Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of the Emerald Coast
“Our Mission: Spiritual Growth”
Rev. Rod Debs
March 21, 2010
Story for All Ages “Pearls in the Making” by Randy Hammer (Everyone a Butterfly, 2004)
We can learn a lot about life by paying attention to nature. This morning’s story is what we can learn from the story of pearls.
Have you ever gotten a speck of dust or sand in your eye? It’s very uncomfortable. What do your eyes do? They make tears to wash away the dust or sand, and you cry.
Pearls come from ocean shellfish like oysters. When the oyster gets a speck of sand inside it, the sand is very uncomfortable for the oyster, just like it is for our eyes. Rather than making tears, the oyster secrets a substance (nacre) that coats the rough sand over and over with its silky smooth coating. The more the speck of sand is coated with nacre, the bigger it gets. It makes a smooth pearl out of the irritating grain of sand.
It is a lot like this for you and me. We humans are able to create something beautiful with our lives. Throughout history, people have created some of the most beautiful things after some kind of trouble or after a great difficulty. Like a rough, uncomfortable grain of sand in our lives.
No one has a perfect life free of troubles. But when troubles or disappointments happen in your life, think about the shellfish, the oyster which takes the trouble and turns into something beautiful. You can make your troubles into “pearls.”
Message What are we doing here at this Unitarian Universalist Fellowship? Why are we here?… I could ask around the room what each one of us is doing here, our individual motivations that reflect our personal religious journeys, but that would be a different question from “What are we doing here together?”
In 2005, a Discovery Team of members authorized by the UUFEC Board of Trustees, facilitated congregational meetings to hammer out what we’re doing here together. Lots of views were collected. The Discovery Team floated a draft. It was displayed for members’ alternative wordings. An altered draft was presented to the Board of Trustees who in turn tweaked the wording a little bit more. Then, the entire Congregation voted to approve this Mission Statement of what we’re doing here together:
“The Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of the Emerald Coast is a religious community united by UU Principles and committed to service, spiritual growth and caring fellowship.”
This Sunday I would like to draw your attention to the second of our three commitments: Spiritual Growth.
Spirituality is, to many, a private journey of individual insight and personal practice. It’s a matter of setting foot on a variety of religious paths, and coming to one that fits, and offers the greatest fulfillment. Spirituality is to many a private path for greater personal meaning. But the question is: What are we doing here together?
For others, spirituality is all about emotional “enthusiasm” heightened by mass dynamics. It’s about feeling moved to tears and laughter, longing, regret, passion and compassion. Religious services become a performance of lofty language of ecstasy and of horror, impassioned oratory, enveloping music from pipe organs or from swaying choirs and praise bands, rhythmic repetition and ancient ritual, lofty architecture with iconic imagery of death and delight. You leave feeling grasped by awe and wonder, at once insignificant and divinely chosen.
Some Unitarian Universalists turn away from private, mystical spirituality and also turn away from emotional enthusiasm of public worship. The life of the spirit is for them an intellectual pursuit of insight, meaning and understanding. You might say we have nostalgia for our college days. Unfolding the mysteries of life at “theology school light.”
Still others would just as soon do without Spiritual Growth as our Mission, preferring a social club committed to Service and Caring Fellowship. A club doesn’t involve personal change. You either fit or you don’t. Clubs don’t have in their New Member Ceremony the declaration, “We are willing to be changed by your presence among us.”
What are we doing here together? Why do we exist?… We are here for our own growth in mutual relations, growth in collaborative responsivity—greater ability to respond to one another. Carter Heyward defines growth in mutual relations as learning to love. She writes (Our Passion for Justice, 1984):
“Love, like truth and beauty, is concrete. Love is not fundamentally a sweet feeling; not, at heart, a matter of sentiment, attachment, or being `drawn toward.’ Love is active, effective, a matter of making reciprocal and mutually beneficial relation with one’s friends and enemies.
“Love creates righteousness, or justice, here on earth. To make love is to make justice. As advocates and activists for justice know, loving involves struggle, resistance, risk.
People working today on behalf of women, blacks, lesbians and gay men, the aging, the poor in this country and elsewhere know that making justice is not a warm, fuzzy experience. I think also that sexual lovers and good friends know that the most compelling relationships demand hard work, patience, and a willingness to endure tensions and anxiety in creating mutually empowering bonds.
“For this reason loving involves commitment. We are not automatic lovers of self, others, world, or God. Love does not just happen. We are not love machines, puppets on the strings of a deity called “love.” Love is a choice — not simply, or necessarily, a rational choice, but rather a willingness to be present to others without pretense or guile. Love is a conversion to humanity — a willingness to participate with others in the healing of a broken world and broken lives. Love is the choice to experience life as a member of the human family, a partner in the dance of life, rather than as an alien in the world or as a deity above the world, aloof and apart from human flesh.”
The Reverend Dr. Carter Heyward also writes:
“To say I love you is to say that you are not mine, but rather, your own.
