A Yes that Allows Each to Be

We celebrated the life of Sandy Pastermack here on Friday afternoon.
Sandy was one of the playful back row altos in our choir, chair of the Music Committee
and had served as secretary of the Board of Trustees.
Sandy was full of life and sparkle.
No one was prepared for her sudden death
that came in the midst of a week
where every night she had scheduled rehearsals and performances.
At her memorial service her beloved fellow choir members
sang from the Brahms Requiem, How Lovely is Thy Dwelling Place.
Today our choir is singing at the Oakland Unitarian Universalist congregation, but Friday they were filling this room with music.

How Lovely Is Thy Dwelling Place, based on Psalm 84, sings of the beauty of the temple.
I could feel the music and Sandy and this community
taking up residence in my heart.

The psalm sings of the human longing for home.
Sandy Pastermack made a home here.
She loved the choir and wanted them
to have opportunities to know each other more deeply.
She led a Chalice Circle for the choir.
Chalice Circles are small groups where people listen to each other
speak of things that matter.

A member of Sandy’s choir chalice circle says at the close of each meeting as the group all would blow out their chalice,
the pages and orders of service would almost fly off the little table,
and they would laugh about the powerful wind
that a bunch of singers can create!
No one ever seemed quite ready to leave.
They would stay around and chat, make sure everyone would get a hug,
and follow each other out to their cars, still unwilling to part
after the very moving sharing that always passed between them.

This deep sharing is what I think Jewish teacher Martin Buber means
when he says “our heavenly bread of self-being is passed from one person to another.”
Our spiritual hunger is fed.
We come home to ourselves in community.
Whoever you are, there are many ways for you
to get to know people and to be known,
to find and make a home here. Just ask.

This spring I have been leading Family Gatherings,
a kind of chalice circle for children and adults.
One Sunday I randomly asked people to try out a program
we are considering offering next year.
Earlier this morning the group had our seventh of eight gatherings.

At the first meeting each person was invited to bring a drawing of their family,
including, if wanted, pets, extended family, friends who are like family.
Next to each family member they could draw or describe the members
and something they love about each one.

At that first gathering when I looked around, I saw one family and thought,
“Oh, my gosh, they are the only (so-called) ‘traditional’ family.”
You know a mother and a father with their biological child.

When that family took their turn showing their drawings,
the daughter spoke, her face shining.
“I like my dad for wanting to adopt me into his family.”
So, not so traditional. What is traditional anyway?

Around the circle were all kinds of families, including step, blended, extended, chosen, adopted, two moms, two dads, single parent, and a single person household.

As we shared our drawings, we saw all our beautiful variety.

Each of us has our own unique story, our particularities.
It is traditional to say that we should love our neighbors as ourselves.
It is traditional for people to get to know their neighbors at a deeper level,
and to be known and valued by their community.

In the words of Martin Buber, we are regarding the other for who the other is.
We are aware of our differences. We affirm each particular person.
And we see how human we all are and how much we have in common.

At that first gathering the drawings of families were amazing!
Some were stick figures, some abstract
with colors representing particular family members.

What a joy to watch everybody as they heard what family members love about them.
Kids were beaming while their parents talked.
People were feeling better about themselves, more appreciated, and more loving.

The youngest in our families group is three years old and the oldest has grown children.

If I were to form this group again and be intentional,
I’d be sure to invite people in their 80s and 90s.
So many families have miles and miles between the generations.
Children, parents, grandparents can be in three different parts of the country.
We need one another to be more whole.

This congregation can be one place in your life that is not age segregated,
where you can make intergenerational friendships.
How fine it would be to have all ages reach out
to ask one another’s stories, fears and hopes.
How lovely to notice a 5 year old greeting a 95 year old!

This congregation’s Coming of Age program pairs a youth with a mentor,
an adult member of the congregation,
who becomes a companion and guide throughout the year.
This weekend the youth went on a wilderness trip.
Each of the mentors created a staff or walking stick for the youth. 
After time alone, the youth returned to a circle of elders,
who listened to the youth and reflected with them.

Before the trip, some of kids were apprehensive about going,
but one mentor tells of witnessing
a blossoming and a growing confidence within the kids. 
All the youth are writing their own faith statements.
This mentor said that last week the girl she is partnered with
had just a few ideas on some note cards.
But yesterday the girl shared with her a beautifully written piece
about her beliefs. The mentor was in awe.
She says all the youth are as much teachers to the mentors,
as the mentors are to the youth. 

