There is, in the ancient Book of Ecclesiastes, a statement whose banality only underlines its truth, one that hardly needs stating. A piece of drivel almost anybody could have said better: maybe that's why it's worth quoting. Here it is:
Two are better than one . . . for if they fall, one will lift up his fellow; but woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up. Again, if two lie together, they are warm; but how can one be warm alone? *
Gee thanks. I think we knew that.
We know it all too painfully because we also know that, ultimately, each of us stands alone. There's a loneliness that can't be cured or removed, a feeling that sometimes we are strangers here. The wise Henri Nouwen one wrote that loneliness is "like the Grand Canyon, a deep incision in the surface of our existence . . ."
But I should read the rest of his phrase. He goes on: "like the Grand Canyon, a deep incision in the surface of our existence which has become for many an inexhaustible source of beauty and understanding." If you aren't afraid of the sometimes frightening requirement to be you, just you, alone, then there can be community, and sometimes, we won't be alone.
If you can love the loneliness and solitude, then, from that fountain of beauty and understanding, you can find community, too. And woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up.
If loneliness is an essential fact of existence, there is another factor. As there is loneliness, there is also Love. It is an energy at the heart of things — great and holy and incomprehensibly grand, inspiring hte noblest of human capacities.
Love is the heart of religion, in the highest sense of religion — though religion, in its basest and most demented forms, can also be a terrible engine of hate, inspiring and justifying bigotry, superstition, and violence. But ours is a religion of love, and that fact puts us under obligation to make it real in life.
Love recognizes itself in the other. It worships in the presence of something Emerson called
that great nature in which we rest, as the earth lies in the soft arms of the atmosphere; that Unity, that Over-soul, within which everyone's particular being is contained and made one with all other; that common heart,. . . the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related; the eternal one.
We are bound together in one interdependent Web of Being — bound in a Covenant with all Life that we can deny, can neglect, but cannot sever.
Now, people come through these doors in search of it, whether or not they would say so just directly. They hope for some deep and satisfying connection. And, wanting, as deeply we all do, to be more than we have been, to become what inwardly and most truly we are — they come looking for rich soil in which to grow their souls, the warm sun of human care, for light and air.
Where can we find this? Emerson recognized how rare a treasure it is when he wrote:
All association must be a compromise, and, what is worst, the very . . . aroma of the flower of each of the beautiful natures disappears as they approach each other. What a perpetual disappointment is actual society, even of the virtuous and gifted!
But it need not always be this way, and Emerson, who was famous for his friendships, tells what it is about the real thing. He has many notable friends in mind, but especially he is referring to the poet Jones Very, who allowed no one to be false in his presence. Such honesty may not work well at cocktail parties, but I doubt Jones Very probably ever went to one. Here Emerson is talking about the role of Truth as a central element of friendship:
A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud. . . . Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins. We parry and fend the approach of our fellow-man by compliments, by gossip, by amusements, by affairs. We cover up our thought from him under a hundred folds. I knew a man, who, under a certain religious frenzy, cast off this drapery, and, omitting all compliment and commonplace, spoke to the conscience of every person he encountered, and that with great insight and beauty. At first he was resisted, and all men agreed he was mad. But persisting, as indeed he could not help doing, . . . he attained to the advantage of bringing every man of his acquaintance into true relations with him. No man would think of speaking falsely with him, or of putting him off with any chat of markets or reading-rooms. . . . To stand in true relations with men in a false age is worth a fit of insanity, is it not?
In his first book, Roy Phillips described a cartoon that says far too much about congregational life. A newcomer is visiting some house of worship. There he is, inside the meeting-house, in front of a bulletin board. It's a list of committees. The heading reads: "Our Committees Need You!"A long-time member is giving the newcomer a little introduction to the place. He says: "Most people are on nine or ten committees, but since you're new I'm sure people will understand if you only join six or seven to start." There are the usual opportunities — the Board, the Finance Committee, and so on — and there's the Committee for More Comfortable Pews, the Plant Watering Committee, the Pigeon Control Committee.
You see why that cartoon is so funny. It's a little too real, isn't it? But it's funny at least as long as we know it's funny and have the will to heed its warning, and need the chasm that sometimes exists between our human possibility and what is it we wind up doing.
