Story for All Ages: This morning I have a story to share with you about an old Jewish man. All he ever did in his spare time was to go to the edge of the village and plant fig trees. People would ask him, “Why are you planting fig trees? You are going to die before you can eat any of the fruit that they produce.” Is there anything that you do that will probably not help you in your lifetime, but may help people after you are gone?
When people asked the old Jewish man, “Why are you planting fig trees when you will die before the trees produce any fruit?”, he said, “I have spent so many happy hours sitting under fig trees and eating their fruit. Those trees were planted by others. Why shouldn’t I make sure that others will know the enjoyment that I have had?” (Megan McKenna in Parables)
Reading: by Antoine de St. Exupery, “Wisdom of the Sands”
“In a house which becomes a home, one hands down and another takes up the heritage of mind and heart, laughter and tears, musings and deeds. Love, like a carefully loaded ship, crosses the gulf between the generations…. If others impart to our children our knowledge and ideals, they will lose all of us that is wordless and full of wonder. Let us build memories in our children, lest they allow treasures to be lost because they have not been given the keys. We live, not by things, but by the meanings of things. It is needful to transmit the passwords from generation to generation.”
Message: The American dream---what is it? Here is one image of it: To grow up with an employed father and mother, a brother or sister or two, cousins and grandparents to visit. Friends and a safe neighborhood to play in, bikes and treehouse, two cats and a dog and your own room at home. Good grades, winning at sports and music performance, then your own car. After graduation, college and partying until you land that good job. You marry your college sweetheart, buy a home with a yard, start your own family and take vacations to the mountains, rivers or oceans. Hobbies and early retirement, community arts, travel around the world, holidays with the kids and grandkids, helping them with college. Health insurance and well-invested assets, a retirement village in sunny Florida (the Panhandle of course), and when the time comes, loved ones and loving hands to ease your passing. The American Dream.
In many ways, you and I live The American Dream. Yet, The American Dream is a façade that masks real-life chaos ranging from boredom to nightmares. It is more an ideal that we dream-walk than the reality we live. The cool mountain tops of our lives, if we are lucky, and many are not.
Even as one of the lucky ones, I have found that the peak achievements of the American Dream are isolated, surrounded by harsh and rugged terrain. And despite such harsh and chaotic realities, we live in The American Dream, our collective fantasy. Back when I worked in the factory, none of us lived in the reality of our work that fell so far short of The American Dream: one co-worker was an engineer someday, another, a wannabe IBM’er with all the security that entailed, and I fancied myself a philosophy professor who had not yet arrived. We lived in an American Dream built as a bridge of hope over our personal chaos and between whatever peaks of success we could claim.
I am pleased to say, dreaming works! My dreams led me to explore the UU congregation in Binghamton, New York, to join, then off to Boston University School of Theology, and not to academic philosophy, but to applied philosophy as a Unitarian Universalist Minister.
Eileen Karpeles wrote: “Out of wood and stone, out of dreams and sacrifice, the People build a home. Out of the work of their hands and hearts and minds the People fashion a symbol and a reality.”
This morning’s topic, “We Are Now Keepers of the Dream” was inspired by the Offertory Words heard many times: “Let there be an offering to sustain and strengthen this place which is sacred to so many of us, a community of memory and of hope, for we are now the keepers of the dream.” (Brandoch L. Lovely)
I remember our daughter, Katrina, when she was about sixteen years old ask the question, “Why go to church?” She knew all our Principles and values, and yet she asked for a simple answer: “Why go to church?” How would you answer?
You could be doing laundry or playing outdoors right now. You could be reading the Sunday paper with a cup of coffee, or, walking along the bayou. Our daughter was wondering, “Why not sleep in ‘til 1 pm?!”
The reason I told her off the top of my head that I commit myself and my Sunday mornings to Unitarian Universalist fellowship is this: To keep the dream alive.
Since I was a teenager, I have had a dream of a better world, and not the heaven or magical new birth perfection of my childhood religion. Something real. Not until I became a Unitarian Universalist did I find a community that articulated open-hearted principles for building that dream of a better world.
I really love the last paragraph of the Statement of Principles which reads: “Grateful for the religious pluralism which enriches and ennobles our faith, we are inspired o deepen our understanding and expand our vision… we enter into this covenant, promising to one another our mutual trust and support.”
Why participate in a Unitarian Universalist fellowship? You and I, “we are now the keepers of the dream.”
What is this “Unitarian Universalist dream?” What is it about this Fellowship? Why do you bother? When someone asks you what is Unitarian Universalism, what do you think is important to tell them? What is the dream of Unitarian Universalist Fellowship that we share?
I took some time to reflect on this question: What is the Unitarian Universalist dream that I feel is worthy of my commitment and support? I expect that what you feel is of value here is different, in fact, I hope your take on the dream of Unitarian Universalism is unique, bringing an enriching and expanding vision. Here is my perspective on our Unitarian Universalist dream:
When our 16-year-old asked, “Why church?” and I said, “To keep the dream alive,” this is the dream I feel must be kept alive, the Unitarian Universalist community of integrity and of universal respect and compassion. You might say it differently. Our UU Statement of Principles is another way to articulate our Unitarian Universalist dream. In Iowa, a member of Cedar Rapids UU congregation said it like this:
“I’m a Unitarian Universalist…
- Because if this church had a steeple, it would be in the shape of a question mark.
