September 26, 2021
Worship Theme: Sanctuary
Rev. Claire Feingold Thoryn
Call to Worship: Claire
Good morning! I was praying for the sun today. Praying, and checking every weather app and website I could. I started following meteorologists on Twitter. And here we are. I don’t think prayers change the weather—but I’m going to keep praying anyway. Believe this!
I wanted to be here in person and see your faces so badly.
My friends on zoom, I miss you and your faces. I miss being in our sanctuary.
Yesterday I officiated my first memorial service in that sanctuary since the pandemic began. We celebrated and remembered Ginny Simons, who was a member here at Follen for 20 years.
During the pandemic, Ginny wanted to return to that sanctuary so badly. She talked about it with family and friends, how much she wanted to return to Follen.
She was able to return once.
Her daughter Elizabeth worked with our Business Manager Linda Hein to stop by briefly and see the beautiful carved table in our entryway.
The table was carved in March 2020 right as the pandemic began,
by the visiting Transylvanian minister and master carver from our Partner Church.
Being there in our sanctuary, as light poured in through the windows, it was hard to believe she was gone, so full of life were the stories people shared about her. Her sanctuary was still there. But Ginny had joined the great cloud of witnesses beyond the horizon of our sight.
Ginny was a teacher—even won a teacher of the year award in New York State—and a lifelong learner. She was always curious and looking to hear the stories of other people’s lives. She never stayed static, picking up new skills and ideas and interests well into her 80s and 90s. I love her lifelong example of having a sanctuary, a place of peace, and offering sanctuary to others by her loving presence; and also being a person of movement and growth, seeking out learning and change.
I call us to worship, inspired by Ginny’s spirit of joyful love, lifelong curiosity, and humble generosity. Let us worship together.
Chalice: Jane Spickett
“Imagine if every church became a place
where everyone is safe, but no one is comfortable.
Imagine if every church became a place
where we told one another the truth.
We might just create sanctuary.”
–Rachel Held Evans
Reading:
Our reading today is titled “Believe This” by Richard Levine.
In looking up Levine, I learned that
“He’s an abecedarian by design and so designed his resume to read as follows:
Levine has worked as a busboy, cab driver, carpenter’s assistant, curriculum writer, deliverer of carpets….
floor sander, house renovator, journalist, musician, pamphleteer, soldier in a war, speechwriter,
and the labor he most loved: public school teacher.”[1]
Here is Levine as a gardener, in “Believe This.”
All morning, doing the hard, root-wrestling
work of turning a yard from the wild
to a gardener’s will, I heard a bird singing
from a hidden, though not distant, perch;
a song of swift, syncopated syllables sounding
like, Can you believe this, believe this, believe?
Can you believe this, believe this, believe?
And all morning, I did believe. All morning,
between break-even bouts with the unwanted
I wanted to see that bird, and looked up so
I might later recognize it in a guide, and know
and call its name, but even more, I wanted
to join its church. For all morning, and many
a time in my life, I have wondered who, beyond
this plot I work, has called the order of being,
that givers of food are deemed lesser
than are the receivers. All morning,
muscling my will against that of the wild,
to claim a place in the bounty of earth,
seed, root, sun and rain, I offered my labor
as a kind of grace, and gave thanks even
for the aching in my body, which reached
beyond this work and this gift of struggle.
Sermon: “Widening the Circle” – Rev. Claire
Can you believe this?
The gardener poet wants to join the bird’s church outdoors.
His sanctuary is a plot of tilled land amidst the wild.
He offers his labor as a kind of grace, and gives thanks.
This is our last Sunday with the worship theme of Sanctuary,
and I love the reading our covenant groups are discussing this month
on the topic by Laurie Bushmiller.
She writes:
“To seek sanctuary in the modern world often means fleeing an untenable situation,
sometimes being sought by the law or other worldly forces.
It implies withdrawing into a spiritual dimension or state of mind, distant from worldly concerns. […]
…The concept of sanctuary [these days] is a portable one.
We seek— and find—sanctuary in natural settings, in the woods, by the sea, in a quiet corner of a public park. But the sense of fleeing something remains.
