Sermon by Alan Taylor

Sept. 12, 1999 Woodinville Unitarian Universalist Church

First Reading: from For the Inward Journey by Howard Thurman

How good it is to center down!

To sit quietly and see one's self pass by!

The streets resound with clashings, with noisy silences,

While something deep within hungers and thirsts for the still moment and the resting lull.

With full intensity we seek, before the quiet passes, a fresh sense of order in our living;

A direction, a strong sure purpose that will structure our confusion and bring meaning to our chaos.

We look at ourselves in this waiting moment--the kinds of people we are.

The questions persist: what are we doing with our lives? What are the motives that order our days?

Where are we trying to go? Where are our values focused?

For what end do we make sacrifices? What do I love most in life?

What do I hate most in life and to what am I true?

Over and over the questions beat in upon the waiting moment.

As we listen, floating up through all the jangling echoes of our turbulence, there is a sound of another kind--

A deeper note which only the stillness of the heart makes clear.

It moves directly to the core of our being. Our questions are answered.

Our spirits refreshed, and we move back into the traffic of our daily round

With the peace of the Eternal in our step.

How good it is to center down!

Second Reading: from Staying Put by Scott Russell Sanders

The longing to become an inhabitant rather than a drifter sets me against the current of my culture, which nudges everyone in to motion. Newton taught us that a body at rest tends to stay at rest, unless acted on by an outside force. We are acted on ceaselessly by outside forces--advertising, movies, magazines, speeches--and also by the inner force of biology. I am not immune to their pressure. Before settling in my present home, I lived in seven states and two countries, tugged from place to place in childhood by my father's work and in early adulthood by my own. This itinerant life is so common among the people I know that I have been slow to conceive of an alternative. Only by knocking against the golden calf of mobility, which looms so large and shines so brightly, have I come to realize that it is hollow.

Recall the scene in King Lear when blind and wretched old Gloucester, wishing to commit suicide, begs a young man to lead him to the brink of a cliff. The young man is Gloucester's son, Edgar, who fools the old man into thinking they have come to a high bluff at the edge of the sea. Gloucester kneels, then tumbles forward onto the level ground; on landing, he is amazed to find himself alive. He is transformed by the fall. Blind, at last he is able to see his life clearly; despairing, he discovers hope. To be enlightened, he did not have to leap to someplace else; he only had to come hard against the ground he already stood.

I walked into the room and saw--a teddy bear, and then on the bed a young man with blue eyes and a face full of freckles. The hardest thing to miss was his big smile. I introduced myself, Alan, the chaplain. (This was when I worked at San Francisco General Hospital as a chaplain.) He introduced himself, Josh. Josh said he was awaiting an operation to relieve him of his severe headaches. Yet he welcomed my company, joked, and we quickly developed a warm rapport. In time he told me his headaches are caused by complications due to AIDS and that over the last five years he lost his three best friends to AIDS. We talked about issues of rootedness, family, love that could be trusted and relied upon. He said, pointing out the window, "See the road up there in the hills? At night I watch the lights of cars weave about as they descend the hill on the same road that me and my friends traveled hundreds of times." He also said now that he's lost his best friends he is scared of getting close to anyone. At the end of the conversation I asked him if he wanted to pray. He looked out the window and said "not now. Pray for me this evening."

"What do you want me to pray for?"

"Pray for all the lost souls and think of me."

Pray for all the lost souls. I can't do that at times without thinking of myself.

Being lost is a state of the soul. According to the Jewish prophets it is falling out of favor with God. That is, in contemporary terms, becoming disconnected from the source of love and truth. Being lost is a natural part of the human journey. To lose our way, to become unrooted-- it is a part of our humanity.

Our Unitarian Universalist communities offer sanctuary for people seeking truth, for people like me who encounter plenty of uncertainty and confusion when trying to discern what is truly important. However, it is not our uncertainty that makes us lost. It is when we are disrooted from others or our own selves. Our worst problems emerge when we don't realize when we are misguided or when we think our state of unrootedness and disconnection is permanent.

A whole people, a whole society can be lost. Getting people to pay attention to one another, let alone really work together, is a most challenging task. During the six years I lived in the Bay Area, the single most important event that brought people together was the Oakland Hills fire. I won't ever forget being able to see the fire from my front porch, hardly two miles away. Shortly following, I bicycled to some of the devastated area. Whole hillsides were nothing but lone chimneys on cement foundations. I came across melted cars and everywhere the smell of ashes. In response to this destruction came a collective generosity that was as out of the ordinary as the fire itself. People of all colors were suddenly homeless and in need of support. The response of the East Bay community was one of generosity. People put other people up in their homes. There was an outpouring of food and clothing. And the basic goodness of humanity shone forth. And then within a few weeks, the immediacy and visibility of the need passed. And people of the East Bay returned to the routine of their private lives. Over the last several years, I have heard a surprising number of people lament the fact that the opportunity to help one another and interact amidst all different types of people was gone. Two people even said, they would welcome another disaster! It is painful to think that it takes a catastrophe for a number of people to contribute to their society. There was plenty of need in Alameda County before the fire, and there is plenty now. We have a social convention that tells us not to get into anybody else's private business. That doesn't make the longing within us for meaningful interactions go away. What made the wake of the Oakland fire so meaningful was that we had the opportunity to be generous and the experience of true community.

The opportunity to be generous and the experience of true community. These are two essential elements of a spiritual home. And how wonderful it is when we can find groups of people that make this possible. I know for many of you, the Woodinville Unitarian Universalist Church is just that sort of place. And I know that others of you still seek to find a home among this religious community.

