A sermon before the Annual Meeting by F. Jay Deacon
Preached at the Unitarian Society of Northampton and Florence
May 2, 2004
A sermon before the Annual Meeting by F. Jay Deacon
Preached at the Unitarian Society of Northampton and Florence
May 2, 2004
There is a little black lab who shares the house with me. He's very clear about what he needs. And though he speaks not a bit of English, we always pretty much know if he needs to go outside and do the things dogs do outside, or if he needs some exercise or his dinner or some affection, to snuggle up and get petted.
We are driven by what we need, to pursue those needs. And so we come here. We probably aren't as clear about what we need as Scooby is. We're way more complicated.
And here we may be satisfied, contented, fulfilled. Or maybe not. Either way, it's good to know what you were looking for. Good for us — a congregation, a spiritual community — to know what we're looking for and inquire whether that's what we're finding, and what we're creating.
Of course, there are the obviously religious sorts of things. We need some hope for our lives and for the world. Some encounter with the Transcendent or at least a glimmer of what such an encounter might be like and some clue about what it takes to get there. We need to be brought into contact with our best and highest selves, and we need to be brought into contact with others in some way that's more than the usual superficial ways, touching at some deeper dimension — and with people who in some way share our deepest passions; —
We need some insight into the Meaning Of Life, connecting the dots to understand what our lives are about and what we're doing here in these times. You know, those religious sorts of things —
But there's more to what we want when we come here, and have some right to hope for. Fundamental human needs, things we have to have or we're going to go home frustrated.
Three simple needs, and a fourth.
The three human needs I have in mind might be called affiliation, power, and achievement.
Our need for Affiliation is clear enough and we talk about it quite a lot: someplace to belong. That connection with others at some deeper level than the usual superficiality. At the heart of our community is the recognition that we are all bound together in a covenant of Love.
We come needing each other.We don't talk much about the other two needs:
You might consider it unspiritual to admit our human need for power, but we bring that need too. It's real and legitimate. We're uncomfortable talking about our need for power, so maybe let's consider it the other way around: we can and do talk about "powerlessness." We agree — it's a bad thing. It really doesn't matter how many Gods are out there thundering the great biblical i am if you can't find the i am inside. It isn't good to be weak and helpless. The search for a God-out-there is futile, and we will ache and hurt and want in vain, without relief, as long as the search for God is conducted on the outside. The kingdom of heaven is within.
And there is our need for achievement. When we've lived our lives out, we want to know if we've made a difference, left anything behind — if it matters that we were here. There is a creative energy at the heart of us. We have an inborn need to achieve, to do the work that is ours to do, to pursue our calling, to be effective. We want to grow in our capacities to achieve. We will be grateful to any institution or community that lets us do our best or even helps us do it.
Sometimes one need can masquerade as another. What springs to mind is a very jovial congregation member I knew in the 1970s, far away from here — who looked for all appearances like somebody mostly driven by his need for affiliation. It took me awhile but I came to realize that his apparent warmth was really gladhanding which he did to gain power. He developed his social skills in pursuit of power but it was all unconscious because, being quite a spiritual man, he couldn't have needed power, could he have?
It wasn't that he held any office or had any official position at all. But he had accumulated a bit of power in that congregation and he expected to get his way. In any system there is formal power and there is informal power. You don't get to elect the people who hold informal power — they just take it. Not because they mean to, always — but because in their lives they have felt thwarted — and need to feel their own power. It's probably all very unconscious, but there it is.
Of course, I'm not talking about you. That guy was a thousand miles and 25 years from here. Just an illustration. It could work in reverse — someone exerting power because what they most need is affiliation with other people and exerting power feels like a way to get that connectedness.
It all gets pretty tangled. How much better to be conscious of what we need, and of what the people who gather in our congregation need.
Look around. What do you see?
What you see has to do with the depth of vision you bring to your seeing. If when you look around you, you see expressions of the divine life of the universe, you will see that we must create space for that power of life, that engine of creativity in each life — to find itself, to find expression. To find a place, to know their power, and to achieve.
A congregation is not a family, but a community. You don't have to be close to everyone, like everyone. But our faith does require that you hold fast to the inherent worth and dignity of everyone. We have to regard every member of this community with honor, care, and love — whether or not you like them.
All these things are true for us as a whole congregation, too. We need to feel ourselves to be a factor, to feel a sense of power. You look at the staggering challenges of our time and you could feel helpless and quite powerless. We come here, renew our vision of the world that might be, and then listen to the political rhetoric and the latest news and it all feels pretty intractable. You have to be able to imagine the intractable problem tractating, which, of course, is not a word.
We really can't afford low-quality expectations of ourselves and each other. It will have to be a community of faith in each other and in our capacities together. It will not be wise policy for us to think small and attempt nothing much.
And we will want our congregational life to be a system of opportunities and not of constraints: — one that creates places for people to do powerful things — and not a system of constraints that makes it as difficult as possible to do anything, initiate anything.
And we will have to ask the ethical question: if we recognize our own power, are we willing to commit ourselves to use our power for the good of the whole and for the fulfilment of our shared vision?
Today we will vote on a Covenant — something that will put into words an unspoken covenant that we intend when we become members. Our Covenant commits us to do our best to make a place here for each one of us — and to make space for the fullest unfolding of each, in the fulness of their particular humanity : —
to come into their, and your, own power,
to find real human connections, those who will stand in solidarity with you,
to achieve, realize a person's fullest human capacities.
