Why Religion?

Beautiful day to all of you! You are glorious people. How glad I am that you are here.

How did you come to be here this morning?

One of us here this morning came in the arms of her parents
when she was less than seven days old.
Children have been born into this congregation,
but this girl’s very first Sunday ever was here.
She’s just over seven years old now, she’s here week after week,
and she has always known this place as home.

Some of us were Unitarian Universalists in other cities,
and when we moved here, we checked out this congregation
and chose it as our new community.

Some of us grew up in other faith traditions.
The professed beliefs were ones we, in good conscience, could no longer say;
sometimes we just drifted away.

Some of us are grateful for the faith tradition that shaped us,
and we want a religion that honors our tradition but includes more.

Some of us are couples from differing traditions,
and here’s a religion where we both feel whole.

Some of us grew up without any organized religion,
and though we aren’t sure how we define it, we feel spiritual.

When I was a child, my world was my home, my neighborhood,
my school and my family’s church — not Unitarian Universalist, but a very good place.

As a kid, I was always being asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”
Church seemed to be the place that dealt with the most important things
so my answer was a “minister,” but I didn’t dare say that out loud.

Every Sunday at my family’s church, the choir processed in singing,
followed by the minister of music, the minister of education,
the assistant minister, the associate minister, the minister emeritus,
and the senior minister, all men.

During my youth, I was a seeker.
A good friend and I visited the African Methodist Episcopal church,
the Catholics, Methodists, the Salvation Army, Quakers, and the Unitarian Universalists.

We learned that the minister of the Unitarian Universalist congregation had gone
to Selma, Alabama, to march with other religious leaders for civil rights,
that a Unitarian minister James Reeb had been killed on the streets of Selma.
Reeb’s death brought national attention to the peaceful, non-violent rallies
and the fearful, violent, racist reactions.

The entire Board of Trustees of the Unitarian Universalist Association
adjourned their meeting in Boston and reconvened on the streets of Selma.

We learned that the local UU congregation had been instrumental
in founding our community’s Planned Parenthood Association,
the local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union,
and was active in counseling conscientious objectors to the military draft.

I was a young lover of literature, and the readings in the service,
as well as the music - piano, harpsichord, violin, and cello, -
offered by the University’s music faculty and students, were sublime,
like in dreams when I lean forward and fly.

Life rolled on. I was off to college, graduated, married,
and then served as a Peace Corps volunteer.

This was a good time in my life. Falling in love and learning are when I feel most alive.
I think that’s true for a lot of people.

The Peace Corps and travel were broadening,
and I was excited to learn from the cultures, art, and religions of the world.

After the Peace Corps, I returned home, settled in as a high school English teacher,
a graduate student in literature, and began a family. These times were full and lively.
I was teaching mythology, Bible as literature, contemporary literature,
and American literature. I loved Emerson, Whitman, Thoreau, Dickinson,
and the whole transcendentalist movement that I knew grew out of Unitarianism.

I wanted a place for my children to have religious education
so I joined the Unitarian Universalist congregation.
I thought I was joining for my children. And I was…, but I found community,
a circle of parents who asked each other anything and everything;
workshops and classes that were engaging,
helping me shape my own answers to the big questions life asks of us all,
Who are you?
What should you do with your life?
How do you understand living and dying?
What is important?
How do you relate to others? How do you love?
How do you make a difference?

I found friends with whom I could have deep conversation on things that mattered,
and people who believed in me, encouraged my growth,
and gave me leadership opportunities.

I love churches because they have kitchens, social halls, classrooms and sanctuaries.
I love the kind of activities that happen in those rooms.

People affirmed the threads of truth I was discovering,
while reminding me not to mistake these threads of truth for the whole truth.

In 1980 my congregation sent me to a Unitarian Universalist Association
national conference on Women and Religion.
Beautiful, moving worship services were led by Unitarian Universalist ministers,
women ministers, talking of their experiences.
I got goose bumps when I first heard poet ntozake shange’s words,
“i found god in myself and i loved her; i loved her fiercely.”

