Presented by: Rev. Linda Whittenberg.

Reading: These are words of Dr. Bernie Loomer who was a much admired professor of theology at Union Seminary in Chicago.  When Dr. Loomer retired in the 1980’s, he moved to Berkeley and while I was in seminary he taught at Starr King School.  After being a Baptist all his life, he joined the Berkeley Unitarian Universalist Church.  We students took great pride in his decision to officially join our movement.  As a scholar Bernie Loomer had devoted his life to the development of a theology based on the process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead.  He was considered one of the leading thinkers in that field.  He addressed the congregation with these words the day he joined the Berkeley Church.

Church is for enabling us to seek and find some ultimate source of value and meaning.  Our trust in this source outruns our knowledge.  This reality is to be worshipped for its own sake, because it is worthy of our trust.

In this relationship of trust and worship, the church is a reminder that we live in terms of a covenant and not in terms of a contract.

Church is a living testimony that we live in the context of a mystery that far transcends our reason.  We are born in mystery, and die in mystery.  A sense of value without sensitivity to mystery is one way of reducing the meaning of life for us.

Church is for seeking as well as speaking the truth in love.

Church is for the increase of stature, the enlargement of spirit, and the greater freedom of the self.  Freedom is not an end in itself; it exists in order to enrich our communal life.

Church is for encouraging us to actualize our most creative possibilities.  It is also the critic of our limitations and our pretensions.

Church is for understanding and for being understood.  Church is for confession, for repentance, and for the compassion of forgiveness.

Church is for reminding us that we are all members of the web of life, that no one is an island, and that no person is an individual outside the context of the web.

The web includes more than the present; it includes the past.  Church is an important agency by which great traditions become living presences within the community.

Church is the communal celebration of our elemental joys and sorrows, of our gains and losses, of great meanings.  The church is for taking these elemental qualities and values of everyday life and of weaving them into the very litany of the community.  I am grateful for this kind of church.  I am proud to be included in its membership.

Sermon:
What is a church?  The Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Santa Fe changed its name some years ago from “church” to “congregation.  I think they made that change in part because some members with Jewish backgrounds never felt comfortable with the term “church.”  So, what is a congregation?  How do we create the community of hope that Dr. Loomer envisioned?

These may seem to be simple questions, but they are important questions for to ask from time to time, especially when going through times of transition as you are right now.

Questions like: What are we doing?  Why are we doing it?  What should we be doing?  Questions like these are ones I encouraged congregations to ask over and over again in the work I did as Extension Consultant for the Mountain Desert District from 1996 to 2000. I remember leading a long range planning workshop here during that time, and I’m sure I asked you then to consider these questions. (By the way, I never saw the final version of that long range plan.  How did it turn out?)

They bring us back to our reason for being, help us remember why we are here, why we’re willing to leave the New York Times Sunday edition to come to services or go out on cold, dark winter evenings to attend a class or committee meeting or yet another potluck, why we pledge a portion of our annual income to this beloved institution.

Once there was a man who turned his life over to the direction of a great spiritual teacher.  As a disciple he made impressive spiritual progress.  Judging his student needed no further guidance, the guru left him on his own in a little hut on the banks of a river.  Each morning after his meditations the disciple would hang his loincloth out to air.  It was his only possession!  One day he was dismayed to fine it torn to shreds by mice.  So he had to beg for another from the villagers.  When the mice nibbled holes in this one too, he got himself a cat.  He had no more trouble with mice, but now, in addition to begging for his own food, he had to beg for mile for the cat as well.  “Too much trouble begging,” he thought, “and too much of a burden on the villagers.  I shall keep a cow.”  When he got the cow, he had to beg for fodder.  “Easier to till the land around my hut,” he thought.  But that proved troublesome too, for it left him little time for meditation.  So he employed laborers to till the land for him.  Now overseeing the laborers became a chore, so he married a wife who would share this task with him.  Before long he was one of the wealthiest men in the village.

Years later his guru happened to drop by and was surprised to see a palatial mansion where once a hut had stood.  He said to one of the servants, “Isn’t this where a disciple of mine used to live?”  Before he got a reply, the disciple himself emerged.  “What’s the meaning of this, my son?” asked the Guru.  “Would you believe it, sir,” said the man, “I had to go through all this just to keep my loincloth!”

That’s about how easy it is for a church to forget its reason for being.  This morning I will give some of my thoughts about the purpose of a religious community.  These are conclusions gleaned from my experiences as parish minister and the time I spent as consultant to over forty congregations.

