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October 5, 2003 Sermon

Rev. Nancy D. Dean

October 5, 2003

Taking Leave: When We Have to Go

My first phase of what has been a life-long career as a teacher began when I taught First Grade in the late 60s and 70s. Then, as now, it was common for one or two children to cry and cling to their mothers or fathers, and as it is always noted, as soon as the parents were out of sight the tears dried up and all was well. I believed then and now, that the children who cry are experiencing at a higher level what all the children are feeling. This is new, there is much to worry about, things such as: Will I do well; will my new teacher be nice; will I have friends; will I be able to go to the bathroom when I want to. Major issues when you are six years old. (Major issues when you are older, too.) Children are often very sensitive to the various aspects of change, especially of moving from one place to another, that adults have lost the ability to perceive or are just too busy to pay attention to. Question rise in the children’s minds, like: Will my kitty get to move; do they allow hamsters in Delaware; do they have the same food in New York as we do here?

For instance, on the eve of one family’s move from Savannah, the youngest child in the family was overheard saying her prayers, ending with, “Good-bye God-we’re off to New York in the morning.”

These sorts of concerns are real for children, and they are real for us, too-and, it is all about making changes. Leaving one way of being or doing or living for another, new, perhaps strange, and, always, a different way. Even though making a big move can be very thrilling, something we have long looked forward to doing, there is still that element of fear that we will lose something behind. One way we have of mitigating these fears and losses is to take what we can with us of those things that are familiar, those “ties that bind” us to our past and keep the new and unfamiliar grounded. You know how it is when you move to a new place and once the old furniture is in the rooms, old pictures on the wall, the old dishes in the cupboards, it begins to feel like home.

I believe we of this faith community have reasons to be fearful, despite our great joy in finally having a home of our own. Despite all our expectations for growth that will allow us to have a full Religious Education program from cradle to elders, and for all our joy in knowing we will have a lovely sanctuary in which to have our services, we still have worries about something being left behind. Will we still have the feeling of closeness we have had these past fourteen years? Will we stay focused on each other, on this faith community? Will we have turf wars now that we have turf of our own?

In all cases, it is good to raise the questions that cloak our fears. By being open about our concerns, our sorrows, and our joys, we will keep the all-important paths of communication open so that we do not lose ourselves along the way. Communication, communication, communication! That is the watchword whether we are six or sixty.

When children are worried and afraid, parents and teachers try to show how things will be good or better, and how some things won’t change. “I’ll be right here when school is over.” Or “All you have to do is ask me, just like you do at home.” And, sometimes a little healthy bribery, “I’ll make you a cake for when you come home.”

What we cannot do is nothing. There are many people who loved the Mill Creek congregation the most when it was fifty or sixty people and just beginning. That is because it was like a family. In fact, we call congregations of under seventy members, family-sized congregations. They are like family because everyone gets to know everyone else, and in our case we were a new congregation, a new place to try out our thoughts and ideas, to test our faith in some cases. Everything was just beginning and that was exciting.

Another aspect of the family-sized church or congregation is that in many ways it is like a big support group. Still, for all that can be pleasant about that newness and closeness, it cannot continue without falling apart. People need to grow, do grow, do change-the problem is that we all don’t change at the same pace. The same can be said for all organizations, all congregations.

The larger goal, presented from the beginning, was that we wanted to be here for the long haul, for all those people who need our UU faith who are here now, and those who are yet to find us. All families change. Children grow up, go out on their own, create new families to add to our wider family units. Often people ask me if it isn’t very hard to listen to people’s problems, help them through rough times, deal with all the challenges of so many different peoples’ lives, and I always say that those things are a part of ministry that I accept and allow me to help people. The hardest part of being a minister is when people have to move away. When the youth grow up and go off into the world, when adults lose jobs and/or take new jobs that force a move. I feel like I am losing part of my family. We have so many wonderful people in this congregation, with new ones coming in all the time, and others taking their leave. But it would be so, even if no one moved, for people must eventually take leave of this life. So, I know this part of ministry will not change, and it is the same for you. I still miss members who moved away, or passed away, even if it was several years ago.

