A DAY IN THE LIFE
A Reflection on Supporting Community

A Homily by James Ishmael Ford
29 February 2004

Today features my major part in our annual canvas kick off. Over the next month we will all be contacted and asked to generously support the life and work of our Society. My task today is to soften you up a little, remind you what we are about, and hopefully make it a tiny bit easer to maybe pledge a little more than you were thinking you otherwise would.

So, maybe I need to start off with a joke. Put you off your guard a little, so you’ll be ready for the pitch. My friend and colleague Stephanie Nichols tells about how one day a carnival rolled into town. What was unique about it was how there was a booth that featured a platform that had a table with only three items on it: a single lemon together with two empty glasses.

A barker stepped onto the platform and started calling for people to gather round. Soon a crowd pushed together in front of the platform when a really big and burly guy who had been standing in the wings, came out, picked up the lemon and squeezed its contents into the first glass. When the lemon was completely squeezed, the glass was almost full.

Then the barker launched into his pitch. “Step right up!” he called. “If you can squeeze just one more drop out of this lemon, the prize money is yours. A hundred dollars! And it costs only a buck a chance. Who’s brave enough to give it a try?

Several people in the crowd did give it a try, but the burly guy was really strong and that lemon was dry. Finally, after the barker had collected fifteen or twenty bucks, a woman stepped up to him holding a dollar in her hand. She didn’t look particularly strong, but nonetheless picked up that lemon and began to squeeze. She strained and sweated, and truthfully, it looked hopeless, when all of a sudden, out came a single drop.

“Ooh,” gasped the crowd. But she didn’t stop there; she kept on squeezing and before long she’d filled the entire second glass. The crowd roared its approval as the woman collected her cash prize. As he handed over the money the barker said, “That was amazing. How did you do it?” And Judy said, “That’s nothing. I chair the finance committee at FUSN.”

Another friend and colleague David Boyer gave me what must be a true story. And let me tell you I’m pleased as punch that there is a true story that goes to the heart of why we should be generously supporting our annual canvas. It begins with an active member of a church somewhere, who wrote to Horace Greeley, of “Go west, young man” fame. If you don’t know he was described as “the most perfect Yankee the country has ever produced.” Greeley was also maybe the most famous journalist of his time. And, by the bye, he was a Universalist.

Anyway, the writer noted her church was in terrible financial straits. They’d tried and I quote, “fairs, strawberry festivals, oyster suppers, box socials, mock weddings (I wonder what in the world those might be and fear mentioning this might put ideas in Judy’s head), grab-bags and lawn fetes.” She then asked, “Would Mr. Greeley be so good as to suggest some new device to keep (this) struggling church from disbanding?” to which he replied, with as David suggested in a note to me, the shortest canvas sermon ever. “Try religion.”

Try religion. This is a point we need to recall. And it opens another point I want to make along the way of encouraging your support of the annual canvas. There is a world of hurt out there. People are suffering in so many ways. There is cruelty, abuse, want, terrible terrible things all around us. And more than anything, people need hope. We need beacons in the night to guide us home. We need a compass to guide us on our way. We need a true North Star.

Try religion. I’m so grateful to report our way provides that. Our broad and wonderful Unitarian Universalism offers a beacon, is a compass, points to that true North Star. What we have here is a path that has intuited two things. The individual is precious beyond calculation. And each of us, precious and unique, is woven out of the stuff of the world. We are one and we are many, and within the dynamic of that simple truth, we find a binocular vision, two eyes that together see the world as it truly is.

Try religion. This insight into the reality that we are, each of us precious and never to be repeated, but all related to each other in the most fundamental way, is a compass in our hearts. When this insight about how we are all related is combined with the way of free religion, calling us to a broad tolerance of differences and to a discipline that embraces reason as an authentic spiritual practice, well that’s a world beater. What people find when they come into a Unitarian Universalist community is confusing and compelling in equal parts. The degree of freedom we call ourselves to astonishes people. We trust ourselves and each other. We dive deep into the matter of the world. And we manifest authentic spiritual lives. We do try religion.

