This Could Be the Place!

This Could Be the Place
© The Rev. Joseph M Cherry
Written for and given to:
The Unitarian Church of Vancouver
12 June, 2011

I’ve been to Toronto three times in my life.

Once when I was in grade 8 for a field trip. It’s only about 4 hours from Detroit, you know. We went to the Ontario Science Centre and the Old Spaghetti Factory. It seemed a very glamorous and glorious adventure to me in 1983.

The second time I was in Toronto was for about twenty minutes. I’d made a wrong turn going from Sarnia to the Peace Bridge.

And finally, I went just last month. This time on purpose, and with a purpose. Like the first time, and I guess the second time, too, I was coming from Detroit. But this time was different. I was there for a conference. Actually two conferences. One was the Canadian Unitarian Counsel Annual Conference and Meeting, called the ACM, and the second was the annual gathering of the Unitarian Universalist Ministers of Canada.

While I was at the CUC ACM, I took part of what’s called a “leadership track.” It was essentially a five part lecture, each just under an hour, given by church consultant, Rev. Robert Latham, about congregational dynamics and Unitarian spirituality. This was the first offering of its kind, but it was very successful and I doubt it’ll be the last.

The five sessions were: Religious Mission, Religious Identity, Religious Message, Religious Identity and Character and then a summary session.

I’m not going to take you through all five sessions, but some interesting ideas were looked at, which caused some questions. Some of them about Unitarian Universalism globally, and some about my time with this congregation.

Rev. Latham sees his work with congregations as being made more effective when the work is done through the congregation’s sense of mission. On the front of the order of service this morning is some word art I created, using the text from UCV’s mission statement.





Latham states emphatically “Commitment to a clear sense of mission will meet the demand of every issue or challenge a congregation encounters.”

If a congregation doesn’t have a clear sense of mission, it can lead to trouble.

Who creates that sense of mission? The people do.

Through working together in meetings and using the democratic process to elect leaders, the people of a congregation work out and live out the mission of their church.

“A congregation may have ministerial leadership but if it does not also have strong lay leadership it still will not succeed in its mission,” writes Latham. “However, it is not simply a matter of having qualified leadership. What makes this leadership effective it its commitment to the mission above all else. Indeed, when a congregation is in trouble it will inevitably stem from some element of its leadership that is committed to an agenda that is antithetical to the congregation’s religious mission.”

I am not standing up here saying that this congregation is in trouble, or its leadership has somehow gone awry. Remember the title of my sermon is “This Could be the Place,” not “We are in trouble here.”

Further Latham warns against the habitual practice of “a warm body approach” to filling volunteer positions. Every congregation needs not just a nominating committee, but a leadership development group whose responsibility it is to help further the effectiveness of its leaders.

In our jobs, we often have professional development goals, if not down-right expectations.

“Leadership makes everything happen that is going to happen,” Latham concludes.

In short, what I want to ask is that as UCV continues on, how are you choosing your lay leaders? I’ve been on nominating committees before. You meet and try to figure out who has the skill sets you need, and then you make a list of people to call, and you put them in order of preference. And then you start making the phone calls, or coffee dates.

What might happen if you change that pattern? Would you consider someone who was clearly dedicated to the mission of this church, and then help them develop their skill set? This might be beneficial to the congregation and the individual. I’m not suggesting that we through the baby out with the bath water, but maybe mix things up a bit.


In another session, entitled “Religious Identity and Character,” Rev. Latham talks about the characteristics of being a Unitarian, and also a Unitarian Universalist. Some of his thinking in this area might be a little controversial, but still it’s good grist for the mill.

I’m going to quote him here “The nature of openness throughout our history has caused Unitarians to reside on the cutting edge of theological relevance. This has not been an easy journey. We began as theological heretics proclaiming the unity of God (asking the question: Who or What Is In Charge?) We moved on from this point to open ourselves to creation and other theologies as sources of knowing (asking How Do I Know What I Know?) In the 1930’s we created the theology of Humanism (asking Who Am I? or What Is In Charge? What Is Our Purpose?) Presently in our midst is a growing but not well defined view of reality that can be called Spirituality.” We are on an evolutional move theologically…

Here is the rub. Once we find a theology that we like we often become very resistant toward both ourselves and others evolving any further.”


Just this week on Huffington Post, Rev Marilyn Sewell wrote a piece that flashed up on my facebook page like a wildfire. People posted and re-posted this article “the Theology of Unitarian Universalism ,” and some, of course, responded to her, too. In the written copy of this sermon, I’ve included the web address to that article if you’d like to read it yourself.

At first I was mostly just excited that Unitarian Universalism was getting as much exposure as it was going to get, being on Huffington Post and all! And then I read the article, which I enjoyed.

Among the things that Rev. Sewell wrote was this: “We are a free religious faith, and so have no creed. And as freedom is wont to do, our faith invites a certain degree of wackiness and abuse. But if that’s the price of freedom, then I still choose freedom.

