Growing Together
Rev. Mark Stringer
First Unitarian Church of Des Moines
12/15&16/07

“Be not afraid of growing slowly; be afraid only of standing still.”
–Chinese Proverb

 

Meditation “Map of the Journey in Progress” by Victoria Safford[1]

 

Here is where I found my voice and chose to be brave.

 

Here’s a place where I forgave someone, against my better judgment, and I survived that, and unexpectedly, amazingly, I became wise.

 

Here’s where I was once forgiven, was ready for once in my life to receive forgiveness and to be transformed.  And I survived that also.  I lived to tell the tale.

 

This is the place where I said no, more loudly than I’d thought I ever could, and everybody stared, but I said no loudly anyway, because I knew it must be said, and those staring settled down into harmless, ineffective grumbling, and over me they had no power anymore.

 

Here’s a time, and here’s another, when I laid down my fear and walked right on into it, right up to my neck into that roiling water.

 

Here’s where cruelty taught me something.  And here’s where I was first astonished by gratuitous compassion and knew it for the miracle it was, the requirement it is.  It was a trembling time.

 

And here, much later, is where I returned the blessing, clumsily.  It wasn’t hard, but I was unaccustomed.  It cycled round, and as best I could I sent it back on out, passed the gift along.  This circular motion, around and around, has no apparent end.

 

Here’s a place, a murky puddle, where I have stumbled more than once and fallen.  I don’t know yet what to learn there.

 

On this site I was outraged and the rage sustains me still; it clarifies my seeing.

 

And here’s where something caught me—a warm breeze in late winter, birdsong in late summer.

 

Here’s where I was told that something was wrong with my eyes, that I see the world strangely, and here’s where I said, “Yes, I know, I walk in beauty.”

 

Here is where I began to look with my own eyes and listen with my ears and sing my own song, shaky as it is.

 

Here is where, if by surgeon’s knife, my heart was opened up—and here, and here, and here, and here.  These are the landmarks of conversion.

 

Let’s pause now for a time of shared silence, so that we might ponder our own landmarks of conversion as we breathe together our common breath, the breath of life.

(silence)

Amen.

 

Readinga responsive reading by Sophia Lyon Fahs, #657 in the hymnal.

 

Leader:  Some beliefs are like walled gardens.  They encourage exclusiveness, and the feeling of being especially privileged.

 

People:  Other beliefs are expansive and lead the way into wider and deeper sympathies.

 

Some beliefs are like shadows, clouding children’s days with fears of unknown calamities.

 

Other beliefs are like sunshine, blessing children with the warmth of happiness.

 

Some beliefs are divisive, separating the saved from the unsaved, friends from enemies.

 

Other beliefs are bonds in a world community, where sincere differences beautify the pattern.

 

Some beliefs are like blinders, shutting off the power to choose one’s own direction.

 

Other beliefs are like gateways opening wide vistas for exploration.

 

Some beliefs weaken a person’s selfhood.  They blight the growth of resourcefulness.

 

Other beliefs nurture self-confidence and enrich the feeling of personal worth.

 

Some beliefs are rigid, like the body of death, impotent in a changing world.

 

Other beliefs are pliable, like the young sapling, ever growing with the upward thrust of life.

 

 

Second Reading the Rev. Mark Stringer’s column from the August 2001 edition of our church newsletter, the Intercom. 

 

There is so much I want to write in this, my first newsletter column as your settled minister.  I want to tell you how thrilled Susan and I are to be here after four-plus years of uncertainty.  I want to tell you about my ordination, graduation, and participation in the Service of the Living Tradition at this year’s General Assembly in Cleveland.  I want to tell you how anxious and excited I am to begin the work you called me to do.  But I have to tell you about the fireworks….

On a late afternoon in early July, Susan and I said goodbye to our Chicago apartment and began a caravan to Des Moines in our two old Toyotas, each containing a frightened and whiny cat.  The previous week had been stressful as we packed up our belongings and recounted our Windy City memories with friends who would no longer be just a short jaunt away.  We kept telling ourselves what we knew in our hearts to be true:  the move to Iowa was the right one to make.  Yet, with the change staring us in the face, we encountered some predictable waves of doubt and questioning.  We did our best to focus on the future and the wonderful possibilities facing us.

During the drive toward Des Moines on that balmy summer night, I could feel the stress slowly evaporating.  With each mile of highway behind us, I remembered why we were making the move and I felt a growing urgency to get started with our new lives.  We turned onto I-235 and off to my right I could begin to make out the skyline…a skyline emblazoned with the exploding color of a fireworks show.  Now I’m not going to try to convince you that this display of light was anything other than a coincidence, but I will say that the moment was just booming with symbolism.  At last we had arrived, and it was time to celebrate.