We are bound together in one interdependent Web of Being — bound in a Covenant with all Life. This covenant that binds us together — is at the heart of a growing movement among Unitarian Universalists. Some congregations call it "Covenant Groups." Our Oak Park planning committee inexplicably worried about that word covenant, that it might sound too religious, and chose instead the name, "Chalice Circles." Whatever. That, too, is a noble name, to all who know the noble tradition symbolized by the chalice that burns in our presence. Here, we're keeping it simple and direct: it's simply Small Group Ministry.
And so today, we launch our Small Group Ministry. The brochure tells you about that. There's a coupon so you can sign up.
So let me say something about those people who enter those doors — every week, for the first time — you and I, maybe long ago, maybe not so long ago. Do you remember?
There is a myth about small congregations versus large ones. It is that in small ones you can find intimacy and that in big ones you get lost. Sometimes it turns out that way, but sometimes it turns out, maybe counterintuitively, quite the other way round.
A friend of mine, a doctor, moved to a big city and went looking for a UU congregation. First he visited the nearest one, a historic congregation that had dwindled a bit. So there he is, and ten long-time members, in this service, and then afterwards, the ten long-time members are sipping coffee in the social hall, and my friend insists he's telling the truth when he tells me that absolutely no one talked to him. So much for the splendors of small.
Meanwhile, vast megachurches of the evangelical persuasion are famous for the intimate connections they foster, and they have learned to do it through extensive small-group programs.
The biggest church in the United States sits upon recently paved-over acres of what used to be remaining countryside outside Chicago. Willow Creek Church is in many ways the model of what's wrong with America — no one can get there except by car, and once there, you'll never hear anything challenging. Somewhere between ten and twenty thousand people go to church there every week. You may ask, Why would so many people do this? The answer is a brilliantly-run small-group program that finds a place for you in such a group almost from the time you first walk through the door. I always thought I should go see and learn from them but I didn't think I could bear a worship service there, a mix of entertainment and evangelical platitudes. Yet all those people are finding something they need and the acres of parking are overflowing. Yes, we have something to learn from them, and now, at last, we're learning it.
On the internet, we found a sermon by a UU colleague in which he is introducing this program in the congregation he serves. He admits a fear and natural revulsion you may feel too. He says:
I've not always been a booster for Small-Group Ministries. I've come to this rather slowly. Well, actually reluctantly. Well, maybe kicking and screaming. . . .
For a long time I couldn't see the point. . . . By various names, prominent among which is Small-Group Ministries, those congregations of five thousand, ten thousand and more, found this to be their solution to their problem.
I very clearly remember saying to myself, when hearing about this, "How nice for them." But, I also thought, "These are not our problems. I mean there are no mega-churches among us, no fifteen-thousand-member congregations. . . . Why such enthusiasm for a solution to a problem we don't have?" . . .
But even here, sometimes, you might feel lost, disconnected, so that you long for a small congregation where everybody can be close. Yeh?
Oh sure. If you get along with the eleven other people, and if they even really ever let you in to their church family. Ever try to join a family? Some of you have succeeded at that, but I doubt you'd say it was easy.
Intimacy and real connections are no more automatic someplace small than they are someplace large. Sometimes it happens all by itself, but most of the time, we have to intend it and set up our lives so it can happen. Or — set up our congregational life so it can happen.
Here, there are so many potentially rich connections. There is no magic formula, but there are some obvious things we can do, and are about to do.
The point here is to give a person a place where they can be honest, where they can find sympathy and insight from others, where they can really speak their own truth.
Speak your own truth. Is that hard? Yes, if it feels sharply different from everybody else's. And Yes, if those to whom you speak it have no context for understanding its significance or offering any perspective that could help you. There is an implicit commonality here or you wouldn't repeatedly come through those doors. There is commonality and there is diversity, differing religious heritage and situation and life-experience within the scope of a common spiritual quest and yearning.
I would like, now, for us to think about the life of the congregation as a whole. This place is important to us. How might it change, because of the small group experience?
First, I want to say something about how it must not change, because along any path there are ditches into which you might fall, perils to be avoided. We must not allow the fact of really fulfilling small-group experiences to result in the loss of the sense of the whole, with its larger scope and diversity. The groups are meant as a way to be more deeply engaged here, not a backdoor way to disengage and join a clique instead of a congregation. That's partly why all the groups will be grappling with the same topic every month.