Our culture does not encourage spiritual quests. Too often I find myself running around like a chicken with its head cut off. What's really scary, is at those times I resemble many other people--Yikes! Over time, it is all too easy to find oneself adrift. It seems to be the norm to go from one job to another, move from one place to another, go from one relationship to another, never setting down roots from which our lives can draw nourishment. Over the last twelve years I myself have had thirteen different addresses. All of our motions, all of our activities often serve as distractions from centering down. Yet, there is always a hunger, always an inner call to come home to where the heart is. The calling is akin to the mouse (as in the children's story) seeking his ancestral home--with plenty of voices telling us how ridiculous our longings are. The only problem is that rarely can this hunger, this quest be pursued without being in relationship with others who are on a similar quest.

We as Unitarian Universalists are awfully diverse. And what we seek from community differs from person to person, just as our beliefs vary. Each of us finds different ways of finding spiritual depth in one's life. And yet we gather together in a single community for worship.

Last night at the leadership retreat, I talked with nearly forty of our church's leaders about what makes this church a spiritual home. The phrase spiritual home means different things to different people. To some a spiritual home is where they can find inspiration and opportunities to bring their lives in accord with their values, To others, it is a place of emotional support, with deep sharing and bonding with close friends. Some see a spiritual home as an intense crucible for personal growth. For others, it is a place to pioneer dreams. And for still others, the spiritual home is inwardly focused, where one's conscience and clarity are fostered.

For me, a spiritual home is a religious community where people can be real with one another and where there are opportunities to move closer to the source of our truth and the source of our joy--even when that too varies for each person. A new member here, Christy Coulibaly, told me the primary function she seeks in a religious community is this: "To empower the individual in the knowledge that one is not alone, that change is a constant, and that the greatest inner growth occurs in times of strife and challenge." She hopes that we "provide a base of strength from which to confront the challenges which are inevitable in the course of human existence."

I believe that this church has come a long way in providing such a base, even through all the turmoil and change you have been through the last four years. I also believe you and I are well suited to deepening and honing our religious community. So much is possible. In time, it is my aim to work with you on worship so that people are able to say with pride and appreciation that they are spiritually nourished from the worship service such that they are able live out their faith through service, with integrity, and with renewed hope and courage. Of course to grow in depth and in numbers will take time.

Change is never easy. And even when you like the new minister, any new changes bring anxiety. So I don't expect you to always smile and tell me how much you like the changes that are happening--unless of course, you honestly feel that way. But I do want you to share with me your concerns and struggles.

We will be successful in growing both in depth and in numbers if three things happen. First, if I listen to all of you. I am fully aware of how stubbornly confident I am of my opinions and that my opinions don't do me much good unless they are informed by all of you. Second, you need to listen to one another. Each of you has a unique perspective that can benefit others. Third, we all need to open our eyes and our ears to the Spirit of Life that exists among us. For if we do all three, we will learn and grow together.

As Mary Grigolia puts it, "The spiral keeps on turning, we're listening and learning. Together the journey is home."

At this Service of Ingathering, I want to offer special recognition for those of you who have stayed the journey and stayed put, with perhaps not much more than faith that this community has the resources and the wisdom to grow a Unitarian Universalist church that gives voice and example to compassion and justice in the wider community. Because of you, I am here. Because of you, this church is here for those who are new and those who will come.

"Midway into life's journey," Dante begins the Divine Comedy "I found myself within a shadowed forest, for I had lost the path that does not stray." Dante woke up to that fact and found his way. Some people who lose their way, never recover, they never admit they are lost. However, there is always the potential. For I believe, every human being has longings for wholeness. The beauty of longing is that it never goes away. It is because of our longing we suffer. It is because of our longing we can reach for all that is beautiful, true and sacred. We need an environment that encourages and challenges us, an environment that affirms us, especially when we are lost. It is when we are called to find our way that creativity comes forth. Dante was banished from the community where he was once one of the greatest statesmen. It was in the height of his worldly success that he lost his way. Then it was when living alone and estranged from his people that he wrote his epic poem, The Divine Comedy, and re-found the journey that does not stray.

At the hospital, I saw Josh two days after our first conversation. His operation had rid him of his headaches and restored his energy. He was in a great mood, and so we joked and bantered about. Suddenly he stopped and asked me, "How do you grieve the loss of the person who would have been your partner if he hadn't died of AIDS?" In the next half-hour he told me what he needed to do to grieve. A listening ear and an open soul can let grace happen. Later that day, when I was gone, another man on the ward died. His eight-year-old son was there. The nurses didn't know what to do with the wailing child. I am told Josh came out of his room, and sat with the boy for over an hour and gave him his teddy bear. Josh told him "It's okay to cry. It's good. Don't let anyone tell you that you shouldn't cry. You'll be a better man to express all the pain on the inside." And Josh just sat there with the boy to let him do just that. Josh left the hospital with much more than relief from his headaches.

Any of us can find ourselves lost, just as each of us can come home to the place where the heart beckons.

Any of us can provide the space for another to speak one's truth, just as each of us benefits from speaking our own truth.

Will you come home to your heart? Will you come home?

If we together can make our church a spiritual home that meets each of us where we are at, then together, We'll build a land where we bind up the broken, We'll build a land where the captives go free, where the oil of gladness dissolves all mourning. Oh, we'll build a Promised Land that can be.

Blessed be. Amen.