First Parish Unitarian UniversalistWhat Does It Take, These Days?
A sermon preached by the Reverend Diane D. Teichert
First Parish Unitarian Universalist - Canton, MA
May 11, 2008
Reading
Excerpts from the Prologue and the chapter on giving thanks at dinnertime in Parenting as a Spiritual Journey: Deepening Ordinary and Extraordinary Events into Sacred Occasions by Rabbi Nancy Fuchs-Kreimer.
Sermon
On this Mothers’ Day, let’s remember our children. Let’s remember our First Parish children. I’d like to share with you some of my favorite memories of them over the years.
I remember on the first Sunday, the Ingathering Sunday, of my first year here, seeing children happily arriving after the long summer hiatus and watching as Kitty McGregor, who had arrived early, greeted each one by name, squatting down to eye level if necessary, happily asking them how their summers were and exclaiming at how much they had grown. I felt the warmth and care, and I got the sense that my new congregation was one that cared about its children.
(And I’d thought that she, being a member of the Search Committee that interviewed and chose me, had arrived early to welcome me!)
I remember one Time for All Ages in that first year, talking with the children about the Flaming Chalice, and asking if anyone knew what it stood for. I remember a little one, it was Hannah Klein, Jan Sneegas’ daughter, who could only have been six at that time, raising her hand. When I called on her, she said it stood for “justice.” I was impressed. This was a congregation that taught its children well.
I remember the year not long after that when there had been a suicide by a Canton High teenager known to many of our First Parish youth. I offered to hold for them an informal memorial service so that they could honor their friend and their feelings about his life and his death in a Unitarian Universalist way. The youth actually came! We gathered in the Youth Room on a Saturday morning. It was Andy Bryant, Kate and maybe Matt Johnson, Mike and Jeff Devine, possibly someone else, I don’t quite recall. I brought words of healing and hope, a song on a CD popular at the time “Let Your Light Shine” by Santana, and what we shared was very real, and intimate. Perhaps they no longer remember, but I always will.
I remember learning one September from her mother that Sara Bonilla, who was then maybe going into 4 th grade and is now a HS senior, had led Sunday worship for her family over the summer, lighting a chalice she’d made in her Religious Education class, using words she’d heard me say, leading them in songs the whole family knew, and inviting them to share their reflections on the theme she would announce.
I remember one Work Party whose mission was to lay cement on the dirt floor in the cellar under the Parish Hall. It was a dirty, back-stooping job, but Ruth Johnstone kept us all going and got the kids who came to take turns turning the cement mixer. Someone spotted a small black snake and I remember the excitement going out to the edge of the woods behind the kitchen with the O’Connell/Biggers boys to let it go.
I remember a wonderful youth-led service, on the theme of “Beauty” for which high school junior Michelle Goldstein gave the sermon. She preached about her experience having shaved all her hair off that year as a commentary on American ideas of beauty. The sermon was so beautifully shaped, many of us sat in a hush at the end, and it went on to become her college application essay. We heard her speak a year ago about her time in Baton Rouge, Louisiana as a Teach for America volunteer.
I remember the winter night that my spouse, Don, and I offered child care at First Parish so that parents could leave their children with us and go off to enjoy a Circle Supper (small potlucks in parishioners’ homes). After rather inedible make-your-own-pizzas, we went for a walk in the cemetery next door: it was cold and dark; there was snow on the ground, and a full moon in the sky. I remember how it cast wonderful scary shadows around the gravestones that spooked young Christian and Isabelle Hegland a bit that night.
I remember that a couple years ago there was a period of several months during which I had a Sunday morning helper, Justin Schwaitzberg, then maybe seven?, who had to get here early so that his mother Lisa Jane could rehearse with the choir. He sweetly offered, “Is there anything I can do?” each Sunday, and there always was! And, I remember how after I thanked him in the newsletter, he never did it again. Now, that was a mistake on my part!