This raises ethical and moral questions. [Bushmiller writes.] Should we be fleeing, or should we be facing those hostile forces? If these forces aren’t physically or legally dangerous, shouldn’t we be confronting them? Is sanctuary a cover for weakness?”
Is sanctuary a cover for weakness?
Such an interesting and kind of combative question.
I love it.
As John Shedd has said,
“A ship in harbor is safe — but that is not what ships are for.”
We cannot spend our lives in sanctuary.
But then, sanctuary is not meant to be a forever home.
It is a sacred place, a time apart, a refuge; not a hideout.
For the churches that have supported undocumented immigrants
“in sanctuary,”
the goal was never for the person or people to stay holed up in those walls for the rest of their lives—
but rather to stay safe and protected until they could emerge,
free of the threat of deportation and violence.
A sanctuary is like a launching pad,
a place we return to for rest and refueling,
that helps us leap into the world again when we are ready.
Back in the day there were folks that wanted their church sanctuary to be a place to flee from everything happening in the world—to let no talk of current events or justice movements or wars or suffering to cross the door.
But the purpose of our sanctuary is to rest, rejoice, heal, and learn—to share tools and instruments and words and ideas to engage the world, rather than send us back out with nothing. And that is what Unitarian Universalism has been doing these past few years—welcoming us into sanctuary, and giving us tools that will help us be stronger when we re-enter the world.
That is what Follen leadership worked on last year, and in previous years, as we strive to live into our values and be an actively anti-racist, anti-oppression congregation.
In 2017, after a full church year of discussions, reading, and listening, we adopted an anti-racism resolution. One part of that resolution was putting up our statement of public witness, our Black Lives Matter banner. There were seven parts to that resolution, and each year we work to live into them more.
Last September, Follen’s lay leadership decided that at the top of every meeting of the Program Council, Board, Action Teams and every committee meeting, we would take time to focus on anti-racism.The way we did that last year was to use a resource well-known in the Unitarian Universalist Association and beyond, a document by writer and educator Tema Okun titled “White Supremacy Culture.”
Okun describes characteristics of white supremacy culture and how we can dismantle and provide antidotes wherever we encounter it—in our communities, our world, and ourselves.
Okun writes:
Culture is powerful precisely because it is so present and at the same time so very difficult to name or identify. The characteristics … are damaging because they are used as norms and standards without being pro-actively named or chosen by the group.
One of the purposes of listing characteristics of white supremacy culture is to point out how organizations which unconsciously use these characteristics as their norms and standards make it difficult, if not impossible, to open the door to other cultural norms and standards.
As a result, many of our organizations, while saying we want to be multi-cultural, actually only allow other people and cultures to come in if they adapt or conform to already existing cultural norms.
Being able to identify and name the cultural norms and standards you want is a first step to making room for a truly multi-cultural organization.
Since I attend a lot of meetings at Follen, I was privileged to take part in many, many of these conversations. They were so interesting and fruitful and they changed over the course of the year.
At the beginning folks were tentative, unsure. There were lots of silences, questions, confusion.
Which was good—we were learning.
We got more comfortable with being uncomfortable.
We got more comfortable with being uncomfortable.
One characteristic of white supremacy culture, according to Tema Okun, is something she names “Right to Comfort.” What that means is, a sense of entitlement to feel good and comfortable and fine all the time—to not be challenged or made to wait or experience any friction.
Discomfort is the root of all growth and learning, and we have to welcome it.
We wouldn’t learn how to ride a bike if we are too afraid to fall;
we would never find love if we were too afraid to say how we feel;
we would never grow into active anti-racists if we are too uncomfortable to talk about racism, white supremacy culture, and intersecting oppressions.
To repeat the words from our chalice lighting by Rachel Held Evans:
“Imagine if every church became a place
where everyone is safe, but no one is comfortable.
Imagine if every church became a place
where we told one another the truth.
We might just create sanctuary.” [2]
We offer our labor as a kind of grace, and give thanks even for the discomfort in our bodies, which help us beyond this work and this gift of struggle.