To love you is to advocate your rights, your space, your self,
and to struggle with you, rather than against you…”
In a society that has adopted Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “self-reliance” as a fundamental American value, relationships and interdependence— love understood as joyful mutual relations is no longer the sacred center of life. Rather, we swell up in emotion when we hear Frank Sinatra, “I did it my way!” Grandpa’s secret to a happy marriage, “Always say, `Yes, dear,’” is a joke targeting women who do not defer to whatever their husbands say. How do you handle such a woman? “Always say, `Yes, dear,’”
It seems that love and relationships are viewed as subverting the genius of the individual. A betrayal of Superman’s vaunted “truth, justice and the American Way” when Andy Rooney declares: “Being kind is more important than being right.”
We celebrate the curmudgeon who “tells it like it is,”—or rather—curmudgeons who “tell it as they see it” without a moment’s consideration of others’ corrective perspectives or of any who might be offended, discouraged or silenced by their unfiltered speech. White students who called black girls “water buffalo” demand that they are merely exercising their right of free speech, when such racist name-calling functions to silence those ridiculed and to prevent their exercise of free speech.
Sixteenth century Francis David taught that we do not have to agree upon what is true, to love and live at peace: “We need not think alike to love alike.” When we disagree, we can decide to choose our battles and hold off being disagreeable. We can choose to respect the relationship and keep dialogue open. There just might be something we can learn, even from those we are convinced are wrong!
One of my responsibilities as the Minister of a congregation is that I am called upon to officiate weddings. In the course of Marriage Conversations with couples, I have come to share an insight I picked up somewhere. When lovers look into one another’s eyes, they see their hopes and dreams for the future. We marry a projection of our dreams.
We do not even know ourselves, how we will respond to the particular events and challenges that appear in our lives. We know even less of how our lover will respond to the unfolding challenges. We make our promises of our best intentions, then we go out together with a promise of mutual trust and support.
There are some things we discover about ourselves that we don’t like, but it’s who we are. We see things about our partners that fall short of our dreams and expectations. But as we love one another despite our shortcomings, learning how to support one another’s better self, we can come to a mature love: That the unfolding of one another’s life with all of our quirks and imperfections, is actually better, more real than the dreams we projected for our future together.
Spiritual growth is like learning to dance together, supporting one another, adjusting our steps to one another, following and leading, responding to negotiate obstacles on the dance floor, delighting in one another’s capacities and working with one another’s limitations. Helping one another be our better selves. Holding one another.
Spiritual growth is growth in healthy relationships, not only in relation to unfolding our own inner selves and in relation to the world as it presents itself to us. But also in our interrelationships with other people, our partner, family, work group and religious community.
The marriage covenant , traditional wording is: “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, as long as we both shall live.” Others declare: “I pledge to love you for yourself in the hope that you will become all that you can be. And perhaps most often used: I take you to be no other than yourself. Loving what I know of you, trusting what I don’t yet know, with respect for your integrity and faith in your abiding love for me, I offer you myself as (spouse) and accept you as my (spouse).” Then the spiritual growth begins.
The religious community is not just a place of theological debate or of intellectual stimulation, not a place of religious enthusiasm nor promoting private spirituality. Our Unitarian Universalist covenant is a promise to one another in this religious community
to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person
to affirm and promote justice, equity and compassion in human relations
to affirm and promote acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth
in our congregations
to affirm and promote a free and responsible search for truth and meaning
to affirm and promote the right of conscience and the use of the democratic process
within our congregations and in society at large
to affirm and promote the goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all
to affirm and promote respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are
a part.
Then we actually use the word `grateful.’ Grateful for our different truths, “yes, dear.” Grateful for one another’s mix of gifts and limitations. Grateful for one another’s kindly contradictory “right” ideas of how things ought to be.
“Grateful for the religious pluralism which enriches and ennobles our faith, we are inspired to deepen our understanding and expand our vision. As free congregations we enter into this covenant, promising to one another our mutual trust and support.” (UUA Bylaws)
What are we doing here together? Our fellowship’s mission commitment is to Spiritual Growth, which is so hard to define. At risk of self-promotion, let me quote from Minister’s Reflections just published in our newsletter.
“We bring many gifts, and just like with beliefs, they differ. The `spiritual growth’ we experience in congregational governance is not just theological or mystical insight. It is learning relational skills: Learning to listen, to appreciate others’ views, learning to accept when the group sees things differently from me, learning to want to hear others’ views, learning to forgive when slighted…
“Building bonds of appreciation for one another’s gifts, laughing despite our quirks, embracing one another’s best efforts, restraining and being restrained from non-mutual breaches of covenant, and celebrating the unexpected joys of one another’s presence, this is what `religare’ community really is…
“—learning to live the covenant of mutual trust and support despite the variety of relational skills and limitations.” (UUFEC Verbal Chalice, March, 2010)
Spiritual Growth may not be what we imagined when we got married, nor when we joined this covenant community. It’s more real and more valuable than a dream.
Parker Palmer admits: “Community comes as a by-product of commitment and struggle.” This is Spiritual Growth.
Let me close with these words from an anonymous source:
“Go forth in fellowship–that quality of relationship among human beings that respects, listens, and invites hidden possibilities, and gently summons each to our better selves.”