ON HERDING CATS
A Meditation on Unitarian Universalist Spiritual Community
James Ishmael Ford
7 June 2015
Text
How wonderful it is to live
in harmony with all people:
like stepping out of the bath,
your whole body fresh and vibrant;
like a morning dew, glistening
on the tiniest blade of grass./
It is God’s infinite blessing,
a taste of eternal life.
133 Psalm (translated by Stephen Mitchell)
Last week I was shaking hands at the end of the service when Peter Van Erp took my hand, and asked, “Is this is your penultimate sermon?” To which I replied, “No, Peter, that’s next week. This is whatever one calls the event before the penultimate.” He said, “That’s antepenultimate.” I looked it up. It is.
This today, however, is my penultimate sermon serving here as senior minister of the First Unitarian Church of Providence. Next week at the end I will reflect briefly on my feelings and thoughts about serving as a minister among Unitarian Universalists for the past twenty-five years. But, this week, the penultimate, I want to talk a little about what it means to be a Unitarian Universalist and a member of a UU congregation.
Let me tell you, you all can be a difficult crowd. The conventional wisdom is ministering among UUs is like herding cats. Although Martha Rice Sanders suggests it might be more like trying to herd border collies. Actually, I find that is basically true of our leadership. But, variations acknowledged, the generic UU, cat. Definitely cat.
Let me quickly review a few things about us, what it is that draws a bunch of spiritual cats, and on occasion border collies, and even more mysteriously what keeps us here? What is the bottom line of this enterprise? I mean why would cats or border collies even think of herding up together? Now, lot of what I have to share I’ve said before, but here I’m going to try to distill it as best I can.
At the beginning we seem a little, well that word mysterious works, nicely, I find. As most here know, we have no creed. And that is confusing when most of the religious communities around us very definitely do. Yes, we do have the Principals and Purposes, and sometimes people, including our own see them as a sort of creed, something we have to believe to belong. But as most of us know they are meant to be descriptive, and absolutely not prescriptive. That is they are not a set of beliefs we must submit to, but rather they represent our best attempt at describing who we are at this given moment in time. Think of it as more like poll data.
So, of course, the Principles and Purposes are reviewed periodically. Our most recent such review kept them intact. So, we’ve had them for a good thirty years now. But, still, that vote was a public reminder they’re not set in stone. So, I find if there’s any way the Principles and Purposes can be considered a creed, they’re a creed written in pencil and that pencil has a very large eraser attached.
Okay. If not creedal, how can our gang be defined? Again, most of us know, but not all. And it is worthwhile repeating. We, as a spiritual community, are defined by relationship, by covenant. We at First Unitarian make a big deal out of the fact we have only had three covenants in this congregation in our three hundred year history. I know how honored I feel to have been a part of the conversation that led to our current covenant, one I feel could last us a generation. And if we don’t get around to revising it for two generations, that should be okay, as well.
Of course, don’t forget that crowd without a sheep among it. How do cats and the occasional border collie do this, live together, grow deep, and be of use in this world? What happens when we agree to be together as a spiritual community? I suggest this is something important we’re about, something precious, offering a healing balm for a hurt world. So, today I want to reflect once again on covenant, on relationships, on being and living together, and within that the most amazing spiritual action, reaching out to one another.
A little unpacking. I find myself thinking about something our current UU president Peter Morales once wrote. “I sometimes hear people say that growth is more than just numbers.” Me, James, as I read this, I thought, ho hum. I’ve heard all this before. Usually as a preamble to not attending to what makes us something people want to belong to. But then Peter made a rather interesting turn, declaring: “Such a point of view is almost entirely nonsense.” Well that caught me.
He went on to say, “Growth is about numbers. However, we have to remember that numbers are not about numbers. Unless we are doing pure mathematics, numbers are about real things…” And then Peter brought it all home for me when he declared, “Let me also add that for me, growth is not really our goal. Our goal is to offer a religious home, to feed the spiritually hungry. Our goal is to make a difference in people’s lives.” I want to repeat that: “Our goal (as Unitarian Universalists) is to offer a religious home, to feed the spiritually hungry. Our goal is to make a difference in people’s lives.”
