First Parish
Groundbreaking Ceremony

Sunday, February 21, 1999

First Parish in Bedford

On the Common

75 The Great Road

Bedford, MA 01730

As we break ground today for our new addition, it’s important to think back to the early parish meetings we had, and remember the reasons why we are building. To that end, I have asked some parishioners to recall what they said at those early meetings:

ELEPHANT: Make room! Make room! We have grown too large for our building!

BABY BIRDS: There are so many kids in the RE program, there’s not room for us all to sit down!

OWL: Ooooooooh! Our church goes on into the night! We have so many meetings, that the First Parish Bridge Group is meeting in Hungarian, and having to sit on the laps of the Parish Committee. And what about renters!

FROG: It’s not that easy being green…. I just want a place to be in community.

HORSE: Neigh! Nay! Our mission is not here with ourselves — the church is merely a place to stable our horses! Our work is out in the world!

UNICORN: We are unique! We need a place to be together, to preserve our uniqueness, to search for truth!

CAT: Yeah, just so long as it is stylish, elegant and beautiful, with some sunny places to curl up and be comfortable in.

BEE: We’re so buzzzzzzy! We need a place with lots and lots of rooms, to do projects. We need a place to have conferences. Maybe we’ll host GA here in the year 2000!

SEAL: And it needs to be accessible to everyone, especially those of us who don’t get around too well.

DINOSAUR: We’ll build it with a sense of history, and a sense of the past.

BEAR: "Love is the spirit of this church." We need a place to come together in large groups and in small groups. Let there be bear hugs!

DOG: "Love is the spirit of this church but service is its law!" We should be doing social responsibility projects. I’m not even sure we should be spending this money on ourselves!

FLAMINGO: We need more parties!

WITCH: I have a great idea for a party! Let’s have it, say, end of October, and get together for a fundraising dinner about 6:00pm, then go out and sell candy to kids, then come back for a big dance. Tickets $25 each. I’ll put a notice in the Parishioner!

TURTLE: Wait, slow down! We haven’t gotten it built yet! We need to take our time, think, plan.

BEAVER: I’ve had my teeth in this project for a long time, and I’m pretty excited about it! Let’s get to it!

BUTTERFLY: But remember why we’re doing it. We’re trying to find meaning, to grow and change.

CATERPILLAR: I’m new here. I don’t really know if I’m a puppet, let alone a UU. I am just trying to put one foot in front of the other, trying to live one day at a time. I feel such a yearning…

SKUNK: I know what you mean. I just want to find a place where people will accept me for who I am, with all my faults.

BIRD: That reminds me of a song!

CHICKEN: But the young ones! The chicks! Oh, I feel an egg coming now!

COW: But it’s not just for the children, it’s for all of us to come together in a cozy place for some nice warm milk…

DRAGON: Warm milk, nothing! I want my coffee! And I don’t think I am ever going to get it! I call the previous question! Let’s vote! Whose idea wins?"

(But, as you remember because you were there, we included all these ideas, and more! Make room! Make room for us all! And let’s break ground!)

First Parish was established in 1729. So, today we’re in year 270 of this religious community’s journey of faith. We stand on the shoulders of all those parishioners who came before us...as those in the future will stand on our shoulders. It seemed appropriate on this day of celebration, to think about some of what’s happened in the last several years to bring us to this place, at this moment, to do this work — this work of breaking ground to build.

This may be hard to see — it’s a Compass. Those of you who have traveled or hiked in unfamiliar places may have found a compass to be quite useful. It can help a traveler set a course, stay on course, change direction when lost. It may show you a way to get to the next place. First Parish has a Compass of sorts — it usually hangs on the rear wall of this sanctuary. It’s our Mission/Covenant Statement and it resulted from a lot of hard thought and work on the part of this community 6 and 7 years ago. We called the process Values and Visions. We shared ideas about what was important to us as a community. Who we are, who we wanted to be, and what we hoped to accomplish together. Sometimes it can be helpful to put into words the assumptions and the agreements that we share. In this statement, we continue to give voice to what we value, and to our promises to each other and to the larger world. Hopefully, like a compass, it serves to guide us, to help us find direction, and stay on a course we choose.