After the conference, a small group of women at my church invited me
to share a meal and my stories of the conference.
The group kept meeting, reading and discussing theology, sharing meals,
creating rituals, marking the events of our lives.

My old passion for ministry was rekindled.

The truth is I wanted to be a minister to learn to be like my dad was naturally.
When Dad was a six-year-old boy, he came home from school and found his mother dead on the basement floor, accidentally electrocuted while doing the laundry.
Dad’s brother died young, his body found across the country, by a railroad track.
Dad was out on his own by sixteen.
At twenty-three he was in the army serving in England and France during WWII;
at thirty-five he was down to 89 pounds and close to death.
He knew pain and loss, still he seemed to live out of a deep joy.
He began the day, saying, “Beautiful Day, Great To Be Alive.”

So, I moved across the country for theological school in Berkeley.
I felt in love with life, fully engaged, and I learned from remarkable teachers,
Ron Cook, Bob Kimball, Gordon McKeeman,
who taught: trust yourself, be yourself, notice and speak up;
Religion is what beckons forth people’s hidden possibilities.

I was an intern minister at our congregation in Hayward,
supervised by a fine preacher, one of the country’s first openly gay ministers.

I graduated and went to serve a congregation in Salt Lake City.
The congregation welcomed and affirmed gay and lesbian people
and took bold, courageous stands in the larger community.

My first fall, the city’s only rabbi and I attended, the Salt Lake Ministers Association.
We were both forging new ground.
After the meal, the association’s president, tried to call the meeting to order,
“Gentlemen, gentlemen, may I have your attention please!”
The rabbi leaned over to me and whispered, “Barbara, you don’t have to listen.”

What a wild and wonderful ride it was to be in Utah,
a land rooted in patriarchy, serving as a woman in ministry!

Just within my time, I’ve seen Unitarian Universalists
be whole-hearted supporters of civil rights,
the first denomination to have numbers of women in ministry,
and to affirm and ordain gay and lesbian ministers.

Go back further and you find Unitarians and Universalists
asserting the humanity of Jesus, the beauty and wisdom of his teachings.

When other religions spoke of an elect few and eternal damnation for the rest,
our religious ancestors proclaimed universal salvation,
on-going revelation, truth ever unfolding,
and never the sole property of one group, in one place, in one time.

You find abolitionists and women’s rights activists,
shapers of mental health care, reproductive rights, and public education.

Unitarian Universalists are honest about not knowing what happens
when you die, but steadfast in striving to make heaven on earth,
all the while celebrating the mystery and wonder of the universe.

This is a community of heretics, and if you stick around,
you see other religions eventually follow where Unitarian Universalists lead.
Sometimes we can seem off by ourselves,
but more and more, we are reaching out and engaging in interfaith work.

Unitarian Universalists seem always to be forging new ground, on the edge, the forefront, leading toward hope and liberation.

How did you come to be here this morning?

Most of us first come here not knowing exactly what we are coming to.

Some of us come at times of transition-job loss, a health crisis, the ending of a relationship, death of a loved one, the arrival of children into our lives.

We come lonely and hurting, self-doubting and despairing.
Something in the service stirs something inside us.
We find solace. We find we are not alone.

When we first come here some of us sneak in late and out early.

Some of us sit for weeks in the back row crying.

Our spirits are lifted, comforted, nurtured.

Some of us come feeling our lives are missing something,
and what itches in our souls gets scratched.

We come weary, from busy, fast-paced, stressed lives,
that seem like they can’t hold one more thing,
then being here is like taking a deep breath.

We pause, see our lives from a bigger perspective.
We remember there is more to life than work,
than the bottom line, than money and status.

We find encouragement for living our values at work, at home, in our relationships.

Some of us come wanting community. We find depth of sharing, fun and friends.