“Our faith, of course, does have requirements. To become a Unitarian Universalist, you make no doctrinal promises, but you are required to do much more. You are required to choose your own beliefs—you promise, that is, to use your reason and your experience and the dictates of your conscience to decide upon your own theology, and then you are asked to actually live by that theology. You are asked to take your chosen faith very seriously.”

And a paragraph later she offers a history lesson of our faith, lest you forget that our faith is serious business, she starts with this: “Our free faith was hard won. It has a long history, and our religious ancestors died for this freedom.”

Robert Latham included in his lecture information gathered from the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations. He quoted a poll that showed that in our midst: Christians feel ostracized; Humanists feel threatened; Pagans feel oppressed and Mystics feel ignored.

I’m going to repeat that. In our congregations, Christians feel ostracized; Humanists feel threatened; Pagans feel oppressed and Mystics feel ignored.


In a totally happy coincidence, here at UCV, our 9-12 year olds recently conducted a survey of people attending church two weeks ago on Sunday. They have compiled their numbers and I can now share with you a theological snapshot of our congregation. I am grateful for their curiosity and willingness to share their data.

In this poll, it was revealed that on average, as individuals, we first questioned the faith we were brought up in, when we were 14½ years old. Our average age as a congregation is 59.61 years old. And our average tenure as a Unitarian? 19.8 years.

Also, you may remember if you were here on that Sunday, there were questions about your belief system. I’ve added this information to the last sheet of the printed sermon, so please don’t worry if you don’t get all these figures, but they are interesting to hear.

20.4 % of respondents identified with the statement “God is Nature.” 19.2% identified as Humanists, 18.4% as Mystics, 13.7% as Agnostics, 8.2% as Pagan, 7.8% as Atheists, and 5.9% as Christians.

If you’ve been adding in your head, you’ll note that the percentages did not add up to 100%. People were not asked to identify with only one spiritual path. We are Unitarians after all, and no one would’ve followed that direction anyway.

Getting back to the UUA poll I mentioned earlier, it suggests that 5.9% of our people feel ostracized; 19.2% feel threatened; 8.2% feel oppressed and 18.4% feel ignored in our church. What do you think about that? Can you yourself identify with feeling one or more of these things?


In an article by Robert Latham, which was not accepted into the UUWorld magazine, suggested that in our zeal to differentiate ourselves from the rising tide of Christian fundamentalism in the early mid-20th Century, the Unitarians “went beyond rejection” to create three substitutes for what we thought of as “dead dogma.” The first substitute was community, the second was social action, and the third was political correctness. The result is an identity crisis. We still, 50 years after the merger of the Universalists and the Unitarians and the creation of the CUC, still we cannot define our living faith statement as a whole people of faith.

Marilyn Sewell suggests in her article that we do however have a theology:

• We believe that human beings should be free to choose their beliefs according to the dictates of their own conscience.
• We believe in original goodness, with the understanding that sin is sometimes chosen, often because of pain or ignorance.
• We believe that God is One.
• We believe that revelation is ever unfolding.
• We believe that the Kingdom of God is to be created here on this earth.
• We believe that Jesus was a prophet of God, and that other prophets from God have risen in other faith traditions.
• We believe that love is more important than doctrine.
• We believe that God's mercy will reconcile all unto itself in the end.


Naturally, not every Unitarian or Unitarian Universalist has accepted Rev. Sewell’s suggestion at first blush. Some will doubtlessly be upset by inclusion of such words as “God,” and “Jesus,” and even the patriarchal word “Kingdom.”

But there are a couple of them I’d like to lift up again. “We believe that revelation is ever unfolding.” “We believe that love is more important that doctrine.” Surely this is a place we can start to agree.

Religion isn’t easy. At least well-thought-out, honestly practiced religion isn’t easy. Perhaps especially for us Unitarians, with our uneasy relationship with authority, and our well-practiced resistance to being told what to do.

I’m as guilty of that as anybody.

But maybe we should focus on coming together here in our churches. As Sewell rightly reports, people have died for our religious freedoms. As Latham posits, leadership focused on the mission of the church above their own agendas is the best way to live out our values through our faith and our religious institution.


This past week, at the North Shore Unitarian Church’s annual meeting, they passed something extraordinary! A resolution:

Resolved that the congregation of the North Shore Unitarian Church considers the decision to become a member as a major step in one’s life journey, requiring careful thought and deliberation, and believes it is reasonable and valuable to have the following expectations of membership:

1) members make attending worship services a priority;
2) members take part in the life of the church;
3) members act in service both within and beyond the church;
4) members make a personally significant annual pledge to the Church;
5) members make efforts to better understand and live by the principles and values of Unitarian Universalism as they understand them to be.



