Month: July 2009

Re-dedication Sunday

/ uurevjeff

I would like to put out there the suggestion that Unitarian Universalist churches consider placing the last Sunday of July on their liturgical calendars as Re-dedication Sunday, in memory of the event on July 27, 2008 at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church. We did this at our service last Sunday at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation at Shelter Rock, resulting in a ritual that many in attendance found deeply moving.

I include much of non-sermon text below as the context for the service. The intent was to recognize that our sanctuaries are sacred spaces into which we bring much emotion throughout the year. The idea of Re-dedication Sunday is to cleanse our worship rooms of the past year’s accumulation of pain, anxiety, fear, and despair so that healing may begin anew.

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Re-dedication of Worship Center Service Elements

Call to Worship

The first peace…is that which comes from within the souls of men when they realize their relationship, their oneness, with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize that at the center of the universe dwells the Sacred, and that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us. This is the real peace, and the others are but reflections of this. The second peace is that which is made between two individuals, and the third is that which is made between two nations. But above all you should understand that there can never be peace between nations until there is first known that true peace which is within the souls of men.
— Black Elk in The Sacred Pipe: Black Elk’s Account of the Seven Rites of the Oglala Sioux (1953)

Chalice Lighting

Let there be light!
Let it shine in dark places,
in moments of pain,
in times of grief,
in the darkness of hatred, violence, oppression,
where there is discouragement and despair.
Wherever darkness is to be put to flight,
Let there be light!
— Gordon McKeeman, Unitarian minister quoting Genesis 1:3 (from 1997 UUMA Worship Materials Collection)

Remembrance

Spirit of Life and Love that we know by many names, enter this space as we honor those whose lives were lost on Sunday, July 27, 2008. One year ago tomorrow, a man entered the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville with a shotgun. In a few short moments, the violent expression of his hate and frustration left two people dead, several wounded, and many shaken with trauma. We remember and honor those directly affected by the shootings at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church. We also remember and honor our own feelings we have experienced and will continue to experience related to this and other similar events.

We light a candle in memory of Gregory Joseph (Greg) McKendry Jr., of Knoxville, Tennessee. He was an usher and board member of the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church.
We light a candle for Linda Kraeger. She was a member of the Westside Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Farragut, Tennessee.

We take time now to remember the joys and the pains that entered through these doors today. We reach out to those who have come in today with heavy hearts; those who are struggling; those among us who are grieving; those who are caring for a loved one; those who are anxiously waiting for an unknown future, and all who are living with illness. We remember those who are home bound or hospitalized or, for whatever reason, could not be present with us today. May their names and faces be brought to mind. May they be assured that they have not been forgotten, and by our reaching out may they know that their presence is missed. Let us also celebrate the accomplishments and successful passages of life events we share today.

Just like our tools of technology, we occasionally need to reboot our lives so that we can better respond to life’s challenges and welcome life’s happiness. We need to cleanse our minds of outworn thoughts of guilt or shame. We need to cleanse our souls of outworn ways of living and being. Throughout the past year, this worship center has been a receptacle for the emotions brought in by the highs and lows of our lives. Just as we need help recovering from the challenges and the excitement of life, we should periodically cleanse our sacred spaces. Today, let us set about the work of cleansing ourselves and our religious home for the busy work in the year to come.

Offering

You may have noticed these boxes to my right. Standing on the Side of Love is a public advocacy campaign, sponsored by the Unitarian Universalist Association, promoting respect for the inherent worth and dignity of every person. Standing on the Side of Love will confront exclusion, oppression, and violence based on identity. Based in the aspiration to create beloved community, the campaign will pursue social change through advocacy, public witness, and speaking out in solidarity with those whose lives are publicly demeaned. All people, not just Unitarian Universalists, are invited to stand, speak, worship, march, roll, and live on the side of the love. Now, in the spirit of remembrance and of unconditional love, I ask the ushers to come forward to collect our morning offering to support the work, the witness, and the wonder of this religious community.