Second, here is a way the small groups can enrich us. I've spoken of the ways they can benefit and enrich us individually. But as an organism, a Unitarian Universalist congregation, it can help us grow in numbers, strength, effectiveness, and influence. Now, I know how reticent UUs are about evangelism and growth, but it's time we got over it. Is it really such a swell thing that in ever-multiplying hosts of fundamentalist congregations today, and every week, more and more millions of people gather to hear about a God who sends people who don't agree with him to hell; a parochial god who plays favorites and disowns all those who fall outside his definition of true believers? Does it matter than millions of Americans are finding their religious homes in places that preach a god who cares more about the American dream and the universal right to drive an SUV than about the fate of the earth, or even a patriotic god who will always be on America's side no matter what it does.
And is it not worth something that, for those who have pretty much given up on religion altogether, there yet be some serious spiritual alternative to the values that not so long ago built an economy on slavery, the values that built and destroyed Enron, and are now preparing to annex the oilfields of Iraq, that elected the politicians who helped it happen?
The point being, if you love what Unitarian Universalism is about, love its stories of freedom, vision and courage — cherish the values and vision at the heart of this place — then why do you want it to be small?
Especially if it's possible to find here a richness, and real connections, and support and encouragement on your journey?
There must be a place that nourishes a higher order of vision, and that nourishes us. And within that place, we must find ways to make places of real engagement and connection for those who come through these doors.
I do not mean that everybody you meet here is going to be your friend, or that you're going to like everybody or get close to everybody. But I do mean that, as in friendship, the central power and dynamic of human community in the highest sense is the capacity to see and recognize the divine radiance in each other, and reverence it.
And I do mean that, as in friendship, so in spiritual community, the principal task is
to discover that divine radiance, come to know it, unearth the hidden treasures,
to help each other listen to those voices from our most authentic self, the destiny within us that reaches out for fuller ways of being responsible and human and won't leave us alone
to discover the meaning of our own calling and destiny and struggle together to make our lives answerable to that calling and destiny.
But we can only share such things in loving struggle, as Karl Jaspers put it, with someone who maintains solidarity with us. We need a community for that, one that believes in us, one where there is faith that human beings are far more than immediately appears.
You have heard these words of Adrienne Rich:
No person
trying to take responsibility for her or his identity,
should have to be so
alone.
There must be those among whom
we can sit down
and weep,
and still be counted as warriors . . .
But how can I tell you what I really feel about this?
I keep coming back to what happened in Mr Emerson's parlour in Concord, or Mr Parker's parlour in the city, or Miss Peabody's bookstore; — at the Brook Farm community or the Northampton Association; around Mr Burleigh's hearth, in Margaret Fuller's evenings of conversation, or Bronson Alcott's backyard school of philosophy. They transformed and renewed our Unitarian and Universalist spiritual movement. They changed the world. They shaped America's tradition of freedom and dignity.
Is it possible ever again? Could it be, ever again? Was that place and time so so unique? Or might it happen here?
* 4:10-12.
A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud. I am arrived at last in the presence of a man so real and equal, that I may drop even those undermost garments of dissimulation, courtesy, and second thought, which men never put off, and may deal with him with the simplicity and wholeness with which one chemical atom meets another. . . . Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins. We parry and fend the approach of our fellow-man by compliments, by gossip, by amusements, by affairs. We cover up our thought from him under a hundred folds. I knew a man, who, under a certain religious frenzy, cast off this drapery, and, omitting all compliment and commonplace, spoke to the conscience of every person he encountered, and that with great insight and beauty. At first he was resisted, and all men agreed he was mad. But persisting, as indeed he could not help doing, . . . he attained to the advantage of bringing every man of his acquaintance into true relations with him. No man would think of speaking falsely with him, or of putting him off with any chat of markets or reading-rooms. But every man was constrained by so much sincerity to the like plaindealing, and what love of nature, what poetry, what . . . truth he had . . . But to most of us society shows not its face and eye, but its side and its back. To stand in true relations with men in a false age is worth a fit of insanity, is it not? Almost every man we meet requires some civility, — requires to be humored . . . which spoils all conversation with him. But a friend is a sane man who exercises not my ingenuity, but me. A friend, therefore, . . . may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.
No person
trying to take responsibility for her or his identity,
should have to be so
alone.
There must be those among whom
we can sit down
and weep,
and still be counted as warriors . . .
I think
you thought there was no such place for you,
and perhaps there was none then,
and perhaps there is none now;
but we will have to make it,
we
who want an end to suffering,
who want to change the laws of history . . .