On new members Sunday, it seems right and proper to pause to reflect on the accident of life, fate, or mystery that has brought 21 people in through the doors of First Church, and the confluence of elements that caused them to stay—to make a commitment to join their lives with ours and become “us” together—to pledge to walk together in all our ways—at least for the time being.
I cannot explain this mystery. I will not even attempt it, other than to say I think it has something to do with ecology.
But first, I want to pause and lift up a prayer of gratitude for the institutionalists who made this moment possible.
Institutionalists are the people who like to build things—with brick and mortar--and who like to sustain them with hard work and money. These are people who look at blueprints and serve on committees and send checks even if they haven’t been to a Sunday service in years.
There are also the institutionalists who like Roberts Rules of Order and subparagraphs and have been know to say heretofore. These are people who will participate in plenary sessions at General Assembly, and organize themselves to hold annual meetings and sift through budgets and refine by-laws.
I want to raise thanks and praise for the women and men who do what I have oft regarded as the tedious, dry, dotting the I’s and crossing the T’s kind of work. If not for their interest and care of matters like history and precedent and order, it is highly unlikely we could be here together today.
In the same hymn of praise, I want to acknowledge that the people who do this work –this work that is hard for me to understand much less do—might actually love this mucking around in the details. Yup. There are people who draw deep satisfaction from making the numbers all line up and balance out at the bottom of the page.
There are people who lose themselves in sifting through annals of meeting minutes to reveal the source of practice and policy. There are those for whom time disappears while they write and edit and hone the precise words that will capture the intention of the whole and wrap it all up into a document that may guide our work for years to come. (Thank you!)
Let us lift up our hearts in thanksgiving for these people—who do what would not otherwise be done—because they have been called to do the work of maintaining institutions!
I have, over the years, become something of a fan of institutionalists. I find that I am, more and more, called to celebrate the life and work of institutions.
This is a strange confession for someone who once prided herself as an outside agitator. For someone who is fundamentally an entrepreneur—someone who likes to imagine new ways and means for accomplishing transformation—morphing into an institutionalist is like learning a new dance step: interesting, useful, maybe even fun eventually, but not natural.
The longer I walk on the path of community, though, the more I find I am willing to lay down my heavy claims to the singular importance of individualism and radical innovation. More and more, I discover the worth of balancing an individualist orientation with the values of community and continuity.
This does not mean I have abandoned my appreciation for innovation and individualism. Not at all. Being an institutionalist does not mean I now believe that the good old ways are the only good ways. Far from it. But as a practitioner within one, I certainly have a deeper appreciation for institutions than I once did.
I was resting on Monhegan Island one late summer afternoon, when I met four vacationers fresh from the mainland. A little unnerved by the quiet and apparent lack of activities, they struck up a conversation. After finding out what I do with my days when I’m not on an island—the two couples shared a story of their experiment in community they had initiated some years ago.
Their children were coming of age and the parents wanted them to undergo the rites of passage proscribed by their religious institution. Though they loved much about the community they were in, there were some elements that really got under their skin. So, they talked with a group of like-minded parents and decided to leave that community and form an independent community for the purpose of holding rites of passage ceremonies for their children.
Over a few years, the new community “graduated” about a dozen teens into the ranks of young adulthood. They met and shared meals and fellowship, rituals and holidays. But as the young people moved on to college, the parents found themselves drifting off into other interests and activities, too. Eventually, the initiating couples grew tired of organizing everything, and when no one stepped in to take over, the small community unraveled and was no more.
Now, about 10 years later, one of the two couples has returned to their original religious community. What they told me was they wished they had spent their time and energy making that community the vibrant, progressive spiritual community they longed for and need now—rather than leaving to create something new, private and, well, individualistic. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Still, they were grateful they had someplace to return to when they could not sustain themselves alone.
I’ll tell you another story. It has to do with how it is that I am here today.
When I applied to Divinity School, I was unclear whether I wanted to be an ordained anything. I considered myself a Unitarian Universalist, having found a spiritual home just before the turn of the century…1999….right here at what was then called First and Second Church
My intention in pursuing a masters degree was to study the beliefs and practices surrounding dying and death in different religions and cultures. My quest was to become a spiritual midwife to the dying. I feel that, like childbirth before the birthing movement of the 1970s, dying has become the province of medical technology. My call is to someday help reclaim the sacredness of dying in our technological culture.
As a requirement of my degree, I spent two years interning: putting my theoretical knowledge to work in practice, first as a chaplain at Dana Farber Cancer Institute, and then in a parish setting. At the end of my time as a chaplain intern, I was considering being ordained as a practical solution for how to identify myself in the world. If I were a minister, I felt, people could better understand my role in the complex system of care to someone who is dying. I wanted it to be evident that I, a minister, was there to offer spiritual care, not to administer physical care.