Ritual of Re-Dedication

When I first heard of the events in Knoxville one year ago, I felt a sick dread in the pit of my stomach. Beyond the senselessness of the act, as a long-time religious education teacher and as a parent, I was particularly struck by the occurrence of the act during a children’s play. All that day, I read updates of the news, seeking more facts; seeking information; searching for some reason or explanation.

I talked with others about the event so that I could share my emotions and pain. For we know that by sharing our pain, we can work toward lessening its debilitating impact on us. We can imagine moving beyond these initial emotions toward response, toward action, toward reconciliation. That is the nature of resilience.

Sometimes, we come here on Sunday mornings to share our pain…our pain of anger, our pain of fear, our pain of frustration, our pain of sadness. By sharing in covenant our love for each other and for all of humankind, we build on the knowledge that a shared joy is doubled in the sharing and that a shared pain is half a pain.

I ask you now to rise and form a circle. In this circle of our congregation, let us today re-dedicate this worship room as sacred space. As the chalice, the symbol of our living tradition, is passed among you, hold it for a moment and place into this vessel the fire of your own commitment to this place. May the combined power of our thoughts and feelings cleanse this space of the past year’s accumulation of anxiety, fear, and despair, so that healing can begin anew.

As this flame consumes a year of pain, may this chalice represent the foundation of that joy that is our commitment to the inherent worth and dignity of every person. We remember not only the love we have for the victims of terrible events, but for anyone whose life is so bereft of compassion, that violence against others seems their only recourse. We remember to love and to forgive those who, either through mental illness, their own suffering from abuse or violence, or other challenges of life, must be held accountable for their own acts of violence perpetrated on others. Our commitment to justice, equity, and compassion in human relations calls on us to do this.

As we pass our chalice, let us join in singing the hymn Comfort Me.

Benediction

Please join hands for our closing words. For centuries, Unitarian Universalists have offered to the world the promise of hope; the promise of a world without hate; the promise of a world with equity and justice; the promise of a world without violence. Together, we here present affirm to build hope, for a hope shared can become a vision for the world. Now, more than ever, let us challenge ourselves in the coming year to stand on the side of love, offering the world in this sacred space the promise of hope.

Blessed be, Amen, and Let it be so.

Rethinking Our Holidays

/ uurevjeff

This sermon was delivered at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation at Shelter Rock on July 5, 2009.

After Julia Ward Howe wrote The Battle Hymn of the Republic, the American Civil War raged on for four more bloody years of death and destruction. Five years after that, the Franco-Prussian War broke out in Europe and Howe acted. She began a one-woman global peace crusade, starting with an appeal to womanhood to rise against war. She went to London to promote an international Woman’s Peace Congress. That effort failed, so she returned to Boston and initiated a Mothers’ Peace Day observance on the second Sunday in June. That meeting was observed for a number of years.

Now, there were other movements afoot to create a day honoring mothers. Ann Jarvis was a young Appalachian homemaker who tried to improve sanitation through what she called Mothers’ Work Days before the Civil War. When Jarvis died in 1907, her daughter Anna worked to found a memorial day for women. The first such Mother’s Day was celebrated in Grafton, West Virginia on May 10, 1908, at St. Andrew’s Methodist Episcopal Church, where Anna’s mother had taught Sunday School. From there, the custom caught on and eventually spread to 45 states.

In 1913, Congress declared the second Sunday in May to be Mother’s Day. The following year, President Woodrow Wilson made Mother’s Day a national holiday. Now, this is long before radio and television, and advertising was still a new industry. But, the growing American consumer culture had successfully redefined women as buyers for their families. Politicians and businesses eagerly embraced the idea of celebrating the private sacrifices made by individual mothers. As the Florists’ Review, the industry’s trade journal, bluntly put it, “This was a holiday that could be exploited.” The new advertising industry quickly taught Americans the best way to honor their mothers – by buying flowers.

