“In the Hearts of Good People”

First Parish in Bedford

29 January, 2006

Emily Melcher

 

Good morning, good people.

 

            I’m curious: How many of us grew up in churches with kneelers?  How many of us knelt at the side of our beds at night as children, folded our hands and prayed for God to keep us and our loved ones safe?  How many of us learned to genuflect – or curtsey – to a cross or a crucifix on the wall behind the altar?  How many of us learned that we must cover our head in the sight of God?  Or that Adam and Eve covered their genitals in the sight of God?  How many of us never bow to anyone or anything?  How many of us never kneel in prayer?

 

            In “Telling Myself Lies,” Libby Roderick invites listeners to understand the relationship between their invisible, internal suffering, and the visible and external suffering of a young homeless woman.  The song is so fluid in making this connection that you might not hear on first listening that this song is about two women, one a part of society, but shut down internally, the other, shut out of society.  The verses alternate between the singer-narrator’s experience of herself, and her challenge to herself and others to recognize the experience of the young homeless woman.  You might miss, on first listening, what Libby Roderick wants you to hear: that we are all broken, we are all alienated, and our suffering is one.

 

            Rebecca Parker put it this way: “We are the wise, the good, the healthy, we’re here to help everyone else – this separates us from the ways in which we are participants who have drunk the same groundwater of violence.”

 

            What is that violence, of which Rebecca Parker speaks, and how have we, good people, gathered here in love, drunk of it?  Why should we think twice about the implications of our opening hymn, and acknowledge the presence of evil among us?  I’m just beginning to know your stories, and I wouldn’t presume to name them from the pulpit, but I feel safe in asserting that someone in this room has been sexually abused.  Someone else has been beaten by a parent or spouse.  Someone here has witnessed a beating, and someone else has raised his - or her - hand or voice to strike another.  Someone here has turned violence inward and injured herself or tried to kill himself.  And yet, we rarely speak of how these things affect our lives.

 

            All of us have drunk from the groundwater of systemic violence, systemic evil.  Some have returned from war, and others have welcomed home a loved one from war, or waited in vain for one who never returned.  Nor are we strangers to the systemic violence of sexism, classism, racism or even theologism (which probably isn’t even a word); in fact, we are a living legacy of all these “isms,” despite our contemporary gender-neutral language, our outreach to the homeless, and our desire to see ourselves as color-blind and theologically open-minded.  Violence, evil walked through the door this morning with me, and with each of you, just as good walked through the door with each of us.  And yet, we rarely speak of how these things affect our lives.

 

            And there are terrorist attacks, Abu Graib, Iraq, secret prisons, and the next horror yet to be uncovered, the next genocide, the next war. 

 

            Violence and evil come in more subtle forms, too.  What about kneeling?  Every one of us has been affected by the violence of religious messages that tell us we are unworthy: whether we grew up in religions that taught us depraved and sinful humans to kneel in total submission before an all-powerful God, or whether we simply grew up in western culture, which teaches people that their private parts, from their genitals to their hearts, are shameful.  And so, to quiet our shame, as Libby Roderick suggests, we do violence to ourselves by shutting down internally, afraid to feel, afraid to be vulnerable, we show up on Sunday mornings, we show up on Friday evenings, we show up at committee meetings and classes and we show up to do social justice work, we show up glad and grateful to be here, smiling with pleasure, and it’s wonderful that we do, but, unfortunately, we also show up smiling politely even through our pain, we talk about the rain, or perhaps about the next project on the horizon, the next cause to be fought, the next person to be saved.  What is impermissible, if I may borrow Rebecca Parker’s words, is to face any way in which we might be limited or hurt or in need of help from others.  This kind of politeness, this violence of shutting ourselves down in order to be the good people, the kind, generous people we are, this particular politeness sustains our dying.  It sustains our individual dying, and it sustains our collective dying, in this way:  Many people go in search of a religious community when they are hurting.  If they walk in to a Unitarian Universalist congregation where it looks like everyone’s got it all together, where it looks like they’ll have to leap in, pitch in, pay up, where it looks like they’ll have to put a part of themselves away in order to belong, how welcome will they feel? 