Later that week, amidst a different kind of fireworks display, the city council voted to add a sexual-orientation clause to its anti-discrimination ordinance…another transition worthy of celebration.  Let us not forget, though, that this action is by no means an end-point; it is only a beginning, albeit an important one.  One needs to look no further than the letters printed in the Des Moines Register in the days following the vote to see that discriminatory practices against GLBT people will not end simply because of an ordinance.  Ignorance and fear-mongering left unchecked will always threaten the rights of those seen as different.  The real celebration will occur only when justice is the norm for all of our brothers and sisters.

So here’s to beginnings.  We have much work to do…together.

Sermon

In a clipping from another church’s newsletter I found this week, UU minister Charlie Kast shared an exchange he had with one of the children in a congregation he served early in his ministry.  He writes:

 

A little girl approached me in the church kitchen shortly before the morning service.  She asked me to give her a cookie.  So, I reached up to a top cabinet and fetched her a cookie.

“I want to be a minister,” she said.

Immediately, I launched into my “Girls can be ministers these days” lecture/sermon.  (It was 1981 and women in ministry was still a relative rarity).  I noticed her eyes glaze over.

When I (finally) finished, she looked up at me and said, “I want to be a minister so I can reach the cookies!”

 

Kast shares this story as he prepares to leave for sabbatical, and I understand why.  The sabbatical itself is one of the bigger cookies any minister can reach as a result of accepting the call to serve a congregation.  The opportunity to separate from the normal duties of my ministry with you for an intentional chunk of time is one I (and my family) do not take for granted.  What a gift it promises to be! May I be up to the challenge of effectively utilizing this freedom for study, reflection and renewal, with which you have entrusted me. 

 

I was talking with one of my more experienced colleagues in town a while back, a minister who has taken a couple of sabbaticals in his over 30 years of ministry.  I asked him to describe the most productive endeavors of his time away from the church.  Immediately he launched into a familiar sounding mission statement of “getting to know myself again.”  And then, he paused in thought for a moment, catching his breath as though he were catching himself in a cliché, and said, “Of course I’ve never known myself well enough to know if I have accomplished that.  But it sounds good doesn’t it?”

 

As you may know from my newsletter columns on the subject, I intend to spend at least a portion of my time away visiting several growing, vibrant UU congregations to learn some of their best practices and to network with people who may be good resources for us as we continue to grow.  I will also attend a workshop or two that promise to improve my abilities as a staff supervisor.  And I hope to do some reading, too.  As one of my colleagues has put it, sabbaticals exist so ministers can read entire books for a change.  And let’s not forget some time spent with my family, a family that has tolerated my almost weekly sermon-writing angst and weekend-heavy schedule for years.

 

Perhaps the most exciting thing my sabbatical promises is the milepost it offers…the chance to stop and breathe in my ministry with you so far, take a look back at where we have traveled and begin to reflect upon where the future might lead.  

 

I loved finding that first newsletter column I wrote as your minister.  To remember the significance of that ordinance when I started with you and then to think that just as I am to leave on sabbatical, I had the privilege of officiating an historic same-sex wedding in my front yard!  A lot can happen in six and a half years.  Those two old Toyotas Susan and I drove here?  They are now two older Toyotas. One of the frightened whiny cats is no longer with us.  I’ve said final goodbyes to my father-in-law, and all three of my grandparents.  Our daughter was born.  A lot has happened to you, too.  I  know because I’ve been a part of some of those transitions.  Weddings, divorces, births, deaths.  A lot can happen in six-and-a-half years.

 

Of course, I still remember those fireworks exploding over the city when we arrived.  They were the perfect greeting for the beginning of our relationship together…a great foreshadowing of all we would experience, which, from my perspective anyway, has been an exciting time of congregational exuberance and delight.  If we were to take the congregation when you called me, a solid congregation…if we were to take that congregation in all aspects—the membership numbers, the level of participation, the opportunities for engagement and leadership, the ways in which the church was involved in the community, the facility, our reputation both local and nationally—and compare it to where we are today, I am sure the changes would provoke ooo’s and ahh’s.  We have certainly come a long way.

 

I am not so humble that I will refuse to take some credit for this.  But, I assure you, I am also keenly aware that the congregation should receive most of the credit.  I know this to be true because, in nearly everything I have tried to do with you, I have done my best to let you lead, to get out of your way, to encourage your own sense of ownership for this place and for what our liberal religious values call forth from you.  I have always wanted this church’s members to embrace their own callings to ministry, to serve that which is life-giving and life-enriching, to discover that the church and this religion we practice here is not a destination, but a vehicle to take us to places we simply would not go on our own, a means by which we can, to use one of my favorite expressions, grow our souls.

