BUILDING A LAND Reflecting on a Unitarian Universalist Life
James Ishmael Ford
6 June 2004

We’ll build a land where we bind up the broken.
We’ll build a land where the captives go free,
Where the oil of gladness dissolves all mourning.
Oh, we’ll build a promised land that can be.

Today I want to talk about how important our liberal faith is. I want to discuss the healing of hurt. I want to suggest a vision for the world as well as for the individual. I want to suggest ways into this vision, to this healing. In part I mean to celebrate us and our way. But also, I hope to call us to something, to recollect the deep currents of our tradition, and to remind us that for it to mean anything beyond a dream, we must act. Our way demands engagement of heart and head, and putting our hands to work.

Now our way is sometimes hard to put a finger on. Fortunately, I stumbled upon an old joke that might help us to find our way in. While they were driving home from the Society, Alice asked her daughter Fredericka what she learned during Sunday’s Religious Education program. The child replied “We learned about how Moses led his people out of slavery in Egypt.” “My,” Alice replied. That’s interesting.” And as an attentive parent she added, “Tell me the story.”

So Fredericka explained that as Moses led his people away, the Pharaoh took his army and chased after them. Then they got to this big sea which blocked their way, so Moses had his engineers build a really big pontoon bridge. Then as soon as his people got to the other side and Pharaoh’s army was on the bridge, Moses ordered his helicopter gun ships to fly over and bomb the bridge, blowing up the enemy army who all drowned, while Moses and his people escaped.

Alice was horrified. “That’s what they taught you in class?” she choked out. “Well, no,” Fredericka replied. “But you’d never believe what they really said.”

There’s a lot in that little joke. It speaks to several issues surrounding our living faith. These include reason and confidence in the individual. While not all that we’re about, those two things, reason and cherishing the individual are so central and at the same time that centrality is so unusual in a faith community that people often don’t understand how we actually are a community of faith.

Those who like to follow such things have noted the recent flapdoodle in Texas where last year the comptroller of public accounts ruled a forming UU congregation wasn’t eligible for exemption from taxes, saying the congregation “does not have one system of belief” and therefore is not a religion This arises from the common misunderstanding of religion in the west as a faith based upon a creed, mental assent to a set formula. Of course to be faithful, as it were, to this view they’d have to deny the religious status not only of Unitarian Universalists, but of Hindus , Buddhists, Taoists and Confucianists, as well. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise last month the general counsel for tax policy in the state of Texas reversed the original decision, based not upon creedal assertions but the fact the congregation clearly was organized for “religious purposes.”

It is hard to be clear about the etymology of that word, religion, but among the theologically minded, the root is seen to point to “binding,” to holding together. And I suggest we’re about nothing less than the binding up of wounds, and in that of creating a possibility of depth, of pointing a way of healing for ourselves and the world itself.

We’ll build a land where we bring the good tidings
To all the afflicted and all those who mourn.
And we’ll give them garlands instead of ashes.
Oh, we’ll build a land where peace is born.

There’s that old joke. A bit sexist, but it carries a point about church life in general. Coming out of worship services one Sunday Mrs. Anderson said, “I can’t believe the Jones’ daughter has dyed her hair that shocking orange. And how many piercings can one child have in her face?” To which her husband replied, “Oh, I didn’t notice.” The spouse went on, “And do you really think a woman as old as Arlene Masters should be wearing a dress like that?” To which her husband replied, “I guess I didn’t notice that, either.” "Oh, for heaven's sake," snapped Mrs. Anderson "A lot of good it does you to go to church."

Now that’s a generic joke. Most all churches, temples and synagogues are about more than showing up and checking out what’s happening. But perhaps we get more jokes about the ambiguity of our path than most. For instance I’m sure most of us have heard about us being a halfway house between church and the golf course.

But, again, this is missing the point, profoundly. Ours is not a path of do anything you want, believe anything you want. We are dedicated to freedom, but it is a disciple with a profound purpose. We must engage our minds and our hearts if we hope to make our way, and as honestly as possible. Therefore no thought or feeling should be out of bounds. But our discipline also suggests no thought or feeling is off limits for engagement, and pushing, and finding the deeper meaning that may be hidden in that first articulation of freedom.

So, instead of creed, we’re about covenant. We bring that commitment to head and heart, to reason and feeling as two ways of knowing into this place. And we covenant to be with each other in that engagement. Now some things have been revealed over the years we’ve followed this way. We’ve already briefly discussed our commitment to the individual. We’ve also learned that the individual only exists within community. That’s a very important discovery of the twin needs for autonomy and connection as religious principles. What we’ve discovered is the dynamic dance of meaning and purpose that is found in a sustained and genuine presence of one person to another.

