Sticking Together in Mercy

For our Christian friends and neighbors, today is the Day of Pentecost. Every year they celebrate the miracle of communication. I will now read from the Christian Scriptures: The Acts of the Apostles chapter 2:1-8

“When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.  Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard them speaking in his own language. Utterly amazed, they asked: “Are not all these men who are speaking Galileans? Then how is it that each of us hears them in his own native language?”

Several years ago, I preached in a church that holds membership in the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations and the United Church of Christ. I had done a history project with them, trying to help them organize, archive and reproduce some recordings of their one-time famous minister, the Rev. Dr. Preston Bradley.

If you ever gotten an email from me, you may have noticed that at the bottom of my email, I quote Dr. Bradley “The world basically and fundamentally is constituted on the basis of harmony. Everything works in co-operation with something else.”

Dr. Bradley’s church was, in it’s heyday, a Unitarian congregation of some 4,000 regular attendees and a radio audience of about 3 million folks. In the 1920’s the term “mega church” was actually coined to describe The People’s Church on the Northside of Chicago.

Their sanctuary seats about 4,000 people.

Well, seated.

Now it seats far less, as the top balconies have been closed off for years.

And the congregation, even though it hosts Chicago’s largest shelter for homeless men, at 150 beds, the congregation has shrunk to about 10.

Yes, 10 loyal followers, many of whom still remember, fondly, Dr. Bradley, who died in 1983.

Though it’s a complex story, with many nuances, The People’s Church has declined largely because it can not let go of it’s past.

Dr. Bradley, for his part, did not leave when it was time for him to retire, and 4 or 5 younger, dynamic ministers, spent years as his Assistant Minister, and were promised that he would retire “in the next year or two.” But Dr. Bradley was unable to let go of his influence, of his fondness for what was in years past, of his own desire to control the direction of the church that he’d built, starting in 1912.

And the church suffered greatly for it.

So here I was a seminarian, preaching in this large auditorium slash sanctuary, on Pentecost to a congregation that believed, at least partially, in the Miracle of the Pentecost.

What to do?

It occurred to me that I might change the question of the Pentecost from the Miracle of Speaking in Tongues, to the Miracle of Hearing Each Other.

What if, the miracle was in fact about listening, understanding and not speaking?


The Rev. Fred L. Hammond wrote:

There is only one place that I know of where people speak in other tongues and others are able to understand them.  That place, my friends, is right here in a Unitarian Universalist Congregation.   And it is a gift that we often fail to cultivate to its fullest potential.
What am I talking about?  Did I suddenly say words that seem incomprehensible?  I am going to do what many Pentecostal ministers do when preaching and refer back to the text of the day.   The text states that when all of these Jews who came from all over the known world to worship in Jerusalem heard the disciples speak, they heard them speak in their own language and were amazed.   The men and women, who had gathered still in grief over the death of their teacher, began to speak in words that others could hear and understand.
And who are we?  We are a people who gather together professing no specific creed.  Right here in this congregation we have people who profess a Christian faith, a Hindu faith, a Jewish faith, an atheist faith, a pagan faith, or possibly a New Thought faith.  We are a diverse people who speak many different tongues.  Yet here we are, covenanting together to create a community that welcomes, promotes our differences.   We have chosen to dialogue together about our various creeds so that when we meet a person who has a creed that is different than our own, we can be open and affirming with that person.  Because we have learned, some better than others, to hear those beliefs and creeds in our own language and at the same time honor the unique differences of their faith. 

Fred and I are friends. When Fred was a student at our seminary, he attended church with me in Chicago.


This is what we are. Out here on the outskirts of Modesto, here in Stanislaus County. We are a gathering of people with different ideas about what holds ultimate value for us, and yet we meet week after week.

We meet not just to tolerate the beliefs of others, we come not to convince each other that our doctrine is better than theirs.

