November 2008

Dear Ones,

As I ponder what it is I want to write to you this month, I am thinking about how much you have taught me already. In just a short time, I have learned so much about this community and how much you love this congregation. It shows in all the ways you step forward to care for one another, and in the depth of passion which each of you brings to the beloved community.

I have found in you models for how to care for the world, for what it takes to step out, over and over again, in courage and in hope, to be good stewards of this faith we love.

The times in which we live are not for the faint of heart. There is so much going on that threatens to disturb all the foundations we took for granted in the past. Not the least among these is the upheaval we have seen in our country’s financial status.

I hear on the radio and on the TV the warnings to stay calm, to stay the course, to not panic, to avoid rash decisions, and all this makes sense to me. At the same time, I wonder about how those among and around us will make do with less, how people will learn to stretch further and further the meager dollars they have to get through the month. It takes courage to step forward, into the unknown, over and over again.

I take comfort in the knowledge that we are survivors of all sorts. Those of us from the northeast, particularly upstate and western New York, have already had too many years of being smart about making dollars stretch. I think we could be the people who write books about this for others to read in detail, so good are we at this, instead of the ones reading and listening to the pundits telling us what to do.

But then I wonder: What else can we learn?

Perhaps the question should be: What else is it that we have to teach?

I think there is still much to be hopeful about and much to celebrate. This congregation has stood through many years of hard times, within a community that has withstood hard times, and yet you still meet and sing with joy and heart every Sunday morning.

You still gather here in this building on the corner of Clinton and Court and work with RAIHN or organize and plan your ministries. You teach your children, or one another; you know every square inch of this building, top to bottom, and you love its peculiarities, even as you struggle with its challenging and aging design. And you write notes of care and concern, make visits and phone calls, check in with one another, always looking to the future, while relishing the present moment.

I look forward to our time together whenever we meet; I know I still have so much to find out about who you are.

In the coming season, as we anticipate ramping up for visitors, special celebrations and times that have, in the past, called for spending extra money, when we can expect to feel swept along with the holiday hype, let us take some time instead to listen to one another, plan in some quiet reflection time, take walks in the brisk fresh air sweeping in off the lake, make tea or cookies and invite the elderly neighbor to come and visit. Find and create new ways to recall what it is that has named us into being in the first place, and practice one of the most important of the ‘holy manners’: that of listening for the voice within that calls us into full interaction with life.

May First Universalist continue to stand proudly here and remain a symbol for the future. May we continue to grow in our knowing of one another and the world, and may we continue to find ways to fill our mission to “Nurture the Spirit and Serve the Community.”

In love and faith,

Join us for our Intergenerational Thanksgiving service, and share your thoughts on giving and gratitude. Feast on one another’s thoughts, words and offerings! Pick up your own Guest At Our Table box today.

Please bring a fruit or vegetable to place in the cornucopia arrangement on the harvest table in the front of our sanctuary.

-with Reverend Sally Hamlin, Worship Associates Janus Mary Jones, Nancy Gaede, DRE Peg Meeker, and others participating.

Well, the election’s over. What can we say? Well, as we go to press, we can’t really say much, because we don’t know yet what to expect? Come to worship together on this Sunday when being with one another means so much.

-with Reverend Sally Hamlin and Worship Associate David Messner

Reverend Sally Hamlin speaking

Part of the preparation for my move to the Bay area five years ago to attend seminary included selling and packing up the home where I had lived for fifteen years. I worked on this methodically from the time I received my acceptance letter from Starr King School for the Ministry in December, until the day of my actual move in August. Sorting through possessions: keepsakes from my daughters’ early childhoods, old love letters written when I was newly infatuated, boxes of files and papers and unread books, old kitchen knickknacks- just lots and lots of stuff.

Each box was a stroll down memory lane, and I moved along this path slowly, not wanting to miss a thing. I wanted this transition, one of the biggest in my life, to be marked. I wanted to honor it and not let it pass without its due acknowledgement. A lot of life had occurred in that house, this place of childhoods, marital passages and deaths of family members, health challenges and career shifts. All of it was reflected in, not only the contents of the house, but in the sense of place of the house: the gardens I had built and designed, the huge messy maple tree out back that littered the yard with endless branches which fell when a strong wind blew, the deck off the back of the house where I had spent countless hours gazing upward, skyward, watching the wind move the clouds which came off the lake, listening to the animals, the squirrels and the birds, the buzzing insects that hummed in the deep heat of summer, and the rustle of the leaves of the huge trees that were like God’s own whisper to my soul.

I know within my body the ways the weather feels in Western New York. I can tell in my bones what the weather is planning even without looking at the barometer that stays near my front door. My body became the barometer in humid weather; it took on fluid like a dry thirsty cottonwood drinks in the first deep rain. In spring in Buffalo, the earth itself takes on a heady scent that reminds me that we walk upon a live underground world, supported by the pulse of Mother herself, her smell musky when she awakes after her long winter slumber.

I could predict thunderstorms, and there are some magnificent ones in here Western New York, by reading the patterns of the leaves in the trees; and I could forecast snowstorms by watching the way the clouds bank and form their mass: they huddle down low and dark.

Looking back at my memories of that place, and especially of how I depended upon the weather patterns for orienting myself, I am surprised that I did not predict that I would feel so displaced by my move to the West coast, where the weather patterns were all new to me. At times I felt a great sense of both sadness and bewilderment, that goes beyond missing family and friends, and that I framed as part of simply not knowing how the weather in the East Bay “worked”. I realize I had simply not learned to read the signs of the weather there in my first few seasons. The seasons are more subtle, the changes unpatterned and unpredictable to my emigrant eyes.