Some of the values we claim are love, honesty, humility, individual responsibility, appreciation of diversity and respect for the mysteries of Life. We try to express these values in all we do together at First Parish—in worship, religious education for all ages, in meetings and celebrations, in how we reach out to others in need. We say that there are three practices that help us live in a way that expresses our values, three practices that are vital to whom we are, that help us "walk our talk."

The first is "personal inquiry" — fancy words that speak to how we each find and hold on to meaning and hope in our own life. We promise to support each other on our journeys through life, in both good times and in difficult times.

The second practice is "common worship." We say that our worship is the center of our life together. It is how we stay connected to one another and to Life’s mysteries.

Finally, "public responsibility." By this we mean fully engaging in the world around us, learning from others, and creating opportunities for service. We value compassionate actions for social justice.

In 1993, when we were considering adopting this Mission/Covenant Statement, John quoted the social change theorist, Robert Theobald. Theobald said,

This is a good common Compass. And I think it’s been helpful to us on this part of our journey.

BEING RELIGIOUS? Being religious. What does it mean? For me it is becoming aware of my most important values and living them. Or, as Maureen has put it, finding the direction on my compass and following it. My values are my guide. I am guiding my life by my values. Is what I do in line with what I say?

DO IT ALONE? WITH OTHERS? We could each do this on our own. Think about our values, our compass and act on it. But we are here because we have chosen to do it together. We’re here because we think we can do more together, to clarify and strengthen our values and more together to help each other act on them, than we can all by ourselves.

THAT’S MINISTRY! That’s ministry. Ministry is not only what a "minister" does, but what we all do here with one another. And we do it in many, many ways. We do it through the three ways that Maureen mentioned: Through personal inquiry, through common worship, and through public responsibility. One important way we live is through learning and teaching. And that’s how I became involved in this building project. I may have shared this with you before.

HOW I GOT INTO BUILDING THROUGH SUNDAY SCHOOL Was it back in 1994 that Kirsten wanted helpers in Sunday school on a brilliant October morning, so I volunteered with the first grade. In that blue classroom was Marcia Stern, teaching 13 first graders (give or take a grade). In that first floor classroom there was no room for chairs. We stood around a table. Imagine having to teach a Sunday school lesson for one hour with 13 kids — STANDING — in that small space. (Like having 13 kids in your kitchen standing around the table, with doors closed, and teaching something as important as our core values for a whole hour.) When one child moved this way or that, they all got shoved. With one child distracted, the whole group was distracted. Marcia did an outstanding lesson, and I was pleased to assist. But I left trembling — that’s no way for us to be teaching our children our important values. What about their dignity and worth?

REMEMBERING MY KIDS IN SUNDAY SCHOOL Was that what was going on when my kids, Sarah now 22 and Mark now 26, used to come home after church and sometimes said they did not like Sunday School that day? Is that part of why it seemed so hectic to teach? I was trembling, shaking. What is this modeling to them? We can do better.

REMEMBERING MY OWN SUNDAY SCHOOL I contrasted this with Sunday school in the large downtown Cleveland, Ohio, Methodist church I grew up in. It had a large meeting room for every three grades and a dedicated classroom for each grade. It was so big that I could play dolls in kindergarten behind the draperies in the ladies parlor that was used for the gathering time. We met under the portrait of Jesus and the children. Suffer the little children to come unto me for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

THAT IS WHERE THE BUILDING COMES IN! We minister to each other. We need spaces that honor the dignity and worth of each child. With our values as our compass, we need to find a way of respecting the dignity and worth of our children. About the same time in 1994 when I helped in Sunday school, Chuck Cole’s report on the church facilities was being distributed here and rather than walking off and just trembling, I said that I’d like to be involved. After hearing me tell this story, Bob Dorer said, "I did not know that is how you became involved. I thought you were just a ‘church junkie.’" Get my kicks, my high out of this? (Shrug) No, living my values is important to me, and here was a way perhaps I could make a contribution. I was scared to do it. The journey isn't straight forward and easy. It has been very hard and full of changes in our compass into unseen and important developments.