Neither you nor I can change what is a reality of life. Taking leave, re-formation, are all part of that process. That is the way of human relationships and human organization. Clearly, though, there are ways to do this growing and changing that are good or bad, healthy or unhealthy.

For example, one downside of groups that stay too small for too long is that they can grow tired of each other. I remember my first Unitarian congregation, where I became a UU, a small fellowship in a university town in north Texas, that did not have a minister at that time. I recall one Sunday during “Joys and Sorrows” having a woman next to me lean over, with that look of boredom that says a great deal, and say to me about the person who had just shared at some length, “I know more about Lynette’s love life than my own daughter’s.” Another time, it was “A little of Lynette goes a long way.”

Since our founding in 1989, the Mill Creek membership has wanted to have a good religious education program, and that cannot happen consistently unless there is a critical mass of young people to fill in the grades. Over the past fourteen years, we have had the situation where some classes are full to over-full some years, while others have one or two children. So one of the clear advantages to having our own space is that we can have a full program for the children of this community of faith.

Which highlights how we make decisions about what merits change, and what we view as more important. The majority of members have deemed it more important to be a place of faith, a place for religious teaching for adults and children, than it is to be a support group for a small number of people.

Of course, what we can do is provide those small group options where people can have that experience of getting to know people well, while not sacrificing the whole program. By being honest about our hopes and concerns we can find solutions most of the time. After all, this is a pretty clever bunch of people sitting in this room. I have unlimited faith in your ability to do whatever you set your minds and your hearts to.

I remember very clearly the pain of sending, first my daughter, then my son, off to kindergarten and first grade; I cried knowing I was losing that early precious stage of their childhood. I felt less pain, and perhaps more fear as I sent them off to high school, then to college. Then there is a point when you in some more subtle way send them off to their own adult lives. What we forget is that usually people have been doing that for us, too. And, we do it for ourselves. In most case, we really want to make those life transitions, we see possibilities to gain materially and spiritually, even while we know we are going to lose something in the process.

We willing make changes throughout our lives even when we cannot know what it is we will gain or what we will lose. When I realized that I wanted to change my life course away from being an English professor, and toward being a Unitarian Universalist minister, I could see only part of what the reality of ministry would be. The future was a cloudy possibility. Or, as that verse from Paul in the epistle to the Corinthians, in the Christian New Testament, “now we see in a glass darkly.” Or as it has been more fully translated to modern English, “What we see now is like a dim image in a mirror”; or, “now we see in a mirror as if in a darkened room”; that is, we cannot see all that there is to be seen. I did not realize either how much I would gain spiritually, or what I would lose. I really did not see that I would lose anything. But I did lose something, something rather significant. Among the list, I lost my ability to be a congregant, I lost sitting out there with you hearing my minister every Sunday, and I lost the ability to read, listen, see just about anything without putting it into the context of what this means to me as a minister, or for a sermon. I believe that what I lost was worth what I gained, but I simply did not realize all that was part of the calling to ministry. Perhaps someone did tell me, but I either could not or did not hear it.

We take leave of one way of life for another most of the time without all the planning and effort that went into building our new UUSMC home. We walk, run, jump leap, dive, into all kinds of relationships and rarely consider the cost, or the possibilities for all that we might lose. We almost always are focused on what we will gain. I think that is a good thing, for the most part. I always say that if we all sat down and calculated whether we could afford to have children, most of us would not have had them when we did, if at all. Or, whether we can buy a home, start a business, find a new path through the frontier. In fact, the scarier it is, the less we are likely to be deterred by the “what ifs.” Sometimes we have to take leave, take a chance, make the leap of faith. Otherwise, we might not accomplish much of anything in life.

I do not mean to suggest that we not take into consideration the potential problems, but that we put them in light of our expectations of ourselves. I am a planner in large measure, but there are times, like the time I left the road of teaching to follow the road of ministry, when I just act on instinct. That famous gut-reaction. Times when we must follow our hearts. Most of us here have raised our children, or will raise their children reasonably well, despite hardships. Most of us will accomplish many of our goals, regardless of height. Most of us will be glad for having made the efforts toward tackling the challenging tasks whether fail or succeed. What is a life for anyway?