As you might imagine, there was long discussion about this resolution. There are some concerns, some hurt feelings. Some feel like this is too close to dogma, and some are relieved that have a statement about expectations, not requirements mind you, but expectations of membership in their church.

What I hope you’ll be able to see in this message, my weaving together of Latham, Sewell and the North Shore Church’s work, is that there needs to be more coming together in our faith. More focus on the beloved community, and a longer view about what we are doing here.


On Sunday mornings around the world, people sit together in churches hoping for an experience that touches them, that moves them, and even one that transforms them.

With so much already going well here, this could be the place that it happens for more people than are here now.

This could be the place;

• Where deep friendships are made.
• Where spiritual awakening can happen.
• Where a lonely person knows that they matter to someone.
• Where leadership skills are developed and put to good use.
• Where the laughter of children and sages ring to the rafters.
• Where no one feels ostracized, threatened, oppressed or ignored.
• Where, when we gather hands and sing “Carry the flame,” people look around the sanctuary at all the people they’ve come to love over the years they’ve been coming.

This could be the place…for more people than are here with us now.

This could be that place.

As we go on, living our lives in faith, may we always keep that potential in mind and at heart. Living boldly in the knowledge that the universe is ever unfolding, that love is more important than doctrine, and the person sitting down the row from you is someone who might just help your life be transformed into something even more wonderful than you imagined.



Benediction

Brethren, farewell. I do you tell, I’m sorry to leave you, I love you so well.
Now I must go, where I don’t know, wherever Life leads me the trumpet to blow.

Thank you for allowing me to walk with you, this congregation, for a year. For the conversations and lessons, for the laughter, for trusting in me as a minister for whom you can turn when troubled, I thank you.

I am sorry to leave you, I am deeply grateful to have had the chance to get to know you as I have. You are part of my journey, and I will carry you with me always.

In gratitude for our time together, I made this pulpit fall for the congregation. I hope that when you see it, today and the future, it’s gentle chevron pointing upwards encourages you toward your higher natures, and reminds you of the bright, vibrant future I know this congregation will have.


If you are new to our congregation, each week at the end of service, we gather hands and sing a song called “Carry the flame.” We repeat it twice. Let the people gather together and sing.

Gardening is an Act of Faith

Gardening is an act of faith. When we plant seeds, we know there is no guarantee that flowers will grow, or bell peppers. We work in concert with the Earth, we tend, we weed, we water as necessary. But we can not force a plant to grow.

I invite you now to close your eyes and settle for a moment as you are comfortable.

Take a moment and figure out, what is your most precious hope?

Imagine that you and your hope are a tiny seed, planted in the spring’s dark rich earth.

Visualize your hope growing from tiny seed, it starts with the cracking of the shell of the seed. Before there can be growth, there must be a disturbance.

As the rain comes from the sky through the earth to your seed, sometimes not often enough, sometimes too frequently, your hope grows.

The roots of your hope grow strong in the earth, as this precious little seedling pushes it’s way up to the surface. Up toward the Sun and sky.

Once your hope is visible to the rest of the world, you may notice several things. You are not alone, there are others nearby.

And they and you are not the same, there is beauty in your diversity.

And as you grow, you in turn, produce seeds within your own being.

And these seeds become the hopes of tomorrow.


As you grow, within you and your hopes, grow the hopes of tomorrow.

Grace (A Sermon for the MFC)

Chalice Lighting:

Unless you call out, who will open the door? - Ethiopian Proverb

Sermon:


“I do not ask for this faith because I shrink from paying the great debt of nature. But I ask for it that I may have respect for myself
—that I may feel life is worth living—
that good is worth striving for above and beyond its mere return of earth.
And above all else, I ask for that faith because it makes life grand,
and gives to us sublime possibilities. And further,
it gives a substance of joy and bliss which nothing earthly ever gave,
and which nothing of earth can take away.”
-Eunice Waite Cobb

Eunice Waite Cobb was a 19th century Universalist.

I chose this quote from her for this morning because I think it invites us into some bit of discomfort, and self-reflection.

Mrs. Cobb does not take her faith as the default position, as the lowest common denominator, as the easy thing. She challenges herself, and her reader, to strive, to work for their beliefs. And she also lays out an expected reward for her labor. Her life will be made grand by her faith, and a joy that nothing on earth can give or take away will be hers.

We rarely make statements of faith like this anymore.
And I fear that it’s starting to show.

Recently I was in an interview for a Chaplain Residency and one of the interviewers, a Jewish pastoral care person, said to me “I know that Unitarian Universalists have difficulty with theology and God. How do you deal with this problem? To whom do you turn when you need help?”

When the co-interviewer behind the desk, an American Baptist, nodded his head in agreement, I was a little embarrassed. He then asked me: “Do you pray?”


This? This is our reputation among our clergy colleagues?

While working through an answer, I was able to articulate the following:
“I desire from Divinity not salvation, but a companion on the Journey of Life. I don’t need to be saved by a Loving God, I need to be reminded to be radically loving.”