MINISTERING ALONG OUR JOURNEYS OF LIFE AND OF DEATH Of course, we minister not only through Religious Education. We minister to each other all along the journey of our lives and in our travels throughout the global world. Even in our journey toward death, we can also live our values.

As many of you are aware, Riff Mildram, one of our members, and maybe best known as our bellringer, was very, very ill last year. He was my very dearest friend and companion. The love that you gave to him and the care as he faced his illness are also ministry. As it became clear, around the end of September, that the goal was no longer cure, but that he was dying, the love and care you gave me was truly overwhelming. You gave me tremendous support as I found direction on the compass for facing the mystery of death, as I determined to face death with him and find a way for him to live each day fully for the next two long months until he died.

AGAIN, THAT’S WHERE THE BUILDING COMES IN! I searched to become aware of his most important values and his way of living them. And I tapped my own most important values and how to live them. This was being religious.

The most important value was to honor Riff’s dignity and worth even as he was dying. This community— you — helped that happen. We ministered to each other. And again, that is where the building comes in. We need it as a shelter, a launching pad, a forum, a place for learning and worship, a place for private counseling and for conferencing.

VISION FOR BEING RELIGIOUS IN THE FUTURE So, my vision is that this renovation and new building is a tool. This building is a means, a means for us to be religious: To recognize our important values and to help one another act upon them, to find our direction on the compass and live it and to minister to each other.

Whether it’s by assisting kids and youth to form and become aware of their values, to see values lived out by others, whether by shepherding one another through the journeys of our lives and our deaths, whether by standing tall, being a beacon and speaking out and acting in the world beyond our building and community.

This building will help us to make that happen.

Yesterday afternoon, standing right here, I said those words—as often I do—at the beginning of a wedding ceremony. Today’s ceremony is not a wedding but a ground-breaking and yet today is also a threshold moment, a meeting of past and future in a vivid awareness of Now. The philosopher Josiah Royce once described the church as "that beloved community of memory and hope," which is another way of saying that here we stand upon a significant threshold, that between past and future, Now.

So what do you do at such thresholds?

The essence of a wedding is the making of promises—the exchanging of vows—and today I suggest that the essence of this ground-breaking is the renewing of our promises to one another.

Promises are at the heart of our Unitarian Universalist faith, at the heart even of our humanity as it is said (by Martin Buber) that human beings are "the promise-making, promise breaking, and promise renewing" species. Most other religions share a conformity of belief or creed. We do not. Unitarian Universalism does not expect or desire uniformity of belief or creed. It is unimaginable; not even in our dreams.

We gather together as a congregation, a religious community, not on the basis of shared belief or creed but on the basis of the shared promises we make to one another.

A covenant is just a fancy word for a promise and ours is a covenantal—not a creedal—faith: "love is the spirit of this church and service is its law. This is our great covenant: to dwell together in peace, to seek the truth in love, and to help one another." In our mission statement on that back wall, we speak of our commitment to personal inquiry, common worship and public responsibility—we speak of inclusivity and values, being a learning and teaching community, facing the challenges of existence within the context of belonging—and these too are our promises, our covenant with one another.

Last Sunday I had the incredibly powerful experience of preaching to and participating in worship with 3000 tribal Unitarians in the Khasi Hills of northeast India. There are only 9000 Unitarians there altogether and 3000 gathered in the village of Kharang for their annual celebration—a celebration, by the way, to which next year we are all invited. Mark your calendars.