We come together and we happily drink in the diversity of theology, or no theology as the case may be. We revel in the ideas and the people who are not carbon copies of ourselves.

What other congregation in Stanislaus County has a Buddhist Sanga on it’s campus?

No one.

This is just one, albeit happily very visible, aspect of what makes this congregation special.

We are the place you can bring your Muslim friends, your Buddhist friends or your friends who are Sikh, or your friends who are seeking….something…. even if they don’t yet know what the name of that something might be, or how it will co-exist in balance with the other really important feelings and ideas that they have inside them.


Here we have heard members of our congregation say, over and over how this fellowship has been a life-line for them in the midst of their most trying times. When loved ones have died, when jobs and relationships were lost. When they felt alone and vulnerable, they turned to this congregation.

Here we have heard triumphs of the human spirit. We have heard of decades long hurts addressed. We have heard of graduations, of finding love. We have celebrated and cheered for new babies and victories of grandchildren. We have heard that we have saved someone’s life, because we were here.

This is exactly the importance of our ritual of sharing Joys and Sorrows each week.


It’s true that we may struggle with words like Mercy, Grace, Forgiveness, Religious Authority, God and other big concepts.

But this is part of what makes us so amazing! We struggle with them. No one tells us:

This is our doctrine, and this is the party line you must tow.

Instead, we wince at a word, like Amen, and then we try to figure out why we wince, and what that might mean.

We do this in coffee hour, and we do this in small group ministry circles. Each Fellowship Circle meets monthly and each circle is responsible for some act of service to the congregation or the world at large. Today’s lunch has been provided for by the Fellowship Circle led by Marcia Gilbert and Denis Paul. It’s members are Mary Randall, Jack Lackey, Doreen Souza and Avonelle Tomlinson, so you should thank them today.

At other churches, you can oooo and ahhhh over pictures of grandchildren, true enough.  But you are not likely to find the rest of what happens here at any other place.

We are unique in this county. We are celebrating 60 years of fellowship here in the Central Valley.


We don’t have a creed, and there is not test of faith to be a member of our community. No one should ever tell you that you don’t belong here.

We are one of 1,100 independent churches that call themselves a Unitarian Universalist Congregation. That comes with both a legacy and a challenge.

This year we have heard stories from several congregants about how they found their way here, this oasis. About what it means to be a non-joiner, and to join. About being amazed that there were other people out here in the Central Valley who thought about things, and felt things, in a similar way that they did.

If we are going to continue to be not just a home, but an effective church, living our faith out loudly and boldly, we must stick together.

Even when that means that we don’t agree. Even when sometimes our ideas are not the ones that the majority go with.


All week I’ve had this image of an old-fashioned barn raising in my mind.

It may be sort of a funny image, I know. But imagine with me a short film of Amish men building a barn together. See them lifting walls, and hammering in wooden pegs. Imagine them yelling to one another, to be heard.

And see the women, cooking enough for an army. Watch them talk amongst themselves about what is important to them.


This community, even though it may have gender divisions that we might not agree with, this community is a thing of beauty. Each person, from the youngest to the eldest, does their part the best that they are able to do, for the benefit of all.

Who cares if the barn being raised isn’t yours…this time.

You may be next, you may not.

What matters is that your friends and neighbors come together, to build this barn, which will sustain your life. With hammer or wooden spoon, the entire community pitches in.


At your best, this is what this community does.

We are a beacon of liberal faith. We are the church of the open mind and the helping hand. We are the church with the big yellow sign out front that says “Standing on the Side of Love.”

We are a safe place for those who might feel otherwise marginalized. Be it because of their gender expression, who they love, their political or theological ideas, their first language, where they were born.

Here they can be safe. And new comers can be safe, but they must first know we’re out here.

We must let them know that we’re here.

To be a congregation that changes the lives of the people of Stanislaus County, we must let them know about us, and we must be strong. To be strong, we must come together, even if sometimes we bump into each other a room full of toddlers learning to walk.

