"Why I Come to Church"

 

 

Reading from “Worship,” by Victoria Safford

Chinese philosopher Lao Tse said that if we would know the One Thing (the great truth, the great mystery, the Holy), we must know it through “the ten thousand things.” That is, the sacred or god or whatever It is can be known only through the ordinary, through the ten thousand ways that the world, nature, and art, and other people, tables chairs, and all earthbound things show themselves to us. Our relationships with each other and with the known world reflect the relationship we would have with the Infinite, the Eternal, the One.  If only It weren’t so infinite and eternal, we could grasp It and know It face-to-face. As it is, with our little hands, we can grasp only each other; with our little limited eyes, we can see (and love and praise) only this world, these ten thousand things. Only through our daily practices, habits, and rituals, and our ways of ordering the day or arranging our communities—which seem intuitive and automatic but are really quite deliberate—can we glimpse something of the One Thing, of the sacred.

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Do you remember the way the sky was so blue, that day?

It was such a beautiful day. A perfect, blue-sky, forgettable day, except that it became an unforgettable day. I’m talking about September 11, 2001.

Where were you?

I was a senior in college. I had breakfast with a friend, who showed up dismayed, saying the Twin Towers had been hit by a plane.  And I didn’t react at all. I remembered the last time the World Trade Center had been attacked, in 1993, and I thought well, how about that. And I didn’t think much more about it.

By the middle of the morning, we were getting more information, and none of it was good. Classes were getting interrupted.  Something important was happening, something we didn’t understand. I went to college in New Haven, Connecticut, and so many of the students there had close ties with New York City. Family, school, friends.

We began to gather in front of TV screens.  We began to realize our cell phone calls – and this is in 2001, so not everyone even had cell phones – we began to realize that some calls, a lot of calls, weren’t going through.

In the afternoon of that perfect, blue-sky day, I remember arriving in my apartment, off campus, and my roommate wasn’t there, and the TV was on, and the coverage was of the people who were not going to be able to get out of the towers. Some people were deciding to jump. And I remember weeping in front of the TV, going to wash my face and looking in the mirror and thinking, all those people. All those people.

Where were you? I wonder.

My spiritual friends, good people of Santa Monica: I intended to start this sermon on a lighter note, especially to honor my pulpit host, Karl Lisovsky, and the video he produced last summer to introduce prospective ministers – ministers just like me! -- to this congregation. 

Karl brought a keen documentary eye to the proceedings of two summer services last year, including one – and let me tell you, this definitely caught my attention when I began corresponding with congregations searching for ministers last fall – including one service at which the guest speaker failed to show up. Right? Were any of you here when that happened? Did you realize Karl decided to share that service with your prospective ministers? It was a bold choice, I thought. It reminded me of that decision I have to make when close friends are coming over for dinner, and the house is strewn with newspapers, opened mail, shoes, and I want to be the kind of calm, cool, collected host who doesn’t have to pick up for her guests, because I’m that comfortable with my life and they are that kind of friend, but then I think, yikes, the bathroom, and I’m just not too sure our friendship can handle the untidied bathroom… But Karl decided on your behalf, I think, that your future minister could use a real look around. That she might turn out to be that kind of friend. The kind that can handle an untidy room.

So he included in the documentary the service at which the guest speaker failed to show. At one point the pulpit host asks, I think quite calmly, under the circumstances, is there anyone outside waiting to come in? And then a few brave souls take to the pulpit, and talk a bit about what’s going on in their lives, and the show goes on. 

In coffee hour afterwards, Karl interviews a dozen or so folks brave enough to face the camera. He asks them what brought them to the congregation this morning, and they say:

Community.

Spiritual Fulfillment.

They say:

Inspiration.

Community.

Fellowship.

Creativity.

The people.

The community.

Friendship.

The people.

Humor.

Intellect.

Love.

Community.

Social action.

They say:

It’s a nice place for me and the kids.

And one woman says: it’s a nice place for me to take a break from my kids, and actually hear the service for once! Ah, a veteran Religious Exploration volunteer! Good for you!

A few folks he interviewed were spot-on practical. They said things like:

This church is closer than Studio City, so I’m here while the choir is off during the summer.

And one of my favorites: I came because I’m in charge of making the coffee today. So honest! So brutally honest!

Finally, one person talks about our liberal religious values, and he says:

This is a place where all people are respected.

This is a place where all points of view are respected.

This is a place that is helping us build a better world.

What drew you to this congregation this morning, my spiritual friends? I wonder.

After September 11, no matter where you were on that unforgettable day, a lot of people started coming to church. That night, I joined hundreds of other students in front of one of the big libraries at Yale, one that looks like a cathedral, stone and gothic towers, at a candlelight vigil. I remember gathering next to strangers and holding those small candles. I remember gathering in front of a dark stone fountain, designed by Maya Lin, the woman who designed the Vietnam Memorial, with the members of my women’s singing group. We cancelled our rehearsal, after the vigil, and we came to the fountain, and we gathered one another up, and we sang.

Disasters, human-made or otherwise, are a reason why we come to church. It’s one of the things we do, when there is nothing else to do: we gather, we sing, we light candles. We think about community, and togetherness, and the kind of world where everyone is respected, and about how we don’t yet live in that world, how we want to work to build that kind of better world.

Ten years ago, my mother had been attending worship at Cedar Lane, a Unitarian Universalist church in Bethesda, Maryland, for awhile, trying out the community there, seeing if there were kindred spirits there, if there was space for her kind of God, which is now, I think, her kind of no God there, and after September 11, 2001, she signed that membership book. That was the beginning of my journey toward Unitarian Universalism, the path I’ve been walking for about ten years now, the path that has led me to Harvard and Cambridge and now to sunny Santa Monica.