The first observation is that a church exists to prod us, to teach us, to support and inspire us to become the best we can be.  The religious community we cherish exists to change us, to enlarge us; I might even say to transform our lives.  It is called to bring us out of our everyday habits, reminding us of the highest possibilities for being human.  It is for helping us develop a personal faith, one that will guide us through the lonely, dark nights as well as the active daylight hours.  These are two quite different needs.  We need direction and help with ethical decisions, choices, relationships, and all kinds of growth for the daytime life, the work-a-day world.  But we also need help with facing the dark times of our life when things crowd in to haunt us and torment us, when disappointment or loss overcomes us, when our real fears and doubts invade our psyches.

I would like our churches to be unapologetic about the fact they are places for religion, raising souls.

In 1947 the hour of eleven on Sunday morning was called the most segregated hour in America.  Sadly, it still is.  Leslie Pennington who was the minister of First Unitarian Society of Chicago wanted to integrate his church.  He didn’t feel justified in going out and recruiting black friends as John Haynes Holmes had done in New York; so, in his Chicago congregation it was voted upon whether or not they agreed to open their doors and welcome people of color.  This vote caused a tremendous ruckus in the church.  One board member, adamantly opposed to integrating the church, objected loudly giving many reasons the church should not be integrated.  In the midst of the heated discussion, another board turned to him and asked, “What is this church for?”  The upset man answered with more arguments against integrating the church.  Again, the man asked the question, “What is this church for?”  In his frustration and anger, the objecting member blurted out, “To change people like me!”  Even though he chose to leave the church, he had spoken the truth.

What is a religious fellowship, a congregation, a church?  It is for changing people like that man and like me and like you.  Once a man in a church I served came to me to talk about the homophobia he was feeling and that he recognized as unreasonable fear.  Jim was a dear man, a very caring person, and during our conversation he vowed to make a real effort to get to know some of the gays and lesbians in our congregation.  He went to some of the meetings of the Welcoming Congregation Committee; he attended the film series they sponsored.  He and his wife invited a gay couple who belonged to our church over for dinner.  They soon became close friends.  He told me his life had been changed by these efforts.  He felt freer.  He had learned and grown as a person, and, no small thing, he had two wonderful new friends.  He was transformed from a homophobic heterosexual male to an open-hearted, informed friend.  That’s what I mean by being transformed.

I believe our churches exist to change us, to make us more loving, more forgiving, more compassionate, and more awake.  I always kept split chambered nautilus on the shelf in my church office because it illustrates the kind of changes I am talking about.  Inside the chambered nautilus shell there are many chambers because each time it outgrows one chamber it must add another larger one in order to live. When you split the shell in half you see all these beautiful, pearly sections in a spiral shape.  Each chamber can hold more.  That’s the way I think of spiritual growth.  Our humanity expands as we stretch to understand more, to overcome whatever holds us back from what we could be.

Bernie Loomer called it “increase of stature, the enlargement of spirit, and the greater freedom of the self.”  As we understand more, we become more conscious, more open-minded but also more open-hearted.  As I worked with UU congregations, some very small struggling groups, others more substantial and secure, I often found more that felt like self-congratulation, comfort and complacency than inspiration or invitation or even challenge to grow or change.  I understand some of how that happens.  Many times UU groups, particularly those that started as fellowships, began as safe-havens from conservatism.  The first congregation I served in San Luis Obispo, CA had begun during the McCarthy witch-hunts.  A few frightened people found each other and met in somebody’s garage on Sunday mornings for support and encouragement.

But, 35 years later, when I arrived we were dealing with that mentality of small, comfortable and safe.  They have changed since then.  In fact, they are courageously setting out on a new building project.  They have gotten over being merely a cozy enclave of liberal politics.  One our seven principles is:  to “encourage each other towards spiritual growth.”  To me it is central to our reason for being.

Congregations exist to change us but also to change society.  The church is called to work for things as they should be, not merely as they are.  All too often churches become agents of the status quo rather than agents of change.  At some junctures in history churches in our association have been prophetic.  In the Civil Rights Movement, in bringing women into ministry, in support of gays and lesbians, in providing sanctuary for refugees from Central America, in ministry to people with AIDS, and in providing leadership in the Death with Dignity movement (to mention just some of the great causes we have championed), many of our churches have done outstanding work.  There is always, however, the risk that we will think, since we have talked about something it means we have done it.  We do like to talk and we have no shortage of high ideals, but just as doctrines do not enliven the spirit, neither do high ideals without action without experience.  The secret of life is to be found in life itself—not in talk about life or thoughts about life.  I would even go as far as to say God is not found in ideas about God, but in the experience of the holy in our lives.