When we bump into each other we must show grace, offer forgiveness and in doing so engage in the very practical and spiritual act of creating mercy here on Earth.

We don’t claim to know what happens in the afterlife, if anything happens at all. We do know, though, that we have only our own hands to change the world.

And many hands make light work of a heavy load.

May we all put our hands together, each according to their finest gifts, and get to work

Mama's Day

When you woke up this morning, how many of you thought of your Mother? How many of you are now scampering around in your brain, because you forgot and it’s too late to send flowers to your Mother?

Last year on Mother’s Day we tried an experiment. We had, as usual, two services, but this time we tried something different in each service. The first service was a contemplative service, in which we sat in small groups, with deep listening, and each person took a turn speaking to the others in their group about their own personal difficulties with Motherhood.

And there are many.

In the U.S. there are about 314 million people right now. Each of them, no matter where they come from, how old they are, who they love, how rich or poor they are, each of them has a mother.

Some share their mother with other folks, but to a person, everybody has one.

How many people of the 314 million have the perfect mother?

Not a single one of us.

I saw this aloud because it doesn’t get said often in a way that is helpful. We hear, especially on a day like to day, a lot about the either real or pseudo sainthood of our mothers.

This does damage in several ways, but there are two I’d like to address this morning.

First, even though she’s probably smarter than this, your mother, or maybe it’s you, is competing with a fictional character. Trying to measure up to someone who doesn’t do things like sleep, make mistakes, inadvertently bruise their child. Someone who loves roses of all sorts, who never loses her temper and who bakes cookies 365 days a year, and yet manages to wear the same dress size she wore when she was 14.

Secondly, this sort of fiction blocks those of us who have mothers from feeling real grief about our own Mother’s human-ness, because to do so, especially on a day like today, is socially unacceptable.

I love my Mom. And I’m not just saying this because she reads my sermons, but because it is true. But my love for her is made more real by loving the real person and not some fictional version of her.

If we can not be allowed to embrace our mothers for who they really are, then we don’t really love them, we love some concept of her.

Love your real Mom, even if it’s difficult.

Notice I said love, I didn’t say turn your face away from the flaws in your relationship, the mistakes she’s made or to glorify beyond reason what she did well.

But do, as you should with all people, do be gentle.

When you picture your Mother, what do you see? Do you see the color of her hair, be it a natural color or with some assistance? Do you see her smile? Can you see her tears?

Do you know her birthday? I know mine, but I’m not going to tell you that!

Is the woman you think as your mother the woman who gave birth to you, or no? Who else has nurtured your body and spirit?

I have a long list of women for who I am grateful.

During this morning’s Time for All Ages, I shared Dr. Seuss’s book Are You My Mother?  It’s a fun enough story, perhaps a little nervous making for the little ones in our church family, who might worry about their Mom going away. But I had more nefarious reasons for reading this book on Mother’s Day than might be readily apparent.

You may recall that the little bird goes from animal to animal, and then to machinery asking “Are you my Mother?” This is an especially poignant question for a child to ask if that child is say… adopted, or is multi-racial and looks very different from their mother, or is a child in foster care. The question moves from being a cute question about confusion to a real, existential question.

Are you my Mother? In many ways is really asking the questions “Who am I, and how do I fit in to this large sometimes very frightening universe? Who do I belong to? Who are my people? Who will take care of me?”

The soon to be Rev. Darcy Baxter, Family Minister at the Starr King UU Church in Hayward California, encouraged churches throughout the UUA to embrace “Mama’s Day,”[1] this year on Mother’s Day. Darcy, of course, is not alone in this effort to raise our awareness, but she is the person who brought it to my attention.

Mama’s Day is a day of celebration of all sorts of families. Some with two Mamas, some with two Daddies, some with one of each or only one parent, and the many other combinations that are possible with blended families.