I think I can happily report, we’re doing a pretty good job here at trying religion. Perhaps it would in fact be better said, we’re doing religion. Ours is a faith in human possibility, our path of salve, of healing, is one of education, of learning what we are and then manifesting. We talk about that a lot, both here in the sanctuary and in our life-span religious education programming.

It may not always be pretty, but it is beautiful. I mean just look at the glorious mess of today’s worship service, where collections of diapers crowd up with candles of remembrance, where there’s a pick-up choir session, and now a sermon dedicated to kicking off a pledge drive for the Society, which is going to be followed by a collection supporting our continuing education of forty AIDS orphans in Zambia, and all this followed by a pot luck party (now don’t worry if you didn’t bring anything this time, there’s always room for another at our table) and for those who want to focus a bit more on the work, at the same time we’ll have a forum on AIDS in Africa. A pretty typical FUSN Sunday, don’t you think? And it is beautiful.

At the same time just thinking about all this makes me want to lie down for a few minutes. And if we add in any of the two dozen other things going on pretty much at the same time at any given moment in this congregation, we’ll all need to take a nap. We are about religion, big time. We’re constantly taking up the work of the good, of the beautiful. Small things and great all find a place in this sanctuary, among this people.

And what we do, what we do. These last three weeks I’ve conducted three memorial services. Most of us are aware of the first, for a person who was a member here for four years, and before that for fifty years at our sister congregation in Evanston. But I also conducted a memorial service for the father of a couple who’ve only been attending here for a few months. And most recently this past week for a woman who had been a member here thirty years before.

Your letting me serve as minister here meant I was able to provide this essential service to three families, helping to ease the pain just a little, to bring some personal experience and a modicum of skill to this most important moment in a family’s life. I was very much aware of how honored I was to be able to serve at these events. And, perhaps because of the season, I found I was also very very much aware that I was able to do this because of our community.

You. We. We are about the work of the good and beautiful, and in doing that, I want to remind you, we really are about the work of the holy. We’re in fact about nothing less than the reclamation of the world, about the saving power of the small, about how each action if it is done with a whole heart and full attention, is in fact the secret of saving the world. We are about religion.

And you thought you were just coming to the Society so your kids might get into a good religious education program. Well, it’s that, of course. And it’s about us, you and me, coming together and discovering in a hundred ways, most quite small, that our lives do not end at the farther edge of our skin, or even at the father edge of our individual senses. We truly, truly, are bound up with one another within a mysterious web, and our coming to this place and participating in its various projects and tasks and classes and other opportunities is about how we find our true place in the world.

And, so on to the pitch. Judy and Faith and the Board all are faithful stewards of our money. Noreen and Anne and Wendy try hard to be faithful stewards of our time. Fran and Laurel are faithful stewards of our resources. They are busy squeezing the lemon, making sure to use every last drop to good effect. And still the need continues. Just keeping even requires some more, time and money. And, frankly, we want to expand our work.

So, in the midst of all that we’re doing, of collecting for others, and doing the good work, from what our seventh graders and COA kids are doing for Sandra’s Lodge, to the magnificent work our youth are doing for those kids in Zambia, and don’t forget in a minute we’re going to be asking for money for that; in the midst of all this, we’re asking you to stop and think about the financial support of this institution.

We know about the widow’s mite. Truly people give as best they can, and some of the most generous gifts of both time and money come from those with the least. For that, thank you! Thank you so much. And there is a pretty large crowd among us who could be doing a little better. You’re going to get some materials that will help you sort things out. Please read it all. And when you’re given the opportunity to support this Society with a financial pledge, please respond in the same spirit as you respond to the needs of the world beyond.

This place provides a loadstone, a compass, a pointing to True North. This is the home of the good. And it deserves our support.

Thank you.

And, amen.