This Sunday is packed with events. We dedicated young Ethan Riak. We were reminded of our beloved member Sandy Latner who passed away this week. We’re being encouraged to join the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee as one of the great common activities of our community. And we’re celebrating Eleanor Phillips’s many years as a member of this Society as she prepares to move to Chicago. I suggest each of these things points to our way. And I suggest each of these things are aspects of how we become ever more true to this faith tradition and to the hope it stands for.

We’ll be a land building up ancient cities,
Raising up devastations from old,
Restoring ruins of generations
Oh we’ll build a land of people so bold.

Let’s talk about people so bold. Young Ethan is our newest member. In this place he has exemplars and guides as he grows into adulthood. In this place he will meet many women and men who have joined in a covenant to help him grow strong and compassionate and wise. People like Sandy Latner who dedicated his life to the way of social justice. And people like Eleanor Phillips who I suspect thought she was just helping out here and there, but who actually was creating a path of goodness and hope for the whole world.

So, let me mention some of how she has worked to save the world, to build a congregation that is a living example of how we can build a world. Karen Lein describes her childhood here in the Society and how “I first met Eleanor in 1972 at Ferry Beach. I was trying to fly a kite that I made in school. The kite string was tangled and Eleanor walked up to me and said she could untangle it for me.” Which she proceeded to do.

Doris Lewis says, “Did you know she worked on the Manhattan Project? And is a learned botanist? She worked on the FUSN garden and knew the names of all the weeds we were pulling, even when she could not see them all very well.” And Bev Droz adds, “Eleanor has been a pillar at FUSN, always greeting me with a friendly smile and questions about how my family was. I treasure her positive demeanor and tenacity, especially in recent years with her blindness.”

Do you see it? Do you see how we take the individual, head and heart, and find our communal possibilities? How small things become the great way? Jacki Colby describes how Eleanor was “(A) faithful member of the Newsletter mailing group for many, many years. Even when she had lost most of her vision & only had peripheral vision she came every week to paste stamps and labels on the Newsletter… For many years Eleanor was active in helping to prepare the chancel for the big holidays… And she was a great bridge player and a member of the FUSN bridge group for years. She also gave all she had to the Holiday Fair.” Jacki goes on to say, “One of the things (among many others) that I’ll miss is her sharing of her great love of reading. (S)he particularly liked English mysteries.” If that doesn’t quite reveal my point to you, then don’t forget Barbara Bates, who noted Eleanor “loves a good discussion.”

Perhaps you see the power of the small. How it in fact informs everything. Here is the secret revealed, here is how one builds a land of hope, a faith of possibility. Cheryl Muise summarized it all so eloquently when she pointed out “Eleanor used to live in the same assisted living as Sandy Latner. Eleanor occasionally visited Sandy when he moved to another location. After a visit Eleanor would worry aloud that Sandy was getting too thin and perhaps not eating enough. Sandy would take me aside and raise a concern that Eleanor’s vision was worsening and was she safe traveling about. They were friends growing older but worried about the other and not themselves.”

Come, build a land where the mantles of praises
Resounding from spirits once faint and once weak;
Where like oaks of righteousness stand her people
Oh come build the land, my people we seek.

I tell you, we’re about nothing less than saving the world. But, this demands something important from us. You may know there’s a lot of talk these days about elevator speeches. You hear it in business circles and it has seeped into our Unitarian Universalist communities, as well. Here we think about what it is we might say when standing in an elevator and someone asks, so what is this Unitarian Universalism, anyway?

My response has boiled down a lot. I say we Unitarian Universalists are about attention. If someone doesn’t quite get it, then I say, in addition to attention we’re about more attention. And if that doesn’t settle the question, I’ll add we’re about attention, and more attention, and still more attention.

When we give our attention to the matter at hand, when we pay attention to each other, the whole mysterious thing is revealed. We discover the dance of self and other. We find how we are precious and unique, and held together by strands of affection and need that weaves into the world itself. We discover what we do counts. And there are no small things. It is all part and parcel of the great healing.

This is our commitment to Ethan. This is the work that Sandy Latner so powerfully manifested. It is why so many of us belong to the UU Service Committee. This is the way our beloved member Eleanor Phillips demonstrated over and over and over again. And so we hear the call, we hear the dream; we hear the possibility of our sacred community.

Come build a land where sisters and brothers
Anointed by God, may then create peace:
Where justice shall roll down like waters,
And peace like an ever flowing stream.

This is our way.

Amen.