DWELL IN POSSIBILITY: WINDS OF CHANGE
by Pam Rumancik

A cool wind is blowing around the edges of the church today and
you can feel a new season waiting to take hold. We have enjoyed the
deep warmth of summer – along with its rich growth and fragrant
offerings -- but now we move into a time of rest.

The colors of the trees are beginning to burst forth and I am led
to ponder on this marvel. The colors which now appear are not
new. They have existed all along in the brilliant green leaves
waving overhead. They were merely overwhelmed by the
action of photosynthesis. Green dominated all the other
pigments and made them invisible.

But now, the enchanted work of creating food from sunlight has
gone into remission and the deep red, oranges, and yellows are
finally becoming apparent.

How many ways does this happen in our own lives? How many times
are the deepest longings of our hearts buried under too much
business and hurry? How often do we forget to live, distracted
by the process of making a living?

Children instinctually love to visit with their grandparents because
the business of life has passed. Grandparents often have time to
pay attention to the lazy pace of an ant or the patience to help
young hands do a task for the first time. The hectic pace has
slowed – and there is time to actually look around and notice
the amazing gifts of this blessed existence.

We each have brilliant hues hiding within our souls. We
have dreams and visions, insights and passions gently
waiting for a ripe moment to emerge. For just a bit, let us
allow the green of doing to fall away; let us rest for a
brief moment in our autumnal souls. What soul colors
may be revealed in this season of turning?

We Only Have to Love  by Pam Rumancik

In Japan they collect ancient bowls and pottery in which their cracks have been filled with gold. When a tea pot or bowl has broken they patch it with resin and then coat the resin with gold powder. Not only are the cracks visible – they highlight the durability of the piece and give the pottery enhanced beauty and resilience.

There's a Japanese story of a man who had bought a beautiful new vase, immaculate, created by a master. He wanted to show this piece to his friend after their tea ceremony. But since the vase was so new, he was ashamed of presenting it to his friend. So he took a brush and dipped it into gold varnish which is used to cover the glue in cracks and fissures in ceramics. He drew a line that looked like a crack in the new vase. Now it looked old and mended, not perfect any more.

This is how he presented the vase to his friend, who immediately understood the matter. He admired this aged vase and regarded his friend with the highest esteem.

In the Japanese culture they understand that new and pristine has not yet stood the test of time. It’s untried – and much less interesting than a cracked and aged pot streaked with gold.

A pot's value does not come from being undamaged…

Which brings us to Mary Oliver’s poem – Wild Geese.

"You do not have to be good…" our cracks may well be our most valuable assets if we just look at life a little differently…

Karen and I began reflecting on our lives for today’s sermon. It’s been a roller coaster ride – chaplain, ordination, coming down to serve a church in the south when the only thing I’d said about where I wanted to go was ‘not below the Mason-Dixon line.’  And that was all about not liking heat.  It just goes to prove – want to make God laugh? Start making plans…

But this is the end of the year – and a time where many people look back over the past 12 months and take stock.  What went well? What tanked?  Where did I live up to my expectations? Where did I miss the mark?

This church has had a pretty wild year as well.

Only last January it was celebrating your 60^th anniversary and looking at a newly invigorated church community with a certain set of expectations about what would happen next.

And now – here you are with an interim minister getting ready to begin the search process for a new settled one.

What happened?  Were mistakes made? Did everyone act from their very best place?

Maybe yes, maybe no. Probably we will never exactly know but part of the work we are doing during this interim period is figuring out where the cracks are – and how we can fill them in with gold.

Life is complicated. Everyone can be acting from the very best place possible and still things go awry…  how do we respond and continue to get stronger and more resilient in that process?

Karen talked about the impossibility of being perfect – there is no such thing as a perfect human being. No such thing as a perfect life – there’s no such thing as a perfect church. So what do we aim for?

We know we screw up. We fall off diets, we “forget” to exercise, we hurt people’s feelings, we make mistakes.  Each of us messes up from time to time, no matter how hard we try. The story of David shows that even our heroes mess up – and sometimes in a really big way.  And yet, still they are beloved of God.