Since then, Mother’s Day has ballooned into a billion-dollar event. For those who appreciate irony, Anna Jarvis became increasingly concerned over the commercialization of Mother’s Day, saying, “I wanted it to be a day of sentiment, not profit.” She opposed the use of greeting cards, calling them “a poor excuse for the letter you are too lazy to write.” In 1923, Jarvis filed suit against New York Governor Al Smith, over a Mother’s Day celebration. When the suit was dismissed, she began a public protest and was arrested for… disturbing…the peace.

Most Unitarian Universalist congregations routinely observe Easter, Christmas, Passover, Hanukkah, Palm Sunday, and Yom Kippur, in addition to other holidays derived from Christian and Jewish traditions. We can understand the rationale for these celebrations and even concur with our commitment to them. But, harder to understand is our lack of uniquely Unitarian Universalist religious holidays. We engage in a Flower Communion in June – a deeply moving and meaningful practice honoring our service and dedication to justice across the globe. Many of our churches embrace a Water Communion ritual at the end of summer that embodies a spiritual depth and that unifies us in our common human experience. But, we do not set aside whole days to perform these worthy worship elements, nor do we plan our life activities around them for preceding days or weeks.

We can acknowledge the importance of Christmas and Easter to our Christian colleagues, both within this congregation and without. We can respect the place of Yom Kippur and Passover to all of our Jewish comrades. Thankfully, some of our churches offer solstice celebrations for our Wiccan and neo-pagan members and friends. But, where are the religious holidays that every Unitarian Universalist can embrace as his or her own, not just out of a sense of shared joy and reverence, not just out of tradition or habit, but out of true ownership?

To paraphrase Martin Luther King, Jr., the battle is in our hands. And we can answer with creative nonviolence the call to higher ground to which the new directions of our struggle summons us. In doing so, we too can disturb the peace. We can disturb the peace of normalcy that for too long has suffered the manipulations of the self-righteous and the war profiteers. We can disturb the peace of normalcy that turns every decent expression of sentiment and honor into an opportunity for retail sales and advertising bonanzas. For we can and should reclaim Mother’s Day for the purpose Julia Ward Howe intended. The Mother’s Day for Peace should rise up again to help us create a normal world where every person is regarded with inherent worth and dignity; a normal world with justice, equity, and compassion; a normal world with peace, liberty, and justice for all.

Two years ago, Unitarian Universalist women in Kansas City began planning an event for the upcoming Mother’s Day. “Julia’s Voice” is a group of mothers and others joined together to return Mother’s Day to its original intent. They peacefully assembled along a public sidewalk and, standing shoulder to shoulder, were joined by Julia Ward Howe re-enactors, musicians, and other special guests. That is one way to reclaim our holiday. There are many others.

We can take the money we spend on greeting cards and use it to send letters to politicians and businesses and tell them what we think about war. We can take the money we spend on flowers and use it to provide microloans, or to buy alternative gifts for women across the world in need of our assistance. We can use the day to write, to study, to talk with each other and plan for our future. And, we don’t have to wait for Mother’s Day to honor the mothers in our lives.

The original Mother’s Day for Peace envisioned by Julia Ward Howe possessed deep meaning. The origins of Father’s Day lack even this hint of significance beyond a maudlin celebration as manipulated by commercial interests. The beginnings of the first Father’s Day celebrations derived from people listening to Mother’s Day sermons in the early 1900’s. It was not until the 1930’s, however, when the Associated Men’s Wear Retailers formed the National Council for the Promotion of Father’s Day, that a concerted effort to legitimize the holiday arose.

People were slow to accept Father’s Day because they saw the holiday for the marketing device that it was. And yet, people increasingly felt compelled to buy gifts in spite of the facade, and the custom of giving gifts on that day became progressively more accepted. By 1937, the Council calculated that only one father in six had received a present on that day. By the 1980’s, the Council proclaimed that they had achieved their goal: that one day holiday had become a three-week commercial event, a “second Christmas.”