However, when I would speak about the disorientation I felt with native Californians, I was often met with blank stares, or with incredulous faces that implied something like: there is weather in Buffalo that you would miss?

There was one person who responded immediately and with compassion to my bewilderment. Rebecca Parker heard something beyond the words I was speaking and took the time to listen to my story of dislocation and displacement. She patiently explained the northern California seasons to me, taking me through each subtle shift in an imaginary year. She explained the weather by describing the colors of the hills and how they change from gold to emerald green, the seasons of the flowering plants and trees, how the air patterns move, and when and where the birds would appear.

When she did this, I felt as though I could finally consider this place as a home for me. I could imagine it to someday feel like something I could know, in my body, although at the time this knowing felt like a long ways away. Whether she knew it or not, Rebecca extended a very big kindness to me that day; she gave me hope that this place would one day feel like home.

Why is the sense of place so important to our sense of feeling at home? How and why do we use our sense of place to navigate our world? What is it that Rebecca Parker did that helped with my feelings of displacement?

Yi-Fu Tuan, a geographer at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, says that the sense of place and rootedness that people have increases proportionate to their experience of languaging within the place. He says that how a place is spoken about, described and named, and how a person is introduced to it will influence their connection to it. Language, he says, “is never neutral”¹ and that “words have the general power to bring to light experiences that lie in the shadow or have receded into it, and the specific power to call places into being”.²

How does this information help us in our church community?

If it is a fact that almost 80% of new Unitarian Universalists come to our faith from some other religious tradition, then we can assume that most people come to us by choice. But it is necessary to consider that even though this is true, these so-called religious immigrants may still have some difficulty understanding the new ‘culture’ they find themselves in. New members may be suffering from a feeling of displacement, which is defined as “any movement or shift from a customary setting”.

People who are born and raised in our faith tradition have had the opportunity to name the landscape of Unitarian Universalism, so to speak. They have a familiarity with its symbols, rituals, traditions, language, and culture. Our religious ancestors created Unitarianism and Universalism by naming it, they languaged it. They called it into being. They brought to life something that did not exist before. Part of our heritage and what gives it such power is that many of our forebears also suffered and sacrificed for these beliefs, some of them with their lives. This profound commitment, in part, is what underlies and makes vivid the pictures of the stories of our faith tradition. Knowing these stories helps us have a sense of being part of something much larger than ourselves. When we light the chalice together on Sunday morning, we are instantly transported through sight, and words, and symbol across centuries and oceans, to our religious roots, and connected vibrantly to the web of life of which we are a part.

But even many life-long or old-timer Unitarian Universalists can unknowingly suffer the effects of displacement when their congregations shift and grow with the addition of new members.

The effects of displacement should not be underestimated, especially when it comes to religious identity. Two contemporary theologians (Nieman and Rogers) describe the impact of displacement thusly: “Displacement separates us from the patterns that have been central to us, the strategies that have helped us mark off who we are. . . it threatens the very core of what culture at its best seeks to provide. . . ways toward identity, belonging and action.”³

While these same theologians argue that we usually associate the effects of displacement with immigrants from other countries that come to North American culture either by choice or as a refugee from persecution, “displacement is a cultural issue of some considerable magnitude for native-born Americans as well. . . Americans no longer tend to live and die in the same place”, and “Middle class professionals have been described as the new migrant workers.”⁴

So even though you may have come to Unitarian Universalism from another faith tradition, where rituals, roles, and polity were clearly defined for you, it is likely that your previous religious experience no longer “works for you”, or you would not be here. You may have felt hurt by your tradition in some way, or been denied full access to its rituals or practice because of some core part of your being or identity, such as your gender or sexuality, for example.

If this is the case it may take you some time to feel at home here in Unitarian Universalism. You will have some work to do to heal your wounds. It will take some time, but we will help you.

Or, conversely, you may be one of the people who immediately felt at home once you attended a UU worship service. I have heard this from more than one person to know this is not an uncommon experience.

But it cannot be assumed that all people will immediately feel at home in a new congregation where, our UU ideals or tenets, our rituals and our roles, our polity and absence of creed and doctrine are new or different.

If we want to help new members or visitors feel welcomed and part of our congregation then the learning about Unitarian Universalism must take place with the understanding that how we language the experience for visitors and new members will have a huge impact upon them. It will influence their level of participation, their sense of belonging, and, most especially, it will influence how long people will stay with us, or, whether they decide early on, that the differences are too vast to navigate, and will require too much emotional, spiritual and psychological work on their part.

As Nieman and Rogers, the theologians quoted earlier, say, “as a private psychological wound like grief or depression, the effects of displacement can . . . easily remain hidden from others” and may even make it difficult for those suffering from the effects of displacement to recognize others around them who may be suffering from the same plight, thereby increasing feelings of isolation, rejection, and cause “available social resources for expressing and addressing displacement. . . unused.”⁵

What are the implications of this information for us as Unitarian Universalists who, as a religious group, have a higher percentage of visitors than other denominations, and yet have one of the lowest “stick around and join” rates?

The first thing we can do to assist in diminishing the power of displacement is to name it, to “draw this reality into the open and make it visible.”⁶ It is important for both the minister and for the congregation to have a sense of how disorienting cultural change can be for those who are experiencing it for the first time.

If you have come to us from another faith tradition, do you remember the first time you participated in a Unitarian Universalist worship service? If you identify as one who carries hidden wounds from other religious experiences, this recollection is critical. This will be the first step in not only feeling that you belong here, but it will crack open your heart and allow the loving healing community that is First Universalist to embrace you on your path to wholeness.

