A Cradle for Our Dreams
a sermon preached by the Rev.
Diane Miller
at The First Religious Society in Carlisle
on September 28, 2008
What is the purpose of a church?
Why should a congregation and a minister meet like this each week on Sunday mornings, year after year? Along with a Minister of Music, a Religious Educator, a host of teachers, nursery caregivers, choir singers, musicians, coffee hosts, candle lighters, ushers, greeters, volunteers, and many more. (Thank heavens for every one if these, key to the busy operation of our Sunday experience!)
This phenomenon of gathering for Sunday Services has been going on here on this spot for two and a half centuries in Carlisle. The specifics of worship have evolved into new forms -- most of them a good deal shorter in length than the originals. This very Meeting House has gradually been changed, over many years and projects, to adapt it to changing needs.
I read the weekly history minutes that were offered last year throughout your 250th celebration, and discovered quite a bit that I didn’t know. I had made some assumptions that were wrong. I thought Union Hall was named for the preservation of our nation during the Civil War, as was the Union Club in downtown Boston. It turns out that our hall was named for the church group, the Ladies’ Union, which wanted a room where they could hold community-wide events. The Ladies got it. Union Hall.
As I reviewed the history of the First Religious Society, learning about WHAT has happened here, I found myself returning to the question of WHY, and wondering if our reasons for being a church have changed. We probably make some assumptions about why people went to church in earlier eras. Such as…People were worried about salvation; they needed someone to interpret scripture for them; they wanted to understand God’s law, they wanted to be morally kept in line morally by a preacher who understood what tempted them; they needed strength to carry on through the tribulations of life, and they enjoyed being together on the Sabbath day of rest after a week of very hard work. Church was a necessary part of the fabric of life.
Is that outdated for us, in this post-modern era?
It is easy to assume that we are radically different from people of yore who sat in these pews. The outward shape of life today differs in many respects. We have the option of Sunday morning TV news programs, Sunday sports, hanging out in a Coffee Shop, and a host of alternatives to going to church.
A good reading of the journals and the diaries of the preachers and the church folk of prior centuries reveals that though they didn’t have high speed internet, they had the same emotional range we do. They felt it all; they hoped and mourned and worried; they lusted and rejoiced and feared. They felt compassion and worked together for the common good. They came to church to be reminded that their lives were not the be-all and the end-all of this universe, that indeed there was a larger purpose. In the earliest days it was a Calvinist message, that God’s purpose was being revealed through their lives.
Our theology became Unitarian and Universalist over time, yet our concerns and those of our founders are not so very changed. We speak of values, meaning, sources of truth, how best to live, and how we might create a better world. They worked hard, and today, so do we. We are concerned about our families, our community, and humankind as a whole. We gather to give thanks, to gain strength, to live more compassionately and generously. To get outside our narrow personal concerns and put life in perspective. And to be reminded that we are not the center of the universe, but rather part of an interdependent web that connects us all.
When I think of the reasons why a community of faith is such an important element of life, and why we create it and recreate it over the centuries, Kenneth Patton’s words echo, from the reading in our hymnbook, “This House”: This house is a cradle for our dreams, a workshop for our common endeavors.
About the word Workshop -- When I first met this congregation I had been a denominational executive for eight years, and had led and attended more workshops about ministry and church life than I could count. In the typical format, people gathered with nametags, handouts, easel paper and markers, and we batted around ideas and did some sociable catching up. You’ve been to these workshops.
When I came to my first workshop here at the First Religious Society, it was something rather different. It was a Greens Sale Workshop. There were no flip charts. It had to do with production, with hands-on labor that was creative, fun, sociable, but without question, the workshops involved work. This is a very active, do it ourselves, productive, talented group of people.
That was a digression, but it brings me back to my sermon theme – that one reason for sustaining a congregation is about what a congregation can do. One could also argue that it is more about be-ing, but in this sermon, to this very productive congregation, I’ll focus on the do-ing side of being a congregation. Kurt Vonnegut is credited with discovering the graffiti message that captures this back and forth argument between doing and being:
To do is to be.
(Descartes)
To be is to do. (Voltaire)
Do be do be do. (Sinatra)
Cradles are found in nurseries, places where life is fostered and developed, whether that be a child, or a collection of plants. This is one reason to be a church – to be a nursery of the spirit, a place where we can learn more deeply what it is to be human, in all its varied and wondrous complexity.
Congregations can be the cradle for our dreams. The First Religious Society has a long track record of generating ideas and turning them into reality.