Ralph Waldo Emerson was born into a Christian Unitarian church that had challenged the Goliath of the established church of Rome in the 1500s, but had over the next four hundred years changed only in minor ways, with the exception of the American Revolution. Emerson felt a calling for a great change in the Church, to take leave of a staid church that was not listening any more to the voice of the Enlightenment that was growing louder with the changes in science, expansion of communications, and so forth. He wanted to take Unitarianism, indeed all religion, our of the box, and open it to the much wider possibilities. He was saying in his essay, Worship, that worship is something that you can do in a highly ritualized way on Sunday mornings, but you can also do it everyday, anywhere. He wanted his audience of a hundred and fifty years ago to see that there was more to spirituality, more to worship, more to God, more to religion than what we had been given by our predecessors. His bold step, his bold leave-taking was to leave the Unitarian ministry as a full-time minister, and carry the essence of ministry out to the world through his writing and speaking.

The heart and soul of Emerson’s message was to live a good life, listen to your heart that knows right from wrong (unless one is mentally unbalanced), look at the world of nature and the essence of human community, for there you see all you need to know of God, of ultimate reality, the Creator. Don’t separate your religion from your moral, ergo spiritual, life. That religion is not just the institution, it is the arts, the sciences, questioning, but first and foremost it is now, for us here and now, and not to be turned over to anyone else as if lambs to the slaughter.

As Emerson spoke, or challenged theological students in his famous Harvard Divinity School Address: “Faith makes us, and not we it, and faith makes its own forms. [S]peak the very truth, as your life and conscience teach it, and cheer the waiting, fainting hearts of men [all people] with new hope and new revelation?”

We finally come to the end of one stage in our life as Mill Creek congregation and next Sunday begin another, with all that implies of challenges, hopes, and dreams. We take with us an appreciation of the great work it has been to hold and grow this community of faith for all the needy souls that are here now, and that are yet to find us.

For some reason I keep thinking of a line of music, and anyone my age will know this song line: “Now it’s time to say good-bye to all our family; M-i-c (see you real soon) k-e-y (why, because we love you), M-o-u-se.”

Now we say good-bye to CACC, and as we go, I take up the Chalice, on behalf of our whole community, this symbol of our quest for truth and meaning, and carry it now to our new home. May we keep its light shining brightly to light the way of liberal religion so desperately needed in our world today.

Amen

 

October 19, 2003 Sermon

Rev. Nancy D. Dean

October 19, 2003

From this Day Forward

After all the confusion of the last two weeks, I am hardly able to believe we are finally here. Since we are here by virtue of a temporary building permit, until the grass begins to grow on the hillside behind the building, I beg of you all to pour libations to the non-specific deities who look with favor on New Castle County procedures.

By the way, speaking of laws and procedures, I just heard about a new church in California. It has three commandments, six suggestions, and several referenda; but the preacher cannot be recalled.

When I was called to be the minister of this congregation, back in 1995, I was told by the leadership at that time (and had read the same in the survey of the congregation) that there was a strong desire to grow, to make a UU presence in this part of Delaware, and to find a home for UUSMC. The idea was that in three or four years, they expected to find some place to lease or buy to house this community until it grew to the point where we could build.

If anyone had told me it would be eight years before we would finally have a home of our own, eight years before I would have an office, eight years before we could reliably plan adult programs, and so forth, I might have reconsidered coming here. But believe me, coming to Delaware to be your minister was the best thing I have ever done in my life, on several levels, and as I look at this beautiful space that you had the faith to conceive and create, I feel so privileged to have been a part of all that these last eight years have meant, and all that the last fourteen and a half have meant for the founding members who are still with us. (If you founders will please stand and let us congratulate you on your vision.)

As you locals already know, this part of New Castle County was mainly cornfields thirty years ago, so there is a dearth of handy real estate around for a congregation like ours to rent. Instead, we had to rent where we had no real space of our own except on Sunday mornings. And, while we are grateful for the space we used the last fourteen years, it is awfully good to finally have a place to call our own.

