THE WIND IN BOTH EARS Anne Bancroft and the Making of a Religious Educator
James Ishmael Ford
22 May 2005

The Text
My father sent me up from the root cellar to see about the wind. He was rechecking the winter’s potatoes to remove all signs of rot and was planning on setting out nets for some fresh cod later on. Was there a steady breeze, he wanted to know. Yes, there was. ‘Now face it,’ he said, ‘so that the wind sings in both your ears. Then tell me where your nose points to.’”
Angus Maclean

My thesis today is simple. Our Unitarian Universalist spiritual path is a path of religious education – lifespan religious education, if you will. There are some high flown ideals about this. And I’ll address them. But ultimately it is about learning, learning to uncover the secret places of our own hearts, and to become that which we were born for. Our way is a way of hope and love. And it is a way for real people. So, mostly, I’m going to explore a single example of how this way of religious education happens.

Anyone who comes here regularly knows I’m much taken with that nineteenth century Unitarian slogan “salvation by character.” I know some of my friends roll their eyes when I use the term. Nonetheless, I find value in that word salvation, not as pointing to some sweet by and bye, but rather as addressing the heart of what we’re about. Think of the hurt places in your heart. Look around the world and notice that ubiquitous pain and suffering. As a spiritual community we Unitarian Universalists are about healing that hurt - in our own hearts and in the heart of the world. I suggest this work of healing the heart deserves a grand, over the top, messy word – like salvation.

Of course that little three word motto “salvation by character” contains another word you don’t hear a lot these days. That third word, character, seems somehow out of place for our times. For some it suggests the weight of custom disguised as morality. Ancient purity codes with no relevance except to club down people who are even slightly different than the rest. For others, in an era painfully sensitive to the need of communal response to what is going on in the world; any implied privatized spirituality can seem narcissistic. But I suggest character speaks to how we stand in the world, and as such points to something deeply profound. And, it is something cultivated.

So I continue to assert that old phrase “salvation by character” speaks to the secret heart of what we are about here in our lives as Unitarian Universalists. We find our healing, our fulfillment, indeed our purpose in life through attention to character, in our individual lives, in our lives in relationship. We find our sacred healing by attention to the whole person; sensitive to and fully engaged within the web of existence out of which we are woven, and of which we, each of us, are an intimate part.

As Unitarian Universalists we are about the healing of the world through attention to how we live within the world. This is also where we find that great Universalist motto “love over creed.” As we attend we learn the mysteries of love. As such our spiritual path is one of education. A little of our path of education is about learning things; more is about learning what already lives within us, our heritage as human beings, which we discover as a seed that needs cultivation. Specifically our path is about this way of cultivation and manifestation.

Well, that’s my thesis on the why of religious education among us. The rest of today’s reflection is an exploration of the how. One thing I’ve long since learned is that the universal can only be known in the particular. So, I’d like to explore our way through a consideration of one person who has been following this path of ours with heart and attention for some time. I suggest the details of her life speak to our own lives, if we allow ourselves to notice.

This past Thursday evening members from our Society were joined in the Parish hall by members of Myrtle Baptist Church as well as others from the larger Newton community, including, I’m please to report, our mayor. Maybe a hundred people were there. Dr. Adrian Haugabrook, a deacon at Myrtle, facilitated our conversation on race with humor and sensitivity and grace. The panelists included two adults, Howard Smith from Myrtle and Lynda Farago from FUSN; two youth, Wesley Turner from Myrtle and Sam Lilienfeld from FUSN, and two children, Jabari Johnson from Myrtle and Isabel Watts from FUSN.

This panel couldn’t have been better chosen. Their stories sparked something; a genuine, and for me deeply moving conversation about how our differences are so small and yet can be so profound. We explored hurt and humiliation small and large for some while barely noticing anything going on for some others; and yet a desire on the part of all to not turn away, but rather to face, to engage and to become something better.

For me this is what we’re about in this Society of ours. Let me underscore this: I’m convinced we’re about nothing less than the healing of the world. And Thursday evening I saw some of how we do it. But there was something else there; almost impossible to notice if one wasn’t looking for it.

There was Anne Bancroft, our Religious Educator, early on setting up tables and chairs, later sitting near the front, but to the side, a whispered something in one ear, a pat on someone else’s shoulder, then as the event began to roll, sitting in the rear, glancing around, making sure things were going okay. And of course, farther in the background, Anne was the person who first saw how this conversation could be more than some adults talking at each other – and who had actually suggested how we can loop in youth and even children, to our considerable profit.

If we hope to understand ourselves, our path of religious education, of spiritual inquiry and manifestation we need to look at specifics. The good like the bad is not found in the abstract, but in the specific. But the specific is complicated. For instance we human beings are complex creatures, the dynamic product of genes, of family connections, of every connection and touch, painful and pleasurable that we experience throughout the course of our lives. That’s something to note. We’re dynamic; we’re in constant flux, our boundaries barely held by our skin. Probably we shouldn’t even be described as nouns, as objects. We human beings, we’re really verbs.

So if we want to understand someone, to get some sense of who that person is under the skin we need to look all around that skin. And today I want to explore Anne Bancroft as an example of how we manifest our path. For today’s purpose let’s go back one generation. Our Anne is named for her mother who was born Anne Beverley Wright. That Anne was born in Winchester, Virginia. In her family dynamic we see some things. Perhaps very significantly Anne senior’s mother had an insatiable thirst for learning. Truthfully, so powerful an urge that she chose to pursue it at any cost. This led her eventually to earn a master’s degree – a highly unusual occurrence two generations ago.

