It took me by surprise when I discovered that most folks could not remember much before they were five or six years old. I am apparently one of those rare birds who retains vivid impressions from infancy. One of my first memories is lying on my back in my crib and gathering my toes into my mouth. We have all seen babies do this and register some indication of satisfaction, even delight. We "discover" our toes. Whether our toes are self or other is irrelevant. Our early world is an extension of our infant selves.
We emerge from the primal matter of amniotic fluid and the miracle of a fertilized egg. We return--or perhaps proceed--to the primal mystery that awaits us all. Beyond the borders of birth and death, there is no evidence that "I" as an individual exist. But evidence is a construct of the human species, undoubtedly limited in its scope, so who knows? What we are concerned with inside the borders of birth and death is the "I" and how "I" connect to what I find here. On an elemental level, there is no "I" and "other." It's all about "I" and "we."
So why does humankind trip over its own left foot in getting along?
The task of the growing child and the ever developing adult is two-pronged and paradoxical: individuation and socialization, a creative reflective emergence of our self, distinct and miraculous as the one-of-a-kind snowflake, and a creative reflective emergence of our self in community, complex and unpredictable as a full-scale blizzard.
At the core of our human dilemma and our human possibility is the dynamic tension between I and we. At the heart of our liberal religious movement is a reverence for life that encompasses affirmation of the inherent worth and dignity of every person and respect for the interdependent web of all existence, of which we are a part. With vision blurred by historical habits of dualistic thinking, our pendulum of perception and value swings periodically towards the individual and then towards the community, towards independence and then towards interdependence. No wonder we're a confused species.
A few weeks ago, 13 of us from All Souls gathered in Rochester, New York with 4,000 Unitarian Universalists--scary, isn't it?--for what is known as the General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association--a lively cross-section of our more than one thousand relatively autonomous congregations. It was a kaleidoscopic unfolding of more workshops and seminars than you could sanely consider, a hefty number of equally hefty and provocative lectures, countless opportunities for rich conversation with friends new and old, and some quite stirring worship experiences, including one led by Galen--Galen Guengerich, co-minister of this church--and enriched by the voices of sopranos Nonie Schuster Donato and Barbara Fusco-Spera. This year's General Assembly was also an exercise in How many Unitarian Universalists can we pack into Rochester with no more than ten scheduled for each hotel room available?.............But this gathering of our larger faith was also memorable--positively so--and left this participant with some lasting impressions. No, this is not a report, simply a gentle weaving of what lingers with questions that have long haunted me.
Threading their way through it all were the themes of community, interdependence, wholeness, subsumed into the overall theme, Fulfilling the Promise....Fulfilling the Promise that emerges from Unitarian Universalist history, spirituality, and congregational life. The refrain was this: the pendulum of our religious movement has swung too far towards the "I," towards the rights and freedoms of the individual. While not abdicating on the "inherent worth and dignity of every person," there is solid documentation from our congregations and ample indication on the national scene that community and interdependence are long overdue for attention, and we are paying the cost of neglect.
Now, this need for redressing the grievances unleashed by too much focus on individualism was felt acutely at the outset of my time in Rochester. The procession of congregational banners is a moving rite of passage into the week. I, however, was left holding the bag, the bag with the All Souls banner. Somehow all of our other illustrious All Souls delegates had scampered to their seats, honoring me by default with the privilege of carrying our banner, a little weight lifting to start off a relatively sedentary week. I'm not quite sure why someone taller than 5'3" wasn't there we needed all the height we could get to make that banner visible. Community begins at home!
Community does begin at home. Indeed one of our own presided over historical community making in the latter part of the 19th century. Henry Whitney Bellows, minister of All Souls from 1837 to 1881, saw the future of Unitarianism hanging on our capacity to move beyond the turf of the individual congregation. Bellows, whose marble visage watches every happening in this sanctuary, was the prime force behind the formation in 1865 of the National Conference of Unitarian Churches. The organizational merger of the Unitarians and Universalists was a hundred years away. Scholar George Williams describes Bellows' vision as that of "a broad liberal church of America [that] would....profoundly reshape the individualistic American Unitarian Association..." It did. Bellows also founded the US Sanitary Commission, precursor to the American Red Cross, to aid the Civil War wounded from the North and the South. Henry Whitney Bellows was an advocate and activist for religious individualism leavened and enriched by religious institutionalism. His biographer was Walter Donald Kring, Forrest's predecessor.