There in Kharang, from 9 in the morning until 9 at night, outdoors under tarps supported by bamboo uprights, people wrapped in colorful traditional blankets—often with babies snugly papoosed underneath, others hanging out of the adjacent church windows, men, women and children sang, prayed, preached and were preached to. At least three offerings were taken—offering bags on long bamboo poles, by the way, and knit caps were passed and apron fronts were held open—like loaves and fishes, these poorest of the poor collected their own rupees to build and maintain new schools and Unitarian churches and social programs.

And in one of the most moving moments, all 3000 stood and together solemnly renewed their promises to one another: promises to worship one God, promises to improve themselves and to build character, promises to care for one another, for the weak and the suffering, promises to respect differing religions, and promises to promote Unitarianism. Would that we might do as well!

We are the promise-making, promise-breaking, promise-renewing species; ours is a covenantal faith; and so what are the promises we would make today?

I, for one, promise to rejoice for watching this building project progress has been like watching grass grow; it’s been like waiting for the light bulbs to burn out; it’s been down so long it looks like up to me; I didn’t know if I’d live long enough to see this day. This ground-breaking has been a long-time comin’ — we ain’t home yet and still I rejoice that this day is come. This is the day which the Lord hath made; let us rejoice and be glad in it. Somebody say amen.

I also promise to remember all those who in previous days came before us. The cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, depending on just how you count, took somewhere between 137 and 687 years to complete, give or take a chapel here or a flying buttress there. Those present at the ground-breaking of Notre Dame were not present at its completion; those present at the completion were not present at the beginning.

At wedding ceremonies, after welcoming the families and friends, I also welcome "those who would be here if they could be or who are here in their thoughts or their dreams or their legacy." Today’s ground-breaking is the legacy of all who have kept faith with First Parish: the Bacon, Page, Blinn, and Webber Families, Elizabeth Goodale, Riff Mildram, names remembered and names forgotten.

I promise also to remember those who will come after us; this building we imagine today is indeed our promise to the future. There are those here among us for the first time today; others will arrive next week; and still others will come here for the very first time on December 5^th, the day after the day when we just might dedicate this new building. Mark your calendars. I promise to remember that all are welcome, all are worthy.

Building walls, you know, is a risky and divisive thing. As Robert Frost said, "one should be mindful of what is being fenced in and what is being fenced out." And some of us will pour our souls into this project while others will occasionally pour coffee, maybe, and others still may only be able to sit and think. And I again promise to remember that all are welcome, all are worthy.

I promise to honor how difficult and sometimes-divisive this project has already been. Just as building a home is stressful to marriages and families, ambitious projects are stressful to ministers and congregations. Last year, on sabbatical, I visited three churches that faced issues of growth and expansion similar to ours. In two of the three, the ministers had actually died mid-project. One church named their new addition for the beloved minister and commissioned his oil portrait to hang outside the sanctuary. Who knows how many others lie in the graves of the unknown parishioner.

This project has already been a coming-of-age for First Parish, a loss of innocence. I regret no decision or process along the way—with which I have sometimes agreed and sometimes not—yet I mourn the quarrels that have hurt. I grieve the wounds still sore, the fabric of community that is rent. I lament and confess the failure of my own and all our imaginations not to have found a better way. In sadness, I choose to wear a ribbon of mourning—torn fabric—from today until the day our new building is dedicated. I promise to strive for its mending. The ribbon shall represent my promise, in the words of Wallace Robbins, "to ever seek the oneness of God, and never turn from that venture, to the dark byways of quarrels and competitive struggles which interrupt the human pilgrimage."

Loss accompanies every gain. Who among us has not eagerly anticipated a new home but before leaving the old walked every room in tears? Who in a new home or school or office has not missed the old familiarities? In a very few days our building will look…well, awful, probably…and in several months the new building will be, well, new. "It sure is different," we will say with brave smiles, maybe. Our building will change; our congregation will change; and we all will be changed. "We build our buildings," said Churchill, "then our buildings build us." And it’s an unforgiving process for as Frank Lloyd Wright warned, "Doctors can bury their mistakes. Architects can only advise their clients to plant ivy." I promise you it will all feel quite odd.