Our whole process reminds me so much of those years when I was in college, and first married, of living in apartments, that you didn’t want to really fix up because they would never be your own. And this act of coming together to first create this congregation, a seed congregation from the First Unitarian Church in Wilmington, the living in rented quarters on a very part-time basis, all bring to mind for me the processes of early, married life. The courting, the wedding/union, the plans for a life together, and a whole host of metaphors about the meaning of joined lives, have been revolving around in my mind for several months, which is why the title of my sermon today is “From this day forward.”

As I thought of all the possible ways to begin this first Sunday service, the one thing that kept rising to the top in my thoughts comes from the 1928, Anglican Book of Common Prayer marriage ceremony, in which the couple are enjoined to promise each other that they will care for one another through all the ups and downs of life. The minister asks each to repeat the essential lines. For example: I ____ take you____ to be my husband/wife ...to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part. I am profoundly touched by that phrase in the vows, from this day forward.

Many of you know that I do several weddings a year, most of them outside the membership of this congregation, but in nearly all of them, I like to include some element of this promise, or covenant we might call it, to remember that they are taking on the responsibility of a life with this other person from this day forward. The whole point of the wedding/union ceremony is to remind all who gather that this is a new family unit in the making; that something different of major significance is occurring with this wedding ritual.

While we are not marrying each other in the wedding/union sense, I do want to call your attention to the fact that we are doing many of the same things that a couple do as they come to that point in the wedding when they make their vows of fealty or fidelity to each other.

Consider how a marriage/union comes into being. First, two people who have some sense of being compatible decide they want to spend time together. That relationship can be of a quiet or very passionate nature, but the first element is connection. We had something not so very different. A group, in this case, decided they had a religious or spiritual connection via our Unitarian Universalist faith, enough so that fifty-one people decided they would like to create this new UU family unit of the Mill Creek congregation.

Now like the children who come along later, many of us did not or do not know that Mill Creek stands for the Revolutionary War distinction of the Mill Creek Hundred. Some parts of the northeast designated areas where a hundred men could be mustered for a militia to fight the tyranny of the British. (You might note that there are about that number of us here mustered to fight the tyranny of the religious right-wing!)

Choosing the name as that early group did, of the UU Society--not church, not congregation, not temple, or synagogue-but, the Unitarian Universalist Society of Mill Creek, is kind of like the women who have to decide whether to become Mrs. Somebody, or continue on as Ms. Who I Was. Name settled, the next thing was to find a home, in our case, a rented space; but, after many years, just like most couples who can, we wanted something more permanent. Roots, a home of our own, a place where we could make the decisions about what color the walls are, and what will happen within the walls.

Frank MacArtor probably looked at every building and every potential site we might lease or buy within twenty miles of here, along with several members of the initial Building Committee for around seven years. We had a couple of false starts, first with the old Ebenezer Methodist Church that was just up here on the top of the hill, a historic building that they offered to give to anyone who could find a place for it. This coincided with finding this parcel of land that was bought in proxy for the congregation, but yet had to be voted upon to be our chosen spot. Needless to say, not everyone was in favor of buying this land or moving that building. After a great deal of work, it was concluded by the Building Committee that it would cost nearly as much as a new building to move that old building and bring it up to code, and we would still have a small building, with no religious education space, and a historic building, to boot, with all the problems that entails. So we passed on that option.

Next was found a large, lovely 1950’s era house in Hockessin, an architect’s home on seven acres at the spot where Highways 41 and 48 merge. A great spot, a great location in many ways, but many of the same problems regarding the building itself. Bringing that house up to the county code was prohibitive, and we still would not have adequate space, and also have a tough entrance problem off the highway.

Finally, it was decided we had no other option but to find a good spot and build. That had its own series of ups and downs, but eventually, the congregation voted on this parcel of land, and then voted the next year following our first Capital Fund Drive to build a building. So much excitement, so much fear, so much of every conceivable emotion that any young family goes through as they try to find a home of their own.

I still think it somehow a dream, a miracle if you will, that this small congregation could be so faithful to this desire to have a home of our own, and so committed to the difficult process that each step entailed. We lost a few members during this process due to a difference of vision, but overwhelmingly, the congregation backed the process, and further, put money behind it. But not just money. Those who made this day possible put something behind this project, this dream, that money alone cannot achieve, they/you put your belief in a larger vision behind it.

