THE BELOVED COMMUNITY
Reflections on a Unitarian Universalist Life
James Ishmael Ford
3 April 2005

The Text
Willingly they come; eagerly they come; expectantly they come;
One by one they move through these determined doors,
Each with their own histories, unique journeys of the spirit,
Singular experiences of joy and sorrow.
They form themselves into a human circle
Surrounding the question they come to answer.
They give length and breadth and depth to what they are.
Eyes meet eyes – with a smile or surprise –
Wonder or embarrassment.
Hands tentatively reach for hands – meet in tender touching –
Squeeze – hold tight – release – smile
And know it has been good to be together.
Richard Gilbert

There’s a story about a preacher who was holding onto a mike and striding powerfully across the platform while speaking. He waved his arms in the air for emphasis, which was quite dramatic. But he had to jerk the cord on the mike every few feet in order to keep going. This was a little less dramatic. After going about as far as he could, as he turned back, the cord wrapped around his ankles. Tangled, he fell to the ground, and writhed there trying to extricate himself from the mess of the cord. During this great struggle one youngster, visiting with a friend, whispered anxiously, “If he gets loose, will he hurt us?”

If we’re talking about us and what we’re about here today and every Sunday; I hope the answer might be, “one never knows.” I’d like to make an assertion about what we’re doing. We’re on holy ground here. This place is set aside for the work of the sacred. And another assertion: something powerful and special is happening. Or, at least, is trembling with possibility. With those assertions made, let me extend an invitation. Here we are at the part of our service where we give ourselves the possibility of hearing deeply. If we can separate the inadequate messenger, if we untangle the message a little, if the deeper message gets loose - what are the chances someone will get hurt?

The message today is pretty simple. It is an assertion of the importance of this religious community, of our beloved community. It is an assertion there are words said here, and emotions explored, that if we allow them to seep into who we are, not only might they change us, you and me, but that they can infect the world with possibility and hope. This enterprise is that important, the invitation that significant.

Back to the poor preacher tangled on the platform. Back to me, here, standing in this place you and those who have gone before have created for someone to try to utter words of meaning. Preaching is a strange practice: to set someone aside and have them attempt to speak to meaningful issues on a regular basis. It is ancient. And it’s more than a little weird. This preaching is set in the context of spirituality, within a framework of religious traditions small and great: surrounded by music and singing, by rituals like kindling lights, telling stories for various ages and inviting a community to speak of joys and sorrows. If we open ourselves, of course there’s the chance we could get hurt.

Dick Gilbert, UU minister and one of my heroes, tells about the “minister who preached at the church Franklin Delano Roosevelt attended when he was president received a phone call one Saturday. The caller asked, ‘Will the president be in church tomorrow?’ The preacher paused a moment, and said, ‘Well, I’m not sure, but we do expect God to be there, and I think that will be sufficient reason for good attendance.’”

Dick follows this anecdote with something from Soren Kierkegaard. “Too often in their church, people adopt an attitude of the theater, imagining that the preacher is an actor and they (the congregation) his (or her) drama critics… Actually, the people are the actors on the stage of life, the preacher is merely the prompter, reminding the people of their lost lines.”

Here I think we are asked to face some things. One is that we have the capacity to know what matters. You and I are born into this world with the capacity to feel and see and know connections. We have an innate capacity for joy. We are born to love. At the same time we get lost in the details of our lives and we forget. We forget the lines written for us in heaven, the lines written on our hearts that give that joy and love and hope to the world.

When I try to preach, I want so much to be of use, to find those lost lines and whisper them to you from behind the curtain as you go forth on the stage of life. Even though I also need to be reminded, you all know how much that’s true; still it’s my job to prompt us to those lines. There are not a lot of lines; and yet we seem to forget or stumble over them all the time. We need to remember the sacredness of our human condition, and how no one is born without worth. We need to recall love and justice, our better angels – how love really is more important than any creed, and how love is the source of justice. And, very much, near the heart of it all, we need to recall the nature of spiritual community, of ecclesia, of what our ancestors called the church. Today, I mainly want to discuss how spiritual community is critical to that project of being reminded of our lines and living lives worth while.

This quest for community has been a central part of my life, as it has for so many in this hall. Most here know the broad outlines of my journey into this congregation. After living for several years in Zen communities, and for a couple of years as a monk; I left the monastery, and that style of living. For me the Zen communities were too hierarchical. While I’d achieved a rank where I got to make decisions, it still didn’t feel right. Something important was missing.