 

I was fortunate to have some choices when I was determining where to serve my first called ministry.  Some in exotic locales…Southern California…

the Pacific Northwest…

Detroit….  

 

I chose Des Moines because I believed in the legacy and the promise of this church.  I chose Des Moines because I believed in you. I believed that a metro with 400,000 people should have a UU church with more than 240 members…a UU  church that sees growth as a major mission.  And grow we have.   Thank you for that.  Thank you for proving me right.  You see, I was looking for a church that was willing to grow. I first entered a UU church in 1996 and I wondered where this religion had been all my life.  So one of the reasons I felt called to ministry was to help grow this movement.  Of course, during my visits with search committees, I talked a lot about growth.  One committee asked me to describe for them, on a 10-scale, how much I thought they really wanted to grow.  I said, “Ahhh, about a five.”  They were not happy.  But you know how many members they have added since then?  Zero.  I had been generous!

 

Thank you to every one of you who has stepped out of your comfort zone to make someone feel welcomed here.  Thank you for increasing your giving so that we can fairly compensate our staff and maintain and revitalize our facility.  Thank you for accepting the challenges and rewards of participating in various ministries of this church, now too numerous to mention.  Your efforts and contributions have impacted lives in positive ways.  Don’t ever forget that. 

 

And while I’m at it, thank you for being kind to my wife and daughter, for understanding that they will not always come to work with me, and for welcoming them when they have. Thank you for the privilege of walking with you in your joys and your sorrows, for being invited into your lives in ways that enrich my own more than you could possibly know.  And thank you, perhaps most of all, for being bold.

 

UUA moderator Gini Courter was here last week and spoke of this being an historically audacious church, a church willing, time and time again, to reach beyond its grasp. I believed when the search committee told me that this church wanted to grow that they were serious. I saw that audaciousness and it spoke to me.  And it still does.

 

That a church our size, over a two-year period, could raise 1.7 million dollars for capital improvements is audacious; that’s for sure.  That a church which had been at a membership plateau of 200-250 members for 30 years could in just a few years’ time grow to over 400 members is audacious.  That we could continue to reach for our future through the Ministry of Reflection and Engagement process, even when we were fatigued (if not downright burned out!) from all challenges associated with the building project, is audacious, too.

 

Of course, I have some hopes of how we might be even more audacious in the days ahead.  (What did you expect?)

 

First of all, most of you know that Joan McDonald, who has served as our Director of Lifespan Religious Education since 2004, is leaving us in February to share the responsibility of caring for her ailing parents in Massachusetts.  As difficult as the timing of this decision is for the church, it is even more so for Joan. Of course we will be sad to see her go and we are uncertain what will happen.  The RE council is gathering this Tuesday from 6-8pm at the church with a planned agenda of identifying needs and divvying up tasks. I know they would welcome others to join in the process. Even as I will be on sabbatical during the transition this winter, I do expect to participate in the process, even if to a limited degree.  The health of our religious education program is far too important for me not to be involved and I hope some of you feel the same.  You see, I believe this transition of leadership offers a significant opportunity to us.  There may be, perhaps, no more important task for this church than to nurture and care for our children and youth, to grow the next generation of UUs, and I’ve yet to see us, in my time here anyway, live up to our potential as a congregation and fully invest ourselves in this essential responsibility.  Now is the time when we must see it as a congregation-wide duty to build the kind of religious education program about which we can all be proud, a religious education program for all ages. We can’t expect one person, or even a small group of people, to bring this program to us. We have a church filled with thoughtful, talented people.  We must engage in this responsibility as a congregation. The facts are if we don’t find a way to get more people involved in religious education in meaningful and meaning-filled ways, we will be heading towards another membership plateau or even decline that will be anything but audacious.  So may we be bold in our imaginings of what is possible, and bold in our willingness to fund what is possible and see it through.

 

I have more hopes for our church beyond religious education.  But before I share them with you, I need to admit something.  They are aspirations that I have for myself, too.

 

Let me explain.

 

I was chatting with one of my theological school classmates earlier this year.  We were talking about our ministries in the healthy, growing churches we have served since graduation, hers in New England, mine in Iowa.  She said, “I realized that what has made me a good match for the congregation I serve is that the issues this church had when I got here were also my issues.  We’ve had the chance to work on them together.”

 

Her reflection made me thoughtful about the good match we have enjoyed here in Des Moines.  I wondered, “Have we shared some issues, or stumbling blocks we might say, that we have had the chance to work on together?”