One of the very visible goals of Mama’s Day is to create and help support what they are calling “Strong Families.” Families that are sometimes marginalized in our world, held up, celebrated and helped by all of us.

What Mama’s Day is asking us to do is to take some time, not just today, but throughout the year to ask questions about what makes a strong family, and how do we help families who are in need. Families who struggle with poverty, illnesses, immigration worries and more.

Earlier I asked you “When you picture your mother, what do you see…” How many of you saw a woman in Chowchilla’s Prison?

One way in we could honor Mama’s Day is to get involved with the women serving time in Chowchilla. Perhaps we could help by offering educational or spiritual tutoring. Perhaps we could help out a woman who is newly released and reunited with her children….

I don’t know what we might do, because I think it should be up to a group of people who are called to be involved to figure that out.

But I do believe we ought to do something.

Chowchilla is just about an hour away from here, and amongst us we have centuries of experience teaching, performing social work and other helping professions that these women might really be able to use.

With enough help, perhaps we could even have an effect on the recidivism rate.

Think back to that little bird in P. D. Eastman’s story. Are you my Mommy is probably a question asked by every child who’s mother is in Chowchilla today.

When Julia Ward Howe wrote her “Mother’s Day Proclamation” she did not have our modern holiday in mind. We have Anna Jarvis, who created Mother’s Day in 1908 to thank for that. From Julia, one of our Unitarian ancestors, we have this proclamation:

Arise, then, women of this day!

Arise, all women who have hearts, Whether our baptism be of water or of tears!

Say firmly: "We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies, Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We, the women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

From the bosom of the devastated Earth a voice goes up with our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice." Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession. As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war, Let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel.

Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means Whereby the great human family can live in peace, Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar, But of God.

In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask That a general congress of women without limit of nationality May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient And at the earliest period consistent with its objects, To promote the alliance of the different nationalities, The amicable settlement of international questions,

The great and general interests of peace.

—Julia Ward Howe[2]

Though the call to action is slightly different than what I’m suggesting we might do in Chowchilla, still there is a call to action that has a special focus on women and motherhood shared between Mrs. Howe’s lovely words and mine, which feel quite overshadowed by hers.

Generation after generation we hear the call of the women of our faith to address the social ills of our time. Abigail Adams, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Susan B. Anthony, Mary Wollstonecraft, Dorothea Dix, Clara Barton, and the list could go on and on.

Generations of the women in our faith have expended great efforts, often at terrible personal risk so address the social ills of our nation. Do we not have a responsibility to these, our fore-mothers, to do the same?

Yes, today is a day to celebrate the women in our lives who have nurtured us body and spirit. Let us celebrate their work and generosity by in turn helping to heal the world we live in with love.

Amen.

---

[1] http://www.uua.org/reproductive/action/284636.shtml

[2] Mrs. Howe wrote this in 1870, as a response to the Civil War, and the Franco-Prussian War. Her other notable contribution regarding the American Civil War is the Battle Hymn of the Republic.

© The Rev. Joseph M Cherry

Written for and Delivered to

The Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Stanislaus County

May 12, 2013

Unemployment and Spirituality.

The first morning that you awaken and have no where to go is depressing.

It could've been a Monday morning, if you had been spending all your time in an office or a classroom. A factory or an Ag. firm.

It could've been a Saturday if you waited tables, or were a nurse.

It could've been really any day at all.

See, before this, you had something, you contributed something, even if it felt meaningless, there was some meaning.

But then you were pink-slipped, fired, or your retired after 35 years of teaching little children.

No matter what you did before, you know face a long, yawning gape of time before you, one that lacks structure but is equally as important as your work-a-day life, but it’s less lucrative.


Now, hopefully, if you've retired, you've been thinking about this day for a long time, and you've even celebrated it's arrival. You've made financial preparations, and even if your belt will have to be tight, you've done some planning.