So it’s not that we mess up so much as how we respond to missing the mark – to being human.  We can bluff our way through and hope that we put it behind us – and that it can be forgotten about – forgive and forget! But that doesn’t help us move forward.  In thinking about the Japanese bowls that would be the equivalent of just buying a new one.

The other response is stopping and really looking at what happened and finding a way to learn, to grow, to become stronger from our missteps.  This would be looking with our heart and responding with love so that we might be stronger and wiser for the next year.

Painting our cracks with gold not only owns our mistakes – but claims the hard won wisdom they represent. Our response to life determines who we become – who we are.

Because in life it is our cracks, our broken places, our places where we have failed and learned and tried again that make us beautiful and filled with life.

Our cracks, our weakness, our woundedness, these are the stuff that makes lives of rich meaning and deep understanding. If I have never broken a promise or missed a deadline, or broken something valuable, I will not be able to have compassion when someone else does one of those things. 

But if I am aware of my own shortfalls, it is much easier to have empathy and compassion for another’s problems.

It is my brokenness which makes me whole, my shortcomings which deepen my ability to love.

As Unitarian Universalists we come with a deep tradition of Universalism – which believes that all are beloved by a God who accepts us exactly as we are – flaws and shortcomings. It is from this place that we are called to love the world.  Not despite our failings, but in the midst of them.

Mary Oliver wrote – "you do not have to be good… you only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves."

Can we love as we are called to love? Love without conditions? Love without limitations? Love without earning or denying our humanity? 

How do we love the cracked and flawed humans who share this planet with us?

These are big questions as we close in upon a new year but the answer is the same as every other year. We love from our brokenness and from our pain – we love from the mistakes we make and the triumphs we share. We love imperfectly but still –

We only have to love…

All of us everyone beloved of Gd

From the stem of Jesse came a baby known as Jesus. Halleluiah. Christmas has come and gone new years is just around the corner  - we are in between.

A time of reflection, a time when new promises are made, new dreams given review.

We are looking at where we have come from. We stand in this day on top of a mountain and can look back over the route that we have taken to arrive here and wonder.
I am not sure about you but if anyone had asked me at this moment last year if this is where I would be today.  If someone had handed me a list of 3 cities to guess and Chattanooga had been on it I may have even wondered - is that city real or is that just a made up name from a song I once sang in the car with my parents as we traveled on long vacation trips.


From the stem of Jesse came a baby known as Jesus. Today I find myself thinking of the stem of Jesse - a man named David.

Perhaps because of the choir’s offering, but also because David is an enigma. Handsome king David in biblical tales from Chronicles and Kings is an amazing and complex person.

The youngest of Jesse's sons he was chosen by Samuel to be part of Kind Saul's entourage.
He was everything we seem to like and hate in a leader. He was charismatic,he was brave (fighting the behemoth Goliath with only a sling shot), he was creative being the author of the book of psalms, he was a thoughtful and even doting father.

But David was complicated as well. He was passionate and he took what he wanted - even if that was the wife of one of his generals. He was clever (when he knew that Bathsheba was pregnant from their joining he demanded that Uriah come back and sleep with his wife - when he refused clever and diabolical David ordered his soldiers to leave him alone in battle ensuring his death.

David is complicated. 

I wonder if he started that year thinking about where he might end up. I wonder if he would have imagined the betrayal that he would experience - the deepest betrayal we can experience - knowing that we have fallen short of our own expectations of ourselves.
But David is complicated and an amazing leader - partly because in the face of this betrayal - he does something amazing. He does not cry out that he had every right to do what he did - as beloved of Gd - as passionate charismatic - as king. Instead he accepts his fate (which is harsh) and he goes out to comfort his new wife.

David is complicated. and David is living into one of the most beautiful of Jewish principles. The person (man) who is sinless can never be as righteous as the person who has sinned and turned back from sin.

In this case let us take the ancient understanding of sin as meaning "to miss the mark" it is originally derived from an archery term. David missed the mark - his prophet, Nathan, has confirmed what he already suspected.

Perhaps intoxicated by power, he reached beyond what he should to forbidden fruit.  He then tried to correct it - and then again and then. Finally he stopped and stood and simply accepted his fault.