For many of us, most of our lives are spent in age-segregated activities,
and this is almost the only time we experience intergenerational community.

For many, this is the only time we join with others to sing.

Here we laugh and cry and are reminded of the kind of people we want to be.

How did you come to be here this morning?

Most of us come hoping there is a religion that finds science and religion compatible,
reveres knowledge and ethics as necessary for a moral life.
and says what we know to be true that the religious impulse is broad and deep
and can’t be confined to one set of ideas only.

We want deeds over creeds, respect over sectarianism,
a religion that honors the body and the spirit, the mind and the heart.
We believe together we can make a difference;
our lives matter,
A decent and just society with compassion, dignity, and goodness
is a dream we keep alive.

No one individual could be involved in all the activities
in which people here are engaged in the larger community,
activities that support justice and peace, enhance our culture and society.

By supporting one another, we are supporting all the good that ripples out from here.

We come feeling despair of the news of the world, and we find small things we can do,
a sphere of influence where we can do good, multiplied in and multiplied by community,
incrementally changing lives, increasing the odds on love and justice,
doing what we can to protect our precious world.

Who are we?
We are transgender women, a boy with five moms, a first time dad,
a blended family.
We are a couple with two children, none of us four genetically related.
We are single, partnered, pregnant with our first child.
We are unemployed and underemployed.
We are retired. We have thirty years on the job.
We are in our first full time job.
We are students, teachers, a primary care giver, a young mother in chemotherapy.
We are back-row altos who love sharing playful jokes with the choir.
We volunteer in the schools, at the soup kitchen, at the jail.
We are a physician at the county clinic, a trauma response social worker,
a construction worker, an artist, an investment banker, a dancer.
We are seven, seventeen, thirty-seven, fifty-seven, seventy and ninety-seven
and ready to claim ourselves as leaders.

We celebrate what we hold most dear-
the blue sky, the sunshine, the fog rolling in,
the tall grasses waving in the breeze,
the beating of our hearts, friendship,
the joy of learning, of giving, of feeling alive,
the life-giving sweetness of being listened to as we speak of things that matter.

We came not sure of what we were coming to,
and we find a human-less-than-perfect-very good place.

It’s not always easy,
but we practice our core values as together we make community.

In a moment of silence or in note in music or in a word embodied in dance,
we feel more whole, more fully human, more truly ourselves.

Tears come to eyes for our pain.
Our joys are shared.
Hands extend to greet and welcome us.

What helps you keep your balance?

What supports you in your anguish?

What gives meaning and beauty to your life?

What calls you to be born again and again and again?

What asks you to speak your truth to power, to act for justice?

What invites you to fall in love again with life, and believe in life before death?

What celebrates the mystery beyond our comprehension?

What lets you see yourself as an infinitesimal but wondrous part of all that is?

Why, religion!

We are a seven-year-old girl who has always known this place as home.
When you see her prance merrily through the doors, you can tell she feels at home here.
You can tell she feels known and cheered
and that she feels this congregation likes watching her grow and blossom.

She and other kids from her neighborhood dance class
had a chance to sing and dance this summer at Disneyland!
Her mother tells me that she tap danced with the brightest smile, never leaving her face-
amazed to be where she was, getting to do what she was doing!

She has a congregation telling her
she’s brilliant and beautiful and perfectly extraordinary.

I want for you to have what she has.
I want everyone to have what she has.
I want the world to have what she has.

May it be so. Blessed be and Amen!

No matter the heartbreak or the hardship,
Beautiful day, dear people, great to be alive!

May you know solace.
May your spirits be lifted, comforted, nurtured.
May what itches in your soul get scratched.
May you be reminded of the person you want to be.
May you feel alive with learning, with giving,
with turning the world around.
May you be amazed to be where you are,
doing what you’re doing.

May the beauty you love, be what you do
and you don’t have to do it alone.  ♦