First Parish Unitarian UniversalistIngathering Homily — Mingling Our Water and Our Lives
Delivered by Rev. Cricket Potter
First Parish Unitarian Universalist - Canton
September 13, 2009
I am reminded of a story from the novel Gilead by Marilynne Robinson.
The main character, an elderly minister from a long line of ministers, is reflecting back on an experience from his childhood when he was perhaps ten or eleven years old.
He and several friends, all “very pious children from pious households in a fairly pious town,” baptized a litter of barn kittens.
Here is his story:
I still remember how those warm little brows felt under the palm of my hand. Everyone has petted a cat, but to touch one like that, with the pure intention of blessing it, is a very different thing. It stays in the mind. For years we would wonder what, from a cosmic viewpoint, we had done to them. It still seems to me to be a real question. There is a reality in blessing, which I take baptism to be, primarily. It doesn’t enhance sacredness, but it acknowledges it, and there is a power in that. I have felt it pass through me, so to speak. The sensation is of really knowing a creature, I mean really feeling its mysterious life and your own mysterious life at the same time.
Now, please don’t freak out at the mention of such overtly Christian concepts as baptism or sacrament!
I know that such words can send Unitarian Universalists running in the other direction crying “foul” because many of us came to this faith tradition as a reaction to aspects we don’t like in other religions.
Bear with me, though, and try to see past the sacrament to the very experience itself –
that of reaching out and touching with careful intention,
and in so doing experiencing and acknowledging sacredness;
in the minister’s words, “really feeling its mysterious life
and your own mysterious life at the same time.”
How powerful is that?
And from my experience, how much we yearn to experience such a sense of connection and mystery.
I want this year together to be about sharing our stories,
experiencing our connectedness,
and exploring all that is holy and good in our midst.
I want you, and all of us, to get to know each other in new and deeper ways –
to reach out to one another with intention
and to lift up the sacredness that is in us
and that binds us together as humans.
I want this because I know from my own experience how powerful and healing it is to find one’s place in community – to know and be known.
As Maria Harris, a highly acclaimed professor and writer on the topics of religious education and spirituality, once wrote,
“To be as a person means to be with. That is to say that we are only fully persons when we are in community and in communion with one another.” (Fashion Me a People, p. 29)
Or as Desmond Tutu once stated,
“We are made for companionship and relationship…. In our African idiom we say: ‘A person is a person through persons.’”
I love that: A person is a person through persons.
For myself, I first consciously experienced this truth when I was a young adult feeling somewhat disconnected and adrift.
I was busy and challenged with work, but that didn’t fulfill me.
I had friends from work and the gym that I hung out with,
but I was missing something more
even though I had no idea what that “something more” was.
And then I accepted a friend’s invitation to church.
I will never forget that first Sunday in that big, beautiful Presbyterian Church.
I was welcomed in a warm and genuine way –
folks there clearly cared about me and wanted to get to know me.
I listened to the prayers and the sermon and the music
and heard a powerful message about love and hope –
how we are all neighbors,
we all worthy regardless of our status,
we all belong to one another and must care for one another
as Jesus showed and taught all those who followed him.
There was a palpable sense of community, and it touched my soul deeply.
I returned Sunday after Sunday, took different classes offered by the minister and lay leaders, joined a covenant group, and then eventually led a covenant group.
I felt known and loved and embraced in a way I had never felt before.
Life itself began to feel sacred in a way I had never known before.
It was that feeling of community and sacredness that eventually brought me to seminary and has shaped my vision of religious community ever since.
I felt that same palpable sense of community and joy last night at our potluck.
I was embraced and welcomed just as I saw you all embracing and welcoming each other –
folks young and not so young,
folks of different abilities and orientations,
and folks from a whole array of religious backgrounds.
Your warmth heated up that Parish Hall so much we had to open up all the windows before they all got steamed up!
My deepest hope is that we can build on that so that anyone who comes through those bright yellow doors on a Sunday can feel that sense of connection and be genuinely welcomed into this community.
My hope is that in our gathering - whether in worship, in religious education classes with our children, in suppers and other activities such as our potluck supper last night, in programs I will offer and programs others will offer, and even in committee meetings –
you can experience a time of deepening,
of getting to know and be known by others,
and ultimately, of giving and receiving in powerful ways.
And, my hope is that it doesn’t stop there, for our faith and our calling don’t stop at our bright yellow doors.
My prayer is that our deepening in spirit and community will encourage everyone to reach out beyond these walls to serve and connect deeply with a world out there that is so in need of our care.
This weekend anniversary of terrorist attacks on the U.S. should be reminder enough for us that there is fear and despair out there that needs to be met with our commitment to love and hope.
And frankly, in my opinion, our sense of community and spirit is only deepened as we seek to build a beloved community in the larger world.
I’m a firm believer that if we don’t reach out together and put our faith into action,
all that we do here becomes irrelevant and self-serving.
So, as we mingle our waters today in this communal bowl, may we enter this new church year with the intention of mingling our lives.
May we open our hearts to be inclusive, welcoming, sharing,
and to see in one another brothers and sisters in community.
And may it not stop there, as we join together to reach out and help others
and engage in the truest form of putting our faith into action.
In Maria Harris’ words, may we truly be with one another.
In Desmond Tutu’s words, may we truly be humans through one another.
And finally, in the words of the minister from the novel Gilead,
may we come to really know one another
and feel both the power and mystery of all that joins us together.
May it be so.
Amen.