When we listen to one another’s spiritual journeys, sharing our stories with one another, we begin to create a bond that can deepen a tentative connection or cement an otherwise wavering one. We have begun the process of languaging a spiritual home together.

Part of this naming and listening is what “rounds out the task of attentiveness, testing our understanding by holding us accountable to others”(96). Such naming helps to begin to pave the path to reclaim a lost vision for those who are displaced, so that they can find in our church community a destination, a home, and thus, recover some sense of purpose, hope and belonging, building social capital along the way.⁷

We have much to learn about what shapes and strengthens our congregations. For those of us who have successfully navigated the journey from another faith tradition to Unitarian Universalism, we especially treasure our new found faith community. We value our polity and the freedom it provides.

Much like I have had to learn to read the signs of a new geographic weather pattern in order to feel a sense of place, home and belonging in California, we need to begin to offer one another a listening heart, much like Rebecca Parker did for me that afternoon,. By recognizing the longing that our visitors and seekers have for a true religious home where all of who they are is welcome, we can take the first step, provide a willingness to hear the tale of the traveler’s journey to help the wandering pilgrim find a home in our Unitarian Universalist congregation.

Today, about fifteen minutes after the service ends, and for the next few weeks the Membership Committee and I will be offering a series of gatherings that will begin this sacred dialogue of sharing our stories, of languaging one another into a sense of place. It is our hope that as we begin to practice intentional religious hospitality, that we will help others find in First Universalist, a place to call home.

We invite you along for the journey.

May it be so. Blessed Be. Amen.

©This sermon was written by Reverend Sally Hamlin for the congregation of the First Universalist Church of Rochester, New York and was delivered on October 19, 2008. No part of this sermon may be copied without permission of the author.

The Rev. Sally Hamlin speaking

When I was parenting teenagers a few years back, I recall more than one conversation that went something like this. I would say: “Well, I understand that you would not say/do/or participate in (fill in the blank with whatever topic), but from what I have seen and by your own admission, some of your friends do those things (or say those things, etc).  So, you might want to consider who it is you choose to associate with. You do have a choice; I hope you will give this a little thought.”

And this is one way to frame our discussion about Association Sunday, which we celebrate today.  It is all about choice. After all, we associate with one another, in this congregation, by actively choosing to do so. No one has legislated or demanded our participation.  And we, the member congregations of the Unitarian Universalist Association, who are in covenant with one another, need Association Sundays to strengthen the bonds of common purpose among us.  We need to bring our congregations together to pursue our mission of affirming “the inherent worth and dignity of every person”.

Association Sundays are a request by our UUA for all congregations to support, both spiritually and financially, the national work of the Asssociation.   It is a day during which thousands of UUs across the nation simultaneously celebrate our shared commitment to our faith.

Today is the second Association Sunday that our UUA has organized to help support its mission to Growing Our Spirit.  This means ‘our group spirit, the human spirit, the holy spirit, the spirit of life, the spirit of love’.¹  The monies collected today will not be used for the general operations of our association.  Rather they will be directed towards projects focused on deepening our Shared Ministry as part of the Now Is the Time! Campaign.

Last year’s Association Sunday funded, in part, the Time magazine ad series on Unitarian Universalism.

This is the first year that First Universalist is participating in Association Sunday. So congratulations are in order!  Because once we decide to associate with one another through our covenant, we are creating the beloved community which we have visioned together, and in which all are worthy of participation.

We are living in extraordinary times, with headlines that seem as if they are coming from another planet, so bizarrely they barrage us, with warnings of more dire things yet to come. Our financial market is in complete upheaval. Our very foundations are cracked and weakening.

The frame we have used to determine what helps us feel safe has now been turned upside down.  For generations we heard the mantra: live within your means, save for your future, invest wisely, take care of yourself now so you can have a healthy and long life.

It is time to think about doing the things we always do, the things we have always done, in a new way.

We need to ask ourselves what it is that will help us through these upheavals.  What role does our congregation, our beloved community, play in our sense of security?  How can I contribute to strengthening this relationship, when my own resources seem to be dwindling day by day? What can I possibly contribute to Association Sunday when I don’t know if my cash is secure?

Well, first of all, you should know this: You are more important to this community than your money is. I will repeat that: You are more important to this community than your money is.  This has always been and will always be, true.

At the same time, we know that money is needed to bring the community we vision into life. As Janus Mary pointed out last week in her offertory words, money, in and of itself, is neutral, it has no ethical denotation.  The only meaning money has is the meaning that we give it.

Secondly, it is important to know what it is that will be funded by Association Sunday.  Fifty percent will support Lay Theological Education programs.  Congregations, districts, and seminaries can apply for grants to create programs which focus on spiritual and theological deepening.

The other half will be divided among three initiatives that support Excellence in Ministry programs, including scholarships for seminary students and support for our minsters of color.
Earlier we sang:

Blessed Spirit of my Life, give me strength through stress and strife.
Help me live with dignity; let me know serenity.
Fill me with a vision, clear my mind of fear and confusion.
When my thoughts flow restlessly, let peace find a home in me.

The words of our hymn today could not be more appropriate words for our current times, I think.  We sing our prayer to find strength to deal with all that is before us, we pray for dignity, for serenity.  We pray for clear vision, for freedom from fear.  And we recognize that when our monkey mind takes over and we spin instead of settle, we sing our prayer that peace finds its home within us.

And sometimes, especially right now when our financial institutions teeter dangerously over the brink of the abyss, threatening to disappear with our carefully saved assets- if we were among those fortunate enough to put anything aside- we find a new opportunity to make a difference.