What does it mean, after all, to tell a couple at the altar that from this day forward they promise to live a different life, for the rest of their life together. The promises are what really matter, for they are promises about living with the other person keeping that partner first in mind, instead of the living just for the self. To keep the other partner in the way that one hopes to be kept or cared for.

I always tell couples I counsel prior to weddings/unions that the old notion about a good relationship being 50-50 is wrong, a truly good relationship is 75-75, for as is almost always the case, some of the time one partner is giving more and some of the time he/she is getting more. It is the willingness to give this extra bit of caring and loyalty when it is needed that makes the difference between really wonderful marriages, and just adequate or failed ones.

We of UUSMC agreed that we would be willing to give not just our money and our time, but our selves in that caring and determined way of all people who value family and community beyond just what they will get out of it for themselves at any given time.

To carry this metaphor further, in many ways, a congregation, a church, temple, synagogue, is a family of choice that agrees to live with all the ups and downs of any other family life, for the benefit of that family life for the long haul. It is all about commitment.

James Womack once said: Commitment unlocks the doors of imagination, allows vision, and gives us the “right stuff” to turn our dreams into reality. That is just what has happened in this congregation. Your commitment unlocked the doors of imagination, allowed you to develop that larger vision, gave us all the right stuff to turn this dream into the reality of this morning.

But unlike a marriage where two people sort out these various issues, we are a union of well over a hundred adults (may one day be hundreds) who are engaged in making this commitment work now and for the future.

Clearly, not everyone is equally committed. Just like in many relationships, we occasionally have to deal with those who live more for their own ego gratification than the community. They are the people who can make life hard within the community. Goethe wrote about such people who live only for the glorious moments when he penned: Love is an ideal thing, marriage is a real thing; a confusion of the real with the ideal never goes unpunished. We are about real things here, as well as the ideal.

In this congregation we have as many dreams of the ideal church/congregation as we have individual minds, but the marriage of members in the community of faith is about the real things: growing ethically and spiritually, getting along, doing the work, paying the bills, cleaning up, sharing space, etc. For those who do not understand the nature of commitment, problems will undoubtedly occur.

Sometimes we think we’re committed, but we really aren’t. I am reminded of an anecdote that illustrates the issue:

          The chicken and the pig were discussing the matter through the barnyard fence. The chicken said proudly, “I give eggs every single morning-I’m committed to the farm.”

          The pig countered: “Giving eggs isn’t commitment, it’s participation. Giving ham, now that’s commitment!”

It has been easy enough for me to see who those committed individuals are, especially over the last three years, during all the slogging work with the architect and builder, fundraising, the involved process of applying for a mortgage, and working with the county (I shall always think of New Castle County as two capitalized words, The County.). A tremendous number of hours of work went into getting this building off the ground. Then, these the last few months, so much work had to be done as the details of having this building really started to come home. People planning how to furnish the space, people up here wiring-painting-cleaning for days on end; doing the moving of all our belongings from the rented space, putting in appliances, moving pianos, setting up the sound system, and that does not begin to cover the extent of the work required to allow us to be here this morning in this beautiful building, sitting on these comfortable chairs, without all the unpleasant problems we often used to face on Sunday mornings. I have, indeed, seen commitment during these last eight years, and especially these last three years, such as I have never seen before. I am truly humbled by the commitment of our members and friends.

Unlike marriages, though, we are not required or expected to bind ourselves together for all time, indeed many people come and go over the years. George Bernard Shaw once observed:

          When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.

Well, some of us will be here until death do us part, at least we hope so, but some have not been able to remain with us for many reasons, mostly job changes and moves, though many of those who had to move continued to support the Building Fund, a testament to their love for our congregation and their understanding of commitment. Some leave because they find another congregation is a better fit, and that is fine. We support that. Some leave because they become disgruntled for a variety of reasons that usually have to do with us not meeting their needs; that happens for we cannot meet everyone’s specific needs. Some leave because they have gotten what they wanted; i.e., church school for their children, weddings or funerals out of the way--a generally rather self-focused kind of people who do not see the greater mission of the congregation to support and promote each other and our UU faith for ourselves and for the future.

