First Parish Unitarian Universalist“Let Sparks Fly”
A Sermon by Jan Carlsson-Bull
First Parish Unitarian Universalist - Canton, Massachusetts
February 8, 2004
It was a Sunday morning, a rare Sunday morning with cloth napkins on the breakfast table. Only cloth napkins would do when my Grandmother White visited. Granddad could have cared less. There we were, my Mother, my Father, my brother, Jeff, and my paternal grandparents, gathered around the table before heading off to church. Now my Grandmother White was a woman well suited to cloth napkins, white linen napkins, in fact. She was an upstanding member of the First Congregational Society of Iowa Falls, Iowa, an avid member of the D.A.R.—Daughters of the American Revolution, and an elegant dresser who drove all the way to Des Moines to purchase her I. Miller shoes.
While Grandmother’s demeanor leaned toward haughty, it was this same woman who knit all my childhood sweaters and gloves and mittens. It was she who in desperation mustered by my penchant for losing so many of those mittens, finally stitched that embarrassing wool chain that ran through the sleeves of my winter coat, connecting one mitten with the other. And it was she to whom I lifted my four-year-old head that morning and remarked in a tone of gentle awe, “Grandmother, you’re really old, aren’t you?”
Well, there was a pregnant pause, rather like the earth decided not to spin on its axis for awhile. A few gasps came from my Grandmother; the predictable shadow of a smile from my Grandfather; from my parents, pure bewilderment; and from my brother, “Uh oh!” It was an unwitting collision between the presumptive privilege of youth and the potential embarrassment of ripened age. But I didn’t get it. I just didn’t get it. I really didn’t understand why she should be so upset. Shouldn’t it be cause for pride to have attained the status of an elder, of an elder elder even? Hadn’t I heard something somewhere about the “wisdom of old age?” What about those wise old owls? Would a grandmother owl get huffy if I remarked on her age?
Fast forward. It’s Sunday morning again, and I haven’t learned my lesson. So I’ll say to you, the First Parish Unitarian Universalist of Canton: You’re really old, aren’t you? You’re even older than my Grandmother! I understand that the Unitarian side of your family was born in 1717 and the Universalist side, in 1825. This is impressive! Depending on how you tell it, you’re either 287 years old or a more youthful 179. If you like golden means, you’re 233—still older than my Grandmother. Then again, you’re alive and she’s not.
How is it that you’ve survived all these years? How is it that you don’t fluff your feathers and grow indignant when I proclaim your age—from a pulpit even?
How have you digested your longevity? I wonder. I wonder how, as individuals, we move with grace through seasons upon seasons, decades upon decades. I wonder how, as congregations, we move with grace through century upon century.
Just a few weeks ago, you declared yourselves as a Welcoming Congregation. Your decision couldn’t have been more timely. Yet, it probably wasn’t easy for you to reach such a decision, just like it probably wasn’t easy for the Massachusetts Supreme Court to reach theirs. Something coalesced in your communal soul to affirm that now was the time.
Homophobia is so deeply embedded in our habits of thought–whether we’re straight, gay, bisexual, or transgender–that to “come out” as a welcoming congregation surely involved some clashes, some friction between the “I am this” and “I’m not that.” What is acceptable most surely drives who is acceptable. Yet something happened here. Something happened that enabled you to move through whatever reticence you might have felt, whatever dissonance you might have experienced, to say: This is who we are. You didn’t just endure the friction, nor did you deny its existence. Now I don’t even know the history of your process, so believe me, this is a hunch and maybe presumptuous, but you know by now that this if not the first time I’ve been presumptuous.
If it takes any of our congregations a few hundred years to come to terms with a reality that’s always been in our midst–and it does, then there’s been some soul searching, some periods of denial, some times of tension, some episodes of conflict, some sparks flying. But you stayed in the circle. You affirmed the family of First Parish. You kept the faith, evolving as it is.
The older we are, as individuals or as communities of faith, the more we can reflect upon times when dissonance rises and divisiveness hovers. “I’m this. I’m not that.” Or “This is who we are. This is who we’re not.” Lines are drawn in the sand, but it’s only sand. Lines are drawn to be drawn over. Barriers are erected to be crossed. Sparks fly that we might kindle a singular flame, illumining differences that we are called to affirm and celebrate.