But in times of stress and fear, we tend to forget the basics about what is important.

I have had conversations with several of you who are very concerned about your financial future. Some of you retired with well-planned retirement funds in place, but are now considering returning to work, given your recent loss of capital.  You wonder if your investments will have time to recover from these losses before you will need to draw on them.

Some of you were already living pretty close to the bone.  You are now worried about what will be next. Will your health benefits be cut back?  Will your premiums increase to the point of unaffordability?  Will you need to find ways to help adult children raise their children, your grandchildren, as their jobs are lost and incomes halved?

In times such as these it is easy to slip into the mind set of ‘Scare-city’ as political comedian Swami Beyondananda names it. Swami B calls us to, instead, declare ABunDance for All.  He says we need to turn to thinking of wealth for the whole, instead of wealth down the hole, we need to turn to concern for justice, and turn away from the concern for ‘just-us’.  We need to live by the Golden Rule, instead of the rule of gold.  We need to live in a state of ‘Emerge ‘n See’, instead of residing in a state of emergency.

This is the time when we begin to realize we need to weave a web of mass construction, as Swami says, and imagining a new world to replace our sick one, tell one another of our visions for the future, playing the game of Extreme Planetary Makeover. Speak of our fears, but work to change the way we see these times. ²

What can we do to change our perspective, to move from survival to ‘thrival’ (Swami B)?  Well, Association Sunday gives an opportunity to do just that, with a gift of our financial support.

Let me explain why I will be donating $100 to Association Sunday today, and why I have asked your board of trustees to consider making donations of $50 or more.

It has to do with stewardship, and putting my money where my mouth is, and walking the path of faith instead of fear.

When I was in seminary, I took a class called Sociology of Religion.  I was challenged by my professor’s claim that while Unitarian Universalists were among the wealthiest of all denominations, our financial commitment to our denomination was among the lowest.  I was shocked by this information.  I didn’t know who he was talking about, but it wasn’t the UUs I knew! The UUs I knew were generous and committed.  We were proud of Unitarian Universalism.  We found ways to live out the principles of our faith in the world by working on and donating to many good causes- ACLU, Save the Whales, Doctors Without Borders, National Public Radio-what was he talking about?

Well, after doing my own research I came to the sad conclusion that Professor Baggett was correct. Proportionally speaking, UUs, in general, give a smaller percentage of their net worth to support their faith tradition than others do.  In fact, we were second to the bottom on the list.

But, still, something did not sit right with me about this. I thought and thought about it until finally I came up with this theory.  While others commit their resources to their faith communities with the desire and trust that their faith community will represent their values in the world, as UUs we often spread our resources out, over, and among, many worthy causes, and we make our congregation and our UUA only one of the many to which we pledge our funds.

This was a light bulb moment for me.  It was, in the words used by those who give proportionally more of their net income to their faith community, a “Come to Jesus Moment!”

This got me thinking: if I truly believed in the saving message of my chosen faith community, then it was time to put my money where my beliefs are: in you, in one another, in Unitarian Universalism.

My new plan of giving, or stewardship focused on my faith, has completely reinvented the way I think about giving in my life. I now think about how I can be a steward of my faith and my religious community, and my beliefs at the same time.  I think about how the money I have to give can be used within the Unitarian Universalist world, and I give until it feels good.  My colleague, the Reverend Victoria Weinstein says this about stewardship: “Stewardship of the 21st century is not about providing services and a superior product to consumers, it is about fostering worshipful hearts and reverent souls who love what the church represents so much that they begin to live their lives in accordance with its ideals”.³

I now tithe to support Unitarian Universalism. Some years this has been a full ten percent of my net income.  Some years, it has been much less.  I certainly did not start with anywhere near ten percent.  I started small, and waited to see what difference my focused giving made in my life.  I was concerned that I would feel a bit too stretched.  And I <i>was</i> stretched. But not in the way I expected.  By making my regular tithe to Unitarian Universalism, and by redirecting other monies I might ordinarily have focused other causes, I was finding that I was feeling spiritually stretched, as in expanded.  As in, strengthening my belief in others, strengthening my belief in my belief. Tithing has helped me keep despondency, hopelessness and powerlessness at bay.

Tithing has also given me a new way to look at my faith. It has deepened my commitment to working with others to change the world by living the life I say I believe in. Tithing as a spiritual practice allows me to feel more deeply connected to all, more embedded within the interdependent web of all existence.  It helps me see myself as only one part of all that exists. And it helps me feel that I have something to say in the face of all that seems outside my control, and that is this: I choose to associate with you.  I choose to associate with others who can make a difference, and I choose to make my association count, with my time, with my life, with my resources, with my heart and with my soul.

And this, for me, is enough.  And this, for me, is just and good.  And it gives me great comfort to know that my financial support of our faith is one way I can express spiritual congruency.  Will you join me and your Trustees today in supporting Association Sunday, with your best offering?

If you did not get a chance to place your offering in the plate as it passed the first time, there is still time to do so now; you can give your envelope to an usher on your way out after our Postlude.

In closing, the words of the 19th century Unitarian theologian and minister, William Ellery Channing come to mind.  Let me share them with you:

To live content with small means;
To seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion;
To be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich;
To study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly;
To listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages, with open heart;
To bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasions, hurry never.
To let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common.
This will be my symphony.

May it be so. Amen.

©This sermon was written by Reverend Sally Hamlin for the congregation of the First Universalist Church of Rochester, New York and was delivered on October 12, 2008. No part of this sermon may be copied without permission of the author.