My faith is not about accepting the easiest answer, a relativistic stance of believing in all things and no things at once. Like Eunice Cobb, I embrace this faith for both its work and our promise of a life made better by that work….and by something unstated above: grace.

As Unitarian Universalists, I’ve noticed that we don’t speak much about things like grace, do we? We like to think of ourselves as being the directors of our own success and happiness. I’m comfortable in that theology. If I work hard and am a good person, my life will have meaning and that shall be my reward.

Except there are a lot of people who work hard who don’t get the same sorts of benefits that I’ve gotten. That we’ve gotten.

Like the actions of the three goddesses called the Graces in Ancient Greece, we can’t see what life offers us. Sometimes we get more than we deserve and sometimes less, seemingly at random, out of our control. I prefer to think of grace as a gift, a generosity from what many may call God.

Perhaps if we engage our faith more strongly, having greater intent with that Unknown Component of Grace we might be more willing to see our fellow humans with greater charity in our hearts. We might be less ready to pathologize them, and have a ready-made solution to their problems.

I’m not suggesting that this pathologizing is born from a place of cruelty. Part of human development is learning to categorize things. Ask any toddler who’s just learning to talk, and you’ll find out that what’s known as a dog to them might be a dog, or a kitten, or a cow. Eventually that child will be able to discern patterns and realize that a dog is only one of many four-legged creatures with whom we share our world.

But also as we grow, we begin to lump things and people into categories, and unless we’re careful, we may over look important details which distinguish one thing from another. We might mistake a white youngster with dreads for a homeless person, or one young person of color as a member of the Hotel staff.

There are others who have worked as hard, if not harder, than we have, who will likely never see the benefits we have now.

This has been a hard realization for me. My parents are laborers. I was a laborer for most of my working career to date. But that’s all changing for me, and I now find myself in a different part of the map. My employability is no longer about how many words a minute I can type, or how much I can lift, or how many tables I can serve effectively.

And suddenly I find myself the guy who doesn’t operate the copy machine or take out the trash from the church office, because that’s no longer “required” of me. It’s no longer in my job description. I’m not blind, however, to the reality that there are going to be times when I am typing, making copies, answering phones and yes, even taking out the trash.

Yes, I worked hard to get here, and I’m pretty sure we’ve all worked hard.

But what about grace? What part does grace play in our successes? Why do we tend to omit grace from our own reflections, not as individuals, but as a whole faith?

Is it because to focus on grace would cause us to focus on the things we can’t control? That which will not respond solely to labor and reason; the things that our sheer force of will, and planning have seemingly no effect on? Is it because to focus on grace would cause us to focus on the other-worldly?

I have heard over and over that Unitarian Universalism doesn’t deal well with tragedy, loss and the more difficult sides of life. Focusing on grace more often might help us to do that.

Once we know in our bones, and can admit freely, that we are not in complete control of our lives, we can begin to really know that others are not as well. Hopefully, we can then move away from a patrician model of charity and into real relationships with the people who aren’t as fortunate as we and from whom we can learn a lot about being in the world.

We are not bad people, and I hope you won’t think for a moment that I’m suggesting that we don’t try to make the world a better place.

I do, however, think with grace as our focus, we could approach our justice work from a different position. One where we continue to recognize that the Spirit is loving and by seeking the companionship of the Divine, we may become as radically loving as our best selves hope to be.

May we be so bold.

Where is your Wonder?

Feb 27, 2011
Given at the Unitarian Church of Vancouver

Some of you may be familiar with the following quote from David Henry Thoreau, "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.” It’s from his book Walden.

Thoreau lived for a time in a tiny community along with Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson had worked to create a community of thinkers and spiritual folk in Concord, Massachusetts. Louisa May Alcott grew up there and Margaret Fuller was an on and off resident there. Concord was quite a little hot bed of transformational thought then. Louisa, at the time, of course, was just a young girl, with a mad crush on Henry. Sad, sad Henry who was never the same after his brother drowned in Walden Pond. Theodore Parker, radical Unitarian Minister was a frequent guest. It was Louisa’s Dad that Emerson had recruited, Bronson Alcott, a radical reforming educator. Also Nathaniel Hawthorne lived there for a while as did the man who had a life-long, unrequited love for Nathaniel, Herman Melville, author of Moby Dick. The names of the people he gathered there are legendary in Unitarian history.

Theirs was an intentional, vibrant, volatile community of people outside the norms of society. In her book, American Bloomsbury, Susan Cheever chronicles the very soap opera story of this gang of friends. Love triangles, death, and the intense exchanges of ideas were very much at the heart of this movement that would later come to be known as transcendentalism. At the time they were living this life though, they were not so organized as to give it a name.

Throeau wrote his book, Walden, during these heady times at Concord, and I think this is a good way to frame our question this morning: Where is Your Wonder?