I will tell you a true story, you may not have heard, about Dr. Albert Einstein.  In 1933 Einstein made a visit to Dr. Geno Gutenburg, the senior seismologist at the California Institute of Technology.  Einstein was keenly interested in the science of earthquakes and asked many questions as the two men strolled around the campus.  Suddenly an excited professor broke in on their conversation.  They looked around to see people rushing from nearby buildings and felt the earth quaking under their feet.  Gutenberg later confessed he had become so engrossed talking with Einstein about the science of earth movements that they failed to notice the Los Angeles Earthquake of 1933.

A church needs to be in the world, not merely studying issues or talking about issues or thinking about issues.  The prophetic dimension provides the creative tension that all life needs.  Sheltered and insulated, a church, like an individual, stays small.

The third point I want to make is that a church needs to provide a certain kind of environment in which people can change and in which the institution itself can be transformed. Congregations are covenanted communities.  That means we operate out of an exchange of mutual promises that provide an atmosphere of safety and support.  We promise to listen to each other, to respect our differences, to work for the larger good rather than our own self-interests.  Whether it is written down or not, such a covenant exists, and if it should be worked out, agreed up, and written down, so much the better.  Being a covenanted community doesn’t mean everyone has to be kept happy.  To the contrary, while as members we promise to respect one another, we do not promise everyone will always be satisfied and agreeable or that there will be no conflict.

“I just cared too much to keep quiet,” I once heard an otherwise demure woman say after a congregational meeting in which her comments had altered the church’s stand on an issue.  If we care, of course, there will be differences of opinion and there will sometimes be conflict.

I seem to be drawn to ocean metaphors.  Consider the ocean—ocean waves, powerful and majestic, are incessantly breaking along coastlines of the world.  Without constant interference between land, wind and water there would be no waves, nothing like the splendor of the ocean.  Think about this:  Does anything lose in the conflict between land and water?  Who loses?… the wind?… the water?  Obviously neither loses.

While conflict in itself need not be a threat to a congregation, it can be used destructively.  One of the traps church people fall into, even we nice liberal church people, is forgetting that our shadows follow us wherever we go, even to church.  We are capable of hurtful, destructive behavior, each of us is.  As long as we remember that, we can get on with the business of growing and learning.  We can check our urge to gossip or keep secrets or go outside the agreed upon processes of decision making.

A church community needs to be one in which redemption is possible.  In a congregation the goal of conflict resolution should always be redemption.  Does it result in a better decision?  Do people learn?  Is the community strengthened?  Are relationships strengthened?  Whether or not there is agreement, is there more understanding?

In a congregation, there are plenty of chances to make mistakes.  One thing life in a church guarantees is plenty of ways to make mistakes.  Even at its best, congregational life is messy.  Oh, do I know how messy congregational life can be!  But because a church is a community of hope, what is important is not the mistake but forgiveness, learning, and reconciliation.

At times we blur distinctions between church and other kinds of institutions.  The mother of a five-year-old heard someone ask him what church his family attended.  The mother listened with great interest to see what he would say.  Her son thought awhile and then announced, “I think we’re League of Women Voters.”  Granted, the League of Women Voters is a worthy organization along with the Sierra Club, the Rotary, and dozens of other fine groups.  We are like each of these in some ways; however, at our peril we forget there is a sacred dimension to the life of a congregation that distinguishes it from all of these.

As far as we know we are the only creatures who contemplate death.  We live with the dual reality of being alive and knowing we have to die.  That’s possibly why humans need religion, why over the entire earth, wherever there have been communities of humans, there has been some evidence of religion.  Humans need to be in touch with the sacred dimension of life, to relate to the mystery of life itself, and religion helps us do that.  When we come to church on any Sunday we come because there are aspects of our lives we do not understand.  There is pain that won’t go away.  We would be better people than we are.  As A. Powell Davies put it, “Workaday enthusiasms are not enough.  They wear out too soon.”  There are people we want to forgive, relationships that confound our best efforts to make them work.  Every one of us is in need of healing.  We would be loving, peaceful people, but we need to learn how to love.  We sing about peace, but need to find peace.  These are the sacred dimensions of life.  This is the holy work of any church, this church.  These are the reasons congregations exist, and when we forget it, we miss our reason for being.  We are like the disciple who ended up with an estate when all he only wanted was to keep his loincloth.

The Search Committee tells us that the search process is going well. That means there is a good possibility that this congregation will choose its new minister before summer! I’m an inveterate optimist. Of course things could turn and the Committee would have to continue its work for some time until they can present a suitable candidate. But I’m excited about seeing the result of their efforts, and I expect that will be soon.

Are you excited? Are you nervous? How close to the ideal candidate will the Search Committee come? Or is there even such a one as an ideal candidate? Each of us could probably describe what an ideal candidate would be for ourselves. But what would the ideal be for the congregation?