Without those differences, without that dissonance, and without that friction, what challenge could our principles and purposes possibly hold? What texture could we possibly enjoy? What conflicts would be other than petty? What elements of our history would we have to deny in the service of shallow harmony?
Now I’m not holding up congregational factions, not at all. I’m rather affirming the processes in which conflict and dissonance are necessary ingredients for a layered look at what we really stand for. For the past several decades, we have kindled the chalice, a symbol of our living faith chosen amid the harrowing years of the Second World War. In that period of our recent history, when the demonic rose to soul-searing heights, we chose the chalice over the bonfire, the singular flame over wildfire.
I think of those sparklers that my parents let me light on the Fourth of July. My friends and I spun around our yards on those long-ago Fourth of July’s with energy reminiscent of a Declaration of Independence. But the sparklers were enough. Much as I find myself fascinated by fireworks, I respect the terror known by friends who have been downwind of the real thing. Sparklers were quite enough.
I wonder. How in our congregations do we move through those inevitable episodes of friction and dissonance with the grace to let the sparks fly and the good sense to prevent full-scale fireworks? How in our congregations of ripened age do we come to terms with those facets of our congregational history AND our denominational history when we know, we just know, that friction and dissonance are inevitable if we proceed? You have gone through this process in all that it takes to become a Welcoming Congregation. Many of our congregations are moving through this process in what it takes to begin a Journey Toward Wholeness, our denominational anti-racism work. Many of our congregations are deciding how to bear public witness during a time in our history when pre-emptive strikes have become national policy. The older we are, the more textured our stories. The older we are, the more rife those stories are with dissonance and discord. The older we are, the larger our mirrors. The older we are, the greater the opportunity to plumb the depths of what it means to be whole.
“One of the roots of prophetic action is history,” writes Sheryl A. Kujawa-Holbrook. “Knowing and coming to terms with our own history and the history of our congregations and denominations are vital for those who purport to lead [our communities of faith] into the future.”
How do we digest our history? How do we recognize embers still sizzling and resist the seduction of simply stomping them out? How do we resurrect stories that are part of our historical record and “own” them as branches that are, for better or worse, part of our family tree? How do we do so without throwing the trunk out with the branches? And then, how do we move ahead, given who we are and who we can now be?
You have moved through this process by declaring yourselves a Welcoming congregation. I don’t need to tell you, there is still much to be done. There is still much to be done in the State of Massachusetts. There is even more to be done in the State of New York and throughout our United States. There is still much to be done in the congregations of our shared faith, but what a step you have taken.
Let me tell you another story of age and courage, the story of a congregation that only four years ago celebrated its tricentennial. Just a few years earlier, this congregation came to new life through owning its history.
This is a congregation that was proud of its heritage, a heritage of sea captains, whose clipper-ships sailed the world. Prints of these stately vessels adorned the walls of their meetinghouse. We know that such ships were the carriers of slaves and that the slave trade drove the early economy of this nation, but the ministers and lay leaders received a resounding NO to their expressions of concern that the sea captains and ships affiliated with this other First Parish just might have been involved in the slave trade.
Doubts were raised, when an activist member of the congregation was called to lead a worship service in the cemetery before a staff meeting on Halloween. Oh yes, we Unitarian Universalists have some intriguing practices! So into the cemetery they went, with a map in tow, searching out the gravesites of some of those esteemed sea captains. The inscriptions on the tombstones were still legible. They read. They pondered. It seemed that many of those long-ago seafarers had expired on expeditions to the west coast of Africa. The purpose of their visit to that coast wasn’t explicit on the inscriptions of their gravemarkers.
One of the ministers, Jamaican born, held back from participating in the service. She just couldn’t approach those graves. The worship leader took note, and doubts raced through her mind: “What if? What if they really were involved?” She conferred later with the minister who had held back, who had sensed, who had known, that there had to have been a connection.
Building on the congregation’s 20 th-century commitment to anti-racism, the work ahead was formidable, but the decision was made. It was discovered that three ships involved in the slave trade between 1841 and 1864 were commandeered by members of the congregation. It was no longer deniable, and “the members of [this other First Parish] chose to face up to the implications of their history, rather than to deny the significance of the information they uncovered.”