As you might be able to tell from what I’ve briefly told you this morning, the people gathered at Concord did not lead simple lives of scholarship. They didn’t live in a cloister there or a monastery. They lived real lives, full of tulmut and chaos. And they weren’t paragons of virtue, either. Not modern day saints.

They were just people, like us.

Emerson struggled with his ministry, and his relationship with the Unitarian church. Bronson Alcott was trying to reform public education. Fuller was a master mind trapped in a woman’s body. Thoreau was largely unemployable and lived in a simple structure he built himself, though Emerson’s wife did all his laundry. Melville was haunted by his love for Hawthorne, who in turn had his own demons.

And yet together they managed to articulate a new spiritual path. In part, they learned to experience the ordinary as extraordinary.

Earlier this year I quoted the Reverend Lilia Cuervo as she talked about the spiritual practice of cooking. She said “Each time I cut into a pepper, I remember that I am the first being ever to see inside that pepper. It is a whole new landscape to be observed.”

Lilia has taken the ordinary and recognized it’s value as a unique experience.

Louisa May Alcott, in her book Little Women, describes an apple, lovingly, as a miracle of nature. The ordinary apple, made holy.


We too can make the ordinary holy.

In fact, we should.


One of the things that Thoreau’s quote about desperate lives warns us against is apathy, the routinization of our lives.


Are you that person who gets up because your alarm is screaming at you, then you go make the coffee, hop in the shower, get dressed, put the coffee in a travel mug and hit the road onto work?

There you’ll spend hours trading your labour for money, and then head home, tired and exhausted?

Or you head to classes. And sit there, wishing to be almost anywhere else?

And then maybe you have family obligations.

You eat dinner.

You do your homework, check the internet to see what’s going on, maybe watch a little television.

And then before you know it, you’re brushing your teeth and going to bed.


How many wondrous things might you have missed on a day like that? Days turn into weeks and weeks turn into years. To quote Burt Bachrach’s Do You Know the Way to San Jose:

“In a week, maybe two, they’ll make you a star. Weeks turn into years, how quick they pass. And all the stars that never were are parking cars and pumping gas.”

No one can make you a star but yourself. And by that I don’t mean a star of stage and screen. Even though this is Vancouver, and there’s a lot of movie-making going on around here.

You can be the star of your own life, I hope that doesn’t sound too cheesy, by paying attention to the ordinary in your life.

Transcendentalist scholar Meg North, explains that there are 7 things you can do, 7 practices of transcendentalism, you can do to help avoid living a life of quiet desperation.

The are:

1. Incorporate Nature
2. Incorporate Meditation
3. Incorporate Reading Sacred Texts
4. Incorporate Writing or journaling
5. Incorporate Conversation
6. Incorporate The sacred in both a time set aside and a place
7. Incorporate creative expression.

So easy, right? You’re probably half-way there already!


I’ll be honest with you, most of those sound pretty easy and fun, but that journaling business? I hate that. I had a teacher in Grade 9, Mr. Callahan, who tried to extol to us the wonderful daily practice of journaling. I didn’t do it then, which might explain my B+, and I don’t do it now.

But I’ll be honest with you, I think it’s a failing of mine not to write in a journal daily. Or at least weekly!

I have spent years trying to train myself to keep awake to the beauty that surrounds me. And for all that work, and all the beauty I see each and every day because of that work, I can not tell what wonderful, amazing thing that I saw a week ago, Tuesday.

And that’s sort of a small tragedy.

I can’t go back in five years and remember the colour of shirt Denis wore when first told me he loved me. And that’s the sort of sweet memory one should be able to recall, don’t you think? Had I written it down in a journal, I could go back, re-read and re-live that moment.

I know this, and yet, I don’t journal.

But the other six? I do them, or try to do them daily.

I incorporate nature into my daily life. I have a house plant at home. I try to walk by and touch it every day. In some perhaps silly way, I’m letting my plant that it’s not alone, even though it’s not next to other plants. I also have a pair of fish that I feed and say hello to.

There’s also walking to the bus, or in the park, or, last weekend, walking on Bowen Island. Something spectacular happened to Steven and I on our way to the minister’s retreat on Bowen Island. Between Horseshoe Bay and the island, each of us saw our very first dolphin in the wild. He saw his first, and though he tried to help me see the same dolphin he’d seen, I ended up seeing another dolphin on the other side of the ferry.


I meditate, usually daily. I have a series of guided meditations on my iPhone and I sit in a quiet place for meditation. We do a short meditation here on Sundays.



Naturally, as a student minister I read a lot of sacred texts. But you know what, before I entered seminary, I read sacred texts often. I sought meaning in the writings of the women and men who lived before me. This is part of why when I discovered Unitarian Universalism, I stayed here. As a people of faith, we are seekers. The reading of texts, both generally accepted “sacred” texts and those reading that our own souls define as sacred, is something that we all seem to have in common.