Halleluiah. David stopped - instead of pointing fingers or making excuses or changing his laws to meet his own whims - he accepted that he was wrong and began the long trek toward a different kind of wholeness.

Wholeness  - once we realize that we are not perfect - that we will never be perfect - that we are far from being able to expect perfection. The world we live within is complicated. 

Many world religions take our human imperfectibility on in different ways. Some say it is out of our woundedness - out of our lack - out of our perfect imperfections that some of our most beautiful and profound realizations, insights and evolutions can be born.

For the Buddhist we see this depicted in the symbol of the lotus flower. It is beautiful, pure white and fragrant, and only grows out of the richest of soil - some might call it s**t at the bottom of the pond. Its growth only comes from a letting go of what was, what is decaying on the bottom, to create what will be next.

For the Taoists it is the depiction of Yin and Yang. Not as dualistic as it first appears but instead a reminder that yang outward energy always has a piece coming back yin that movement inward to a more passive state always has within it a way back out to balance.

For the Hindu this understanding might be held in the image of the goddess Kali - nothing is created without first the destruction - nothing is destroyed without the presence of possibilities within creation.

For some Christians - the further stem of Jesse - sin or missing the mark can be complicated further by the concept of an external incomplete grace. This grace is only granted to those who accept an image of a God who bargains and grants pardons.

But grace that comes as a result of our woundedness is the one that we learn from our universalist heritage. Universalism means that all are beloved of God and will return to that from which we came – and it demands that I participate in creating a community and society where we are all beloved of Gd.

ALL of us. 

All of us beloved does not mean that I can act any way I want. It means that if I love myself I will create a world for myself – and others - that is safe and probably even generous. Being loved without reservation allows me to live into that love and not act from fear or power over others.

If we wish to live into this love we recognize that we are all responsible for this world and all who live within it. If gd loves everyone who should I not love?

Now back to David for a moment – pure love does not equal approval. Indeed the UU peacemaking groups would have us recognize that love must be strong enough to stand up to tyrannical or abysmal behavior. Our universalist heritage teaches that it is our responsibility to foster a community and society that promotes goodness and mercy for  everyone.  Love is complicated - just like life. 

We are bound by our nature to "sin” - to fall short.  It is not those actions alone that form us however.

Ultimately when I take responsibility for my actions I am formed by those results as well. When David stood with Nathan and wondered at what he brought upon his house, his response was to be contrite and to begin the long arduous process of providing comfort to those he had hurt most deeply. His life was still complicated but out of this moment of reflection and evolution came the next great leader – his son, Solomon, who would lead his people with such an even hand that I can still remember hearing the stories of his great wisdom as child. Halleluiah

Today as I stand looking back over this year. I can see places where I was less than I wished to be. I can see places where I brought more love than I got back and I can see places where mercy followed me relentlessly.

Today I look back and find those things that I might do differently. And I turn to this next year knowing that I may be made better by my reflection. It is not grace that I seek - I believe grace in love is here for all of us - instead what I seek is redemption. The redemption that comes from knowing I can be imperfect today just as I have been and still be called to be in this world with a fierce and mighty love. Love that says no .. and yes. Love that works for justice and is self reflective. Love that is deeply imbued in all of us and love demands that we live within it now.

As a child

Some Christian scripture asks that we approach Gd as a child. (Mark )

So often I have thought that this means that I need to be less jaded by the world, more trusting, more innocent  As if the worlds harshness curls us into a defensive ball by the time we reach our adulthood. And in many ways that is true. A slight glance can now tell me volumes about how loudly I am speaking or how under dressed I am for an occasion.

I remember going to a party when I was in high-school. I shopped for just the right outfit, wanting to look good, wanting to show off that I had lost weight (soon to be put back on). It was the first party with the cool in crowd - well the cool we are the student government people and the theatre people crowd. I had looked on from a far as I had made my way out of the smoking lounge crowd into the choir crowd and now finally had an invitation to be with the theater folks. I knew from the moment I arrived that I was over dressed. Everyone else in jeans and t-shirts. Laughing comfortable uninhibited, and there I was in kulates. (Kulates, really never a fashion trend setter except in the east village where worn with pink hair and pierced nipples they are elevated to the awkward coolness of being totally off center.) When we started to play charades everyone laughed as a card came up about a flood and someone said well at least we can all jump on Karen and she will save us from getting wet. Ah yes, by young adulthood we all know the realities of a look and have been whipped by our deepest fears of being rejected.