 

            I remember a woman who walked into our congregation in Madison for the first time, three weeks after her partner had died of ovarian cancer.  She had the courage to tell the greeter that she had come because her partner had died, that she felt terribly alone and had no community to support her.  The greeter extended her sympathy, and said, “Let me find a lay minister to sit with you this morning.”  She took the woman by the arm, found me milling about, and introduced us, telling me briefly what the woman had told her.  We sat together through the service, I with my arm around her as she wept, and after the service, I asked if I could introduce her to some other people, and if she’d be comfortable sharing her story with others.  She said yes, that she needed for people to know, and couldn’t possibly handle small talk, so we talked of her pain with others, many of whom spontaneously touched her or put their arms around her.  When she was ready to go, I asked if she would like a call from a minister, and passed her name and number along to one of them.  The next week, she was back, and a few weeks later, I noticed she was singing in the choir.  A moment ago, I said that she had the courage to tell the greeter why she’d come.  In our society, in our culture, I believe it takes courage for a person to ask for help.  I’ve seen some people do that in this congregation, and I commend them for their courage, and you for the ways you let it be known that here, a person can ask for help.  But I also know that we have a long way to go, both in this congregation and in others.  I wonder: How can we make it possible for a person to walk through the doors of our religious communities and say, “I need help,” or for a person who has been here forever to say, “I’m lonely.  Would you sit with me?”

 

            And what about those who have been here forever?  Many of you have known each other longer than I’ve been alive.  Your connections are deep and strong, if not always kind and loving.  When I first came here, I read something written by our Assistant Minister, Sylvia Stocker, (it might have been a newsletter article or the annual report, I’m not sure) where she expressed her concern about the way people here treat each other, quoting a parishioner who’d said that this is a place where “some armor is required.”  Admittedly, I tend to be both sensitive and tender, but I’m still sad to find I sometimes feel the need to wear armor here.  For me, as for others, that unfortunately also means I come armed – not just armored, but armed.  I wonder: if we didn’t have to hide our fears and neediness from one another, might we learn to address each other with greater kindness?  And might that greater kindness, in turn, help us to stop shielding our tender spots, or expressing our fears and frustrations as hostility and anger? 

 

            What might that be like?  Would we as individuals be self-absorbed and self-indulgent?  Would our communities turn into inwardly-focused self-help groups, disinterested in the wider world?  I don’t think so.  I think we’d create a more hospitable climate for deepening self-development and deepening faith development, which would naturally flow into greater engagement with the world.  I believe that the full unfolding of human potential is the primary task of religion, from which other things naturally flow.  I’m going to say that again, so you’ll know exactly where I stand:  believe that the full unfolding of human potential is the primary task of religion, from which other things naturally flow. I fear we often skip this process, dismissing it as narcissistic in a world that sorely needs care, or fearing our encounter with ourselves.  When our church tasks or externally-focused initiatives are uninformed by individual maturity, we and the world are robbed of our birthright gifts, including, no doubt, some very effective and powerful voices for social justice.  As a result, we may lack the openness of heart that is so necessary if we are to be effective and sustain our efforts. 