October 2008

“I wonder if the fall has rheumatism?  Do the limbs of the full grown, aging trees have aches like the one in my right shoulder?  The tree, like me, is a perennial.  It too may get weary and crotchety after too many cycles of seasons.  The annuals demonstrate life’s most efficient wisdom, to have one spring and one summer, and have done with it.  Let all things seed through the cruel winters.  If life can be born again in the spring, it does not get involved in hibernation and releafings. “ From Reverend Kenneth Patton, Unitarian Universalist minister, in his book All Blessedness: a Book of Psalms.

As I am writing this, I have a dull pain in my right shoulder that comes when I do too much leaning over a keyboard in just the wrong way.  I have to pay attention to how I sit and make sure I get up and move around every once in a while.  Not altogether a bad thing at all.  I never used to have such strange body aches and pains.   But I am no longer the youngster I once was, when I could get little sleep and work and play long hours with no physical consequences.  Now intentional daily stretching is part of my morning routine.  If I forget, watch out!

And so it is with our congregation.  Paying close attention to where we show our age, where we might be stuck in a pattern of activity that no longer serves us, is good work for any religious community.  We must stay nimble and flexible if we want to be part of the changing landscape in which we worship and gather, stay fresh and alert.

But I am happy to report that I like being a perennial, having the chance to hibernate a bit in the winter, become more reflective, take time to enjoy the short days and long nights.  For the moment, however, I am even happier being part of the change from summer to fall, from temperatures in the mid-eighties to the fifties in twenty-four hours. I think these swift shifts in weather makes us resilient and attentive beings.

With that resilience and flexibility in mind, I have been attending as many committee meetings as I can this past month, just to get to know who you are and find out how you do things, how you meet and greet one another, how you share your ideas and dreams with one another.  I hope to be helpful to you, as a new-comer here, and share feedback and perceptions with you as we learn one another and grow together in our ministry.   We have much to offer the world and one another, and it is good to know the world needs our gifts as much as we need to share them!

See you in church!

The Rev. Sally Hamlin speaking.

In The Wind in the Willows, Mole has just returned to his cozy home underground. Soon he lays his head contentedly on his pillow. Before he closes his eyes he lets them wander around his room, “mellow in the glow of the firelight. . . on familiar friendly things.” How good it is to be back! Yet he would not want to abandon the splendid spaces above ground; he has no intention of turning his back on sun and air and creeping home and staying there. “The upper world was too strong, it called to him still, even down there, and he knew he must return to the larger stage.”¹

Welcome, everyone! I am the Reverend Sally Hamlin, Minister of the First Universalist Church of Rochester.

Welcome to this service, to this beautiful house of worship.

In another couple weeks we will celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the first service in this building on October 4, 1908. When the merger of our two faith traditions occurred in 1961, each church in Rochester kept a name reflective of its theological origin, one Unitarian, and one Universalist. Thus, we have our historical First Universalist Church of Rochester, and we have First Unitarian, both of which are Unitarian AND Universalist. This can be a bit confusing at times, especially to a new visitor or guest today, so I thought I would mention that fact here, today, to clear up any confusion.

You may have found your way here today from another faith tradition or traditions. For those of you called ‘come-outers’, you have chosen this church as your religious home. You have decided to make this place, these people, your people.

Or you may be here today as a birthright Unitarian Universalist – a ‘born-inner’, as we say. Perhaps you were raised Unitarian or Universalist, and can claim a lifetime in this religious home.

Or perhaps, as many before you have, found your way to us, not having come from any particular tradition, but out of a deep personal yearning for a religious home. You came looking for a community involved in religious search, one that does not give up on the dream, the vision of what is possible in the world. You longed to be part of something greater than yourself, looked for a place to consider those questions sourced deep in your heart: what is the meaning of my life, why is there so much suffering in the world, how can I grow to be the best person I am capable of becoming? What is my understanding of the Divine, and what do I call that understanding? Is it God? Is it Ground of Being? Is it Nature? Is it Love?

And once here, you felt at home. Perhaps you cannot explain what it was that happened to you at the first few services you attended. Perhaps, what happens for many, happened to you? Did tears fall from your eyes? The relief, along with an intense feeling of joy, is what many experience at first here. The relief that, finally, once and for all, you found your religious home.

Here, the scope and breadth of what is possible in a beloved community gradually becomes known, and unfolds in ways previously only imagined. What feelings grow here are never achievable as a result of individual endeavor alone, but rather, come into being as a result of the natural affinity sparks of humanity have for one another, and like tiny stars, we leap toward one another in the search for light in the darkness, illuminating and expanding the fires of the Spirit of Life, the power of that combined combustion, fueling one another’s search for understanding the mystery that is called Life.

For this process of finding a religious home is best done as a collective process, undertaken with the efforts of many, with the understanding that we do not, we cannot, act alone, in the building of a religious home.

Yet despite being called a pilgrim people, our bodies and souls fill with longing and desire for roots that ground us, and a place to stretch our wings and explore all the mysteries that abound within a sanctuary of trust and respect. It is a wholly human longing to have such a religious home to call our own.

And I find myself very grateful lately that I have found my way back home. This time, I am not speaking of the metaphor of home, but actually, now, I am literally home. Home to my beloved western New York, to loving family members and friends, to the great lakes of Erie and Ontario, and the rolling hills of the Finger Lakes and of Allegany and the Adirondacks. Back to four seasons and the excitement of lake effect snowstorms, back to the land of my home. I love this part of the world. It is part of what defines home for me.