After September 11, when my mom joined her UU church, I started attending services with her there when I was home from college. That winter, I brought my Jewish boyfriend to her Christmas Eve service, and found it spiritually spacious, big enough for all of us.  This experience stayed with me as I graduated from college, moved to Boston, and went to work for The Food Project, a nonprofit organization dedicated to sustainable agriculture and youth development.  At The Food Project, I learned how to be a mission-based fundraiser by inviting people to align their resources with their values. I began to explore my identity as a white person working in a diverse community for racial justice, and I began to seek a language big enough to describe the personal and social transformation at the heart of The Food Project’s inspiring vision.

There I was, new college graduate, first job, first serious relationship, first apartment.  I was in place of transition in my life, and I was looking for something – more, or different, or deeper.

I started sounding it out when I was out in the fields, harvesting potatoes with teenagers from Boston’s suburbs and inner-city.  I started asking people about it when I was out with my community choir after rehearsal, over drinks.

Maybe you’ve been there, too.  A moment in your life, a series of moments in you life, when not only do you not know the answers, you aren’t even sure you are asking the right questions. Maybe for you it was a pretty painful and lonely time, maybe you’d made a big life change or a move, and you didn’t fit in where you’d though you would. An awful breakup, a divorce, a diagnosis, the loss of a beloved friend. Or maybe a new kind of life was taking shape for you, and you wanted to celebrate it: a long-sought after new job, a longed-for new baby, a new partner, new school. There are a lot of reasons why we come to church, not just the big, headline-grabbing reasons, but the deep inner reasons: we are yearning, we are looking, we are hungry for something.

But, and here’s a curious thing I’ve been thinking about, in the end, the reasons we come to church, I think, are not the same as the reasons we stay. The poet Kathleen Norris writes in her spiritual autobiography, quoting a Trappist monk, “The reasons you stay are not the reasons you enter” a monastic community. She writes, speaking specifically of the monastic way of life, “There is no way you could give a rational explanation” for that decision. 

So these reasons – these embarrassing, needy reasons that actually draw us to church, a sense of fear about the unknown, a deep anxiety about our place in the universe—they may be the reasons we come, but they aren’t the reasons we stay.

After September 11, so many of us, and our friends and our neighbors, showed up for services and vigils. We wept, and lit candles, and sang. And then we returned to our lives – our real lives, our income-producing lives, with children and dogs and untidy homes.  And there we were, until the next tsunami, the next earthquake, the next plane crash. Many of us did this: we went on home. But some of us stayed. Some of us stayed. Why did we stay?

Several years after my mother found a spiritual home in Unitarian Universalism, I walked into another U.U. church to sing with the choir, and recognized my lifelong love of music as a deeply spiritual practice. As I sang in this Unitarian Universalist church, I found myself finally at home.

But it was more than that. I found a place that I could make my home, that I could build onto and upto. That I could grow into and with. A place that I needed, but also a place that needed me: my insight, my energy, my questions. A home that wasn’t totally polished, wasn’t entirely tidy, but a home with a  strong foundation.

Here, in my spiritual home, my interfaith wedding, marriage, and family was welcomed and affirmed. Here, I was invited to share my questions about life, rather than my answers.  Here was a faith that asked me to keep growing and adding rings of life to my core, without asking me to deny previous aspects of my identity or spiritual journey. 

In this big-tent faith, I heard a calling to spiritual leadership that would equip me to live out “my one wild and precious life” in service to others, and to explore with them the theological language of intimacy and ultimacy, a language big enough for personal and social transformation.

And, well, you might not believe it, but that was the short answer to that question, that question of not why did you come, but why did you stay. And the longer version I can only tell it in the many stories I hope to share with you, with this congregation, with this community on the edge of the ocean, with this tremendous city, this week and beyond.  These are stories about growing up overseas, in Japan and India, about cool well water at a Shinto shrine and the dry heat of Hindu temples in South India. These are stories about the liberal values of Unitarian Universalism, the way our churches are soaked in the wisdom of so many people of faith, people of different faiths that we claim as our own prophetic women and men.

The long answer is about how power is shared in our congregations, a history of minds on fire, and lives transformed by a powerful love, by a mighty love, by a gentle and abiding love, the kind of love that will not let you go.

Why did you come to church this morning? No, don’t answer that question. It turns out this isn’t the question I’m really interested in. I’m interested in why you stayed in church this morning.

I stayed at church to listen to stories about where you have found God, where you have experienced transcendence and holiness in your life, where you have found wholeness, which has so often been for me in relationship, in uncovering the divine spark in others, and helping that light shine.

I stayed at church because I have come to understand this community of love and trust, this community of starting over and trying again, of welcome and forgiveness, as a place not of spiritual perfection, but of spiritual practice. Sometimes we don’t get it right the first time. We need a place to practice trying it again.

I stayed at church because, in the words of our reading I shared earlier this morning, in the philosophy attributed to the Chinese sage Lao Tse, I believe we will come “to know the One Thing (the great truth, the great mystery, the Holy)” only through “the ten thousand things” of our ordinary lives.

I stayed at church because it is changing me and helping me change the world.

My spiritual friends, this is good work. And this is the work I want to do. The people who are doing that work: those are the people I want to be with. I think I’ve found them – I think I’ve finally found you -- here, right here, in this congregation. I’m honored to be your candidate for minister and I’m looking forward to beginning to get to know you this week.

I leave you with one final reason to come to church, and one final reason to stay, as recorded in the Santa Monica search committee DVD:

Come to church because you love this place.

And because this place is our home: the gracious and untidy and getting-remodeled and challenging and generous and welcoming home that we are building – and we are building it together.

Amen, and may it be so.