Year Resolutions are a thing many of us used to do every year, but it seems that very few bother any more.

Resolutions are bold proclamations of our intents, of things we consider important enough to state out loud, or on paper, perhaps taped to the bathroom mirror where we can be reminded daily of our pledge.

Resolutions can stem from a desire to better ourselves, as in the “eat healthier, lose weight, exercise more” vein, or a desire to better our communities as with the “recycle, give to my church and charities, be kind to people” line of resolution.

And what drives us to make these resolutions? Are our aspirations so out of character that we need to write them down to remind us to change ourselves completely from what we are into what we want to become?

I doubt it.

We make resolutions to make ourselves better versions of who we already are. We have things that we believe in, things that we value, things we want to work toward to improve ourselves. We want to get better at what we do.

And yet, when we stumble early in the game, we are quick to give up. Before a few weeks have passed, we despair that we will ever be thin and fit and healthy, or that we can rearrange our finances to adequately support something in our lives as important as our church and we give up.

Oscar Wilde said “good resolutions are simply checks that men draw on a bank where they have no account.”

But Webster’s offered me some additional insight into “resolution.”

A resolution is not just a promise, it is an answer.

We resolve conflict.

We find a resolution to a difficult situation.

Resolution indicates an answer, and an answer in the affirmative.

Yet we bludgeon our psychic selves when we stumble with our resolutions. We beat ourselves up emotionally, for being human and having room to grow.

What matters, it seems, is not so much how we came to this place, but how do we get past it. How do we learn again to pedal into life with the fearless enthusiasm of a ten-year-old on a bicycle on a summer’s day? And when we fall and skin our knees, how do we remember that getting back on the bike is what is really important?

I think the “kids on bikes” analogy is a good one.

There is much adults could learn if we’d hang out for an afternoon at a skate park. Yes, kids ride bikes at skate parks. And they ride skateboards, and they ride in line skates. If it’s got wheels, kids will ride it and make it do tricks.

If there is a ramp, a kid will want to go down it. And another kid will want to go up. And a third kid will want to spin circles while going in either direction. A fourth kid will try to do it all while upside down.

And if you watch long enough, you will see an amazing thing.

The kids fail.

All the time, they fail.

They go up, and they come down, and not always on the same set of things they rode up on.

They scramble back up, push off, and try again.

And fail again.

Crash!

Boards and bikes fly off in crazy directions and helmets and pads hit ramps and boards and pavement and parents cringe and wince.

The kids get up, dust off and go again.

They try and they try and they try, they watch each other, they help each other, they offer advice, and the mimic the guy who’s got the move down.

They fail.

All the time.

And unlike us, they get over it.

They understand that there is a big difference between failing and BEING a failure.

You ask a kid with a board and a helmet what his goals are, he’ll likely tell you about a guy named Tony Hawk and name a bunch of moves that would make most adults blanch to contemplate.

Ask if he thinks he’ll ever get that good, and you’ll get a bunch of different answers depending on the kid. Some are cocksure, saying they’ll beat Tony Hawk one day. Others will be reverent, saying breathlessly that they can only dream of such a thing, and others still will say “maybe.”

Maybe.

As in “maybe I will, maybe I won’t.”

But they don’t get hung up on the “maybe I won’t” part. They just keep skating.

If they got each thing right the first time they tried it, there wouldn't be any challenge, now would there?

And the fun is in the challenge, the learning, the mastery. And finally, in moving on to the next cool thing to try.

They don’t get freaked out about failure. To them, it’s a natural part of learning and mastering a new skill.

When a ball player comes home from a game, be it the big leagues or t-ball, all covered in dirt from sliding into base and chasing balls around the outfield, we do not judge her harshly, saying “you should have been able to achieve your goals standing up and staying clean.” Of course not. We know that success often means getting dirty.

It usually means trying more than once.

Trying several times means you didn’t get it right the first X number of times.

It means being like Robert Bruce’s arachnid muse. It means if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.

Or, as Walter Elliot said in The Spiritual Life, “perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after another.”

Let me read to you the text on a little card I carry in my wallet. The emphasis added is my own.