Where can such things happen? They can happen in a place that's commited to these things by a conscious covenant, and —
where there is trust.
where vulnerable souls can know they're safe,know that it's safe to be real, safe to take a risk,
safe to try, and fail, and learn, and try again.
And trust is the fourth need that we bring here.
Trust is a sacred thing. Particularly since the 1960s, Americans have learned to accept a lying government and leaders they cannot trust. The current government is mass-producing, on an unequaled scale, public cynicism.
We almost expect to be lied to.
And we have no confidence in the competence of the government to get it right. So they lied, so they got us into a quagmire and can't get us out of it and can't admit it and maintain the bravado. What else is new?
We don't trust the corporate powers that seem to own the government. We don't trust our employers. We breathe the poisoned air of betrayed trust.
So we might bring some of our cynicism here. I hope we won't. May we never, never give each other reason for cynicism and distrust.
We have to be able to trust this institution — this Unitarian Society — and trust its leaders to understand these essential needs of ours, and to structure our congregational life to make room for them, make space for their fulfilment.
If we stifle and frustrate the human energy that is gathered here, we will betray our mission. We have to be able to trust this USNF and its leaders to make our congregational life a laboratory for our best and highest human capacities; to set our sites high.
We have to be able to see our own sublimest dreams and values reflected in what goes on here, and to find our place in it.
We will have to be able to trust this Unitarian Society to lift its voice when our faith requires us to bear witness on behalf of the highest human possibilities and against the despoiling of the earth, the degredation of human rights and dignity, against violence and deception — and not remain silent. In a little while we'll be voting on some particular matters of public witness — against bigotry that would deny to some the right to marry, against racism, against mindless war that daily snuffs out more young lives. We need to be able to trust our congregation to make itself heard when it matters.
And — We have to be able to feel confident that our human energies won't be frustrated here.
We have to be able to trust this institution and its leadership to do things well and effectively. We have to trust that it's really intelligent and visionary and competent or we won't be very happy or very committed.
We will have to be able to trust the processes by which this community — its members and its leadership — does things, makes decisions, or we won't be able to commit our life-energies to it.
We will have to be able to believe our leaders and each other and trust the purposes that drive them, — be able to trust our leadership to be working from a reasonably high level of consciousness and self-awareness — or we will be fearful and defensive and closed.
And you — as a member — will have to be able to feel that this institution and its leadership trusts you — and isn't always trying to oursmart or manipulate you, keep things from you, — but rather understands well that you hold some part of the vision and the abilities and the passion that is essential to our work.
We need these things, and it is these things that will drive our best work, let us fulfill our human promise.
A community that makes room for these things, makes them part of the equation — will be electric.
It will free the creativity inherent in us.
It will open in us our best passions and energies.
It will stay focussed on its mission and do so with great imagination. It will not waste time and energy on trivia, spend long meetings to make one inconsequential decision. It will think bold thoughts; it will attempt significant things.
It will radiate respect, trust, and mutual regard.
It will be a place where human lives are transformed from within, by the force of the power within them — and it will cherish the transformation.
It will take risks. It will give you space to make mistakes and learn and keep at it until you get it right.
It will work, really work, at finding the gifts and capacities of each of its members, and make a place for them. It will will be a force and a factor and a healing presence in this world.
We — you and I — need this Unitarian Society to be that place. We have the power to make it so.
©2004 by F. Jay Deacon. All rights reserved.
Samuel Johnson.
At the opening of his Free Church
of Lynn, Massachusetts on 7 August, Sagamore Hall, 1853.
Our radical movement is essentially constructive, laying new cornerstones in eternal truths; reading history, not in fragments any more, but as a divine whole. Human thought fares us onward, obedient to a secret call, pitching its restless tents at evening by some alluring Bethel, only to strike them again at dawn, leaving at every stage an altar to the Spirit whose promise of a more noble home forbids it to stay. Say, rather, it is a magnificent exodus . . . into a land, promised from the beginning, . . . of spiritual liberty and joy. Its inspiration makes us bold to . . . [ break up camp] in good earnest to cross over into its heritage.
But the end will not be reached without great trials to private virtue . . . , and many a noble hope go down before the morning dawns. There was never greater need of all the help [we] can give each other, — that none fail to understand the signs of the times, the perils, and the promises, to see the duty and find means to do it.
And so we come back to the proper purpose of such a Church as this. It is that we may be faithful to the opportunities of the age; that we may use its freedom of [thought] and conduct in the spirit of love . . . ; that we may learn what truth can make of us, when put before our minds purely on its own merits, apart from . . . intrigue or manoeuvre . . .
How far we shall fulfil this service rests with ourselves. For always the Spirit bears witness, for its part, that `the fruit of good labors is glorious . . .' For us, then, consecration to fair and generous dealing, to world-wide sympathies, to mutual aid. For us, self-watchfulness and self-discipline: the inward purification, the outward fidelity. For us, no timidity, no indifference in the work to which we have put our hands. For us, the courage and love that can lift out of ignoble habits and narrow aims, and slavish conformities . . .
We gather again: — for a reckoning with this life, singley and together; to contemplate the past and the future.
We gather on this Today, in this Now. We ask what we are, and what we are doing.
The day greets us: the sun's strength, the life-giving warm rain, the promise and grandeur of all Nature. We would trust the processes of renewal, of the passing of the old, the life and growth of the new. We would plant good seed and trust it to do its work without impatience or anxiety. We would savor, drink in the joy.
In this Today embedded between past and future — we gather our strength, our hope, our faith, and would take care not to gather our fear: — so that our gathering might bear the good fruit of peace, and greater justice, and more expansive hope.
We would be present to this Moment . . .
In the silence.