I knew I needed more than a spiritual discipline, even though it was a very good discipline. I knew, somewhere in my gut that I needed something that could only manifest if I were willing to be with others in a more equal way. Perhaps it was a whisper from my Baptist origins, a call to a more egalitarian spiritual community. While I wasn’t exactly sure how it should come together I knew a healthy spiritual community was based more obviously within a sense of mutuality than I was experiencing. I needed a place where everyone had a voice. I also needed a place where people had their heads screwed on and within that sense of mutuality understood not every voice was going to be healthy.

I looked around quite a bit for a spiritual home that could meet this need for responsible spiritual community. In California there were a lot of options. More than you can shake a stick at, actually. And most, well, all had significant shortcomings. Seems if human beings get into the mix, it will be complicated. After reading about Unitarian Universalism I thought this really could be it and I began to visit UU congregations. At the beginning it was hard. It was hard to see a serious spiritual discipline. And I have to admit I fell asleep during the first sermon I heard. While it might not seem so to many here; I never forgot that.

But I also made an important decision. Instead of writing Unitarian Universalism off as better in theory than in practice, I decided to apply the principles of my Zen discipline and return. And return: to hold myself to the possibility and see what was actually there. To, what I didn’t realize consciously at the time, the chance of hearing the prompting for those lines already written in my heart. Gradually it became clear to me the only option that really worked for me was Unitarian Universalism. I was so grateful my liberal Buddhism fit. Not seamlessly, it only fit roughly. But even that appeared a good thing, as the parts where things didn’t quite fit, were opportunities for me to look at myself, to make corrections, to grow a little bit deeper. I grew to love the spiritual, the beloved community within which I could flourish and grow. I grew to cherish those with wildly different views regarding the nature of God, regarding the place of spirit, regarding how we might best be present to each other and to the great world.

As this spring makes its first tentative appearance I’ve found myself thinking a lot about that first UU congregation I joined so many years ago. Jan and I’d recently closed our bookstore and moved near the campus of Sonoma State University where I was finishing my undergraduate degree. I loved the fellowship in Marin, nearly fifty miles to the south of where we lived, and threw myself into life there. I signed the book. While very small, I made my first canvass pledge. I joined several committees. I preached a couple of times and began thinking the most tentative thoughts about future ministry.

Then when my son came to live with us and I had to acknowledge the congregation was too far away and announced I was going to join the congregation in Sonoma County, by California standards the local church. As a going away present the congregation presented me with a concrete Hotai, the so-called laughing Buddha. At the time I had mixed feelings. I never liked the figure because people often think the fat guy is the Buddha – kind of like confusing Santa Claus with Jesus. That said I accepted him with close, I hope, to the spirit with which he was given; as a mark of deep affection.

We’ve hauled him around with us for many years. The first cracks appeared when we lived in the suburbs of Milwaukee, following a bone numbing winter. Now, as our Boston snow has receded I found our little laughing Buddha completely shattered, a pile of rubble topped with that fat smiling head. I can’t quite bring myself to get rid of the pile. Every time I walk up or down the stairs to the house right now, I look at him and I find myself thinking of that congregation and my first delving into the unfathomable of sacred community, of beloved community.

Over the years since I first signed the book in San Rafael, I’ve found to join a UU congregation and to make a commitment to it was to be constantly reminded of my lost lines. They came to me from the pulpit. Sometimes so eloquently and right on I was shocked at how a sermon could be written for me alone. Other times I found those lines in my struggle to not walk out offended or bored to tears. The critical lines were given just enough to keep me coming back. I hope you noted that important point: while those lines often came in the worship service, more often than not, those critical lines came to me not from the sermon, but from my friends in the community, to those who gave me their attention, and continue to do so, who open their hearts and covenant to be together in this path of discovery and manifestation. Beloved community.

Today, the line I want to remind all of us here about is that line about beloved community. I need to warn you. This is something, if it gets loose in your being, can shake you and the world to its foundations. The beloved community sits a secret in each of our hearts, waiting to burst forth, threatening to completely alter the world. It is the most dangerous thing we hold here. Yet it’s the smallest of all things, like that mustard seed in the Gospels, that when tended grows into a great bush, shelter for the birds of heaven.

This is much of what we’re about. Here the unsettling secret of the beloved community is revealed. It is revealed when we reach out or are reached out to. It is revealed when we do the right thing; it is revealed when we do the wrong thing, fail miserably, completely – but stay within our community. The beloved community is always present, wherever two or three are gathered and we allow ourselves to be vulnerable, to let the possibility of hurt happen, to listen to words from the pulpit, to listen to words from our friends, to listen to the wisdom of our way when and where it presents itself.

I’m so grateful for the whispers of my friends reminding me of those lines. I’m so happy to be able to do a little of that whispering, myself. It’s what we’re here for: blessing each other and the sweet, beautiful, terrible, wounded world. Healing and being healed.

So why do we come here? It turns out God is here. Who would have thought?

Amen.