We, the member congregations of the Unitarian Universalist Association, covenant to affirm and promote:

The inherent worth and dignity of every person

Justice, equity and compassion in human relations

Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations

A free and responsible search for truth and meaning

The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large.

The goal of world community with peace, liberty and justice for all

Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

These are the principles that make us who we are as a faith community.

These are not small things.

These are big things, huge ideas.

Ideals.

Goals.

Things perhaps forever beyond our reach.

Do we commit ourselves to them once a year, do them imperfectly for a couple of weeks and then quit?

Of course not.

And why not?

Because these principles are too big, too important, too much a part of who and what we are to just abandon them.

Even if we stumble.

Even if we fail.

Recently, the UU Church of Ellsworth held a series of after-service classes for adults focusing on the seven principles of our faith. It was led by members of the congregation and drew a diverse group of participants, ranging in age from 22 to the northern side of 75. It is impolite to ask how far north of 75, I am told. We had some lively discussions and some heartfelt silences. Perspectives varied but stayed within mostly predictable bounds. We all agreed that the principles were good and that we ought to work toward practicing them in our daily lives. And we all agreed that we fall short, often, but that we do what we can and must be satisfied with progress, if not perfection.

The discussion around the sixth principle seemed to be the most anguished. Principle six states a simple goal: “The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all.”

It was so big, so enormous.

A world community?

With peace?

And justice?


For ALL?!

It was so monumental that many of our group despaired of ever reaching this goal. So long as there are dishonest people, and greedy people, and mean people, and hateful people, it seemed like we’d be shoveling against the tide.

“How can we ever hope to achieve something like this?” some wailed.

Our group was split. There were some who decried such an impossible task, and there were others who shrunk it down into something a little more manageable and got to work.

I call this the “light a candle” approach.

As in “better to light a single candle rather than sit and curse the dark.”

Another woman there took the Tip O’Neil approach.

“All politics is local,” she said.

Will the whole world be able to see by the light of our single candle? No.

But the people around us might.

I was reminded of the parable about the boy on the beach throwing starfish into the sea. The beach is covered with thousands and thousands of starfish, washed up on shore and certain to perish as the tide recedes. A man notices the boy and his efforts and questions why he is tossing starfish, one at a time, back into the surf. “There are so many,” the man said. “The birds will eat them and the sun will bake the rest. They are doomed. What possible difference can you make?” the man asked the boy.

The boy holds up a starfish and nods at it before he tosses it gently into the waves. “It matters to that one,” he said.

We do not need to change the whole world to work toward a goal. We only need to change what we can reach. And sometimes that means that the only thing we can change is ourselves.

Sometimes we have to be the single candle we light. It is not easy, but it is the next right thing to do. Just keep doing the next right thing. Just reach out and offer a kindness. Just help someone who needs it. Just eat the salad instead of the fisherman’s combo platter. Just take the walk instead of watching TV.

When we make resolutions, the field is really quite wide open.


We can pick an easy target that we can comfortably achieve, designed to make us feel good about ourselves. “I resolve to return my hymnal to its place and recycle my order of service every week.”

Or we can choose something that challenges us to get outside the place where we are comfortable. “I resolve to tithe 10 percent of my income to my church and donate 10 percent of my time to charity work.”

When we aim for the big resolution, we run the risk of setting an impossible to achieve kind of goal, unless is it something we can peck at and work at and make small progresses as we go.

For me, a resolution is a thing I hold in my heart that I strive for, a principle that is in my thoughts every day, or perhaps most days.

Some days I hit it, and some days I do not.

Does it mean I have failed, on those days when I have not hit the target?

No.

Failure is not permanent.

A single failure does not mean I AM a failure.

Failures teach us what doesn’t work.
The problem comes when we insist that the methods that have not worked will work if we try them again, even if no other variables are different.

Albert Einstein defined insanity as trying the same thing again and again and expecting different results.

So perhaps we need to learn from our kids.

If a kid at a skate park tries a thing a half-dozen times and it doesn’t work, he adjusts what he’s doing until it does work. If he still has problems, he asks someone for help. He’s not too proud. He wants to master the trick.