Another favorite before-the-service memory is of Alan Broomhead and his and Keiko’s son Jack, then maybe one, now four years old. As I bustled around getting ready for the service, I looked out through the Minister’s Study window and saw them out in the back parking lot. I had noticed Keiko in the kitchen, setting up for Coffee Hour, but out in the parking lot Alan and Jack were passing the time, both crouched down and intently examining something on the ground, I knew not what, for the longest time. Ants, I later learned, of course!
I remember our warm welcome of Sofia Amster two-plus years ago, whose parents Joe and Diane laid the groundwork for their child to be born into a thriving religious community, by beginning to attend long before her birth, and offering their varied talents here ever since!
I remember the past three years watching special friendships blossom from their Mystery Pal seeds, and I hope that such flowers will bloom among this year’s Mystery Pals pairs as well, resulting in multi-year exchanges of hugs, notes and visits between them.
And, lastly—these memories began with one on my first Sunday here and end now with one from just last Sunday—how Michaela Seaman, age thirteen, spoke so articulately (as so many of our young people do) during Joys and Sorrows on behalf of her sister, asking us not to ask Jennessa “how are you?” because “her illness isn’t her favorite topic, and if she wants to talk about it, she will initiate it herself.”
Memories to warm a minister’s heart, that’s what they are, and your hearts too, along with many, many more.
It’s a rich and deep life that children and youth can have here as Unitarian Universalists. But (and I really must emphasize this) it’s only as rich as their presence here is regular.
That’s because the richness and depth is created in varied and not necessarily predictable ways: by experiences that not only bear repeating, they require repeating, and take time to take hold; but also by experiences that are serendipitous, unplanned, and not in the stated curriculum at all; and by experiences that involve relationships with adults and other children that become real only over time.
For as Director of Religious Education Patsy Hatch-Reinertson has reminded us before, “UU Religious Education is not just what the children learn in their classes, as important as the content is; it’s everything we do in their presence, and how we do it. They even learn from what we don’t do, what we avoid or leave out.”
Children have to be here, to find meaning for their lives here, to learn the explicit and the implicit lessons, to develop sustaining friendships with peers and mentors.
“When I return to the beloved church in which I grew up,” writes UU minister Mary Harrington, “I am always struck by how deeply familiar everything feels. This, of course, is possible when you go somewhere week after week, over many years, and while there, feel welcome and happy.” Mary is former minister of our Winchester and Marblehead MA congregations and the founder of Gulf Coast Volunteers for the Long Haul, which arranges service trips to, as their website says, help “people in the Gulf Coast region rebuild their homes, their neighborhoods, their communities and their lives for as long as it takes.”
As one of our First Parish leaders whose children are now grown said to another whose children are young and still happily attending, “if your kids grow up attending here regularly, they will have deep bonds with the other young people in their cohort.”
That’s why I began inviting the college students and other recent high school grads to be the ushers on Christmas Eve. They were home for the holidays and I wanted to reinforce those bonds, not to mention that everyone loves to see their shining faces.
Getting here on Sunday mornings is a struggle for parents, I know. I remember that struggle in my own family all too well. In fact, we were usually late! So I sympathize with those of you who arrived late today, even though I insist we start on time.
But here’s an even greater embarrassment: I remember quite a few Sundays, when our son was in third grade (next week he graduates from college), bodily carrying him out of the house and into the car to go to First Parish in Arlington. It wasn’t a pretty sight!
He said, “My class is stupid, the children’s worship is really stupid, and anyway I’m old enough to be left at home.”
But we insisted that attending worship was something our family did as a family, and nothing was more important than that on Sunday morning. It was a family value. He had to come. Even if we had to drag him out of the house. If he needed more downtime, he could have fewer weekday and Saturday commitments, but he could not stay home on Sunday morning.
I won’t be sending him a copy of this sermon, and I hope he doesn’t find it on our website. Because, if by chance he has forgotten about this terrible period of his life, I wouldn’t want to remind him!
