Rev.
Ann C. Fox
(508) 992-7081
RevAnnFox@aol.com
Unitarian Universalist
Society of Fairhaven
A Community of Many Mansions
a sermon by Rev. Ann C. Fox
January 28, 2007
Note: A reading is attached, which you might like to read first.
Can you think back to when you first considered you were part of a true community, that is, a group of people, small or large, when you enjoyed open-hearted communication and where you felt valued and respected? We hope that our church is such a community for you.
Recently, I received a request for funds from the AAUW, the American Association of University Women. Holding that envelope in my hand took me back 25 years to when I joined a book discussion group of the AAUW in Northern California. It was a wonderful escape into an adult gathering from being the mother of two small children and engaging in an activity I loved the most: reading and discussing books. We were a multi-generational group with a few writers amongst us. How well they listened to one another! How deeply they revealed their lives in response to the stories, the novels, we read! How much laughter there was! And some tears.
When I moved to southern California, I grieved the loss of my book community. I quickly joined another book group of the AAUW but it was not the same, not as good. The book selections were not what I liked and the discussions lacked depth. For me, the group was not satisfying and it wasn’t their fault, perhaps because I had been bitten by the “spirituality bug” and since this coincided with my decision that my children should have a religious education, I went on a search and found the UU Laguna Beach Fellowship. It was more of a true community than I could possibly have ever dreamed up!
Since this was a small Fellowship of 32 members, after the service they had a “talk-back” where members asked the speaker or minister questions or they made comments on what was said. They would say the most amazing things. Here it was—a group like my former book group but with a spiritual streak. A few weeks after I joined the Fellowship, Joseph Campbell’s “The Power of Myth” was showing on the television. Everyone in the fellowship was talking about it and we decided to watch it together from tapes someone had recorded. About 20 people watched it together and discussed it endlessly. What a “bonding” experience that was! By the way, we will be offering this series here in March. Apart from the Sunday services and occasional things like “the Power of Myth,” the Fellowship had regular potluck suppers at the homes of members.
For me, the most interesting thing about this community was the theological spread of beliefs. Some believed in God, some didn’t. Some said Nature and Laguna Beach’s beach was their “God-force” and others just didn’t know how to express their spirituality. What was mind-blowing for me was that what they believed religiously did not seem to matter. The freedom to speak about their beliefs was primary. What I didn’t know then was that because of their wide religious diversity, the Unitarian Universalists had just formulated seven principles that stated what they commonly believed amongst them and these are the seven principles that you see printed in your Order of Service every week. I asked myself how people could hold such different beliefs and still be a community. You can see that the fourth principle is “a free and responsible search for truth and meaning.” It reminded me of the line from the Gospel of John: “In my Father’s House, there are many mansions.” (John 14:2) And I thought, “Yes, and they can all be under one roof!”
As I moved on to larger churches I found they were similar in their spread of beliefs but there was no “talk back” after the service and so one couldn’t come to know so easily who believed what. However, in the larger churches, I saw something else that was mind-blowing—the democratic process with very “soft” authority. They elected their Board of trustees and chose their committee chairs. In the healthiest churches, there are no secrets. Board meetings are completely open and the Board communicates extensively to the congregation, usually through the newsletter so that everyone knows what decisions are made in their name (if they read the newsletter, that is). Decisions affecting the congregation are brought to the congregation for discussion and a vote at one of our two annual meetings or a special meeting.
It is time for a joke break and I thank Shauna McLellan for this one:
A church goer wrote a letter to the editor of the newspaper and complained that it made no sense to go to church every Sunday. "I've gone for 30 years now," he wrote, "and in that time I have heard something like 3,000 sermons. But for the life of me can't remember a single one of them. So I think I'm wasting my time and the pastors are wasting theirs by giving sermons at all." This started a real controversy in the: "Letters to the Editor" column, much to the delight of the editor. It went on for weeks until someone wrote this clincher: "I've been married for 30 years now. In that time my wife has cooked some 32,000 meals. But for the life of me, I cannot recall what the menu was for a single one of those meals. But I do know this: they all nourished me and gave me the strength I needed to do my work. If my wife had not given me those meals, I would be dead today." No comments were made on the sermon content anymore!
The one thing our larger churches lack is the intimacy of the small ones. We try to compensate for this by having potlucks, classes, interest groups, and small group ministries. When we formed a covenant (an agreement of how we will be with one another) with our vision and mission statements, we stated “Have a spiritual practice at all our church meetings.” This is an attempt to remember that we are a spiritual community and to take the “meeting” out of ordinary time and invest it with a special significance, remembering also that we are serving one another; we call this shared ministry. You could say that we have shared leadership when we all participate in the running and organizing of our church and shared ministry and when we care for one another.
I recently reread the book The Different Drum by M. Scott Peck, M.D. (You might remember also his book The Road Less Traveled.) Scott Peck is a psychiatrist who has spent much of his life studying how communities work well and he has identified the qualities of good, authentic communities. I want to share with you some of the qualities of “true community” he has identified and you can decide whether we are exhibiting some of these:
1. A true community is group that has learned to transcend its individual differences. (p. 62)
2. It has a quality of contemplation and safety about it. It examines itself. It seeks to know itself. (p.65)
3. True community is spirit, but not competitive at all. The spirit of true community is the spirit of peace. The atmosphere of love and peace can be felt by all. (p.73)
4. The achievement of [true] community can be compared to the reaching of a mountaintop…and differences are celebrated as a gift. (p. 62)
5. Scott Peck’s expanded definition of true community is “a group of individuals who have learned how to communicate honestly with each other, whose relationships go deeper than their masks of composure, and who have developed some significant commitment to rejoice together, mourn together and to delight in each other… (p. 59)”
Do you think and we have these qualities? Personally, I think that we do!