Many of you will think of the features of some minister or several that you have appreciated. “I would like to have a minister with characteristics like good old minister X.” “Our future minister should combine particular talents that I observed separately in ministers M and T.” Some of you I fear will think, “someone like Dale.” That will be natural, of course. But will that adequately move the congregation toward a new future? Shouldn’t you also think about what talents, interests, and characteristics will bring young people and young families into the congregation to stay?

Will you look toward a minister that you would like for yourself, or a minister that would be good for the needs and visions of the congregation?

There are other considerations as well. Will the new minister have the skills to address the Long Range Plan? Will the new minister be interested in children and RE? Will the new minister have a theology that suits me? Will I LIKE the new minister as a person?

When the Search Committee reviewed our answers to the questionnaires and began to profile from that data what the ideal minister would be for the congregation they had these and many other issues on their minds. Their task is HUGE. Early on I reminded the Committee that it is impossible to make everybody happy. Why? Because an ideal minister does not exist.

The Committee will be presenting a candidate they think has enough characteristics of the ideal minister that most people of the congregation will be accepting. They will present a minister they believe we will be willing to work with despite human limitations.

And think about this: do you suppose we are the ideal congregation for any minister? Remember, while the congregation is choosing a minister, a minister is also sizing up a congregation. Let’s do the best we can with what we have to work with to both choose and be chosen.

Rev. Dale Arnink
Transition Minister, Minister Emeritus

Thanks to the Long Range Planning Committee (Gordon, Lew, Rick, and Ann) we have a Framework for improving existing practices and moving into new territory. Thanks to all of us participating in many ways for growing our vision, we have golden opportunities to join with others for living our mission. Already, our Board and Committees have set forth on some of the activities presented in the Framework. Some of the activities that the Committee learned are high priority can be done or initiated by only two persons.

Please look at the Lay Ministry Opportunities bulletin board to find the activity you would like to work on with others. We’ll try several ways to help like-minded folks find each other. Checking the bulletin board weekly could be the quickest way to accomplish our Mission Goals. Coffee hour will be another time to link up with others to share an activity – not a time to do the business, only a time to arrange for making future opportunities.

Joining the Buildings & Grounds Committee is one way to find immediate satisfaction and contribute to an Objective of the LRP/Framework. Recently I found Bill Rodgers and Pam Risley in the Minister’s Study preparing the walls for painting. Bill allowed me to remove a built-in cabinet, add some drywall, and paint. Eva Montoya selected the gender-neutral paint colors, and I am very pleased by her choices. Sometimes I worked with Bill and other times I listened to books-on-tape that had been on my reading list. I’ve had fun with that project, and I hope that when some of you see the results you will support similar projects for other rooms in the church.

Actions at the February Board meeting included reviewing Dale’s contract with the Board and also the auxiliary Memorandum of Agreement, as required by the contract written last August. Following that review, we encouraged Dale to continue as Transition Minister for another six months, and we are very thankful that he agreed to do so. With Dale’s leadership, we approved a number of improvements to our Constitution. All changes will be presented to the Congregation in April to vote on the proposed amendments.

This Board of Trustees is headed down the final stretch, and I think it will feel like we’re facing a stiff headwind. We have some important business to complete, several activities we’ve been handed by the LRP/Framework, annual reports to write, and if we’re fortunate a Candidate Week to spend with our next minister. I feel so blessed by all of the support I’ve been getting, and thankful for all that you do to make this congregation so alive and interesting. Very soon the Nominating Committee members will contact some of you to be leaders and officers starting in a few months. My advice to you: think about which position(s) you’d especially like to take on, and then see if you and the committee can make a satisfactory match with your spiritual temperament.

Carl Newton
2006-2007 Church President

By Wellner Ahluwalia

Recently someone asked me, “You’re half-white and half-Asian–do you identify as white or a person of color?” I admit, my first thought was “person of color”, and then I realized something incredibly important. I shouldn’t have to identify as either. I am both, and I am also neither.

In this world, we should not feel we have to term ourselves in this way. The question was asked for the sake of accepting these different groups, but in the struggle to accept, we have separated people into groups and put labels on them. If we truly want to be inclusive of all peoples, then continually saying, “Let’s work towards accepting people of color,” for example, is only going to put a spotlight on that group, effectively creating more segregation. Yes, people are all different, but we need to appreciate the similarities before focusing on the differences if we wish to include everyone. So, I am tired of us all trying to point out nothing but differences and expect unity and equality.

Yes, some of us have white skin while others brown, some have ten piercings and some are afraid of pointy objects, some believe in one true God who protects and nurtures us while others believe that there is little purpose to the universe. We are all very different, but we are also very much the same. We are all people. I no longer “identify myself” as white, or a person of color. I am human, a living being; the same is true for you, and every other person. That is the only label we really need.