I enjoy exchanging ideas with people. This, done with intention, can easily be seen as Meg North’s “incorporate conversation.” Talking with others about our faith, our confusions, our hopes….this is spiritual work.


Because you’re here right now, you’ve already begun to designate time in your life dedicated to a sacred space and a sacred time. By coming this morning, you’re already addressing the need to carve out a place that is separate, intentional, for your spirit. You don’t have to limit time to feed your spirit to just Sunday mornings. In fact, I encourage you not to!

Even in the tiniest of suites, one can set up a small altar. I know that word altar might make some people here jump a little inside, but stay with me for a moment. You can substitute “niche” or “corner” for the word altar, but I encourage you not to do so right now. If you have a strong reaction to that word, ask yourself why. And then ask yourself if you want to grow enough to reclaim that word.

On my altar at home, which truth be told is jus the top of my half-bookcase, on my altar at home I have a little statue of the Buddha. I bought it in a bookstore. It’s called “itty-bitty-buddha.” I have it there to remind myself that every being is a potential Buddha, and that my work in this life is treat my fellow beings with the respect that my own highest aspirations can muster.

I also have a prayer by St. Francis, given to me by a Franciscan Nun who works with the … She brought back this from her visit to Assisi.

A Simple Prayer

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love.
Where there is injury, let me sow pardon.
Where there is doubt, let me sow faith.
Where there is despair, let me sow hope.
Where there is sadness, let me sow joy.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled as to console,
To be understood as to understand,
To be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive.
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned.
It is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

– St. Francis of Assisi

You may struggle as I do, with some of the language in this prayer. Theologically, I do not feel comfortable with asking God to grant me these things. I don’t like the idea of having to rely on God for anything really. I want to feel like the master of my own destiny, to be the force in the universe that is responsible for my own happinesses and successes.

But even so, to live this kind of life is I think a life well lived.

And Ms. North’s final recommendation to live the life of a transcendentalist is incorporate creative expression. This can take many forms, of course. Cooking, painting, photography, dancing, singing in the shower by yourself. The point, I think of this part of spiritual practice is to celebrate life. To let your soul speak though your right brain, and not just your left brain. To work both halves of your mind is one way, and perhaps a pretty great way, to fully embody your spirit’s experience.


To do these seven things, though, requires one to pay attention to your life. And this paying attention to your life is, I believe, the thing that will keep you from living a life of quiet desperation.

If you can train yourself to be mindful of the wonders around you, you can celebrate them. They will not whiz by you, in your life, moment by moment, leaving you at the end of the day asking “where did the day go?”

You will know how your day was spent. You will remember your first cup of coffee and it’s rich flavour. You’ll look back on those early spring flowers you saw pushing their way up from the ground, while you walked to the bus, train, car. You’ll smile at a joke you heard this afternoon. You will remember the robust flavours of the food you ate for dinner.

You’ll be able to see just how rich with experience your days are. And if you’re wiser than me, you’ll write them down.


I’ll make you a deal. I will begin the spiritual practice of daily writing, beginning this evening. If you join me in this discipline, starting sometime this week, I hereby grant you permission to ask me how my journaling is going. Who knows, at the end of the church year, maybe we can create a “journaler’s coffee shop” here, and some of us can read a few favourite parts of our journal to each other over tea and cookies.


The idea of spiritual practice might bring to mind arduous daily tasks and/or great personal sacrifice. Some of us may not even like to think about spiritual things on a daily basis, but I tell you that it is important work, and it doesn’t have to be painful! I hope that this list of 7 things, which I will put up on Ning, that this list of 7 can be recognized for what it is: a lot of things we’re already doing.

This is your life. Depending on who you talk with, we only get this one, and certainly this incarnation is unique. You, and you, and you deserve to drink deeply of it. To celebrate the days of your life! This is about you, your stumblings and your victories. You are the star of your own movie.

Even when, as will sometimes happens, the movie takes a turn for the sad. Love dissolves, there are financial struggles and health concerns. You worry about your supporting cast, your daughter, your friend.

When the music takes on a minor key, and your life is difficult it is especially important to seek out the small beauties that life can offer us.


Please, pay attention to your life. It is, on balance, filled with important events and amazing people. A life fully realized is a gift! Allow yourself to walk around, watching and be filled with wonder.

You are worth that gift.

The Rabbits Are Coming!

At first blush, a sermon about rabbits may seem a little odd. After all, what is a rabbit but a little mammal with notably little strength at very near the bottom of the food-chain. How should we find inspiration from one such as this?

And they’re so common! Just Ask the people over at the University of Victoria. Last summer the population of feral rabbits at UVic was estimated to be between 1,400 and 1,600. As of January 20, however, the population is down to 50. UVic has promised that all rabbits removed to date have been done so humanely and were sterilized and released into appropriate places elsewhere in the province. They have a goal of zero rabbits by summer.