- Because here (I) feel like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle instead of an ingredient for a blender.
- Because there are people here who are backbones for justice….
- Because when I’m broke they don’t foreclose on my soul.
- Because when I contribute they don’t act surprised.
- Because I can laugh out loud in this church.
- Because I can cry and people care… gently.
- Because messages here have real questions not rhetorical ones.
- Because here, at least, I can look forward to Sunday again.
If we are now the keepers of the dream, how important is what we do here?
Rev. Lewis McGee was raised and ordained a Minister in the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) tradition. In 1948 he was fellowshipped as a Unitarian Minister, serving until he died in 1979, helping to found the Free Religious Fellowship in Chicago. Rev. McGee wrote:
“Our religion is a religion of social concern a religion of intellectual and ethical integrity, a religion that emphasizes the dynamic conception of history and the scientific worldview, a religion that stresses the dignity and worth of the person as a supreme value and goodwill as the creative force in human relations. This religion can and ought to become a beacon from which this kind of faith shines.
“Millions upon millions of people everywhere are drifting from the old formulation, no longer willing to view the ancient myths as religious truths. They are looking for a vital, modern religion with a personal and social imperative. We may have it! I think we do!”
Our Unitarian Universalist dream of personal integrity and of universal respect and compassion is a precious heritage that very, very few people in our community have even heard exists, and even fewer have any accurate sense of what it’s all about. What if people simply knew we exist?!
Dana McLean Greeley, the first president of the merged Unitarian Universalist Association told the following story: “A Japanese Buddhist said to us: If we had known you like this, we could not have bombed Pearl Harbor, but if you had known us as you now do, you could not have dropped destruction on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”
He went on to say, “Our old world is passing away before our eyes. What vision shall arise to take its place? If we join hands and hearts, we might hold the world against some fatal explosion. It doesn’t have to be in the name of Christ. It can be in the names of Moses or of Buddha or of Confucius or of God, (Mohammed) or of justice or humanity.
“May we be makers and messengers of peace: Yellow and White, Black and Brown, East and West, North and South, the Developed World, the Developing World. We all seek our separate peace, but we have to make peace together.” (adapted)
In more recent years, Clark Olson, author of the UUA’s Commission on Appraisal document, “Fulfilling the Promise,” wrote: “The 21st Century story of Unitarian Universalism may be that in fulfilling our promise (of covenantal relations) we provided a light for many of the world’s peoples, now conflicted by faith and ethnic differences, to move toward a new understanding of how peoples can be truly together in a democracy. And what a legacy that shall be!”
One final question remains. How shall we go about “handing down… the heritage of mind and heart, laughter and tears, musings and deeds…from generation to generation”? Dom Helder Camara wrote: “When we dream alone, it is only a dream. When we dream together, it is the beginning of reality.”
Let me tell you a story about how to keep the dream alive from Jay Walljasper of the Utne Reader:
“Oxford University recently replaced the gigantic oak beams in the ceiling of one of its dining halls. When the beams began to show signs of rotting, university officials were concerned that they wouldn’t be able to find lumber large and strong enough to replace them. But the university’s forester explained to them that, when the dining hall was built 500 years ago, their predecessors had planted a grove of oak trees so that the university could replace the beams when the time came.” (March-April ’97)
The famous American poet Carl Sandburg, a Universalist, spoke a bit more directly. He wrote:
“You can’t go through life always eating out of other peoples’ picnic baskets. You’ve got to settle on one congregation and throw your life into it and build it up. You’ve got to feel the importance of your own individual participation in its life.”
A UU colleague from Wisconsin helped me understand that even if my UU Fellowship doesn’t live up to my dream, I am not simply a religious consumer. That’s not what we’re about here. Tony Larsen wrote: “You don’t need the UU church. Our children do not need the UU church. The world needs the UU church.”
I am certainly “preaching to the choir” (as it were) this morning because I know that members of this Fellowship are very active with individual participation. At the same time, it is our further challenge as active members to make opportunities, to make institutional space for newcomers to throw their lives into the Fellowship as well, helping to build it up. Now that we are the keepers of the dream, we must not allow Unitarian Universalist Fellowship to be invisible, inaccessible and irrelevant. The poet Audre Lorde wrote:
“I have come to believe over and over again
that what is most important to me
must be spoken, made verbal and shared,
even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood….
And I remind myself all the time now
that if I were to have been born mute,
or had maintained an oath of silence my whole life long for safety,
I would still have suffered and I would still die….
We can sit in our corners mute forever
while our sisters and our brothers and our selves are wasted,
while our children are distorted and destroyed,
while our earth is poisoned;
we can sit in our safe corners mute as bottles,
and we will still be no less afraid….
I (am) going to die, if not sooner then later,
whether or not I (have) ever spoken myself.
My silence has not protected me.
Your silence will not protect you.