SANCTUARY
by Jan Carlsson-Bull
June 8, 2003
I don’t know how many of you have ever been refugees. I do know it’s a tough way to travel. There was a torrential downpour on that summer night twenty-five years ago. My mind raced frantically as I threw our things into a few sturdy bags, gathered up my children, clad in their nightgowns, bedded them down in the back of our station wagon, and headed south to the home of my brother and sister-in-law. Only a few miles out on the Jersey Turnpike, my seven-year-old leaned over the back of my seat to say, "Mommy, this is the best day of my life and the worst day of my life." We were refugees, in desperate need of a haven; I was escaping the tyranny of an abusive spouse.
It must have been midnight when we landed on the doorstep of my family in the Philadelphia suburbs. The porch light was on. The door opened. Arms reached out and took us in.
Our stay extended to four months, during which time my young daughters and I found our footing, I began legal proceedings for a divorce, and I found a job back in New Jersey. But before all that happened, another door opened to us. A door opened wide onto the sanctuary of The Mainline Unitarian Church of Devon, Pennsylvania. It was my first real acquaintance with Unitarian Universalism. Now it is supremely ironic that it was my big brother who introduced me to Unitarian Universalism. Here was the sibling who did not go to seminary, who pursued a professional course that included The Wharton School of Finance, who, while quite worldwise, probably considers Tillich to be a fine German beer and James Luther Adams, a close relative of Sam. This is the sibling who introduced his sister, graduate of Union Theological Seminary, to Unitarian Universalism. Only in recent years did this fine liberal Protestant institution know the leadership of a Unitarian Universalist. During my time at Union, my introduction to Unitarian Universalism bordered on Cliff Notes.
So through the doors of this new sanctuary we walked, my young ones and I. They went off to their age-appropriate classrooms, and I entered the sanctuary. A candle was lit in what looked like a wok. Okay. A call to worship was spoken that didn’t include one single "I believe." We opened hymnals and sang lyrics that neither depressed or assaulted me. I have no recollection of what the sermon was about; I just know that the space I inhabited felt right. I may have been a refugee, but I was home. I was in sacred space.
A few words about sacred space. That space that is common to all of us and distinct to each of us is the space of the heart--some call it the soul. Some of us, terrified at the prospect of straying too far from reason, call it mind. As my mother says, "Whatever."
Sacred space is the arena where all that matters most calls for attention. As we grow in spirit, tending to what matters most, we become more adept at recognizing it.
Our Buddhist selves become more mindful, more awake, more attentive to the breath that links our inner sanctuaries with the sacred space that is Creation itself, more fully within each moment. Pema Chödrön, an American Buddhist nun, says more:
"....through [the] simple practice of paying attention....you begin to realize that you’re always standing in the middle of a sacred circle....Wherever you go for the rest of your life.... the circle is always around you. Everyone who walks up to you has entered that sacred space....Whatever comes into the space is there to teach you....Mindfulness trains you to be awake and alive, fully curious....about now....The more you can be completely now, the more you realize that you’re....standing in the middle of a sacred circle."
(Chödrön, 28)
Our Jewish selves stand with Moses on the holy ground visited by a God who demands our attention. In the Book of Exodus, we read that Moses was tending the flock of his father-in-law, basically minding his own business, when an angel appeared to him in the midst of a bush that was burning but not consumed. When Moses walked toward the bush, trying to figure out what was going on, God spoke to him. "....Do not come near; take your shoes off, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground." (kind of like what I’d like to tell my family when they come through the door on a rainy day, but back to God and Moses)
Terrified to look at God, Moses hid his face. But he listened, as God called him to lead the people of Israel out of Egypt into freedom. Now to go before his people with such daring plans, Moses needed credibility, so he said to God,
" ‘If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’’ what shall I say to them?" God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM.’