This also meant Anne senior was largely raised by her grandparents. There is hurt connected with this pursuit. Anne attended Mary Washington College before becoming a model. At some point she attended a ball at Annapolis when she met Charles Oscar Swanson. For him it was love at first sight. They were quite the pair, the astonishingly beautiful model and the dashing young Naval cadet.

Chuck had been born and raised in Colorado and at the end of High School found himself accepted at both West Point and Annapolis. Before Chuck was commissioned, the Navy sent him to MIT for additional study so he could work as an engineering officer in the nuclear submarine program. Chuck eventually retired a captain and went on to have a career in Hawaii in both the public and private sectors, at one time serving as the state’s Under Secretary of Transportation.

After a brief courtship, the young couple married. Chuck and Anne had three children. The oldest is Charles Beckman Swanson, known as Beck, who is an architect in Connecticut. Next along is William Bradshaw Swanson, known as Brad (these nicknames appear to be a WASP thing) is a business consultant in Maine, who also has recently returned to school studying psychology. Anne was next. We’ll return to her in a moment. The caboose was John Westwood Swanson. Apparently they couldn’t find an appropriate nickname, so he’s called John. John works as a graphic designer in Portland, Oregon.

Our Anne was born in Bethesda, Maryland. As a Navy brat she followed her family in numerous moves around the country. They lived in New London, Connecticut, Kitterie, Maine, Bremerton, Washington, and several times, including her entire High School years, in Honolulu. Anne was raised Episcopal, singing in the choir, playing piano and teaching Sunday school.

She also played a major part in taking care of her younger brother. In some ways Anne seemed destined for her work among us, finding much of her youthful jobs in preschool and day care programs. In talking about her, our administrator Fran Clancy, who sees us all in our best and worst, observed how Anne “was able to grow wherever she was planted.” Anne graduated from Punahou High School as class valedictorian. I’m sure that’s no surprise to anyone here.

Anne went to college at Mt Holyoke. She spent a semester in Brussels before taking her degree in Economics. She returned to Hawaii and spent a year working for a trust company. Bored silly, she joined up with a friend who was moving to Boston. Once here she found herself sharing a house in Auburndale. Now while at the trust company, it turned out what she really liked was designing charts. Thinking about that Anne landed a job as a designer for the Strategic Planning Institute in Central Square, Cambridge.

This is about when she met her dashing young man - a lawyer, Daniel Bancroft. And here’s where stories begin to mix, and something new births. Dan’s grandfather had been a German war hero in the First World War, and barely escaped the Holocaust by immigrating to Palestine just ahead of the Second World War. Also, the Episcopal/Jewish thing would become an integral part of Anne’s spiritual journey, her path of religious education.

Preparing for this I spoke with a lot of people, Wendy, Fran, Noreen, among others. When doing reflections about people, I often find the guys aren’t a lot of help. They’re generally aware their children were born; often, not much beyond that. Dan Bancroft, however, knows what’s going on and turned out to be my primary source.

Dan told me “When we were thinking of getting married we talked about children and religion” quite a bit. We sought counseling from “Al Kershaw, the Episcopal minister at Emmanuel Church. He was one of those love conquers all types.” Who encouraged them to follow their hearts. This spiritual path of open heartedness that is the core of our way of religious education doesn’t belong to us alone. Although the fact that it does have a universal component, that is it can be found so many places, is for me a sign it’s true. Al also insisted that Dan, despite all evidence to the contrary, had a spiritual side. We don’t have time to follow that interesting thread, other than to hold it up about us all. We do have something to awaken, something to cultivate, something to learn about ourselves and our possibility, each and every one of us.

While they were courting, Anne moved on to become Art Director for the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce. Anne and Dan married in August of 1984. Around that time Anne started her own design business, Anargraphics. In orderly succession along came, Elizabeth Hardy Bancroft, Benjamin David Bancroft and Lillian Wade Bancroft.

Anne felt a clear need to give the kids a religious structure. First she enrolled Elizabeth in the Brandeis Religious Education Program for a year. The family found them good people but, as Dan said, “we recognized there was no sense of community there,” at least outside of the academic community. Then, rather surprisingly, Dan’s father recommended Unitarian Universalism. Dan told me “First we went to the Chestnut Hill UU church. It was April and they were gearing up for Easter – a nice talk, but a lousy fit.” Then they found FUSN. They enrolled Elizabeth in the RE program. And almost immediately Anne found herself on a teaching team with Susan Callahan, Amy LeClare & Cathy McKone-Simons. It was a magical team.

Before long Anne was recruited to assist our then Director of Religious Education, Jackie Shepherd. Almost imperceptibly she began letting go of the design business in favor of religious education, both as work and as her conscious spiritual discipline. When Jackie left us, she was immediately engaged as interim Director, and then as Director of our program. Now ten years our DRE, Anne is attending Harvard Divinity School. In the upcoming Fall semester she’ll be devoting her sabbatical to full time study.

Here I find myself thinking about our path as Unitarian Universalists. You never know what’s going to happen. You never know what will heal your own heart, or be the healing of the world itself. But, it does seem to happen most, when we’re open, when we’re willing to let the spirit settle where it will; when we’re willing to learn. Salvation by character. Love over creed. Religious education as a spiritual path.

Anne should pretty much have the last word here, don’t you think? She writes, “It is the educative ministry I am drawn to pursue, to encourage love as a gift, worth giving and receiving as an abundant and healing reality. I believe in the idea of many streams to one river, many paths to one truth, and of our individual and collective responsibilities, to ourselves and each other, in our journeys to understanding. As dramatic as it sounds, I believe we are faced with the imperative to look outside our respective bubbles of theological and religious certainty if we are to survive as a world community. My goal is to figure out my part in that challenge.”

Not a bad summary for a life that counts.

This is, I suggest, our living faith.

Amen.