But first, first came the questions, the hard and nagging questions: “What is to be gained by researching the painful aspects of a congregation’s history? How do we benefit in the present from the study of the moral complexities of our forebears?” Conflict was inevitable. Dissonance was a given. Sparks would surely fly.
The congregation moved with the sparks. Grounded in their already stated commitment to anti-racism, they owned those branches of their family tree. They moved into a systemic array of anti-racist education and activity, both within the congregation and outside their walls in a community and a region that is highly adept at denying any racist sentiments or behavior.
Perhaps it is no accident that this was the first of our congregations to embark on our Unitarian Universalist Association’s Welcoming Congregation program. The door had already been opened. What followed the discovery of this long buried history included a deep and layered look at how worship was conducted, anti-racism study circles that drew close to half of the congregants, the creation of anti-racist curricula for all age levels of their religious education ministry, and alliances with regional groups working in the arenas of race and race relations, alliances driven by a commitment to move “beyond service to organize for action and social change.”
“People talk about this church as something that has been life-transforming for them,” remarked one of the ministers. “Sometimes I think the sparks caught fire a while back, and then a momentum happened that carried itself forward.”
Once those sparks catch fire, a momentum can happen, leading not to a wildfire but to a singular flame that calls us to engage in that search for truth that is both painful and exhilarating, that calls us to engage the differences in our midst, that calls us to engage in our communities and our larger world with our new-founds truths, with our rekindled spirits of commitment to who we can be and what we must now be about.
How do we digest our history? How do we own our historical branches, however brittle or flexible, as part of our family tree? What is the promise of our possible? And then, how do we proceed?
I think of the history of this congregation. I consider the history of that other congregation. I ponder the history of All Souls, New York City, founded in 1819. I reflect upon the history of the aspiring democracy that America is, claiming justice for all while we stumble toward its attainment, and I recall the words of Wendell Berry.
All the lives this place
has had, I have. I eat
my history day by day.
Bird, butterfly, and flower
pass through the seasons
of my flesh. I dine and thrive
on offal and old stone
and am combined within
the story of the ground.
By this earth’s life, I have
its greed and innocence,
its violence, its peace.
Back I go. Back I go to that other Sunday morning with my Grandmother White, to my four-year-old bravado and her pilgrim soul not quite ready to own her age while taking such pride in her roots, not quite ready to be “really old” as her weathered hands folded her white linen napkin. How would I have liked her to respond? What words would I now choose for her?
“Well, Jan, I am old. I must seem very old to you. You’ve barely begun. Because I’m old, I have stories to tell, so many stories. Some I’m proud of; some I’m not. But with each story, I have learned so much. I still learn from my stories, and every time I do, it’s just like having a birthday, because I know I have another chance. Finish your breakfast now, but later this afternoon, let’s sit down together. Let me tell you some of those stories and what I’ve learned. Maybe you’ll discover a thing or two about yourself.”
How do we digest our longevity? The older we are, as individuals or as communities of faith, the more layered our stories, the more likely it is that there will be embers still sizzling and sparks waiting to fly. In the words of the hymn,
Look inside, your soul’s the kindling of the hearth fire pilgrims knew.
Find the spirit, always restless,
find it in each mind and heart.
Touch and hold that ancient yearning,
kindling for a new-found truth.
You’re a welcoming congregation. You’re an old congregation. Just think what that can mean–the stories, the new-found truths. Just imagine the promise we hold in our shared faith as we stir up those embers, let those sparks fly, and open all our doors as wide as doors open. Just imagine what can happen when the welcome moves up from our roots and finds new life in the branches of a family tree large enough for all of us. Just imagine. It’s possible. It really is.
Amen.
Sources:
Wendell Berry, “History,” from Collected Poems of Wendell Berry, 1957-1982, North Point Press, 1987.
Mark M. DeWolfe, “Sing Out Praises for the Journey,” in Singing the Living Tradition, The Unitarian Universalist Association, Beacon Press, Boston, 1993, 295.
Sheryl A. Kujawa-Holbrook, A House of Prayer for All Peoples: Congregations Building Multiracial Community, The Alban Institute, 2002.