I understand my ministry today as one that is unfolding within a theology of witness, hope and love. The nature of a call—of vocation—is that it evolves, it changes with experience and context. I first identified my call at a hospital bedside and, later, at a Christmas Eve service in a New England church.
I recall the latter episode this way:
While strains of Silent Night rose in the dark sanctuary, the flame of candlelight was passed from person to person. It was so elementally beautiful that my eyes welled with tears. From my seat up on the chancel, I looked out onto the congregation. It seemed that each glowing face was framed with a radiant halo.
Of course, it was the effect from the moving flames refracting through my tears—the way a streetlight looks on a misty night. But I knew I was seeing something as real and true: The visible saints were standing in the river of history that was winding through the sanctuary. It was as if cords of light were weaving in and out, between and among the congregants, binding them together into community, into a church.
In a heartbeat, I understood something I could not grasp before that moment: that a minister does not serve only individuals in crisis or celebration. She is present for an entire body that is “The Church.” When individuals choose or are somehow impelled to come together and form community, a minister stands ready to bear witness to the experiences, the fears, joys, dreams and doubts of that community.
So, I am gradually becoming an institutionalist.
I am becoming an institutionalist out of gratitude. I am grateful that First Church stands here, 377 years since it was first gathered, a sanctuary waiting to welcome you-- individuals who comes when you are called, when you are ready or have chosen to return after a time away. I am grateful that First Church was here for me—as a member in search of a spiritual home, and later as a minister prepared to bear witness to the lives of individuals and to the life of a church.
We are here now, today, and with our love and devotion, this church will be here for years to come—an institution radiant with the diversity necessary to be a strong and sustainable system.
As a church, we are gathering still to cultivate friendship, freedom and love. We nourish understanding, compassion, patience and strength for our personal lives and our lives in the wider community. We rehearse our highest responses to suffering and to happiness, to death and to life in this sanctuary, and then carry that ministry out into the world. Here is where we practice attentive listening to the scripture of life, and this practice forms us and calls us to ourselves—to know ourselves, to be ourselves, and to be of service.
It is not only what happens in church that calls us, of course. We can sense the soft murmuring of life whispering to us in many places and on varied occasions, from the harrowing to the beautiful. Something whispers to us, or shouts out loud, asking the question Mary Oliver lays before us in her poem, The Summer Day: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
Knowing what we will do flows from our ability to know who we are and whose we are. In the mix of community life, we have a wondrous opportunity. It is the opportunity that the newest members were offered today. It is an opportunity that extends to everyone who graces this church: “to know and be known, to minister and be ministered unto, to love and be loved in this congregation.”
And this is where a little bit of ecology comes in. You who know who you are and what calls to you: You are individual. You are unique. Joining in community, you bring your uniqueness, adding to the diversity of ideas and gifts and theologies of this community. Diversity is the cornerstone of a sustainable ecosystem. Diversity and respect for diversity is the foundation for building a human ecosystem of relationships that are stronger together than they are alone.
So welcome entrepreneurs and institutionalists; visionaries and historians; nurturers and analysts; pilgrims and guides. This is your house of belonging. Thank you for choosing to come together, to weave your lives into community, to bind yourselves with cords of light and history and faith and friendship. We are so glad that you are here, strengthening this institution.
Over the past two months, various members have come up to this microphone to share with you why they are members of this church, and why they support this community with their gifts. They have said some very nice things about me and why they support calling an associate minister (and I thank you all).
What you haven’t heard (and is important to hear because this is a mutual process--it’s not just about your choosing me; it’s also about my choosing you; it’s about our saying “Yes!” to one another) is whether and why I will choose to serve if I am called.
The “why”? Because, in the two and a half years I have been here, you have implicitly extended the same invitation I offered to our new members—and to each of you--today. You have afforded me the privilege “to know and be known, to minister and be ministered unto, to love and be loved in this congregation.”
Even though I did not know clearly it was what I wanted for myself, First Church opened its doors and hearts and eyes to me. You welcomed me, pretty much a stranger. You trusted me to pray with you, preach for you, and bear witness to your lives.
And because you have recognized me, seen in me a minister who can be with you, walk with you, and hope with you, you have, without ever voting, called me deeper and deeper out of myself and into my life. You have called me to live into my ministry, as a witness to hope, here among you and for you and for the wider community we all are called to serve.
And so I will serve, I will continue to say “Yes” if I am called.
Now, tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