Now I have to say I do not care about kulates anymore - and frankly neither should you - but when approaching Gd that is still part of what is expected. Gd is best listened to through the lens of letting go of everything I have lived through to hear the world as innocent and new. To hear the possibility of that which has not yet been formed. To live within the un-ness of creating.

I have thought a lot about this form of interaction with Gd. (If you are friends with the lovely Pam she will tell you this means that I ruminate and talk and argue and read and listen and cry and finally, finally say well maybe...) I have spent hours meditating and praying to be open to the now of this moment. Sometimes it even works.... Still lately I have wondered if this was all that Gd meant.

Come into the presence of Gd as a child.

Children are not just innocent, children speak the truth.

Children speak because they are innocent and do not know about the consequences, still they speak the truth. What if in an allegorical reading of this passage Jesus is actually saying to these people he is walking with ask, even if you look foolish, even if I am angry or say no - ask how else will we ever know one another. How else will you ever know me... They did not ask after being chided and I wonder what he might have said if they had asked him about slavery, abuse, homosexuality, and women's rights. What would Jesus have said about those even deeper issues of justice. What would he have said had they asked about grace, salvation, service, and sacraments? Would he have said - forget about what is on the table it is the table itself that matters - find places you can be together those will always be a rare commodity. What if his disciples had had the courage to ask and look foolish. To speak as a child and say what they know as the truth in order to be taught and be transformed.

I suspect he might have had words that confounded me with their wisdom and spoke about how deeply the world challenges us to become more than we think we can be. I think he might have said love is love and love is always an answer to be reckoned with even if it creates havoc because sometimes people do horrible things out of love. I would have had to look at those words and tried to wrestle with them. It might have given me a starting point to talk to so many different people in my life estranged because of misunderstood words. Would words of deeper wisdom have given me the courage to reach out and be in community again instead of simply sitting and thinking about why neither of us was calling.

Come into the presence of Gd as a child.

If I take this into the knowledge that each of us holds the presence of Gd I stand in an even more awe-some place. I had a colleague once who said that while I could live in the world I created in my head just fine it might be nicer for the people around me to tell me who they are instead. Hmmm all this talking and asking questions and listening and actually being like a child, willing to hear what is said not what is convenient.

What would our world look like if I took this on as well. If the innocence of my being was strong enough to say what is real and true about myself and the world I love within. Not worrying about who or how but instead simply being a truth teller. - Truth in love - Truth in spite of my fear - Truth because really the only way to be vulnerable in this world is through truth. What if we both greeted each other with innocence and truth. Able to ask the hard questions even if we will look foolish and willing hear what is said not what we want to hear. In this way coming into the presence of Gd within you as a child, speaking in truth and hearing in love actually might allow me to be converted by you in our conversations. What a radical world that would be to live in. Perhaps this is the prophethood of all believers that our UU theologian spoke about.To speak what we believe is truth - even if it turns out to be wrong - so that others can help us to clarify what is real. because in this time of sound bites and obfuscation truth is held more firmly within the grasp of the many than of the few.

Why do most of our stories for children start with once upon a time in a place far away. Do we think that putting good and bad things at a distance will somehow shelter them from life. Moving a story away from the source of its generation, which will be their own mind or body, to a place detached and remote - not here - not now - not you, will somehow protect them. It is so absurd. To teach imagination as usable only in passive and unreachable ways.

Imagination is perhaps one of our most powerful tools in the arsenal of living as creative and emotional beings. I wonder what it would be like if I had heard stories that started with - right around the corner... - or better yet - have you ever known someone who... - or even still - can you imagine yourself... I suppose it is right I was protected but I find myself wondering what I was protected from, or what the world was protected from by this limitation.