Now, why does it matter for members of a predominantly white organization to have these conversations? Isn’t it better to just ACT, to do things, rather than talk and talk?
I hear you. Sometimes I feel that too.
But as Okun says,
“Culture is powerful precisely because it is so present and at the same time so very difficult to name or identify. The characteristics of white supremacy culture are damaging because they are used as norms and standards without being pro- actively named or chosen…
…Being able to identify and name the cultural norms and standards you want is a first step to making room for a truly multi-cultural organization.”
If we can’t talk about white supremacy culture,
if we can’t even see it within ourselves and our organization and in the air we breathe, we will have a really hard time trying to fight it.
We might even find ourselves…perpetuating it.
As journalist Charles Blow has written,
“One doesn’t have to operate with great malice to do great harm.
The absence of empathy and understanding are sufficient.”
The absence of understanding can cause harm.
At the same time Follen was working on our anti-racism resolution in 2017, Paula Cole Jones, a lifelong UU, was considering how to compel our Unitarian Universalist Association to greater accountability in our justice work. As a Black woman, she had seen how our existing 7 principles imply this 8th principle, but do not explicitly hold us accountable for addressing these oppressions directly, especially at the systemic level.
She wrote what I hope will become our 8th Principle.[3]
The 8th principle reads:
“We, the member congregations of the Unitarian Universalist Association, covenant to affirm and promote:
journeying toward spiritual wholeness
by working to build a diverse multicultural Beloved Community
by our actions
that accountably dismantle racism
and other oppressions
in ourselves and our institutions.”
It’s about time our seven principles received an update. Back in the 60s, when the two American denominations of Unitarianism and Universalism merged, the principles that were written and voted on with great acclaim then were rampantly sexist. In the 1970s, women activists within our denomination started the grassroots fight to first, remove offensive language, and then, offer new principles entirely that spoke better to our evolution of faith.
The seven principles were finally voted into being in 1984. And, they kept changing—the text of our principles and purposes have changed in multiple ways since then, in ways large and small,
and will keep changing. They are a dynamic living document, not a fixed creed; part of our very faith is searching for truth and, when greater truth is revealed, changing ourselves and our faith to respect the importance of that revealed truth.
Paula Cole Jones wrote the 8th principle, worked with white minister Bruce Pollack-Johnson to refine it, and ran it by many folks for editing. At this point, the wording is carefully chosen and is not up for wordsmithing. (So editors can put down their pencils.) In many ways the 8th principle says exactly what our anti-racism resolution does, just in fewer words. (After all it is a principle, not a resolution!)
Many congregations have now taken up a vote to support this 8th Principle, and we have that opportunity too this year, I know our Board will be looking at this possibility.
“We, the member congregations of the Unitarian Universalist Association, covenant to affirm and promote:
journeying toward spiritual wholeness
by working to build a diverse multicultural Beloved Community
by our actions
that accountably dismantle racism and other oppressions
in ourselves and our institutions.”
Just like with Follen’s anti-racism resolution, “The 8th Principle is really just the beginning of action, rather than the ultimate goal.” The 8th Principle Project website has a list of action items that could be jumpstarted as part of living into this new principle.
The gardening poet wrote that the bird sang to him:
Can you believe this, believe this, believe?
Can you believe this, believe this, believe?
Our principles don’t ask us if we can believe them.
They ask us if we can do them.
They ask us to try.
And so we offer our labor as a kind of grace, and give thanks even for the aching in our souls, which reach beyond this work and this gift of struggle.
Our sanctuary is not a cover for weakness.
Our sanctuary is a place to gain and regain strength.
May service be our prayer.
May our labor bring us grace.
May our discomfort bring us learning.
May our sanctuary hold us, heal us, bless us
and then send us on our way,
holding the tools we need to bless the hell out of this world.
Amen.
Benediction – Rev. Claire
And now in our comings and our goings,
May the light of Love shine upon us,
out from within us,
be gracious unto us,
and give us peace.
For this is the day we are given;
Let us rejoice and be glad in it.
[1] https://richardlevine107.com/
[2] Rachel Held Evans
[3] https://www.8thprincipleuu.org/