Since I was fourteen, I’ve been collecting quotes, and I have quite a collection now. Some 28 or 29 pages, single-spaced. One of my favorites is “If dandelions were rare and difficult to grow, they’d be welcomed on any lawn.” I guess the same is true for rabbits.

In just a few days, we will celebrate the Chinese New Year, and the year coming up is the Year of the Rabbit. Lynn Sabourin, she was pleased to tell me, was herself born in a Year of the Rabbit.

The fourth year of every cycle of Chinese years belongs to the rabbit. Rabbits are in folklore around the globe. One telling of the story of how rabbit was honoured with a year of his own goes like this:

Buddha, before he ascended, invited all the animals to be in his presence. He honoured the first 12 to appear by making them part of the zodiac. Of these 12, Rabbit was the fourth to appear.

Another East Asian legend tells us, that:

The ancient god of India, Indra, King of the gods, was weary and disguised himself as a lowly traveler. One of Buddha’s earlier incarnations was in the form of a rabbit, who kept company with a monkey and a fox. When Indra, as the beggar, entreated them for help, the three animals went searching for food. The monkey came back with a handful of nuts, and the fox also had something for the traveler, but the rabbit found nothing. So great was his sense of honor that he said to the beggar, “I have found nothing for you to eat, so I beg of you, so that you don’t go hungry, eat me.” And he jumped into the fire. Indra was so impressed at the sacrifice the rabbit made for him, that he placed the rabbit on the moon where he became the Rabbit or Hare in the Moon, unlike the Man in the Moon in Western traditions.

A little earlier, Lynn shared with us a story from Cameroon wherein Rabbit uses his wit to become the prince of a land, following his hearts affection, and employing his mind to achieve his goals.

In many lands, the rabbit is a trickster god. An almost direct link can be easily drawn from the story from Cameroon and in other parts of Africa, to the Br’er Rabbit stories from the southern United States; wherein Br’er Rabbit outwits his enemies, time after time. You might be able to see, without too much difficulty, how a population in slavery and historic oppression might find comfort in stories about a creature so seemingly weak, and it’s ability to thwart those with more power.

In Native American and First Nations tribes, the Rabbit is also a trickster god. With the rabbit trickster, here are two interpretations—one positive and helpful and the other devious and aggressive. Known as Cottontail to the Paiute tribe of the the Great Basin region, this rambunctious figure carried on a war with the North Wind. After seducing the daughter of his enemy, Cottontail then burned her alive with her brothers. Conversely, the Omaha tribe of Nebraska saw the rabbit trickster in a more positive light. According to Omaha myth the rabbit, known as Mastshingke, is a defender of early man. When the world was plagued by ferocious, man-eating bears and gargantuan snakes, Mastshingke arrived to show ancient man to safety. For this, he is viewed as a giver of life and protector of mankind.

We also have a modern version of the rabbit as trickster god: Bugs Bunny. How many times has he faced the barrel of Elmer Fudd’s shotgun and gotten away? How angry does he make Daffy Duck, because Bugs always turns the situation around?


What lessons, then, can we learn from our little furry friend with the big ears? Clearly from pre-history, humanity has been fascinated by this little creature who, well, breeds like rabbits, who survive and thrive even though they have seem to be so vulnerable.

There are times in our own lives when we doubtlessly feel vulnerable, no? When we feel as though even though we’ve made our best effort and did our best planning we find ourselves facing a metaphorical fox.

Perhaps it’s related to work, where you’ve been careful and diligent in your work, only to find that you’ve been made redundant. Or at home, parenting, where your kid seems to be more like a trickster god than you.

What does a rabbit do?

Pulling us completely out of myth for a moment, let’s look at what the rabbit, the real rabbit, does.

The rabbit has long ears, and they are for detecting the sounds of its predators. When a rabbit hears danger, she thumps her big long foot on the ground to warn others. And then, she runs like Hell to safety. And if the road to safety is blocked, and I think this part is amazing, and actually leads to so much of the mythology about rabbits, if her way is blocked, she can make a 90-degree left turn so quickly as to almost seem magical.

In the warren where she lives in safety and community, she keeps her individual “room” clean. She does not lay her waste in the warren, she goes outside to do that.

What can you learn from her?


Go about your business, and find the sweetest, most tender grass you can find and enjoy yourself. If you like sunshine, then go, eat in the sunshine! If you prefer a place more shady, that’s okay, too. While enjoying your food, or frolicking around with others, do keep an ear out for danger.

By all means though, do not stop enjoying your life for fear of danger.

When danger appears, warn those with whom you share your life. Thump your foot, let them know something is wrong, and then run to safety. Once there, regroup.


As I spent the last couple of weeks thinking about rabbits, one image kept returning to my mind. And that is one of the rabbit’s ability to make a 90-degree left hand turn, seemingly at a full-speed run.