This behavior is difficult for many adults. We get jammed up at the first sign of difficulty.

We are afraid to skin our knees. We are embarrassed to ask for help.

We fear failure and we fear shame.

We put an awful lot of power and emotional baggage behind the word “failure.”

It stops us from even attempting things that are difficult.

We are Unitarian-Universalists! Do we not thrive on a challenge? Do we not crave difficult concepts, uncomfortable ideas, flexible theologies, things that make us swallow hard and step forward into the fear?

Yet the idea of resolutions, which remember, are answers in the affirmative to difficult things, send us grouching away remarking that they are useless.

We know that our UU principles are important enough that we commit ourselves to them, not just every Sunday when we sit in this sanctuary, but in our everyday lives.

We work to remind ourselves that every person has inherent worth and dignity, and we struggle – and sometimes fail – to treat them accordingly.

We try to work for justice, equity and compassion in human relations. And sometimes we fail. We fall short of that compassionate ideal.

We do our best to accept one another and encourage each in our congregation to the kind of spiritual growth that calls them. And we often fail. We sometimes have difficulty accepting each person. We sometimes disagree with the spiritual truths our neighbors might find.

We try to support and affirm a free and responsible search for truth and meaning, but we fail here, too sometimes. If we’re honest, we can admit we’d really rather others find our version of truth and meaning.

We affirm the right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and society at large -- except when things get bogged down in committee. Then we’re not so sure democracy is a good idea.

We believe in the goal of a world community with peace, liberty and justice for all, but we despair that we will ever achieve it. We seem to be up against such enormous odds, in a world filled with greed and hate, we struggle to not get discouraged.

And we respect the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part, although sometimes we wish our neighbors would not bounce the web so violently. It disturbs our place in it, and we begin to forget again that they have inherent worth and dignity.

These are our principles. We know them. We do our best to live them.

And we fail.

Regularly.

We fall short of what we want to be.

When we fail, do we abandon it all, throw our hands in the air and walk away in defeat?

Of course not. We try again.

We stop, take a moment (or several) a deep breath (or several) and then, gently, as we are able, we step forward again into the work that our religious tradition calls us to do.

The UUA issued resolutions to covenant and affirm our principles with the authority of the gathered congregations at the convention.

Have we the authority to covenant and affirm similar broad, grand and sweeping declarations of intent and affirmation with regards to ourselves? Yes.

Do we afford ourselves the same measure of worth and dignity that we struggle to see and affirm in others?

Perhaps we should be gentle with ourselves.

So let us now take a look at our resolutions and see them as solutions, as answers in the affirmative, progress toward a goal of perfection.

We want progress for ourselves.

We want to be as fully human and as fully divine as we can be.

Let us resolve, then, to treat ourselves gently in our criticisms of our humanity while we encourage ourselves to continue to strive.

This we ask, in all the names of the Divine.

Blessed be. Amen.

strange bedfellows indeed!

OK, so this is not anything I ever imagined that I would be saying, but I preached a sermon this morning. I was tagged by a friend when a call went out for a guest speaker on the Sunday before the election.

Maine's having an election. You may have heard something about that. Something about marriage equality. Yeah. Something like that.

So anyway, I went to the Unitarian-Universalist church in Belfast this morning. I worked for several days crafting my sermon, and choosing hymns and readings and a children's story. I was a bit of a nervous wreck, but I got through it. Here's what I said:


It is just two days before the election, and I am in a pulpit, a place quite frankly, I never pictured myself short of some kind of trial. Politics make strange bedfellows, though. And despite the fact that our democracy was founded on the principle of the separation of church and state, we as Unitarian-Universalists, are called to speak out for justice, and in this season, that means we end up mixing our faith and religious practices with secular concerns. And that, I suppose, explains how this grumpy middle-aged, lesbian, ex-Catholic semi-failed UU ended up in a pulpit two days before an election to not quite talk about politics.

As Unitarian-Universalists, what do we believe? What makes us what we are?

