First Parish Unitarian UniversalistKeeping Warm
A sermon preached by the Reverend Diane Teichert
First Parish Unitarian Universalist - Canton MA
December 11, 2005
We’re in our eighth year of ministry together here at First Parish UU in Canton MA. I can hardly believe it, can you? More than seven full years have passed by.
Seven years: births and deaths; comings and goings; potlucks, fundraisers, work parties, and workshops.
Seven years: countless committee meetings, three Presidents-- each just right for his or her time, seven pledge (aka “canvass”) campaigns, seven budgets. Oh and did I say countless committee meetings?
Seven years: one Organist, one Choir Director, one Music Director; two secretaries; five DRE’s.
Seven years: 74 newsletters, 302 orders of service, and way too many email messages!
Seven years: a new roof, a new stove, a new sign out front, a rainbow flag.
Seven years: so many Adult Religious Education classes, quite a few public social justice events, three special collections for disaster relief in the last year alone, and how many plates served by First Parish folks at the Friday Night Supper for the homeless and hungry in Boston, with a call for volunteers to do it next on December 24 th? ??
Seven years: I hope you know I am proud of this congregation.
Seven years: I remember well one very early pastoral visit in my first weeks as your minister. It remains in my mind and heart as one of the saddest, even after all this time. Ellen, whom I’d not yet met, called me: a First Parish member’s husband was dying, would I visit them and their young daughter at home? John died that night. I remember feeling so sad for Suzanne and for young Molly, who is younger than my own children…and their many friends, roughly my age…”Such sorrow.”
Seven years: I remember well my first group of newcomers, what a great bunch of people. Among them was Stacey, pregnant in the fall, and then along came a little brother for Abby. Just look at them now, she’s almost seven! And Jake will be six in February, both as bright-eyed as can be! Such joy.
Seven years: many sorrows and much joy. I hope you know I care deeply about you.
If we look back a bit farther, to the prior seven years of First Parish life before our ministry together began, we would likely see just as much sorrow and joy. But, in those seven years that began in 1991, the parish was served by seven different ministers.
The first two of the seven were interim ministers who each completed their one year terms, while you searched for a new minister to call. But they were followed by a three-year conflicted ministry that ended with the third minister’s resignation. The fourth was an interim minister who died of a heart attack a few months into his time here; the fifth came to fill out his term. The sixth, another interim minister, got sick at New Years and nearly died-unable to ever work again. The seventh arrived that March to fill out her term. And then you called me as your settled minister.
Seven ministers in as many years. No wonder the search committee wanted to know if I was healthy!
It’s important to recall our history. After that much instability, a period of trust-building was needed, and—I believe—over time, took place.
But as the children’s rhyme goes-- here’s the church, here’s the steeple, open the doors, here are the people.
Ministers come and go, do their good and do their damage, but it’s the laity that steers the ship and keeps it afloat. You did. You might have been weary of the crisis management skills so well-honed by time you called me as your settled minister, but you were justifiably proud that the ship was still sailing, as I recall.
And now—thanks to my good health (knock on wood), our good luck, and whatever it is that has held us together and kept us taking the next right steps together—after seven years, I’m still here! I hope you know I am honored to serve as your minister.
This April 26 th, it will be ten years since my ordination, and in May, on the 15 th, eight years since I was ceremoniously installed as your settled minister. Recently, I found in my files the program for that Installation Service. Reading it brought me right back to the excitement of that time, and how we asked important questions of each other and then crafted the answers, written by many of you on lots of 5x7 cards, into a powerful liturgy of purpose and of hope.
We wrote the liturgy as a public conversation between me; the President at that time, Kitty (we stood next to each other in front of the pulpit); and the First Parish members and friends assembled, who had been asked to stand.
I‘d like to share some of that liturgy with you now.
First Parish Members and Friends read aloud:
Diane, this newly-begun relationship with you as our minister is poised on the edge of commitment, waiting for us to shape it by our mutual conscious intention. It is with hope in our hearts that we come to this day ready to do so.
And I replied:
I, too, am ready to offer my best intentions for our ministry together.
Then we remembered those who came before us, First Parish Members and Friends saying:
We begin by honoring those Unitarians and Universalists who came before us in Canton, building houses of worship for the practice of their free liberal faiths and doing the work of sustaining congregational life for centuries. We honor those who brought the two churches together, twenty-four years ago. And, we honor those who gave of themselves that this faith community might survive the tension, trauma, and transitions of recent years, that we might celebrate today the beginning of a new settled ministry.
And then I spoke, remembering my father, deceased, and honoring my mother who was present, and thanked my husband and children, and my friends, many of them who were present that day. And I quoted Albert Schweitzer, "Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within."
Then we proceeded to the task at hand . First Parish Members and Friends read aloud:
Today we offer you, Reverend Diane Teichert, this free pulpit, that you might speak the truth from it with all your heart, mind and soul. We ask you to use it to guide and challenge us into individual spiritual growth, increased kindness and cooperation with one another, and a clearer witness for justice in the community, and even the world, in which we live.
This past week, it was here that I stopped in my reading of our liturgy to ask myself: have I done as you asked? I’ve certainly tried. And so have you.