Even if we’re not running away from a hawk in the sky, or a fox in the shrubbery, we are living our lives at full-speed ahead, aren’t we? Even if one has retired, or works in a non-9 to 5 job, still we are living our lives non-stop.

Do you ever feel trapped by the pace of your life? Do you ever feel like you’re just trying to get quickly to the warmth of your own warren, so you can rest? And on the way home, all you can focus on is the path in front of you?


What can the rabbit teach you? She can teach you that it’s okay to make a sudden right turn, because that ability is part of survival.

When is the last time, while driving home from work, you just made a turn and did something unexpected? Went down an unfamiliar street, or popped into a store to have a look-see?


Obviously, we are not all rabbits here in this church. Our lives have become complicated by more in our live, than any rabbit has to worry about. After all, we have mortgages or rent to pay, our education to pay off, or helping our children get theirs, and the list goes on. But still, humanity has for eons watched the lowly rabbit for clues about how to live a better life. There must be wisdom for us in the modern age in there somewhere.


It’s rare for me to re-read a book of fiction. There are already so many to choose from, going back and re-reading seems to be a missed opportunity for some new adventure and universe of characters. One book I have read, over and over, about once a decade is A Brave New World. I first encountered that book at age 11. As a boy from Detroit, the very idea that people would worship Henry Ford and the Model T religiously was fascinating to me. Also, from that first reading forward, I’ve never really trusted government completely.

As I’ve read it, like I said about once a decade, each time I re-read it, I’ve gotten something new from it.

I first read Richard Adams’s Watership Down in grade 6, in Mrs. Kramer’s English class. At the time, I didn’t know how old the book was. It was published in 1972, making it less than 10 years old when I read it. I didn’t know the importance of contextual things like when a book was written back then, and I’d like to publicly thank Mrs. Kramer now for introducing me to such a book, which has become a classic of juvenile literature. When I first read Watership Down, it seemed like an adventure story.

I read the book again about 10 years ago in a book club. My second reading of Watership Down was all about relationships and community.

Briefly, and I hope not too briefly, the novel Watership Down, is the story of 5 younger male rabbits in a warren who venture out on their own to create a new warren. They are inspired into action because one of the smallest rabbits has a vision, which shows him that human developers are coming and the warren they currently live in is doomed.

They try to warn the Chief rabbit, but because they are young, not even 2 years old yet, their warning is not heeded, and they strike out on their own. Along the way they have dealings with two other warrens, neither of which is suitable for various reasons. Once they arrive in the place where they will create their warren, two of the smaller rabbits start digging, which is work that only does, or females do.

This by the way, caused a great discussion in my book club.

Eventually, their leader, Hazel, begins to understand that in order for Watership Down to continue, they must find mates. Find mates they do, suffering losses and gaining allies along the way, and the book ends with an elderly Hazel looking out over what he helped to create.


When I told my teaching pastor, Steven Epperson, that I was doing a sermon called “The Rabbits Are Coming,” he shared an article with me written by Stanley Hauerwas, an orthodox, conservative Christian about the book Watership Down and Christian Ethics.

In this article, Hauerwas examines the little band of rabbits not as the rag-tag group of friends that I’d read about in 1981 or even in 1999. Instead, draws parallels between the story and communities of faith. Of course, he means the Christian universal church as he understands and promotes, it. But I see easily how this relates to any group gathered together to practice their faith. Written in 1981, Hauerwas’s article is available through google books. Google books is both terrific and frustrating because the site offers so many resources, but unless the resource is in public domain they must redact it, meaning that every so often a page or two gets skipped in their reproduction. But if the article captures your attention from google books, perhaps you’ll pursue it further.

Hauerwas writes that the little band of rabbits does not start off as a community. It’s the trials and tribulations that the rabbits go through together, and the learning of their own limitations and the strengths of their compatriots that forge them into a community.

Look around you at this community. See the strengths of the people around you, and know that they can see yours. Know that this community is made stronger not just by your ability to excel at tasks, but also your ability to stand back and let others share their abilities. Learn that it’s okay that you can’t do everything, and that relying on others, within your community, helps to make that community stronger for all.



At first blush, a sermon about rabbits might seem frivolous and potentially silly, I know. I mean, what after all do we have to learn from them?

Enjoy your daily tasks in the sunshine. Keep an ear out for danger. When danger appears, warn others. When it’s time to do so, run for home. As you’re running for home, if the way is blocked by danger, don’t be afraid to turn quickly in a new direction to save yourself. If you have to strike out on your own and form a new home, know that it can be fraught with danger, lessons, loss, and successes.

Once you’re home, don’t leave your waste lying around and be respectful of the others you live with. Work to make your community strong.

And then go out and enjoy your daily tasks in the sunshine.

Repeat as necessary.

Many blessings for our shared journeys.

Amen.