 

I think I intuitively knew the answer was yes. It’s why I chose Des Moines in the first place…and maybe why you chose me, even if we couldn’t have articulated it at the time. 

 

I’ve chosen two of these issues to describe today.  They are probably not the only ones.  My descriptions are not meant to be an indictment of any one person, except maybe myself.  I am talking in institutional terms here, the ways in which we present ourselves to the world, and how the objective observer (if there really is such a person) might see us.

 

The first issue is what I have experienced in Unitarian Universalism, in this church, and in myself, as an inappropriate mix of political partisanship and religion.  The current political and social climate have made what I would call traditionally American concerns, such as civil rights and freedom from religion, partisan issues. This state of affairs has muddied the water a bit.  Is it necessarily an expression of partisan politics, for example, for a large number if not a majority of the members of this church to vocally support GLBT rights, or a woman’s right to choose, or to suggest that the Ten Commandments should not be posted in public places, or that people who have migrated to this country should be treated with dignity and respect?  I don’t think so.  I don’t think these are partisan issues.  The fact is, I would not want the members of this church to ever back down from what I perceive to be foundational concerns of our liberal religious perspective, past or present. 

 

However, I have come to understand that it is not appropriate to take time during our services here to disparage our fellow citizens, particularly those who have been elected to serve on our behalf, as though we all agree…as though this church is just an outpost of the Democratic party, because, simply put, it is not and should not be. 

 

In my time with you, I have taken some inappropriate jabs at our President, for example, that actually betray my theology.  I don’t think it is wrong to question policies or to express concerns about decisions being made by our political leadership, especially when our nation continues to be engaged in what I still contend was an unnecessary war.  I do think it is wrong, however, to be a smart aleck about political differences.  I have not always set a good example in this area.  For that, I am sorry.  I trust at least some of you have experienced some growth in this area, too, maybe even by watching me make mistakes. May we continue to grow together in the days ahead and leave room for a broad spectrum of political perspectives.

 

The second issue is what I would call an over-emphasis on religious partisanship.  This may be an area where, as a church, we have grown the most over the past six years.  I know I have grown a lot.  You have to know that when I entered theological school, I was a devoted humanist, meaning that I believed that theistic religion, at least in a traditional sense, was worthy of suspicion, if not scorn.  In fact, the first book that really spoke to me in my first year of seminary was about the American Religious Humanism movement that was developed, at least in part, in this very church, by a former minister named Curtis Reese.  In a 1917 sermon preached here in Des Moines, Reese proclaimed that the here and now would always be more important than the supernatural and that he, therefore, sought a religion that would not be shaken if the very idea of God were to pass away.  However, equally important to Reese’s perspective, and to mine as it has developed, is that we would be well-served to remain open to the idea of God.  I don’t interpret Reese’s message, or my own today, to be that we should strive to embrace the notion of God…that somehow an understanding or acceptance of God is the rightful destination of our religious journeys.  After all, some of the most religious people I have known have been devout atheists, and our religious heritage is one of freedom of belief.

 

The challenge put before us as a religious community is less about accepting or even comprehending differing theologies and more about accepting people…about keeping ourselves open to the understandings of others, which after all, is the foundation of creative interchange…the closest thing to God that I have found in my own life.  I’m not suggesting that we avoid disagreement, as if we even could.  I’m suggesting that we thoughtfully stay at the table when we disagree and model the kind of world in which we want to live through our thoughtful, humble, respectful, even passionate engagement with difference.  If we aren’t willing to give voice to our religious perspectives, and to do so with love, humility and forgiveness, how else will they be heard?  If we aren’t willing to engage with others, even when we disagree, how will we keep ourselves open to the continuous revelation that is at the core of our liberal approach to religion.  My fear is that if we are comfortable in thinking that traditional theistic notions are to be merely discarded or avoided, what then should we do with the people who find meaning and purpose in those notions? 

 

Rather than find reasons to disagree with religious perspectives that are more traditionally God-centered than mine may be, I have learned, along with some of you, to search for similarities, for those places where our desires for justice, compassion, and the pursuit of a life-well-lived intersect.  Much of this learning has come through my interfaith activities in town, both the Interfaith Alliance of Iowa and AMOS.  Getting to know and work with the clergy and lay people of different religions has been one of the greatest gifts of my ministry the past six years.  And I know some of you have experienced these same gifts in the ministries of your lives.

 

Last December, as part of our annual music service, I invited the congregation to sing a version of “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” in which the words had been altered to reflect the stubborn certainty of those among us for whom Christmas is just a holiday and not a holy day.  The words included:

God rest you Unitarians, let nothing you dismay.