Don and I insisted that our children attend Religious Education classes up through the eighth grade offering, OWL which stands for Our Whole Lives (the excellent faith-based sex ed program developed by the Unitarian Universalist Association and the United Church of Christ, which we offer here in Canton every other year to our seventh and eighth graders in partnership with the UU congregation in Sharon). And, then we said that they could ultimately choose whether to get involved in the high school youth group or not, but they had to give it a try.
More children’s sports take place now than did fifteen years ago when our children were young, unfortunately, and I appreciate the bind many of you have felt you are in. This is an issue the Canton Clergy, like the clergy of many other towns, has tried to address with the various Canton sports organizations. We met with some of their leaders, gave them a grid showing a composite of all of the times in the week when we offered religious education for children and youth, and asked them to offer choices so that all parents can honor their religious commitments.
But, the reality is that there aren’t enough playing fields for all sports to offer enough choice, and more importantly perhaps, Canton is a predominantly Catholic town and those families can attend one of several Masses every weekend and CCD on a choice of weekday afternoons. So, to the majority of parents, the status quo poses no problem..
The Protestant, Jewish and Unitarian Universalist clergy instead must ask the parents in our congregations to prioritize their faith community over sports when the latter conflicts with the former. I remember a colleague saying aloud what we all were thinking, “does what we offer our kids make it worth choosing? What does it say about us that the parents in our flocks choose swimming or soccer or sleeping in over their children’s religious education and their own presence in their house of worship?”
To the end of improving what we do with our children and youth here at First Parish, there is a ten-question survey going on right now, in which everyone—not just parents—are asked to participate. It is available on paper in the Parish Hall or from Patsy, or you can do it on-line via the link in the Midweek Announcements or May newsletter.
If it used to, as the now-perhaps-trite African proverb says, “take a village to raise a child,” I think it takes a congregation these days.
As intrusive and commanding as the dominant consumer culture is and as far-flung from extended families and even many of our closest friends most of us are, parents today truly benefit from a congregation’s support. In nurturing spiritual and ethical qualities in our children, it’s SO hard to do it without the support of a community of people who share our values.
First Parish is about the same size as a small village. And though we don’t all live within walking distance or even a safe bicycle ride of each other, for a child, it feels like an extension of the safety of home to come to know a community of adults who share your parents’ values and become friends with a community of children who are being raised more like you are than are many of the children you know in your neighborhood and school.
I fear the parenting challenges are greater now than even when my twenty-somethings were at home. Recently, my sister who has five year old twin daughters, told me that they’d each received a toy called a Webkin. These are cute, harmless-looking little stuffed animals.
But, they each come with a unique Secret Code. With it, and a computer, you enter Webkinz World. There you care for a virtual version of the Webkin pet you own, spend the initial wad of virtual KinzCash that comes with each pet on furniture for your pet’s room and food and other accessories to make your pet happy, and answer trivia and play fun computer games to earn more KinzCash.
My sister sat the girls on her lap, logged on, entered a Secret Code, and tried out the website they’d heard about from their friends. She discovered that its implicit theme is: the more “stuff” you have for your pet, the happier your pet will be and the happier you will be too, and that the fastest way to earn more KinzCash is to go out to a real store and buy another Webkinz pet, because each one comes with more KinzCash. It’s just a racket to get you to buy more.
Even public TV shows for children, these days, are associated with toy products to purchase. The message of this marketing to children is, of course, “without our product, you are nothing. With it, you are somebody special.”
Contrast that with what children learn here: that we affirm the inherent worth and dignity of every person, including them! And that we are all deeply connected, one with another, with all living things, and indeed with the web of all that exists in the real world!
Here we cultivate wonder in the natural world. We teach the art of spiritual practices. We affirm the value of the non-material things in life: love, hope and faith. We offer friendships with people of all ages, and opportunities to reach out beyond ourselves, our families and friends, to help others and the earth.
And, we remind each other, every week, in our Sunday celebration of life, how thankful we are to be alive and able to love one another.
Amen.