I remember when I was young and I was at that stage in a Catholic girl’s development when I began to realize that not every one of my friends was Catholic. I asked my aunt about different families we knew, and I remember when I asked about the Bennetts, she told me “they’re Unitarians.”

That stopped me for a moment. I had begun to learn a little about the various stripes of what had previously been a monolith of “Protestants” in my mind. I knew of Baptists and Episcopals (“Catholic-lite” I was told) and Pentecostals and Lutherans, but Unitarian-Universalists were a new thing to me.

“What do they believe?” I asked.

There was a pause, as my Irish Catholic aunt searched for her answer.

“Not much, as far as I can tell.”

More than thirty years later, I find myself here, asking the same simple question. The answer is far more complex than that first one I received.

What is it that we believe?

What is it that drives us?

We can cite the stuff that is written in the front of our hymnal and in all the literature, the lines about the inherent worth and dignity of each person, the bits about the interconnectedness of us all, the appreciation for our diversity and how we value each search for truth and meaning, but what DRIVES us? What makes us DO stuff? What makes us move?

What gives us passion enough to put aside the things that we do every day and invest a little bit of ourselves? And perhaps the more telling portion of this equation is this: how do we explain it to ourselves, and to others?

There are beautiful and intricate essays woven by theologians to explain why UUs are different from other Protestant sects, but for me, the thing that makes it real is what I call the “put up or shut up” principle. It is unwritten anywhere in our texts, you won’t find it in our creed, or in any hymnal or pamphlet, but it is something that runs through me that resonates within these walls.

We are people of action. We are people who put our money – and so much more – where our mouths are.

We do not only wail about hunger, we feed people.

We are saddened by oppression and seek to stop it and lift up the oppressed.

We do not just lament injustice, we work to fix it.

We prefer action to novenas.

Put up or shut up.

We exemplify faith in action.

The key thing, it seems to me, is that we like to be challenged. We like to have our ideas and beliefs challenged, else why would we show up every Sunday? Certainly not to be told repeatedly that we are right. Certainly not to have illogical things drilled into us by rote until we believe and chant it all back like so many automatons.

We want, nay, we DEMAND to be challenged, in all aspects of our lives. We need to hear “so what are you going to do about it?” We need to hear “please explain.”

Ours is not a faith of passive obedience, but one that demands rigorous action. As much as we need to be challenged, we challenge each other and the world around us. As often as we hear “please explain,” we say those same words.

“Please. Explain.”

“Show me.”

“Teach me.”

For what is it worth? To go through a day – or a lifetime?

never learning,

never growing,

never risking,

and never accomplishing a damned thing?

What kind of life is that? Where is the joy in being sedentary? Passive? Isolated?

When I first encountered UU-ism as an adult, it was at the Universalist-Unitarian Church in Waterville, Maine. I attended a service there as part of an assignment in a college class on modern religious movements.

I was overwhelmed.

The people were welcoming.

The readings were about love and sharing and helping and doing right, and you can only imagine my amazement when I flipped through the hymnal to find Holly Near!

I couldn’t go back for over a month. It felt so affirming -- it was more than I could stand.

I had never been in a church where I had been told that I was worthy. Indeed, as a part of the Catholic masses I used to attend weekly - sometimes daily – I repeated “Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed” countless hundreds of times through my developing years and into adulthood.

To stand among people who did not ask me to hide my orientation or my politics was amazing. To converse with people who did not judge me because I had ideas that were different from theirs was enormous. To be welcomed and introduced to other, out queer people in a church was all a bit much for this embittered ex-Catholic to handle. I had no idea church could be like this. And it scared me.

What kept me coming back – initially – was the social and political action stuff. I was impressed by how active the people at the UU church were in politics. I was surprised to see people actually doing things – as opposed to just writing a check. In 1995, when I really became involved with the church there, it was because of the number of people from those pews on Sunday morning that I saw at the Maine Won’t Discriminate phone bank all the other nights of the week. We were fighting a No On 1 battle back then to protect the anti-discrimination law that had been passed by the legislature and signed by the governor.

Sound familiar?

You knew I’d get to this part.

The No on 1 part.

And it’s true. That’s why I am here.