The philosopher Vilfredo Pareto once said, "Give me fruitful error anytime, bursting with the seeds of its own correction." We’ve made some fruitful errors already, and I expect a fruitful crop of errors in days to come. I renew my promise to you that ours will aspire to be—for we may not always be so, but we may always aspire to be—a learning community, neither defensive nor closed, but open to the unexpected insight, the quieter voice, the unpopular truth, the fruitful error.

Over the last two weeks I’ve visited more than a dozen churches, and I am so humbled by what I’ve witnessed. Two Sundays ago I worshipped at the First Unitarian Church in Oakland, California where, as a congregation not much larger than ourselves and with fewer financial resources, they have spent $5 million dollars on renovation and anticipate spending another $2 million when they get around to working on their sanctuary. And in their neighborhood they have also built low-cost housing, and a transition project for the homeless, and they give a home to community organizers and an expansive center for urban family life. A philosophy of abundance says that there will always be enough energy, enthusiasm, wit, will and money for purposes that are worthy. Today we celebrate abundance.

And in the Khasi Hills a week ago, I visited a new church built of thatch and corrugated tin, costing for construction at most $500 and in that Unitarian church and in every other one I saw in that remote and beautiful region where per capita income does not exceed a few hundred dollars a year, every church sponsors a school, a literacy program, a health clinic or some other non-sectarian reaching-out to serve the needy and the larger community. In a land of dire scarcities, their faith too is one of abundance. Freely we have been given so that we may freely give.

It was a humbling experience, in both Oakland and the Khasi Hills, and so I renew to you my promise that this project for which we break ground today will serve not our own needs only. These walls we build will be a catalytic vessel, a fertile womb that shall give birth to deeds of justice, service, compassion and love – values and purposes that encompass us yet point us beyond ourselves.

And so…

I promise to rejoice and celebrate. This is a very good thing we do.

I promise to remember those who came before, and to include those who come after.

All are welcome and all are worthy.

I promise to mourn, to honor all our griefs, and ever seek our unity.

I promise to keep learning, and like it or not, stay open to all that life teaches, including the fruitful errors.

I promise also to keep teaching, for here we say as well that "all can learn and all can teach."

I promise to rededicate my life and the life of this congregation to deeds of service.

And, then again, I promise to rejoice and celebrate for our gratitude and thanksgiving is everlasting.

I ask us now to pause in a minute’s reflection on the promises you would make, perhaps have broken, or would renew again.

Ever since I first met a bunch of gargoyles up close and personal atop the Nôtre Dame de Paris many years ago, I have been enamored of—and fascinated by them. Malcolm Muggeridge once noted the necessity of cathedrals having both steeples and gargoyles.

"The steeple is this beautiful thing reaching up into the sky—attempting something utterly impossible—to climb up to heaven. The gargoyle is this little being grinning and laughing at earthly absurd behavior—and here are these two things both built into a building to the glory of God."

My next encounter with gargoyles was at Oxford University, that exalted seat of learning. The scholarly gargoyles tend more toward droll faces, making fun of students (and tourists) passing by. I love it that while one of the purposes for a gargoyle was to scare off evil spirits, there’s an ancient sense of humor that comes through in the expressions on some of the faces.

So, I would like to present First Parish—for the period of the construction—one of my favorite gargoyles:

This is "Irving." He is the most famous of the American gargoyles; his original resides at 81 Irving Place, in New York City. He is considered the Guardian of Buildings, which is why I consider it appropriate for him to watch over First Parish starting at this moment.

Muggeridge said, "Every steeple—every reach for the good, the true, the beautiful, and the terribly significant—should have a gargoyle prominently and firmly attached." Nancy Daugherty says, "It’s a perspective thing. Earthly matters may go awry, but we humans can remember to laugh—and go on."

...and with Irving here to help watch over the new building, we can reach for the good, the true, and the beautiful.