I have begun to wonder what and how we have learned to limit ourselves in order to "live" within this world. Even that statement "live within this world" makes me ask what world? All I can experience is given to me by my senses interpreted by my mind through a filter of rules that I learned as a child. Touch the red hot stove and you will experience pain. Drop something from your hand and it falls to the ground. These are, I have been told, the immutable laws of physics. I can not walk on air to reach as Icarus to fly to the sun, even if i plaster myself with wings. And I have to say that I have seen them all to be true.

I was taught early and often to believe in the rules that guard this realm. Gravity and falling, energy and cold, heat and burning, solid and impenetrable, I was taught as you likely were as well, these classics of our physical existance and then I was taught more subtle things about relationships and words and meaning. I was told stories about how people act and why we live together and how I might be a better person....

But I wonder what would have happened if I was told stories about myself that included magic - like Harry Potter. If radical acts of imagination might have come forth? What if we started contemplating the realm of possibility as much as we teach the realm of "reality." What if... what if we started to tell our children stories that let them make up the world instead of our imposing the rules we think we know upon them? What if we taught them that gravity and heat exist - yes they do, touch a red hot stove and your hand will burn, still what if we taught them that this is what we know now... and ask them what they know as well. Or better what they imagine.

Once upon a time In this world now, there lives a person just like you who ...

Free fall

I am in free fall.

The moments between but not attached. That time when you realize that you are not some part of who you used to be and are moving onto what is next that has not emerged yet. I am falling and am trying to enjoy the flight rather than be terrified by where and how I might land.

In prayer Gd says - I love you I will catch you - trust - let go.

But what if I wanted to be more than simply the lilly's in the field. What if I wanted to have a home (oh wait I do), what if I wanted to be of service (oh gosh I am), what if I heard a call to a particular place (well you are still in the place you have always been - it is called here), what if I thought I could speak, organize, inspire, lead, remind, heal, call. What if I longed to be of use (well that would be the service part), no of specific use. I thought I heard Gd calling me somewhere - perhaps I found too much wonder in the story of Abraham, the listening to/for Gd even after you think you have heard part.

I am in free fall. Still I suspect where I will land. Because as my parent knew when I left home as a child in the most important ways I never left who they had helped me to become. I am falling but I suspect I am simply coming home, falling back, falling up.

For those who do not know my journey in a moment of great loss, with a need to argue with Gd, I left the Unitarian church and found my way in to a rich ritualistic experience of Gd in the Episcopal church. Being on the track for ministry I stayed on that track for the priesthood. It turns out that while as I get closer to the center of the wheel of faith - that is to a closer relationship with Gd - I can see how the lines between these systems are false reflections of our human need not a reflection of Gd's need. That even as I can see that to serve a particular spoke of the wheel I need to believe that story entirely. While I am transformed and challenged by the Christian story I do not believe it to the bone of my bones. I do, however, believe in the practice of seeking and questioning in service to relationships to, as I just put it, my bones.

It is hard to be a Unitarian in an Episcopal church so I am in free fall.

I fall knowing at least three things more fully:
1. That grace exists for all of us to claim and live within. Gd loves each of us, right where we are, just as we are that is the meaning for me of salvation.
2. That the main sacrament of my religion is the table not the elements that sit on top. A round table where all are welcome and all have a place. This is what I am called to take to the world.
3. That I am called to minister to people. I am called to all those things that I listed before - yes I am called to service - yes I am called.

OK Gd I am in free fall I need your help.

Oh and my friends that means I need your help as well because Gd works here through you!

Unitarianism in 500 words or less

Unitarianism is a non-creedal and non-doctrinal faith. So I speak for myself here. I would say that as a faith of practice two of its main "sacraments" are questioning and seeking. It supports people as they practice seeking truth, their truth. It encourages people to question, wonder and transform their beliefs into a stronger and more complex places of faith. Its salvation is the knowledge that all of us are held in the love of Gd - no exceptions. Unitarians deeply value the relational nature of life. How we live and support and thrive with each other, our communities, our world, our resources, ourselves. Often this work of relationship demands our participation in justice for all and it also demands our living lives of service, inquiry and even celebration. (Gd's world is complex and beautiful beyond our imagination). For some of us (my self included) Jesus and the trinity express an example of this - Father a source of being, Son a source of justice and change, Holy Spirit a source of renual and strength.