September 09, 2007 Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley
Imagine yourself walking down the street. Someone speaks to you. What do they say? “Good morning,” perhaps, or “Nice day,” or “Hi, how are you doin’?” We expect all the usual greetings, and we respond almost automatically.
But what if someone said something unusual? What if they said, “Have you eaten rice today?”
“Have you eaten rice today?” You might think it’s an inquiry related to some new fad diet. It was the question Koreans began asking one another after the Korean War in 1953.
Before that, the usual greeting was, “Hello, did you sleep well last night?”
But, after three devastating years of war, the deaths of as many as four million people and the economies of both North and South Korea pulverized, “Have you eaten rice today?” was the essential question. In South Korea alone, five million people were homeless.∥
It makes me wonder, “What are the essential questions we ask one another today?”
Barbara, our daughter Sarah, and I, went to Korea this summer to visit our son Ben, who is there teaching English. Since our return I have been reading, trying to understand how these remarkable people have made such an amazing recovery in just over fifty years. Seoul is larger than any city in the United States. With over ten million people, it is the sixth largest city in the world, and by 1990 South Korea’s economy was the eleventh largest in the world.
Seoul is clean of litter. Its subway system can get you anywhere in the city for next to nothing. People are courteous. The parks are filled with people of all ages. Crime rates are low. We saw no homeless people. There is a sense of care for the community, civic pride, mutual respect, the call of the common.
Of course there are problems. Air pollution is one of them. But it is amazing that out of the devastation of war, in a few decades, the South Koreans rose to host the Summer Olympics in 1988, and now offer the United Nations its new Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
I am no expert on Korea, and apologize for any misrepresentations I may make. But I feel this trip has helped me to step outside our western culture, to see it from a new perspective. It has to do with walking mountain paths and coming across Shaman shrines and Buddhist temples. It has to do with a deep sense of history and community, and compassion.
For example, in Korea, we saw no evidence of the industry of retirement and nursing homes common here. I have great appreciation for those institutions that give compassionate and skilled attention to elders. But in Korea, the family continues to be the locus of senior inclusion, and care. The culture, the common, with its Confucian roots, calls family members to honor their elders. Many families have at least three generations living in the same house.
I want our country to be like that.
I want people to be housed and fed.
I want elders to be embraced by the young,
no one left alone, hurting on the streets.
I want civic pride, good schools,
public transportation available to all.
I want us to ask essential questions.
And I want what we do here, in this religious community, to help make it happen. This is our common call: to come here, to feed our spirits, that we may care for the body of our world with compassion. Our common calls us to the work, and the joy, of justice and love.
I cherish this intergenerational church community, where we have the gift of meeting and greeting and growing across the lifespan. I love it when I see elders and youngsters interacting with one another. It keeps those of us in our older years active and involved, and it gives those who are young models of intentional growth and inclusion.
There is an old joke: How many Unitarian Universalists does it take to change a light bulb? A dozen. One to change the bulb and the rest to make sure the power doesn’t go to his or her head.
I remember the first time I heard that joke — twenty years ago. I remember laughing, and then wondering why. The joke says a lot about the roots of our religious lives “in common,” in community.
Unitarian Universalists have changed a lot through the
centuries. In fact that’s one hallmark of who we are: people
who, especially theologically, embrace change. Our experience of
living is change.
Tree rings speak change.
Fossils speak change.
We change with each year, with each breath.
The distinguishing feature of American Unitarianism, in the early 1800s, was the move away from the authority of creeds to the authority of individual experience in matters of religious belief.
While the democratic locus of authority for church governance was still clearly in the voting hands of church members as a community, understandings and affirmations about the nature of reality were vested in the individual.
We call it freedom of conscience.
For a very long time, we have lived in this tension of celebrating the authority, or power, of the individual in matters of belief, and of the community, in matters of polity.
So, how many UUs does it take to change a light bulb? Well, now it’s probably more than a dozen. It may take all of us, for we are becoming “green” — and we are talking about what kind of light bulbs to use, and we are talking about solar panels to power our lights.
The interdependent web of existence, the common, calls us to new understandings of stewardship.