(Exodus 3:1-14)
I AM WHO I AM is the rendering of an acronym. In Hebrew it is spoken only as YAHWEH. The full name of God was considered by the people of Israel too holy to be uttered other than as an acronym. To say I AM WHO I AM is to speak from the midst of sacred space, at the center of the sacred circle purified by fire. I AM WHO I AM is a call to freedom. It is an affirmation of one’s complete worth. I AM WHO I AM is the sanctuary that we are offered by the divine within us.
Our Christian selves ponder the words of the Jewish carpenter from Nazareth who preached the gospel of love and justice and compassion, who bid us to be attentive to the capacity for goodness in each person. Jesus told the story of a man on his way to Jericho who was assaulted by robbers and left for dead on the side of the road. A priest approached and passed by. A Levite approached and passed by. A Samaritan approached, stopped, and cared for the man, even taking him to an inn and paying the entire bill. (Luke 10:29-37)
Why did this story turn the heads and raise the eyebrows of those who heard it? Because the Jews who were listening had absolutely no dealings with Samaritans. For Jesus to hold up a Samaritan as a model of ethical behavior blew the stereotypes of his day and stretched the boundaries of the sacred circles of religious convention.
The open door of free religion invites us into a sacred space that embraces the Buddhist, the Jew, the Christian, the Muslim, the atheist, the humanist, the pagan, and yes, the refugee. We even welcome lifelong Unitarian Universalists! Our sanctuary, our sacred circle, is as large as the eyes of our soul permit us to see, as encompassing as the arms of our hearts are willing to stretch. The late Kenneth Patton understood this well.
"This house is for the ingathering of nature and human nature.
"It is a house of friendships, a haven in trouble....
It is a house of freedom.....
It is a house of truth-seeking....
It is a house of prophecy...
This house is a cradle for our dreams."(from Singing the Living Tradition, #444)
How does this happen? I believe it has something to do with what we tend to this morning. This morning we recognize and celebrate our volunteers–basically every one of you who has given a drop of time or money or both to further the ministries of this congregation. There was something that drew you here–a flight, a search, an invitation, the strains of the choir, a sermon on WQXR, curiosity, whatever. Now that you’re here, why do you stay?
You know exactly why you stay if you’ve rolled up your sleeves and served dinner to 160 of our homeless neighbors, as our Monday night Hospitality volunteers did last week. It was a record number of guests!
You know why you stay if you’ve joined others from our Task Force to End the Death Penalty and rung bells outside this sanctuary, letting the block and beyond know that yet another person has been executed in our aspiring democracy.
You know why you stay if you’ve had the gratification of starting a new group to build fellowship and community among a potentially marginalized populace within this congregation.
You know why you stay if you’ve pitched in to plan a gala Heart & Soul Auction and raise funds for our outreach programs.
You know why you stay when you find yourself lighting a chalice in a Circle Worship of our Young Adults.
You know why you stay when you walk into a meeting at All Souls and you’re welcomed by name–or when you find yourself sitting in a café in a neighborhood as far away as the Upper West Side and someone calls out your name because she recognizes you from All Souls.
And somehow, some miraculous how, you’ve managed to cross that invisible barrier of the Sunday morning coffee hour, so it no longer feels like that dreaded junior high dance when you were just sure nobody would ask you out onto the floor, because here you are in an animated cluster in Reidy Friendship Hall. Here you are out on the floor, and you might as well be dancing.
You stay because you’ve found sanctuary and you’ve created it.
As volunteers, as people who act of our own volition, our own free will, we find and affirm sanctuary. We are, in the words of Mary Pipher, in "the shelter of each other." Pipher, a psychologist and member of our Unitarian Church in Lincoln, Nebraska, borrows from the Sioux nation the word tiospaye, meaning "the people with whom one lives."
"....Communities …give [us] a sense of history, of place, and they offer....a complex weave of people from whom to learn how to be more fully human...Communities give [us] tiospaye," [family].