But if you've been let go, laid off, made redundant, fired, sacked, you're likely to still be in some state of shock. You'd been counting on those steady paychecks to help make your life to add stability to your life. You enjoyed the steady weekly, bi-weekly or monthly pay checks that you got to deposit, which is very convenient when it comes to things like the first of the month and your rent or mortgage is due.

Unitarian Universalist, and Civil Rights leader, Whitney Young, Jr. wrote: The hardest work in the world is being out of work.

I don't know about you, but I have been fired.

I was fired once when I was a 15 year old dishwasher from the Bonanza restaurant not far from our house. I was fired because I was too young to legally work, and I had fudged my work permit papers. I also was not the fasted dishwasher ever.

I was fired at 22 from a job that I'd had for 3 years because my boss had discovered something about me, that I had only recently discovered about myself: I had a burgeoning attraction to members of my own gender.



In 1910, Jane Addams wrote: [O]f all the aspects of social misery nothing is so heartbreaking as unemployment.


I can tell you from first hand experience that being fired is a shock to the system. Rarely do they tell you in advance, so that you can save up a nest egg.

Also, another aspect of being involuntarily separated from your place of employment is that you find yourself suddenly without your work friends.



If you quit a job well, than there is no stigma to that, is there. You can still meet the gang after work, for a little while anyway, and hear the latest gossip and what have you.

But if you've been fired, well, that's a little too much for most people to handle. Your name has been besmirched. Your reputation tarnished.

And there's also the fear of association. "Well, if he fired Joe and he knows we hang out, what's that going to mean for me? How will Randy think about me then?"

“When you took a man's job away from him, his ability to feed and clothe his family, that man was going to get angry.” wrote Darrin Grimwood, in his book, Destroy All Robots.



Above all, for most there is the fear about money. Where will it come from? Will there be enough?

One hard lesson that every person who's ever lost a job unexpectedly losses a job learns, and quickly. Looking for a job is hard work. It is not vacation. Yes, suddenly you can go to the Queen Bean on Tuesday afternoon, but you do so at your own peril.

In many ways you're forced to become your own entrepreneurial employment agency, with only one client, and no one gets paid until that client finds a job. As fear sets in and bank accounts diminish, you find yourself working more hours to find a job than you ever worked when you had a job, and there's no paycheck on Friday.


When I was asked to create this service, once by a person who actually won the raffle to request a theme, and by one other person, I wanted to both convey the feeling of losing one's job, and a corresponding spiritual answer to losing one's job.

Paul Krugman wrote in his New York Times column for May 30, 2010:  “More and more, conventional wisdom says that the responsible thing is to make the unemployed suffer. And while the benefits from inflicting pain are an illusion, the pain itself will be all too real.”

One can’t help but feel anxiety when separated, unwillingly, from one’s job. From his 1939 novel, Coming Up for Air, George Orwell wrote these poignant words:

“I suppose there hasn’t been a single month since the war, in any trade you care to name, in which there weren’t more men than jobs. It’s brought a peculiar, ghastly feeling into life. It’s like on a sinking ship when there are nineteen survivors and fourteen lifebelts. But is there anything particularly modern in that, you say? Has it anything to do with the war? Well, it feels as if it had. The feeling that you’ve got to be everlastingly fighting and hustling, that you’ll never get anything unless you grab it from somebody else, that there’s always somebody after your job, that next month or the month after they’ll be reducing staff and it’s you that’ll get the bird – that, I swear, didn’t exist in the old life before the war.” 

I’m always tempted to tease good old George about his dystopian outlook. I don’t know what it is about the British and their affection for dystopia, but so often I find Orwell’s words speaking at times to my own life.



For me, it is exceptionally difficult to think about how great the universe is, how abundant life can be, when I'm applying for employment.


But breathe with me for a moment.

This is EXACTLY when one should try to think about abundance and greatness.

I know it won't always be easy. I know you'll feel the pressure of bills and deadlines, and the self-esteem does take a hit at times like this, but....