Remember there's no evidence there was a Christmas Day.

When Christ was born just is not known, no matter what they say.

Glad tidings of reason and fact; reason and fact;

Glad tidings of reason and fact.

 

It was meant to be funny, a poke at some of our own cranky pre-dispositions, but it did not come off as I had intended.  Some people were upset, so upset in fact, that they have not returned.  Not once.

Talk about a joke gone wrong.  As disappointed as I was that this happened, that people actually heard this song as an attack on Christianity, which was not my intent, I realized it marked a turning point, one that was more positive for this church than not.  People were standing up for what this religion claims to be…open, respectful, welcoming to difference…and it was great to see. 

 

Our small group ministry program has an expectation that each group member shares the privilege and responsibility of helping the group to function.  This is great counsel to us as a church, too.  When lines are crossed, lines of political or religious partisanship, either by members or by ministers, those who care about what we claim to believe need to speak up…with compassion, with respect, with love.  In the end, we will all be better for it.

 

I sat down to lunch the other day with a retired Baptist minister, a man who has devoted the bulk of his life to working to improve the lives of others and to grow and nurture the kinds of interfaith interactions, which his many years in ministry have taught him are our greatest hope.  We instantly hit it off and enjoyed swapping stories of our desire for more understanding and meaningful engagement across the lines that typically divide us, especially lines of politics and religion.  Upon the arrival of our food, I quickly began to eat, my hunger leading me to virtually shovel French fries into my mouth.  My friend, gently spoke, “Mark, I don’t know your theology but…”

 

Oops!  Before he could finish, I knew where this was headed.  I had bulldozed right through the blessing.  How rude of me!  “Oh, I’m sorry,” I said, blushing. 

 

“Don’t worry,” was my friend’s reply.  And then he told me a story. 

 

In the early days of his ministry he had served in Toledo, Ohio, where one of his closest colleagues was the UU minister in town, a much older fellow, cut from the classic, blustery New Englander mold.  The two men were fast friends and remained devoted to one another until the UU minister’s dying day, when my friend had been called to his bedside.  The two exchanged some memories and then, the UU minister asked for a prayer.  My friend mumbled his uncertainty about what would be the appropriate prayer when the UU minister said, “Let’s forget about theology.  Let’s just pray.”

 

And then, as if I had been invited into that moment from the past, my new friend, reached out his hand to me and said, “Mark, let’s pray.”

The prayer he offered was gentle.  It was kind.  It was respectful.  It was holy.  And it reminded me of my aspirations for our church, indeed for our religion. 

 

I want us to be open to the ways in which others experience the divine.  I want us to be willing to “forget about theology” and pray once in a while.  Not pray as though we all have to hold the same theology, but pray as though what really matters is that we be willing to stand with our companions and enter into the sacred space that is our between-ness and honor that space with some acknowledgement that our time together is important, finite, and holy.  Sometimes people will use language that does not speak to our own understandings.  And sometimes people will use language that actually offends our sensibilities.  My hope is that we will work on that…that being offended part. 

 

I believe our religion offers a bridge across the divides, but we have to be willing to do our part to see that the bridge is there, and we don’t do that by being cranky about religious differences.  Our task, as Ghandi famously said, is to “be the change we want to see.”  That’s the kind of church I want to be a part of, a place filled with religious seekers who aren’t so certain, even in their uncertainty, that they close the door on what is possible.  A place filled with people who are willing to take the risk to reach out to others, to get to know them and to allow what they get to know to change them…maybe even in unexpected ways.

 

So won’t you join me now?

 

Let’s forget about theology and just pray.

 

 

Creative spirit, spark and sprit of life, that which is greater than all, and present in each.

 

May the next five months be a rich time for this church, for me and for the ministry we share.

May the speakers who fill the pulpit while I am gone be welcomed with open hearts and filled auditoriums.  May their words be offered and received in love and respect.

May Joan McDonald and her family find comfort in their own time of transitions, may we honor and celebrate Joan’s time with us, and then, may we be up to the challenge of embracing our religious education program and the sacred imperative of nurturing our children and youth that it represents.

May this congregation continue to welcome the stranger, inviting all those who enter our doors to join us in the creative interchange that can transform our very lives.

And may we be willing to grow…to grow our membership…to grow our understandings of this life we share…to grow our souls.

 

Amen.

 

Closing Words (Lauralyn Bellamy)

If, here, you have found freedom, take it with you into the world.

If you have found comfort, go and share it with others.

If you have dreamed dreams,
help one another that they may come true.

If you have known love, give some back,

To a bruised and hurting world.