Over all, we have a membership, and devoted friends, who truly do understand that this idea of building a church, creating this congregational space, is much more important than one person, one family, one minister. It is about being the voice of liberal religion among the crowds of religious narrowness and bigotry. Building this home for the Mill Creek congregation is about history, certainly the present, and also the future, for ourselves, our families, and all those who are looking for a place of real commitment to a set of ethical values that does not require absolute allegiance to a set of doctrinal beliefs. We are a rare gem in the world of religions.

From this day forward, we who have decided to be part of this community of faith are doing so with an understanding of that Greater Good, or God for some, that which is greater than we are as individuals, yet is all that we are as individuals, as well.

Even so, no one ever said it would always be easy, no such relationships are. It was Benjamin Disraeli who said: It destroys one’s nerves to be amiable every day to the same human being. I don’t agree that it destroys one’s nerves to get along, but it can try one’s patience. (Believe me, I know.) And Winston Churchill had his own comment on marital vicissitudes:

          It seems that while listening to Churchill expound at length on his political opinions, Lady Astor grew more and more furious. Finally, unable to contain herself, she snapped, “If you were my husband, I’d put poison in your coffee.”

          “And if I were your husband, madam” returned Churchill, “I’d drink it.”

As we all know, marriages, unions, relationships of all sorts do not always have the happy ending that their beginnings promise. People make promises and vows that they either cannot or do not want to live out. Sometimes it cannot be prevented, but all too often I see relationships fall apart because people do not want to compromise. In relationships that we would characterize as unhealthy, one or both partners are not willing to give an inch, or look for common ground, or to find some help when the problems worsen. This can happen for congregations, too. Just ask our Joseph Priestley District Executive who often does not get called in to mediate church problems until it is way too late; he can tell you about all the tiffs, the hateful words, the turf wars that can happen in unhealthy congregations.

Mill Creek congregation agreed, in those processes that began in 1989, and resulted in this baby of a building, to do our best to get along, to work for the betterment of each other and the whole community. We understand that we are not all in the same emotional, intellectual, or spiritual place, and we need to be willing to sometimes give that extra bit, go the extra distance, to create the best atmosphere for our growth as a moral people, with our various joys and sorrows, gifts and needs.

I have always felt that the greatest virtue of this congregation was your deep desire to communicate with each other. No matter what we have tackled, the leadership has consistently pressed the need to share what is going on, and what it means to the whole UUSMC community. If all marriages cared that much about communication, far fewer would fail.

From this day forward we must continue in this vein to communicate, to work with the processes that insure everyone is treated equally and fairly. From this day forward, we have many more opportunities to live out our UU faith here in this place. To have and to give sanctuary to the hurting souls of those who need us. But our opportunities are always laced with some risks. When we take on the challenges, like our forebears did with slavery, or women’s right to vote, as many of us have with Civil Rights and Gay and Lesbian Rights, we will find our ability to communicate is not as easy as when we decided to build this building (and that was certainly not easy!).

We have our work cut out for us, just like every couple who set out on their wedding day to create a new family that they hope will live in harmony and mutual respect from this day forward. How little they often understand of what they are expected to do, or what they are most likely to do beyond their wildest expectations. We are in a similar place of expectation this morning.

Despite the great expectations, our fears notwithstanding, we here are clearly ready to begin, even relish the challenges ahead. This building means a great deal to this faith community; yet, it is a building, and it is the people who gather here that will make the future bright, perhaps one day even glorious. And, we who helped to shape this building, this space we make sacred by our gathering, must remember that as Churchill noted: [While] We shape our buildings. Thereafter they shape us. We will be shaped by the spirit of this building, shaped by the voices of the past and present, by the intentions, the strengths and the weaknesses of all that happens within these walls.

From this day forward we are a community of faith, who are also homeowners, with all the appurtenances, duties, and responsibilities thereof. Even more, we are builders of our Unitarian Universalist faith; this precious and holy path by which the spirit/soul/mind, may find its way through all that great murky jungle we call life, toward whatever meaning is available to us. So be it.

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