Bellows' vision and action resonated as Unitarian Universalists gathered in Rochester to fulfill the promise. In a lively dramatization of conversation among our church fathers and mothers, Galen played the role of Bellows....convincingly.
As individuals, as a congregation, as beneficiaries of our larger faith we stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before us. Rochester as the site of this year's General Assembly was not coincidental. Nearby Seneca Falls was the site in 1848 of our nation's first Women's Rights Convention--150 years ago. Susan B. Anthony presided, a member of the First Unitarian Church in Rochester. Olympia Brown was there too, the first woman in our country to be ordained a minister--by the Universalists in 1863. Brown was a lifelong advocate for women's rights. In the presidential election of 1920, Olympia Brown cast her first vote at the age of 85. We stand on strong shoulders.
In her General Assembly address on our movement's history, Dr. Rebecca Parker, President of Starr King School for the Ministry, observed that "We receive who we are before we choose who we will become.".....We receive who we are before we choose who we will become. Who we are as a religious movement was rendered through the perspective of sociologist Robert Bellah. Bellah based his remarks on the results of a survey completed by over 10,000 Unitarian Universalists on our religious needs and aspirations, as well as our demographics. In our social witness, he noted that we are strong dissenters, but religiously and culturally we are American mainstream. One of our deepest beliefs--unfettered individual conscience--is shared by the majority of our fellow citizens. I quote:
"Beneath the surface glitter of American culture there is a deep inner core, which....is ultimately religious: the sacredness of the conscience of every single individual. Nothing....takes away from the enormous power for good of that idea. But, by the very weakness of any idea of human solidarity associated with it in a culture dominated by the dissenting Protestant tradition, it opens the door to the worst in our culture. It easily leads to the idea that humans are nothing but self-interest mazimizers.....I don't think we can challenge that version until we come to see that the sacredness of the individual depends ultimately on our solidarity with all being, not on the vicissitudes of our private selves."
Yet another sociologist, Amitai Etzioni, delivered the esteemed Ware Lecture. In the thought provoking tradition of those who have delivered other Ware Lectures--Jane Addams, Reinhold Niebuhr, Martin Luther King, Jr., May Sarton, and our own Schuyler Chapin--Etzioni urged us not to trivialize the rights we enjoy as individuals. A case in point is free speech. "You don't need free speech," he proclaimed, "to protect complements." Echoing Bellah, Etzioni advocated a carefully crafted balance between individual rights and community.
It's about I and We. It's about interdependence, not just pushing the pendulum to the extreme of community but setting the pendulum into a movement of rotation. We're points on a circle; we're in this together.
To introduce the offering in this church, we say, "The morning's offering will now be given and received." There is an understanding of mutuality in our offering. As we give, we receive. In relation to our broader religious movement, we also give and we receive. In our liberal theology and our social ethic, we give generously. We are a congregation commonly identified by our vital outreach to the surrounding community. Our challenge is to heed the extent to which we also receive from those we serve--in richness of perspective, in the reminder that we give out of the privilege of having enough to give--enough time, enough money, enough education, enough skills. To give and receive in partnership is to listen also to the levels of comfort--and discomfort--with which our "congregational clients" benefit. Is it I and her, I and him, or I and we?
Mutuality isn't easy for those accustomed to being in the position of giver. Several years ago, I went through a divorce--a gristy, anxiety-to-the-sky custody trial divorce. Without the support of family and friends, I don't know how I and my children would have made our way through it. As an occasion to say thank you to two of these friends--husband and wife--I took them to dinner at a quite elegant restaurant on the North Shore of Long Island. They were beyond comfortable financially. I was struggling. I was equally intent on paying the bill and summoned every ounce of my stubbornness to do so. He was accustomed to hosting, to giving, to being in the position of benefactor. "Look," I said, "it's selfish on your part if you can't give me the opportunity to give to you, and I don't want to regard you as selfish." He sat back, startled. I paid the bill, and that was that. It's about mutuality--including mutuality of the power and privilege to give.
This is an exceptional congregation, one of the largest and most dynamic in our religious movement. We are known as a flagship church. We have much to offer other congregations in the arenas of church leadership, social outreach, and the aesthetics and dynamism of worship. We also have gained much and have much to gain from our connections with our larger religious movement. A strong church can only get better by realizing that we are learners as well as teachers, recipients as well as benefactors. The rich curricula for our children's religious education program come from the Unitarian Universalist Association. Our practice of behaving proactively to ensure the safety and well-being of each and every child and member is grounded in the Safe Congregations initiative of our national Association.