I think Peter summarizes what it is we’re about when he goes on to assert, “You and I are relational creatures. We become fully human in a network of relationships. We desperately long to belong. We need community the way we need food and shelter. Yet, in our pursuit of a misguided sense of independence and economic opportunity, we have created a society that systematically rips apart human relationships. Yet our need for deep relationship never goes away.” Here I found myself catching the echoes of that line from scripture, “where two or three are gathered…” We’re about that gathering.
And here we get what covenant means for us. Ours is a way of relationship. The liberal spiritual way has other markers, of course. We consciously embrace a rational approach to religion. We also famously embrace doubt as some glorious good thing rather than an obstacle to faith. But more than anything else we see how as we come together, how as we open ourselves to others, we find we are embracing a spiritual discipline, a spiritual practice.
And in this we’re called to not be a closed circle. Here I find myself thinking of the Passover tradition where there’s always an extra place at the table. That setting is for Elijah. In Jewish folklore, and carried over into Christian myth, as well as in Islam, Elijah is a bringer of good news, a prophet or sometimes an angel of God. When we set out a place for a stranger, we are opening our hearts to new possibilities. In many ways I consider this the central spiritual practice of Unitarian Universalism. We dress it up in fancy language, as it deserves, and we talk of pluralism and a desire to be a welcoming home for a greater variety of folk than we usually achieve.
Some can see our failure to include people of color in significant numbers, or many folk outside the middle and upper middle classes hypocrisy, but I suggest while we have been mostly a ghetto for the over-educated and economically comfortable, we genuinely have an aspiration. Always a few, a leven among us. But, fewer than we want, fewer than we need. We intuit within our bones and marrow that we have something of use to more people than we currently count as our own. Within that aspiration, the seed, the heart of it, is a deep knowing the stranger welcomed among us may indeed be an angel or a prophet, may indeed open the way for our heart’s knowing.
Here’s a secret behind that longing to be genuinely welcoming. For our way to be complete we need to welcome the stranger. You never know who will turn out in fact to be family.
So, with a trembling at the danger as well as at the possibility, I suggest our central way is one of radical hospitality. A popular term in our denomination right now, but usually one not explored much, I feel, than as a slogan. But, it is rich, and worth exploring. For instance one reason I actually like the term “radical hospitality” is that we have to share it. We didn’t coin it. As near as I can tell it’s most closely associated with the Benedictine Order in the Catholic Church. But then we don’t claim uniqueness in our tradition, only focus. We have a way, and I suggest very near the heart of this way is reaching out to another. We’ve done a pretty good job of this here at First Unitarian, although we still fall short among people outside a pretty narrow ethnic and economic designation.
As the great Zen teacher Shunryu Suzuki observed, “You are perfect as you are. And, you could use a little improvement.”
And so this is a call to open arms, and to open eyes. Embracing hospitality doesn’t mean not being responsible. There are dangers in this life, and that includes human behaviors. And covenant is not a one-way road; we need to hold each other responsible on this path. Covenant is about responsibility. People are responsible for their actions, and when we gather within covenant, we are expected to hold each other to bounds of decency and care. And, in the mix, it also means erring on the side of generosity, of kindness. Like for Elijah’s chair, it is always setting out an extra place at the table. And then, seeing what happens, being open to what comes next.
Often, it seems, we discover ever deeper intimacies with what at one time we thought were others. Other people. Other creatures. This planet upon which we walk, and the air that we breathe. Our spirituality of welcoming, of presence, often ends up a call to reach out, and to help.
It really boils down, simply enough. I recall when I first attended a Unitarian Universalist worship service. Pushing forty years ago, now. The sermon, well, it wasn’t all that much. But, in the coffee hour following I found myself explaining I was a Buddhist to a member who asked me about my religious orientation. She was in her seventies, probably late seventies, had that tightly curled white hair favored by her generation, and with thick lensed glasses that made her eyes appear owl-like. I recall they were brown and at least within my imagination speckled with bits of yellow. I also feel I recall a hint of gardenias hanging in the air. She responded enthusiastically to my statement, “Oh wonderful. I don’t know anything about Buddhism.” There was a pause then she asked one of the great questions. “Please tell me what about it has made you a better person?” Interesting question. I’m still working on it.
Talk about spiritual practice. Talk about hospitality of the radical kind. It is a spiritual practice.
And it is what we find going on here.
This is the religion of our pews. This is what we find within the covenants of presence we make to and with each other. Intimate. Dynamic. Wildly open.
Something beautiful.
Something making us better people.
Inside and out.
Don’t you think?
Amen.
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