For ten years I worked for the Unitarian Universalist Association at our headquarters in Boston. 25 Beacon Street sits right next to the Massachusetts State House, atop Beacon Hill, across the street from Boston Common. During those years I walked, almost daily, through Boston Common. Historically, one use of The Common was for military training — the common defense. But earlier it was the sight of a graveyard, a place to honor those in the community who died.
And always, it has been a gathering place, whether it be for ice skating on the pond in winter, or for protest demonstrations any time of the year.
That place, that lovely park with tree-covered walkways, with benches, and squirrels and pigeons, with lovers walking hand-in-hand, and folks in need asking for help, is a gathering place of humanity.
The Common calls to us, reminding us that we are all connected, that we depend on one another more than we know.
The common calls us to a deeper, more intentional understanding and practice of relationship.
The common calls us to open our minds and hearts to the stranger.
This community, this Beacon on the Hill, is like that. There are so many people, and programs, and worship experiences that keep calling us to generosity of spirit, to grow in our flexibility, to honor our differences.
This morning as part of the new 10:00 Education Hour, you could have heard renowned teacher Huston Smith, share from his life experiences of the study and practice of world religions.
Or, you could have participated in discussion led by the Rev. Cathleen Cox-Burneo on “Walking Our Talk: Living our Vision,” drawing together Non-Violent Communication and Family Systems theory to develop skills in building trust and positive energy for exploring and resolving differences.
This common calls us to a journey of unfolding compassion, and gratitude. Here we are called to peace in our relations, within our households, our congregation: compassion and gratitude rippling out to our schools and work places and transforming the world.
At the beginning of this service, we issued a common call, as we spoke the Covenant of Right Relations this congregation adopted at the Annual Meeting in May.
I love to hear us say those words, to keep them alive, within our hearts, and in the actions of our lives. Over a two-year period, we reflected together on how our being with one another encourages or discourages healthy relationships, our sense of community, and personal growth.
We all know we don’t always do the best we can, being who we really want to be. Sometimes we disappoint ourselves and one another.
The covenant process was, and the covenant that resulted from it is, an invitation to spiritual growth.
We want to learn to listen more appreciatively,
to speak more carefully,
to express our gratitude for one another,
to honor our differences as gifts from which to grow, and
to enter relationships assuming our own and other’s good intentions.
We covenant to do these things because, when we do them, we are agents of justice and love, participants in transforming the world.
The common calls us to grow in our understanding of community, and to embrace opportunities to learn new skills of relationship.
This religious community invites us to a never-ending banquet where we practice, tasting the nourishing morsels of deeper appreciation. Practice may not make us perfect, but when we engage one another in these ways, we are enriched, and the aura, the atmosphere of the common, is transformed.
Our practice of intentional relationship has led to the creation of covenants among all the leadership groups in the church, and is the heart of our Chalice Circles small group ministry program.
Last church year, 130 people participated in Chalice Circles, meeting twice a month to practice the skills of deeper relationship and spiritual growth.You can sign up in the Atrium, following this service for new groups starting this month. The common is calling to you.
This week our call to community takes an historic leap. With sixteen other Unitarian Universalist congregations in the Bay Area, we are participating in a fall campaign to raise our visibility. So many people new to the church tell us they would have come long ago, but they had never heard of Unitarian Universalism. It’s time for that to change.
It’s time for us to come out of the closet, to let this beacon light on the hill shine. It’s time to welcome people into this community, inviting them to learn, as we do, the skills of justice and love.
Starting this week, there will be Unitarian Universalist announcements on KQED radio, on many of our favorite shows: All Things Considered, Morning and Weekend Edition, the News, and Prairie Home Companion. And, in coming weeks, through Cable TV, local newspapers, BART billboards, Internet ads and banners, specialty publications, and direct mailing of postcards, we will invite all who long for a religious home where people honor each other’s beliefs and worship together as one faith, to join us.
It is an exciting time.
The Korean greeting, following the devastation of their country, was a “common call,” one person reaching out to another with an essential question of survival. “Have you had rice today?”
We, too, want everyone to be fed: food for the body, food for the soul.
Did I hear someone ask:
“Have you found a way to nourish your deepest longings?”
Was that you asking: “How goes it with your spirit?”