(Pipher, 100)
A community of faith is a form of tiospaye. I was fortunate enough to know it from an early age. Like Mary Pipher, I’m a native Midwesterner. What I recall most vividly from the church of my childhood–a Presbyterian Church in a small Iowa town–what I remember most are the smells and the din of potluck suppers in the church basement on cold winter nights. It doesn’t take much to conjure up the 27 varieties of steaming meatloaf, the 92 renditions of quivering Jell-O, and always the cakes, the pies, the brownies and the cookies that we gobbled down if we cleaned our plates. Sacred stuff? You bet! It was the sacred stuff of extended family, of tiospaye.
Now the downside of this scenario is the stark reality that my brother and I were discipline fodder for any adult deeming our behavior out of bounds, and we did our share of out of bounds. But somehow we negotiated our way through this gauntlet of hyper-vigilance toward some semblance of responsible adulthood. After all, it was that same brother who welcomed my bedraggled brood at his doorstep on that dark and stormy night. And I had the good sense to know where to go.
This congregation, The Unitarian Church of All Souls, New York City, offers everyone who steps inside tiospaye, family. The garden lights are on, the doors of the sanctuary are open. All we have to do is to step inside if we’re outside and to step outside if we’re inside, to greet one another, and then to connect and connect and connect around what matters most to us. That’s really all it takes to know sanctuary, to celebrate it, and to sustain it.
Frequently we welcome the complete stranger into our midst. Sometimes we welcome that colleague from our office, the one who got tired of hearing us talk about All Souls and decided to check it out for himself. Sometimes we even welcome old friends right on the steps of this sanctuary. That’s exactly what happened to me just a few short weeks ago.
It was a Sunday morning, and I was standing on the steps outside, greeting folks as they trooped into the sanctuary. Suddenly I turned to see this lovely woman with a head of hair that rivals the golden fleece itself. I looked into her eyes and said, "Susan!" "Yes?" she replied, a bit befuddled. "Susan Price," I exclaimed! "I’m Jan, Jan Adelman" (one of my former names). Her response came quickly. "Jan! I don’t believe it!" Susan and I had been closest friends along with our now ex-husbands during that time when we were both pregnant with our first children. That was more than thirty years ago. We had lost touch when we had each divorced, then moved, then remarried. Of course we hugged and all but screamed our delight. It took a bit of discipline to pay proper attention to everyone else heading into the sanctuary. That very evening Susan and her wonderful and gracious husband, Fawwaz Tuqan, joined Dan and me for the Musica Viva concert and then dined at what may as well be called the All Souls Brasserie on Third Avenue. (I guess I need to take care not to do a real commercial here.) Then last Friday night, Dan and I were their guests for the most delectable Middle Eastern cuisine in their home on the Upper West Side. We’ve connected. We’ve reconnected through this sanctuary.
That first evening, Susan said something to me that I’ll never forget. "This is such a gift, Jan. We hold one another’s history, you know." We hold one another’s history. In the sacred space that we share, that we discover, that we keep on discovering, you and I hold one another’s history, because we create it day by day, year by year.
Susan and Fawwaz have become members of All Souls. They have enriched our extended family, perhaps finding the same quality of sanctuary that I discovered so many years ago and that I have discovered again and again in my six years in this congregation.
We abide in the shelter of each other. Like Alice Walker, we may not recall the words or "brood on the Genesis of life," but most surely we "ponder the exchange itself and salvage mostly the leaning."
How we each need our leaning, our tiospaye, our sacred circle in which we grow in our caring and regard for one another and our wider world. God knows I needed to lean upon my arrival in that sanctuary so many years ago. How could I have known then that I might stand before you this morning, in the pulpit of this sanctuary, giving voice through the gifts of love and leaning I have known throughout this community of faith?
How thankful I am for each and all of you. How good it is to be home. Amen.
Sources
The Bible (Revised Standard Version)
Pema Chödrön, The Wisdom of No Escape: And the Path of Loving-Kindness, Shambhala Classics, 2002, 28.
Mary Pipher, The Shelter of Each Other: Rebuilding Our Families, Ballantine Books, New York, 1996.
Alice Walker, "Sunday School Circa 1950," in Revolutionary Petunias & Other Poems, Harcourt Brace & Company, 1970, 11
Back To Jan Carlsson-Bull Sermons