The true community, however, is a committed one. Every community has highs and lows. When tension arises, as it surely must, it commits itself to go deep in communication together to attain a greater understanding and return to harmony. We are greatly strengthened and made more vibrant when we embrace tension and move beyond it. (p. 136)
Meeting in celebration with worship, prayers, song, liturgy and ideas to ponder strengthens the true community if it is a religious one, as does sharing silence, and sharing our stories. Going deeply together into what we believe either through pondering our thoughts or discussing them with one another will surely reveal and strengthen the wisdom that is within each of us.
I believe that acknowledging the gifts that every person brings are an essential part of true community. The story that we heard this morning was about how honoring gifts in each other has the effect of building up each person so that they become a creative and shining light that attracts others and they, too, enrich us and make us a vibrant community.
Another community principal we will embrace today after the service is the fourth one “…the use of the democratic process” where we can install a new board member and hear the result of the cottage meetings that most of you attended where you identified what you loved about the church and what you would like to see changed or added. The board and the leaders of all the deeper activities you have embraced lately have worked very hard to bring the results to you. I hope you will commit to attend this meeting, even if you are not a member. We do have childcare.
The most important thing for a true community is to celebrate itself by coming together on a Sunday morning. I hope you will open yourself to this each week. Perhaps you might say to yourself each Sunday, “Today I open my heart and mind to the celebration of life in precious, true, spiritual community.” It could well have a nourishing effect on you. I hope you will ponder to what extent we are a true community for you and I invite you to join us in making us a better and better community with the gifts you bring that are uniquely (and perhaps divinely) yours. May our community be a true community, which for us might be a living well from which we can draw strength and wisdom.
Reference
The following informed and inspired this sermon:
Peck, M. Scott, M.D. The Different Drum: community Making and Peace (a spiritual journey toward self-acceptance, true belonging, and new hope for the world), New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1987.
Reading: "A Rabbi’s Gift"
from the Prologue of A Different Drum by M. Scott Peck, M.D.
A monastery had fallen upon hard times [because of persecution. Only five monks were left in the decaying house:] the abbot and four others, all over seventy in age. Clearly it was a dying Order.
In the deep woods surrounding the monastery there was a little hut that a rabbi from a nearby town occasionally used for a hermitage. Through their many years of prayer and contemplation the old monks had become a bit psychic, so they could always sense when the rabbi was in his hermitage. “The rabbi is in the woods, the rabbi is in the woods again,” they would whisper to each other.
As he agonized over the imminent death of his Order, it occurred to the abbot at one such time to visit the hermitage and ask the rabbi if by some possible chance he could offer any advice that might save the monastery.
The rabbi welcomed the abbot at his hut. But when the abbot explained the purpose of his visit, the rabbi could only commiserate with him. “I know how it is!” he exclaimed. “The spirit has gone out of the people. It is the same in my town. Almost no one comes to the synagogue anymore.” So the old abbot and the old rabbi wept together. Then they read parts of the Torah and quietly spoke of deep things…. [Finally, it was time to leave.] The abbot asked, “Is there nothing you can tell me, no piece of advice you can give me that would help me save my dying Order?”
“No, I am sorry,” the rabbi responded. “I have no advice to give. The only thing I can tell you is that the Messiah is one of you.”
When the abbot returned…his fellow monks…asked, “Well, what did the rabbi say?”
“He couldn’t help,” the abbot said. “We just wept and read the Torah together. The only thing he did say, just as I was leaving…was that the Messiah is one of us. I don’t know what he meant.”
[In the days and weeks that followed, they each pondered what the rabbi’s words meant.] They thought, “The Messiah is one of us! Do you suppose he meant the abbot? Yes, if he meant anyone, he probably meant Father Abbot. He has been our leader for more than a generation. On the other hand, he might have meant Brother Thomas [for certainly] he is a holy man….Certainly he could not have meant Brother Elred! Elred gets crotchety at times. But come to think of it, even though he is a thorn in our sides, when you look back on it, Elred is virtually always right….But surely not Brother Phillip. Phillip is so passive, a real nobody. But then, almost mysteriously, he has a gift for somehow always being there when you need him. He just magically appears by your side….He couldn’t possibly have meant me. I’m just an ordinary person.”
As they contemplated in this manner, the old monks began to treat each other with extraordinary respect on the off chance that one among them might be the Messiah.…
Because the forest in which the Order was situated was beautiful [people began to wander onto the lovely lawns and gardens. More and more people came week after week because they sensed this was a holy place. They appreciated the way the monks appeared to radiate love.]
Then it happened that some of the younger men who came….asked if they could join the monastery….So within a few years the monastery had once again become a thriving order and, thanks to the rabbi’s gift, a vibrant center of light and spirituality…
© The Rev. Ann C. Fox