This week a note came to me from one of our former young adults, a woman who was here less than a year. She was in college. She was a seeker, and a finder. She had a heart and brain well suited to the progressive religious journey. She was open. She knew what she did not want. She was unclear about what the possibilities were, out in the world, around liberal religion, but she was determined to find out more. She read. She went to drumming circles and came to talk to me, with some regularity. She wanted to know: Is there a place where I might belong?

 

My old clothes don’t fit. She was saying. But I’ve not yet found the right combination for my closet. Help!

 

Who among us isn’t like that, on occasion? She found her place in Portland. She found her place in natural medicines, in liberal religion, in alternative community. She wrote to let me know that she is doing well, but still under pressure from those who say, I won’t love you til you become just like me. And that is a sad and lonely place to be, for her.

 

While she was in the Quad Cities, for that brief period, she found a refuge here, a sanctuary, a place of freedom and passion that enabled her to find something of peace, but not an empty peace, not a peace that comes from ignoring a problem, but rather a peace that is grounded in resolve and purpose.

 

May those of you who have found common ground with the principles and purposes of this cooperative, congregationally based church, find peace. And not just the peace that comes from ignoring difficulties, walking away when the trouble is too great, but the peace that comes from great resolve. I have a place here. I will listen. I will learn. I will win some and lose some. Here, I belong.

 

May you come to know the peace of belonging. Belonging.

 

Two weeks ago, I did a wedding out in Geneseo. This was a couple that called from the Twin Cities, a delightful young couple that had grown up in Geneseo, had known each other since 7th grade, and had moved through college, into graduate school, and had moved into a place of being deeply in love. They had discovered in the Twin Cities, the creative, powerful, liberating spirit of Unitarian Universalism and called me to find out if I would conduct their wedding. I gladly did so. And, they got married in a room in his family’s home that was the same room where his grandparents had been married in 1928. This was a place of great significance. So I went out to do the rehearsal, and there was a dinner of course. Many more came to the dinner than had come to the rehearsal. I was talking to a young couple—both were longtime friends of both the bride and the grooms, before dinner, during the cocktail hour. You know small talk. And then this young man’s eyes lit up as he saw his first boss—a local vet and farmer—whose son was another of the circle of friends of the bride and groom. This older gentleman came over and bear hugs, the whole thing, and proceeded to tell me stories about the groom, this young man, their friends, working on the farm, castrating pigs, rolling out of bed. The laughter of belonging, the laughter of being known, of no pretension, no false modesty or unnecessary arrogance. The laughter of being known. The beauty of belonging. 

May those of you who have found comon ground with the principles and purposes of this cooperative, congregationally based church, find belonging. The kind of belonging that challenges you when  you are complacent, that holds you when you are suffering, as we all will suffer, that affirms you, come what may. A kind of belonging that comes from depth.

Depth.

I have become quite a fan of web logs, especially those coming out of the Unitarian Universalist ministers born in the 60s and 70s, who have been first to blog about liberal religion. Now, the concept is spreading. The latest to blog is a Unitarian Universalist minister, Dr. Brent Smith, who serves our congregation in Grand Rapids Michigan. He identifies the purpose of his blog with these words.

This blog presents spiritual ideas and theological concepts and ruminations as derived from my experience within religious communities formed by covenants; and whose chief aim as communal agreements are to shape the individual’s spiritual life as a disciplined endeavor to walk in the ways of God as they are made known through freedom. These ideas, concepts, and ruminations are themselves the products of years of practicing my faith life within the Unitarian Universalist tradition through ministering to and with churches in that heritage. Unitarian Universalism is a faith tradition that combines two distinct but old and related faith traditions, Unitarianism and Universalism. Both of these traditions have their historical roots in Christianity, are non-creedal and non-doctrinal in nature, are “liberal” theologically; that is, are shaped by a long history of understanding God as the origin and aim of the liberty of the mind to think without doctrinal restrictions, and the liberty of the heart to mirror the generosity of God’s own affectional nature by extending a love to all souls. The mission of this blog is, like the aim and purpose of liberal religious faiths like Unitarian Universalism and the spiritual communities formed to manifest them, to liberate and cultivate the spirit.

I find these words to be a striking and compelling history of the liberal way in theology. So let me say this plainly, May those of you who have found common ground with the principles and purposes of this cooperative, congregationally based church, find depth. The kind of depth that invites you to go places in your spirit, in your understanding, in your action that you could have never imagined going, the end of which is a life of passion and purpose and meaning. Such a path leads to a choice to bless the world.

My colleague, Rev. Rob Hardies of the All Souls Church, Unitarian in Washington, DC, has written a little book called Choose to Bless the World, which is about the writings of Rebecca Parker, the president of our seminary in Berkeley, Star King School for the Ministry.

It goes like this:

Your gifts
whatever you discover them to be
can be used to bless or curse the world.
The mind's power,
The strength of the hands,
The reaches of the heart,
the gift of speaking, listening, imagining, seeing, waiting
Any of these can serve to feed the hungry,
bind up wounds,
welcome the stranger,
praise what is sacred,
do the work of justice
or offer love.
Any of these can draw down the prison door
hoard bread,
abandon the poor,
obscure what is holy,
comply with injustice
or withhold love.
You must answer this question:
What will you do with your gifts?
Choose to bless the world.

 

  

 

Be the song you sing!
Roger Butts
Unitarian Church
Davenport, IA
Since 1868, a voice for progressive religion.