Back to the liturgy, the Minister read:
I promise to tend to my own spiritual needs, knowing that without grounding and growth of my own, I can neither lead nor inspire you.
“Ah,” I thought as I paused from reading again, “This is really what my sabbatical is about. I’ll be keeping that promise. I’m in need of deepening, of going down into dark fertile ground, and hopefully I will come up again enriched to grow in the light.”
And then the Members and Friends all read:
We will participate with energy and positive outlook, and contribute ideas, enthusiasm, leadership, and resources. We will communicate with you and with each other in open, honest, and democratic ways that create harmony and build the common good. We promise to show up!
And I said:
As will I! And, when we fail or falter, as we surely will from time to time, I will accept and forgive myself, as well as you, and ask that you do the same for me and for each other.
These have, I think, been challenges for us all, worthy of our continuing attention.
And then you read (and remember this was seven years ago):
We desire to grow in so many ways. We want to be larger in spirit as well as numbers. We want to welcome all kinds of people and celebrate our differences, even as we come to know and trust our commonalties. And, we want to practice Unitarian Universalism in our lives and our community, doing the work of love and justice. We know these are high hopes and we want to know if you share them.
And I said:
I do!
Then Kitty read:
Diane, will you also walk with us when we are hopeless? Will you rejoice with us in our joys, grieve with us in our sorrows, and help us to mark with meaning the important passages in our lives?
My reply:
I am honored to walk with you, uphill, down, or on the flat barren stretches; and when the way ahead is obscured, fearful, or bright with promise. I want to get to know you and love you, and I will help you to celebrate the changes in your lives.
Let me now say: I have been privileged, beyond my expectations, by your trust in me as a fellow-traveler, and sincerely hope that my walking with you has given you comfort or aid or, at least, company, as needed.
And I want you to know that I have deeply appreciated your support of me in my own joys and sorrows, challenges, missteps, and accomplishments.
First Parish Members and Friends continued:
We, the members of First Parish Unitarian Universalist-Canton, do hereby install you, Diane Teichert, as minister of this congregation. We will be fair and faithful to you and do our best to reach our high hopes for this ministry together.
And I responded:
With joy, humility, and faith in a larger love that holds us all, I take up this ministry among you, to walk with you a good way toward the hopes we share.
Then Kitty asked that all of our guests please rise—there were many, including lay people and ministers representing probably thirty different UU congregations, the speakers, friends of mine and family—and they joined us to read in unison:
We raise our voices in affirmation of this congregation¸ this minister and the covenant made today.
After the liturgy, there were songs and speeches, a gift of drawings from the children, and so on.
We began our ministry together in a very wise way. Slowly. Many congregations install their new minister within a few months, and that may be fine for them. But, we took our time, from mid-August to mid-May, to get to know one another and to share, as deeply as we could then, our respective visions for First Parish. Plus, it gave us time to really spruce up the premises and they looked great, ready for company!
With this original liturgy, we began our ministry together on a solid foundation of known intentions. Amazingly, or maybe not so amazingly, look how well those intentions are serving us, how well we’re serving them and, even, how we’re being held by them.
I am proud of our ministry together. I hope you are, too.
In a few short and very very busy… two weeks from tomorrow, to be precise, this ministry path on which we have been traveling together will reach a somewhat unfamiliar junction. There, my path will diverge from yours for a while and, three months later, meet up with yours again. You will carry on our ministry in my absence.
During the time we are apart, we each will have a bit of a journey. I will have mine, and you will have yours. I will grow and you will grow. We don’t yet know how you will grow or how I will grow, but we do know, if we’re paying attention to our experiences, there will be growth, and learning for us all.
But, we’ve done this before. In my fifth year as your minister, I took a one-month sabbatical. Last winter, I was away for two weeks in February on Study Leave I’d been unable to take during the summer before. Each time, I returned renewed in spirit, with a fresh perspective, new energy, and was able—I think—to share my experience with you so that you grew from it, too. I hope you know that I am thankful for the time of growth and learning now ahead of me.
I confess to hoping that you will miss me a little bit—I will miss you a lot!
But, my more important hope is that you will “show up” for each other. By “showing up,” in part I mean, come on Sundays. The people who have planned worship in my absence will feel their time and care was well-spent if you are here to participate.
By saying I hope you “show up” I also mean what you said in the Installation liturgy, “We will participate with energy and positive outlook, and contribute ideas, enthusiasm, leadership, and resources. We will communicate…with each other in open, honest, and democratic ways that create harmony and build the common good. We promise to show up!”
And, now for my final hope. I hope you will discover while I am gone the exhilaration of pulling together, like scullers rowing on the Charles with synchronized oars. I hope you experience the power of pulling together, how well it moves you along. And come to recognize that it is you together, not me and certainly not me alone, who have moved First Parish along toward being “larger in spirit as well as in numbers” as you said you wanted, in our Installation Liturgy seven years ago this May.
I know… and I think you know… it will be that “larger” more gracious, more spacious yet more intimate spirit that we have created here together these seven years… that will keep you warm and keep me warm… while we are apart until our paths converge again.
Amen.