My job today is to challenge you, within the context of what we know of our faith, and ourselves, to be all that we can be, to do all that we can do. And to give of ourselves. I mean really give. Not the easy stuff, the check, the single shift at the phone bank, going to the polls and casting a ballot. I mean the tough stuff.

The put up or shut up kind of stuff. The ‘how much does this thing called equality mean to us really?” stuff.

We’re UUs. We’re already active. And, truth be told, we’re usually pretty smug about how active we are.

When was the last time you gave everything you had?

I mean everything?

When was the last time you stayed up late, got up early, worked tirelessly, round-the-clock, putting aside everything else for a thing that was bigger than yourself? And what was that cause? An event? A war? A campaign? A big project? A movement?

What is it that is worth that much of us? Is marriage equality worth that? Some say yes, some say no.

Let me tell you what happens sometimes when my partner Laura and I visit an emergency room. Laura suffers from chronic back pain and chronic migraines. Sometimes we end up in the emergency room for acute care. She is in pain, blinded by her pain, often crying, sometimes being physically ill, barely able to speak. I am nervous. I am scared for my beloved. I want to stop her pain, but I am powerless. I want the doctors to respond NOW to make her better. I am frantic with worry.

And then a nurse steps in front of me and says, “you can’t be in here. You’re not family.”

I could cite case after case of similar instances, both in Maine and around the country, but I am only here to tell you about my experience. My truth. My reality. Where I live every day. And this is it. Unless we are married, by law, I am not a part of my partner’s family.

The hospital cannot release Laura’s medical information to me. I cannot have input or ask questions about her treatment or how I should care for her after I get her home. Under the law, we are strangers.

To me, then, this fight is worth everything I’ve got. And honestly, I don’t recall a time when I have poured more of myself into a thing than now.

I have devoted myself to causes and projects over the years. Some were logistical challenges, like conferences or retreats or weekend activities, but some were bigger than that.

Some, like this campaign, are about something that goes deeper than coordinating a weekend of picnics and hiking. This is about equality. And rights. And security. And dignity, and justice, and all of those things that are hard to describe but so important to us.

So important is this battle that I have devoted what some would call an unreasonable amount of my life to it in recent months. I am a small-scale contractor, specializing in home maintenance and repair. With the economy in a downward spiral, I have taken a leap of faith and thrown myself into this campaign. I have abandoned my business except for the most peripheral obligations and have begun to rely on the kindness of friends and strangers to pay my rent and other bills. I have not applied for public assistance, although it may come to that after the election.

I go to sleep each night and wake each morning thinking of the campaign. I think of how I can help, what I can do, where I can go to raise money, to recruit volunteers, where can I put yard signs, how can I get a house party put together in Bucksport or Stonington, or Ellsworth? How do I get my mug in front of voters and potential volunteers in Sedgwick or Gouldsboro, or Belfast?

Lately I have been having a recurring nightmare. I awake with a start from a dream in which it is November 4 and I am reading the election returns in the newspaper. Only I learn that if we had two more votes in each town, we would have won.

We UUs often talk about a faith-lived life, but what does that mean? To me it means living my life as closely in line with the things I believe as I can possibly get. It means put up or shut up.

It means doing what it takes to do what is right. It means giving of myself, laying myself on the line, taking a risk, speaking out, standing up and stepping forward.

It means volunteer. Put a shoulder to the wheel, stand and haul in line with the others, and do the work that is real.

Some of us are burned to a frazzle. Some are too overwhelmed by the enormity of what must be done to even begin.

And I am here, feeling just a little of both. Like many of my friends, have been fighting the long battle for equality for years. Many of us are more than just a little burned out. We feel as though we have been throwing ourselves at this particular wall for a very long time and we can see no sign that our efforts are doing anything real.

In the past few months, my role in the campaign has been to inspire people to give of their money and their time. I make ‘em cry and then I make them write checks and volunteer. It is what I seem to be good at, so it is what I do.

Not everybody can ask a group of strangers for money, and fewer still can ask their friends; but I can, and it needed doing, so that’s what I did.

The time for house parties is over. We are down to the sprint for the finish.