 

            As Libby Roderick’s song indicates, if we can’t see ourselves, we can’t see others, either.  Several of us from First Parish attended a workshop on “Best Practices” earlier this week.  “Best Practices” are welcoming practices, and the workshop offered ways for congregations to look at how welcoming they are, and understand their obstacles to growth, in order to overcome them.  Among other things, we learned that there are about 218,000 members in UU congregations affiliated with the Unitarian Universalist Association today.  A few decades ago, there were about 50,000 more.  Our facilitator asked, “Where did those people go?”  The quick reply from the audience, confirmed and reiterated, several times, by our facilitator, was “Nowhere. Nowhere. Those people went nowhere.”  What they meant by this, I imagine, was that these individuals don’t attend church. The fact that, in a recent nationwide poll, 680,000 Americans identified themselves as Unitarian Universalists ought to provide ample evidence that those who have left our congregations are, in fact, somewhere.  Have we failed because they are not members of our congregations?  Or is it possible that their lives were transformed by their time with us, and they are out there, doing good things in the world, things they might not have been capable of had it not been for their time with us?  Is it possible that my friend Alice’s efforts to stop the invasion of Iraq had similar, far-reaching consequences, most of which she will never know about?

 

            My home congregation is the largest and one of the fastest-growing Unitarian Universalist congregations in the county, and Unitarian Universalism has without a doubt been a saving grace in my life.  I do not hesitate for a moment to share my experience with others.  I am actually in favor of growth, because my own experience has clearly shown me the power of a large congregation to change lives and to act as a corporate body for positive change in the world.  And yet, there’s something in the tenor of the discussion I’m hearing that disturbs me.  I think there are numerous blind spots in our push to grow in numbers, and I don’t believe we will grow unless and until we address them.

 

            First and last, our push to grow in numbers must be accompanied by growth in size in Bernard Loomer’s sense of the word “size:” the stature of our individual and corporate souls, the intensity and variety of outlook we can entertain in the unity of our being without feeling defensive or insecure, the power to sustain more complex and enriching tensions, and the magnanimity of concern to provide conditions that enable others to grow in stature. 

 

            I hope you’ve noticed the quote by Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz in your order of service.  Writing in 1985 of the failure of the women’s movement – the white women’s movement - to attract women of color, she said “…the lack of ability of the movement up to now to attract ethnic/racial groups is possibly due to the sense we have that white feminists want us to join their movement, instead of asking us to participate in redefining the movement so we could indeed call it ours.”  In other words, the white women’s invitation failed to provide conditions that would enable women of color to grow in stature.  The invitation reified women of color, turning them into objects or tokens.  Don’t slip away here, folks, I’m talking about us, not the women’s movement.  I believe the current push within the Unitarian Universalist Association for anti-racism and multi-culturalism will continue to fall short unless we examine the ways in which we -- largely white, European-American, largely well-educated, largely upper-middle class congregations with distinct cultures -- the ways in which extend welcome to others. 

 

            My husband offered this image yesterday: “If we’re going to build a bigger house,” he said, “we shouldn’t build it of mirrors.  We should build it with bigger windows.”  Rather than expecting people to come in to our culture, and help us fulfill our agendas, we must welcome them to build a shared future with us. If we can’t do that within our own house, or if we don’t want to, perhaps we could imagine that we could grow in the stature of our individual and corporate souls in and through our contact with people outside our house, people who have their own houses, or no houses.  

 

            Libby Roderick describes our problem this way:

 

I am telling myself lies,

There is no compromise

I am not civilized, no such mercy

The tenderest appeal, forgotten how to feel

Forgetting that we kneel as a breathing

I am telling myself lies.

 

            If kneeling is a breathing, perhaps we Unitarian Universalists, and those whose lives we touch, could benefit from a little more kneeling.  I’m not suggesting we put kneelers in our pews.  I’m thinking of kneeling more as an internal posture, a posture of gratitude, of humility, and of the courage to say “I need you.”  If we can do that, we may grow, both in numbers and in the stature of our souls.

 

            I close with these words from Rabindrinath Tagore

 

Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers,

but to be fearless in facing them.

 

Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain,

but for the heart to conquer it.

 

Let me not look for allies in life’s battle-field,

But to my own strength.

 

Let me not crave in anxious fear to be saved,

But hope for the patience to win my freedom.

 

Grant me that I may not be a coward,

feeling your mercy in my success alone;

But let me find the grasp of your hand in my failure.