Yet it would be remiss of me in a sermon titled Coming Home, not to consider the meaning of having a religious home, or any home for that matter, without speaking of the homelessness that occurs daily, all around us. Global migrations of human beings are now seen in unprecedented numbers; millions of people displaced from their homelands, as a result of wars and conflicts and global warming, in places such as Darfur, Sudan, and in Iraq and Afghanistan, millions live in temporary shelters, moving, moving, always moving.

Most recently we heard that those displaced to Houston after Katrina, are homeless once again after the ravages of Hurricane Ike.

Unfortunately, the need for emergency shelter is not unusual in Rochester. We are, in this regard, too like many other places around the country. It is estimated that in any given week in the U.S., at least 200,000 children are homeless, with forty-two percent of those children under the age of five. In the San Francisco area, over 45,000 homeless live on the streets. An unimaginable number, really. Like a small town, the homeless roam the hills of the Bay area.

So what can we do about this? How do we reconcile the situation of our own relative privilege and the needs of so many? As a religious community, we possess what many in our country and around the world, dream of, clamor for, yet, in all likelihood will never have. We live in a community that is mostly safe from natural disaster. Many of us have inherited privilege as descendents of mostly European ancestors, and/or have had the advantages of good education and health care.

I recognize that we are not a completely homogeneous congregation, that some among us claim other identities, have known paths of struggle with class or race or gender which may be hidden from obvious view. So when I speak of our privilege as Unitarian Universalists, and as residents of this country, I want to make it clear that I understand that our struggles as individuals are often not acknowledged, and I do not diminish the depths of these struggles in any way.

But if the advantages we experience as Unitarian Universalists can be used to work for justice in the creation of better world, our work must be based upon the acknowledgement of our privilege. It behooves us to acknowledge it, not hide who we are or where we come from. Power and privilege, not acknowledged, or misunderstood, can unintentionally be used for harm, rather than for good. When we understand power and the sources of it, we may move forward more clearly, and use what we know and have and claim, to change the world for the better.

And from what I have observed, that is exactly what you have done at First Universalist. That is who you are. You have chosen to stand with those who are experiencing something most of you have never experienced. Yet, you have taken the time to learn, to study the issue of homelessness, and have, as a congregation, and in many cases, as individuals, decided to work with RAIHN.

Right here in this building, every few months, we meet face to face with those affected by the problem of homelessness, when we offer hospitality as part of First Universalist’s commitment to house those served by the Rochester Area Interfaith Hospitality Network, or RAIHN.

This deep commitment you make to others, shown with your time and with your devotion, demonstrates that you know that the devastating effects of homelessness for people in this very community, is profound. And your commitment is inspirational.

And this says a lot about your spiritual journey as individuals and as a religious community. You have decided to live our first principle which speaks of each person’s inherent worth and dignity. You recognize in your pledge to live by these guidelines that it could be you who is homeless, who has lost the job that led to a loss of health care, that led to a loss of a prescription plan, which led to not taking medications that keep a chronic illness in check, which led to an expensive hospitalization, which led to huge bills left unpaid, which led to a loss of a home, which led, ultimately, to being homeless. In another disturbing twist on the six degrees of separation theory, this scenario I just described could be true for any one of us.

The alienation and frustrations of the middle class are no joke. As the costs of just maintaining a roof over one’s head continue to rise, and, in the light of the past weeks national financial crash of banks and investment companies, along with our government’s bailout at our future expense, we are held in suspense as our retirement accounts diminish right before our eyes. We cannot predict what the future holds for any of us.

A few days ago, I attended the annual Symposium on Hunger and Homelessness at a hotel just a few blocks from here. I attended the workshop offered by Donna Ecker, co-director of Bethany House, the Catholic Worker house of hospitality for women and children in Rochester. As I listened to Donna speak of the philosophy and mission of Bethany House and the services it has provided for over forty years, I realized once again that the basic need of each human being to have shelter and food and a safe place to rest, is the same the world over, despite the circumstances which caused one’s homelessness.

And meeting that basic need is what RAIHN is all about. But it is also about much more than that.

Because when you volunteer to take a shift at RAIHN, what you offer to our guests, who are temporarily homeless, is much more than a bed and a few meals. It is about offering a message of hope, that there are people who care in the world, and that you are one of them. It proves that there are still those whose faith and belief in the inherent worth and dignity and goodness of all, calls them into service with compassion.

And the learning does not stop there.

As a RAIHN volunteer, you have the opportunity to find out that you are important as a human being. That, just by being you, you can make a difference in another human being’s life. The guests who stay here, bring their children here, sleeping in this very building, offer you a unique opportunity to see in the face of the other, what it is that is truly important about life.

As a volunteer for RAIHN, you can begin to remember what it feels like to matter in the world. You begin to recall that you are important. That the gift of your personhood is all you are asked to be. All you are asked to be, whether in the world or here at First Universalist, as a seeker or as a member, is yourself. The only one who can be you, is you.

And that, my friends, is enough. You are enough.

It is said that the definition of home is that it is the place that, when you go there, they have to take you in.

Well, whether it is a religious home you seek, or a temporary home in which to rest your head for a night to be safe and warm from the elements, with your children sleeping soundly nearby, may it be here that we find one and the same.

I would like to share a poem I wrote a few years ago with you now, titled “Coming Into the Home Stretch Now”.

Coming into the home stretch now
It was no less than everything that it took to get you where you are this very moment.

Like an athlete in the Religious Olympics this time.
You have trained for this event your whole life.

The focus- everyday, for what has seemed like forever;
the hold- of the dreams, of the hopes, of the “I know I can do this”
the release- of family, of friends, of belongings, of home
the persistence, the showing up everyday, without wavering
- to come here.