Well, if Madison Avenue can create a holiday celebrated across the country by millions of people, why can’t we reshape that holiday into one with deeper meaning and perhaps with broader purpose? Why can’t we, as we reclaim the Unitarian Universalist heritage of Mother’s Day as a day promoting world peace, recast Father’s Day with a new intent and with a new range of activities and ways to involve everyone in our religious communities?

Especially to all of the young people here today, this point is important. As Unitarian Universalists, we affirm and promote the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. What exactly does that mean to you? When you come here for Sunday School classes, how do you see yourself freely and responsibly searching for truth and meaning?

For me, it means that I will think for myself and not let other people do my thinking for me. It means that when I decide to do something, I will do it because I want to, not because other people want me to. And, it means that whatever I think or do in my life, I want those thoughts and actions to mean something – to be important.

Now, I hope that everyone here has had a father, or one or more people in your lives who served the role of fathers. And I hope that the relationship that you have with that person is a loving one. You should feel free to take the time to honor and to share your thoughts with that person anytime, and not wait for the calendar to limit you. There is no rule that says that you must wait until Father’s Day to reach out to the fathers in your life.

So, what then do we do with the Father’s Day holiday? As we reclaim Mother’s Day for world peace, let us rededicate Father’s Day as a celebration of domestic peace – peace in our homes and peace in our hearts. Responsive reading #602 in the back of our hymnal quotes Lao-Tse, the central founding figure of Taoism 2,500 years ago.

  • If there is to be peace in the world, there must be peace in the nations.
  • If there is to be peace in the nations, there must be peace in the cities.
  • If there is to be peace in the cities, there must be peace between neighbors.
  • If there is to be peace between neighbors, there must be peace in the home.
  • If there is to be peace in the home, there must be peace in the heart.

The essence of this wisdom is this. We must have peace within ourselves and our families before we can become peacemakers in our communities and in our world. Father’s Day can become a time for reflection and study about our own lives; a time for families to bond and resolve differences; a time to strengthen the foundation of peace that can lead to a world without war. For the more practically-minded, Father’s Day can become a day to support agencies that combat domestic violence and that support healthy lives for children.

Mother’s Day and Father’s Day as we currently celebrate them can represent a noble exercise. Those who fulfill the roles of mothers and fathers in our society deserve our respect and our recognition. The question we must ask ourselves, however, is this. How do we best honor our mothers and fathers? How do we best honor the parents of all the other children of the world? How do we best honor those who assume this responsibility for tomorrow’s children?

Considered together, a Unitarian Universalist revisioning of Mother’s Day and Father’s Day can celebrate men and women as role models for children and as partners for each other. As religious celebrations, these holidays can represent our commitment to the principles of our covenant, from the inherent worth and dignity of every person to the goal of world community, with peace, liberty, and justice for all.

An essential broader message overlays this idea to remember when you leave here today, when you sit at your desk this week, or when you return to school in a couple of months. Ask questions when you do not understand why things are the way they are. Challenge rules and beliefs that you see as unfair or oppressive. Use what you acquire here on Sunday morning to shine a religious light on all aspects of your life. Use that religious lens to rethink every aspect of your life, of our society, and of our world.

Benediction (modern words based on Julia Ward Howe’s 1870 Proclamation proclaiming Mother’s Day)

Arise, then, men of this day! Arise all men who have hearts, whether forged from fire or from fears!

Say firmly: We will not have our families damaged by outmoded stereotypes. Our partners shall not come to us, cowering and frightened. Our sons and daughters shall not go into the world equating manliness with malevolence, but with mercy. Our children will know men capable of compassion with strength; patience with wisdom; and forgiveness with justice.

We men of one community must be too tender of those of another community to allow our sons to accept violence as a tool of communication. From the bosom of our devastated homes a voice goes up with our own. It says “Men of the world! The fist of anger cannot wield the touch of parental caring and of spousal love.”