I stand before you with a complex agenda. I am here as a fellow Unitarian-Universalist, knowing what it is to be a cat who resists herding, and resenting mightily the suggestion that I might not be as enlightened and politically active as I ought to be already, thank-you-very-much.

And I am here as an organizer who knows just how much more there is to be done in the next 58 hours and who wants to inspire you to do it.

And I need to somehow wrap it all in a not-quite-political message that will both challenge and appeal to the pantheon of spiritual traditions and beliefs that fill the room.

Frankly, a house party would be a lot easier right now.

We all know what is involved in a political race. We all know what is involved in the last hours of a campaign. There’s a lot of grunt work to be sure, very little glamour, and much confusion and sometimes some shouting. But it is as necessary to democracy as air and sunlight and free speech. It is the stuff that makes our nation what it is – free people working hard for justice.

A faith-lived life is a light that can change the world. Gandhi taught us this.

How much is it worth to us, this thing called equality? What does it demand of us? What are we willing to give? How much faith do we have?

Are we willing to give our time? Our energy? Our talents?

Our hearts?

So now I challenge you:

What are you willing to do on faith?

How much of yourself are you willing to put on the line?

Are you willing to give of yourself?

Are you willing to give a day?

One day of your life?

Tuesday? Election day? Can you take that off to help drive people to the polls?

Maybe Monday, too? To make get out the vote calls and help people who want to vote early?

Two days?

Can you offer that much on faith?

It’s a lot, I know.

Are we willing to step out on that high wire and trust that we are doing the right thing and that the fates, or some higher power of our own definition, will preserve us?

Are we willing to put ourselves on the line?

Not as civil rights workers have in the past, stepping into the path of police dogs and fire hoses and riot batons; but to put ourselves on the line in a different way.

Personally, I’d love to see everyone here rush up to our volunteers after the service and sign up to work all day both Monday and Tuesday.

Not all of us can take two days off. But we can all give something.

Through this fall’s campaign, I have been using some basic math to inspire people to write big checks.

When a donor makes a one-time contribution of $100, that is a very good thing. But what does that represent? How much of that person is offered in that donation?

If the donor makes $30,000 a year, that $100 check represents one-third of one percent of his or her income.

One third of one percent.

How much are we willing to give of ourselves?

How much of our resources, whatever they may be, are we willing to put into this battle for equality?

One day of our year is – in easy math – one three hundred sixty-fifth of our year’s allotment of days. In easier to comprehend math, that’s something just over one fourth of one percent.

If we break it down into working hours, for those of us with day jobs, let’s say we offer up a whole workday. Based on 50 weeks of full-time employment, one eight-hour day is four tenths of one percent of what we pledge to our employer each year.

How much are we willing to give of ourselves?

The time for writing checks is past. Now is the time when justice asks us to give of what is real, to give of ourselves.

We talk in lofty terms about democracy and equality and justice, terms our Unitarian and Universalist forbears held so dear and suffered so to preserve, but how much of ourselves are we willing to sacrifice for those things?

What is equality worth to us? What value do we place on being able to visit a spouse in the hospital? How much of ourselves are we willing to give so couples will never have to hear again “you can’t be in here, you’re not family,” or worse yet, from a funeral director, “I’m sorry, you can’t sign for the body. We need a family member for that.”

This IS the single most important civil rights issue of my lifetime.

Marriage equality is going to happen on a state-by-state basis, creating a patchwork of equality until we arrive at a Loving vs. Virginia – type decision that will decide for all the land whether same-sex couples deserve the same basic civil rights as our heterosexual counterparts.

Maine is the only election this year dealing with marriage equality. 34 times the issue of same-sex marriage has gone before voters in one form or another in this country, and 34 times it has failed.

The task before us is enormous and is of a level of importance that I cannot describe, but can only hope that you comprehend.

This is our chance to march to Selma.

The world is watching.

I have taken that step out into the ether and trust that the world and its people will not let me down.

*****************

Then we stood and sang "This little light of mine". And then we signed up 14 volunteers for shifts tomorrow and Tuesday. I've done what I can do. Next step: Tuesday.