To the event of your life. It is no less than that. No less than everything.

What did you think? Did you think that it would be easy?

For some of you it is like coming home. Finally, home.
For some of you, it is like entering a new home. Familiar, and beckoning.
For others, it remains less strange than it was one short week ago.
Your journey, all your journeys, have brought you to this place.

Now I say:
Let it be no less than everything that you bring here.
Let it be all that you have carried and sorted and held and released.
All the good-byes, the letting go, the falling away, the separating wheat from chaff.
The separating.

You belong here.
And isn’t that a relief to know?
Your whole life’s journeys have deposited you in this place now.
Here is my advice to you: let it be like this, exactly.
Like the naked athletes who stripped away all non-essentials to hasten their arrival at the finish:
Come.
Coming into.
Coming into the home. The home.
Coming into the home stretch.
Stretch.
Claim now the wreath of olive branches and let it circle your heart.
You. Spiritual athletes all. Come into the home stretch. Claim your prize.

May we continue to give thanks for the many ways in which we have already made it home.

BATTER……UP!!!

May it be so. Amen.

©This sermon was written by Reverend Sally Hamlin for the congregation of the First Universalist Church of Rochester, New York and was delivered on September 21, 2008. No part of this sermon may be copied without permission of the author.

The Rev. Sally Hamlin speaking.

In her book, Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith author Anne Lamott asks her friend and mentor Father Tom: “How are we going to get through this craziness?” She is referring to the challenging event they are facing. “Left foot, right foot, left foot, breathe,” he responds, a good answer for Lamott.

And it is a good answer for me, who, like Lamott, has the capacity to jump into despair and helplessness when pondering the slippery slope of the tragic condition of our world. The ever widening disparity between the rich and poor in our country, the continued wars we wage in Afghanistan and in Iraq, our decaying cities, and the everyday violence occurring in our schools, on our streets and even in our sanctuaries, takes its toll on me, puts me in danger of careening down the crevasse, a solitary and self-indulgent slide off the edge.

This past August, I was feeling unmoored, congregationally speaking. I had left my congregation in Duluth, and following our UU Ministers Association’s guidelines which, among other things, provides advice about ministers’ transitions, was no longer in contact with the congregants there. Thank goodness for friends, family and colleagues.

I was sitting in my daughter and son-in-law’s house, in the room they use as an office, checking emails, listening to the peeps and trills of their bright blue parakeet Popsicle as he tried to make sense of the hidden message of my keystrokes. I was awaiting news of the whereabouts of my missing household effects, which, as far as I knew, were on a truck somewhere between Minnesota and New York. Little did I know the boxes filled with all my worldly goods were not on any truck anywhere, but sitting on the floor of the moving company’s warehouse, unloaded there the same day they were picked up from my apartment. And, as I said, I was feeling a bit lost, between homes, between congregations, and more cognizant than ever, and in a new way, about how much I rely upon my work – which I love so much- and my UU community for grounding and meaning in my world. It is within this covenantal relationship we share that I find solace and renewal.

Just a few days earlier, I’d heard the horrible news of the events in our Knoxville Tennessee congregation. I had been alone in my car, traveling back to Buffalo, after three days in rural Vermont with no connection to the outside world. I turned on the radio and found the local NPR station and pulled off the road so I would not lose the tenuous signal as I moved in and out of the Green Mountains. I felt shock. Disbelief. How could this be? A shooting in a UU congregation? I could not hold back my tears. I was thinking of a particular person.

Just weeks earlier in June while at General Assembly in Fort Lauderdale, I met a new colleague, Reverend Mitra Jafarazadeh, minister at the Westside Knoxville congregation. Mitra’s congregation’s children, and I imagine, her own son and daughter, were among those participating in the Sunday service celebrating their production of the musical “Annie”.

In Florida, outside our hotel awaiting the convention center shuttle bus, Mitra shared with me her struggles in the mid-south to fight the overt and sometimes shady experiences of racism she and her family experienced in Tennessee on an all too regular basis. As I listened to this soft-spoken and elegant colleague describe her reality, I felt inspired and challenged to continue the difficult conversations we must engage in if we are serious about changing the status quo, serious about engaging our feet along with our hearts and minds, in true liberal religious fashion.

And now, in the news, I was hearing over and over the stories of shootings, the two deaths, congregants’ courage, and the outrage, all taking place in one of our congregations, a supposed refuge from horrors of the outside world. Our sanctuaries are supposed to be that: a refuge, a place of comfort and renewal. A beloved community, a supposed safe harbor, now hit and impacted by the same hatred we supposedly unite to fight against that exists outside our church walls, now had struck within.

And I began to think of those who were brave, who stood to protect the children and their friends from death, the two who died that day.

I wondered what else was in danger of disappearing, of dying, because of this man’s actions. I wondered: how many people will now stay away from church because they are afraid? Because we can now doubt in a new way, the illusion of safety that our congregations provide, what kind of new challenge will this present to us? What new bravery will the cowardly actions of one individual call into being?

Well, as it turns out, the story of this awful day is filled with other contradictions. The shooter was not a stranger to this congregation, nor a stranger to Unitarian Universalism. He was the former partner of a congregant. While the note found in his car said that he was angry with religious liberals and he felt he had liberals to blame for his employment difficulties, inside his home, according to the Bill Moyers’ Journal segment aired this past Friday night, books were found, written by radio ‘shock jocks’, filled with hate language aimed at religious liberals, people like us.