The first minister here, the Rev. Paul Litchfield, instigated a Carlisle Library Society in 1797. Fifty-two subscribers paid $1.50 for one right, which entitled them to a vote and access to the books. The collection was expressly designed to exclude any books which promoted Deism, weakened evidences of Divine Revelation, or vindicated “the doctrine that all men shall finally be saved….” [p112 Wilkins] These are of course, precisely the very ideas that later took hold in this congregation, Unitarianism and Universalism. It is a good illustration that ideas are rarely extinguished by censorship, for compelling concepts arise again on their own merit if they speak to human experience and understanding. The library Society continued for forty-six years, the precursor of Gleason public library.
From its beginning, this congregation has supported the practical, educational, cultural, social, and spiritual development of the community. That tradition continues.
Yesterday I met an adult who was in the first group of children to attend the Red Balloon. The idea for a cooperative nursery school came from a church member, Carrie Glauthier, the mother of twin boys. A grant from the Unitarian Universalist Association helped with the cost of adding an outside door to the basement area, and much volunteer labor transformed the space. After a few years of operating as a church program, the Red Balloon became an independent organization, a tenant of the congregation, still serving three and four year olds and their families.
FRS has made use of its musical talents, with the annual concert that raises money for CHILDREN WITH AIDS. Other events, such as the Winter Holidays Concert, are for the entire community to enjoy. Just this past year, the Coffeehouse was started, a combination of an entertaining, sociable evening which supports musicians and raises money for good causes.
The congregation continues to reshape this place, maintaining the building, and adding new elements, such as the addition behind me, and this past year, the Infinity Memorial Garden.
Today we are often a cradle for ideas, service, and efforts to promote justice.
One example, launched in the 21st Century, has been the Environmental Action Committee. This effort stemmed from a sermon by Bill McKibbon, [1] and took off with peaceful civil disobedience in front of the Department of Energy in Washington DC, to raise concern about drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The group has continued as a vehicle of education, action, and public witness. Personal actions to reduce energy consumption and raising urgent awareness of global climate change have both marked this effort.
Bill McKibbon’s sermon started from a place that would have been familiar to the earliest members of this church – from the biblical story of Job, and the utter destruction of Job’s life. McKibbon’s message is one we still need to hear: that our personal comfort, our family concerns, our personal prosperity, are not the central meaning of life.
. . . if you wanted to create a message that was profoundly troubling from a spiritual point of view and one that made progress on issues . . . of the environment, particularly difficult. . . , you couldn't pick a better one than "You're the most important thing on earth. You're the center of the planet." This is an old question, where we stand in relation to everything else.
Where we stand in relation to everything else. This is such an important part of what we do here, to put our lives and our interests in perspective, not only with one another, but indeed with all humankind and this very planet.
Why be a congregation? Bill McKibbon concluded:
. . . our religious communities are deeply important, almost the only institutions left in our society that posit some goal other than accumulation for our existence here on this planet. Take good care of each other, but don't just take good care of each other - push each other a little bit too. This work has to be done fast and it has to be done lovingly, and it has to be done not only with an eye on the temperature around us, but with an eye on the temperature inside of us - on our understanding of who we really are, not who we've been told we are over and over and over again by all the images that flow through the [media] . . . . .
This church community reflects Frank Sinatra’s do-be-do-be-do combo of doing and being. Some of what we offer to the wider community has nothing to do with our programs or social action or music or religious education. It is simply being here, day by day. Sometimes it is a refuge in a Job-like time of trial.
Last week I met a Carlisle resident who told me a story that explains a feeling of deep connection to this sanctuary. Many years ago this resident had an agitated family member in crisis, acting extremely erratically, and feared that the person might jump out of the car. As they drove into the Center, the resident saw the church, and felt intuitively that this would be a place to go – and pulled up to this church and suggested that they go into the sanctuary. The person telling me the story is a member of another church, but had been in this sanctuary for concerts. The doors were unlocked and no one was around. They sat here alone in this very calming space. The only sound was the ticking of the clock. The calming quiet, the steady ticking, turned out to be what was needed to create enough calm and focus that they could continue on, and go to where they could get help.
I felt privileged to be entrusted with this story. It reminded me that our purpose is broader than we know. It goes beyond our programs and services, our deeds and our actions, beyond our members, to play a sometimes pivotal role in human lives. Just by being here.
I ask myself now, what dreams will we bring forth and make into reality? We are about the creative, sociable, meaningful work of nurturing lives, fostering arts, creating a sanctuary of peace and healing, strengthening this community, expanding knowledge, reshaping options for the future generations, indeed, our version of salvation: saving life itself. We are here to do, and simply to be. Together, we are the stewards of this cradle for our dreams. AMEN