This is also a chance to reinvent yourself.

“My first bit of advice is to not personalize a job loss.” Writes John-Talmage Mathis, in his book For the (Soon) Unemployed, “The cause for the dismissal was a business calculation. This is difficult for many to grasp; it’s difficult to accept that events just occur. Come to see this as an experience. Obviously not the most pleasant experience, but it is one that you’ll overcome.” 

This will be hard work, but spiritual work is hard work.

Try your best not to take the first job tossed in your direction, unless it is awesome, in which case, jump at it!

As part of figuring out what your next step might be, interview your friends. Ask them what they think you're strongest skills are. They may surprise you. What do they know about you that you don't?

 Ask you family about the burning passions you had as a child, can any of those help direct your next job search?

Keep a daily log of the jobs you've considered, applied for, didn't get and the ones that you chose to reject because it wasn't a good fit. This will show you, when you think you haven't done enough work, that you have in fact, done A LOT of work.

If you have to take a crappy job, a McJob, a job not in the direction you want your life to go, take it, but don't rest too long there. When taking a job waiting tables, for example, you don't need to feel an obligation to stay there for five years. Waitstaff are notoriously transient folk, you won't be the first to quit after 6 months.

And accept this assignment: Spend one hour, every day, being good to yourself. This doesn't mean an hour on Facebook. Find things to do here in town that are cheap or free, and do them. Many of them.

Spend ten minutes a day writing in a journal. Write about the things that you are grateful for, things you are good at, things you've seen on your walk in Graceada Park.

Many of us find a lot of validation in our jobs, and to find that source of grounding that we've been relying on, to find that it is gone is a shock to the system.

Financial concerns aside, we feel lost. We may even wonder who we are now that we are not a teacher, a nurse, a combine driver, a member of the military.

I strongly encourage you, when and if you find yourself in this state of flux to tend to you spirit.

I understand that your spiritual life may suddenly seem like a secondary concern now, now that you’re worrying even more than before about bills…

But this difficult time is exactly what one’s religious and spiritual life is for. When our lives get hard, we have our religious community to turn to, our spiritual practices to rely on.

Sometimes Unitarian Universalism is judged to be ill-prepared to deal theologically with the sufferings of life. There are those who decry our seemingly endless optimism, and the way we sort of whistle past the graveyard so as to not have to look to hard at all the humans who’ve gone before us.

We, as a people of faith, are very good at pointing to the suffering of others and then making posters and protests on their behalf, which is something indeed to be very proud of.

But we are not as good at sitting within our own suffering.

Often we look for some problem to solve, some injustice to rail against, some way to be useful.


I think this desire to be useful is what makes unemployment so difficult for us. If we are not doing something, than who are we?


Our first principle is that we believe in the inherent worth and dignity of every person.

This includes us.

It includes you.


If you find yourself struggling with the forced idleness of unemployment, remember that while your labor is valuable, you are more valuable than your labor.

You are a beautiful soul, beautiful in all of your complexities, your brokenness, your wholeness, your holiness.

One of our favorite hymns is “Come, come whoever you are. Wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving. Ours is no caravan of despair. Come, yet again come.” When it was set to music, the Rev. Lynn Ungar left off the line “Though you’ve broken your vow a thousand times” because she just couldn’t get it to fit in.

Though you’ve broken your vow a thousand times, as we all have, you still matter. Though you are imperfect, you still matter.

Though you’re in a tough spot right now, though you wish things were different, though you feel powerless and alone, you are not.

To us, to me, you matter.

May each of us, when hardship comes into our lives, remember that every person has intrinsic worth and deserves to be treated with dignity.

May each of us remember, that we too, are part of “every person.”

Amen.

© The Rev. Joseph M Cherry

Written for and delivered to:

The Unitarian Universalist Fellowship

of Stanislaus County

May 05, 2013