We have heard very little about what has happened to this man; obviously very disturbed as he was. Yet the effects of his actions still linger among us, and in other UU congregations. But after that day I began to wonder about what it means to be faithful, what faithfulness requires of us, what our faith asks of us. When we are feeling disenfranchised, disconnected from our communities of faith, when the world seems too overwhelming for us to find an adequate response, when we attempt to have some impact upon this mad world, how do we find our way back to belief, to faith, for support and sustenance?

What is our response when we, as Anne Lamott says “wake up some mornings pinned to the bed by centrifugal sadness and frustration”? Let’s be honest. We all succumb to these feelings once in a while. We are susceptible to our inner reptilian remnants which tell us to give up, to flee from the perceived danger, instead of engaging it. Activist writer Joanna Macy says that this despair for the world is part of a normal healthy response to all the sorrow and tragedy. And this can be of some comfort to us: we need not feel weak, but rather fully alive, with this response.

But, when, finally, we have had enough of retreat, we find a slight slender thread still strong enough to bear the weight of all we have encumbered, and we reach out to try again to make some sense of the madness that surrounds us. We find that tiny web-like strand, and hang on for dear life. We move forward tentatively, holding on, looking back only to remind us of what it was that we need not engage any longer, and turn instead in the other direction, back to what we know is true, what it is that calls to us from the depths of Knowledge. We feel the breath of God whisper in our ear, and we hear ‘do not lose faith; come back; come back’. Words come to us from far away, and we turn in the direction of our fellow pilgrims, and find our way to this, our congregation, to the beloved community of the faithful we call our religious home.

Theologian and religious scholar Richard R. Niebuhr names this connection to our religion “a kind of ligature by which we bind ourselves to divinity or that which bestows wholeness” and “by which we seek to bridge the distance that separates us from what is supreme in worth”. ¹

Is this connection to our religious home, our return to our particular religious values, where our questions and doubt are not only welcome, but expected, the same as having faith, being faithful? Is our responsive “yes!” to that distant call, what it means to be faithful in such difficult times? Or is it instead, a matter of belief, a matter of thinking through, logically, to a sensible conclusion, an answer to the question: “Where am I most likely to find what it is I need to navigate my way through the depth of such misery?”.

Buddhist meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg defines the difference between faith and belief in this way: “When we hold a belief too tightly, it is often because we are afraid. We become rigid, and chastise others for believing the wrong things without really listening to what they are saying. We become defensive and resist opening our minds to new ideas or perspectives. This doesn’t mean that all beliefs are accurate reflections of the truth, but it does mean that we have to look at what’s motivating our defensiveness. . . .

Salzberg continues: “With their assumptions of correctness, beliefs try to make a known out of the unknown. They make presumptions about what is yet to come, how it will be, what it will mean, and how it will affect us. Faith, on the other hand, doesn’t carve out reality according to our preconceptions and desires. It doesn’t decide how we are going to perceive something but rather, is the ability to move forward even without knowing. Faith, in contrast to belief, is not a definition of reality, not a received answer, but an active, open state that makes us willing to explore. While beliefs come to us from outside — from another person or tradition or heritage — faith comes from within, from our active participation in the process of discovery. Writer Alan Watts summed up the difference simply and pointedly as, ‘Belief clings, faith lets go.”²

To me, what Salzberg, a Buddhist, is describing, along with the essential Buddhist lesson about attachment, is how our own liberal religious tradition, Unitarian Universalism, a faith without creeds, provides a place for us to belong, to explore and share our beliefs and to turn them into action.

Liberal theologian and UU minister Paul Rasor names Unitarian Universalism, in his book of the same title, a Faith Without Certainty. Rasor invites us, instead, to consider the distinction between religion and theology. He describes religion as being “about the large scale world pictures that orient us in the universe and help give our lives meaning and purpose”. Alternatively, Theology, Rasor says, is “about examining these worldviews and the assumptions that go into them. It is about making our implicit patterns of orientation explicit, lifting them to the surface and examining them intentionally, honestly and critically. It is about reflecting on these patterns, trying to make sense of them by questioning, clarifying, and rearticulating them”.³

So, now, here is it, mid-September, and there is a lot at stake, a lot on the table. There is no time left for pondering, with our national elections only weeks away. And I am attempting, however poorly or well, to talk with you about the meaning of being a faithful community of seekers, holding onto one another in this crazy world. What is it that we hold out for one another that keeps us coming together, as individuals, struggling to make sense of the bad and awful things that happen in our lives? What does being faithful mean to us as a religious community which gathers week after week, singing our hope and our history through our hymns? We agree to consider our own and others’ failures only as testimony to our fallible and frail human condition. We attempt to name the evils of racism and hatred and power mongering in our world, and move with our feet and with our voice at the polls, to say ‘no’, we will not participate in their perpetuation.

Despite the inherent risks involved in such naming and claiming, it is clear to me that we need one another to stay faithful. We need to hear others’ sense of what is right, to feel the safe womb that a religious community can offer, to deepen and evolve in our understanding of how to live out our hope-filled vision of what is possible in the world. We need one another to ask our questions, to express our doubts, knowing both will be welcome here, that when we stumble, another will be there to correct us or to hold us, to inspire us, or to catch us.

I live with the absolute certainty that our collective journey can create the beloved city on the hill; that we will shine the beacon of light that beckons all into wholeness; that our voice which welcomes all to the table and the faithful called community will be heard far and wide.

May it be so. Amen.

©This sermon was written by Reverend Sally Hamlin for the congregation of the First Universalist Church of Rochester, New York and was delivered on September 14, 2008. No part of this sermon may be copied without permission of the author.