It pleases me that sparkling moments between and among people happen
in this community way more than any one of us knows.
These connections are central to all that’s happening.

Families are finding their lives are more by connecting with single people and vice versa.
People with grown children are having fun with families with toddlers.
Adults and teens are learning from one another.

We become fully human in relationship.

But Americans are lonelier than ever.
Unitarian Universalist minister Peter Morales speaks of the studies that have asked
“To how many people are you close enough to confide personal information?”
In 1985 people said three people.
Through the years the number has dropped.
People said one person and the person was usually their life partner.
In the 2004 study, more people said they had no one. Not one.

Many people feel isolated.
There’s no one they can call on for a ride
to the airport or a doctor’s appointment.
There’s no one with whom they can let down and cry.

Is there someone with whom you are vulnerable?
Who do you let know you don’t have it all together?
Can you share your doubts and fear?
Can you share your joys and achievements?

Each week at the family gatherings we have time for sharing joys and sorrows.
Together we’ve named frustrations and challenges, celebrated braces, retainers, new pets, upcoming moves, beginning violin lessons, completed school projects, new jobs, trips, birthdays, joining the church, joining the youth and children’s choir, sleepovers, losses.

What we share is creative, holy interchange.
We learn from one another and grow.

In the family gatherings, people hear things other families do
that they want to try.
One person writes in a journal most nights before going to bed.
She keeps a gratitude list naming what she was grateful for during the day.

Another family on Sunday night has Weekend Wrap-up
when they share the highlights of Saturday and Sunday.

One family has Cranky Days.
Any family member can declare any day — Cranky Day.
When someone becomes cranky, the others give a look
and the cranky one gives the family hugs.

We hear each other and creative power
for how we want to live our own lives is released.

People are teaching each other crafts,
are the back-up for one another on picking up kids from school,
invite each other over for meals.
People are glad to see each other on Sundays.
Real relationships are being made.

We humans are relational beings. We long to belong.

We need community like we need food and shelter.
Without community, our souls dry up.

When we worship and sing together, share our joys and sorrows,
and listen to each other’s stories, our souls come alive.

When human beings reach out to one another, we come into our being.

What we are doing here is becoming present-
present to yourself
as you are present to others
as you are present to life itself.

This is religion. All of us are getting religion.

This mutual respect is what Martin Buber calls the Yes
which allows each to be.
It’s what one human being has to offer another.
This is real relationship, a living partnership, a genuine meeting.

It doesn’t mean we won’t disagree or hurt each other’s feelings.
Disagreeing, hurting each other’s feelings, messing up are all part of being human.

After Sandy Pastermack’s memorial service,
a woman told me about a time she confided in Sandy.
She told Sandy how really irritated she was
with another member of the community.
The woman says her own anger was over the top.

She asked Sandy, “What is going on? I totally don’t get it.”

Sandy responded, “I have no idea what’s going on.
I totally don’t get it either…but I let it go. It will work itself out.”

Sandy’s response was for the other woman like a sigh of relief,
like taking a deep breath and letting it go.

We go on, accepting one another with our goodness and our flaws.

We even become the face of love for one another.

I know a family in this congregation who is going through hard times.
The father is ill, in and out of the hospital, the mother works,
and they have two children. She says to me that yes, it’s hard,
but she’s more aware of the care that has always been there,
but is now so apparent.
Every day someone is dropping by a casserole or some flowers
or a card arrives in the mail.
She says she knows now these loving connections have always been sustaining them.

Why does all this matter?

Kids are growing up in this culture of respectful sharing.

What if more and more kids in the East Bay were?
Would there be fewer shootings?
Would there be less depression and loneliness?

Can you imagine the difference it makes as you move through the world
with deep self respect and respect for others and respect for life itself?

Can you imagine the sanity and health that brings to the workplace,
the marketplace, the halls of government, the schools, the streets?

How life-giving it would be for people to really know each other
beyond categories of young and old, single and partnered,
gay and straight, strangers and friends…

How life-saving for more and more of us to befriend our self
as we befriend others as we befriend life.

Aristotle said that among friends there is no need for justice.
Being friends means respecting one another, being decent and kind and fair, not taking advantage, making amends, not holding grudges, not causing hurt intentionally.

There would be no need for justice because real friendship, real regard
not only lessens the odds on injustice,
it increases the odds on love.

In the 1800s a great prophet of religious liberalism,
William Ellery Channing declared, “Religion was given to bind together, refine,
soften human hearts. Its great ministry is that of love.”

This is our religious task. Increase the odds on love.  ♦