The strong presence of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee and the Promise the Children's Advocacy Network here at All Souls derives from and feeds into the work of the Service Committee at the national and international levels. Formed in 1939, members of the Service Committee risked life and limb to save countless lives from the terrors of Nazi Germany. Over the years, the UUSC has advanced human rights throughout the U.S. and on almost every continent. On Friday evening June 26, in the context of General Assembly, several of us heard Richard Scobie bid a moving farewell after 26 years as Executive Director. Interdependence was his working assumption. At All Souls and in our extended global community, this organization continues to serve as a model for bridging the chasms of poverty, classism, and racism.
The society in which we live has long been fragmented by racism, a diabolical blend of power, privilege, and prejudice. In the late 1990s racism remains as a fault line in our national psyche. Its presence is more subtle than thirty years ago, but nonetheless venomous in keeping the primacy of opportunity--for health care, for meaningful employment, for quality housing, for first-rate education--in the hands of those of lighter skin color.
Just a few weeks ago, Richard Leonard, our Minister Emeritus, stood here and delivered a sermon entitled "Insider-Outsider," assisted and inspired by Sarah Flynn, a young woman who participated in this year's affirmation class. Dick remarked that it was impossible to discuss "Insider-Outsider" without talking about racism. He also talked about the work of our Unitarian Universalist Association in addressing racism and noted the anti-racism training in which he and other members of our congregation participated. He recommended it strongly for those of us at All Souls. So do I.
Our Metro New York District has been home to five congregations that were part of a multi-year pilot process to create anti-racist multicultural congregations. I was personally part of this process both at the local and district level. It combines intensive training with congregational commitment to begin a journey that is transformative in nature. The comprehensive effort of our Unitarian Universalist Association towards anti-oppression and anti-racist multicultralism is called our Journey to Wholeness.
There are many in our congregation ready to begin that journey and I stand ready to nurture, encourage, and facilitate this happening. At the national level, Galen serves on the Journey to Wholeness Transformation Team of the Unitarian Universalist Association. Dick and Polly Leonard and John Reidy, as members of the UUA's President's Council, participated in intensive anti-racism training. The words of this morning's responsive reading sound their refrain: "From the fragmented world of our everyday lives we gather together in search of wholeness." Diversity is a by-product of such effort; it doesn't just happen. We are prime to take the first steps.
In the spring of 1941, James Luther Adams, one of the giants in the history of our faith, observed that "As creative beings we can act to preserve or increase, destroy or pervert, mutuality--though it must be remembered also that conditions over which we have little control may affect the results of our action. We are fatefully caught in history, both as individuals and as members of a group, and we are also able to be creative in history" (from his essay, "The Changing Reputation of Human Nature").
When Adams wrote these words, Pearl Harbor was months away. Dietrich Bonhoeffer had returned to Germany, committed to resisting Nazi oppression in community with the Confessing Church. Anne Frank was writing in her diary.
Five years later in 1946, Adams set forth his thoughts on "A Faith for the Free." We are historical beings, dependent upon a creative power in nature and history, a transforming reality that "sustains meaning and goodness in the human venture." As historical beings, we open ourselves to this reality most fully in "the exercise of the freedom that works for justice in the human community."
Spiritual wholeness and freedom come from living our lives in community, an extended community defined by the justice of I and We. On an elemental level, there is no "I" and "other." It's all about "I" and "we."
"We gather together in joyful thanksgiving, acclaiming creation, whose bounty we share." "I" am incapable of gathering. A congregation of one is an oxymoron. An association of one congregation is delusional; an association of two is a beginning. An association of a thousand is a gift.
"I" come to this life from a state of "we." I thrive in this life because I am and We are. I leave this life as I know it and enter a profound oneness with the ultimately mysterious "we." I may dissolve, but we do not disappear.
We dwell in Possibility. We dwell in the promise inherent in our community as a congregation and our community of congregations. We dwell in a covenant of shared purposes and principles, a covenant that comes to life in "deeds not creeds." We draw on many sources, among them "the words and deeds of prophetic women and men which challenge us to confront powers and structures of evil with justice, compassion, and the transforming power of love."
We dwell in the possibility that the promise might be fulfilled. It is a journey, a long journey, a rich journey, a journey to wholeness. I and we can make it happen.
Carpe diem. Amen. Copyright AllSouls 1998.