The Unitarian Fellowship of Peterborough

We gather as Unitarian Universalists into a congregation.

We join with other liberal religious communities to create and support open and welcoming movement:

We gather affirming that we can accomplish these goals best when we work together.

A box of chalk must work together to create an unfolding picture that comes to an acceptable conclusion for them all.

Meaning cannot be measured. Yet we live immersed in a world of measurement so pervasive that even many of our religious institutions measure success, significantly, by market share. Who's winning in the missionary competition? The Catholics, the Mormons, the Evangelicals, the Muslims, the Buddhists, the Hindu's? How many Jews have left the fold?

 

We even witness religious organizations distorting their mission to mean "reaching more people', as if souls were a measurable commodity. Indeed, the mission of bringing the applications of spirit, which is by nature beyond measure, to our daily efforts to live good and honourable lives seems estranged in the competition that measurement fosters. All too often, "mission" is something we do to outsiders, not something that drives the work inside the community itself. We seem to forget at times, that "if you save one life, you are saving the world".   

 

(And Rev. Wayne Walder adds: We forget, WE.... must become the world we are seeking to change before we can ask it of another.)

 

When I was “in search” for a settled ministry a couple of years ago, one of my goals was to find a place where I could be part of a team and where there was collegial support nearby. I was doing a consulting ministry in Thunder Bay, one of our most isolated congregations, and before going to seminary, I had worked as an independent contractor for twenty years. I really wanted to feel and know the presence of a community larger than myself. In this work, in this somewhat marginalized faith tradition, in our efforts to save ourselves, it is really easy to feel isolated and alone. 

 

This pulpit shuffle is evidence that I have, in part, found that community. The UU Ministers of Southern Ontario are almost rabid about ensuring that we get regular time together for study and retreat, so although no one is close enough to me to have for tea on an afternoon, I know that they’re at the ready with their support.   And their support has inspired me to do all that I can, in turn, to be a support for them. In the scant two years that I’ve been in Peterborough, their reasoned advice and compassion have saved me several times over.

 

We are regularly in need of salvation, it seems. We are living in increasingly busy and anxious times. Sometimes we just want to run home, jump in bed, and pull the covers up over our heads...to try to shut out our problems and worries...to attempt to avoid reality. Being under the covers can be a wonderfully comforting experience. For a time, you can get out your crayons and colour, for a time you can build a fort and imagine a world in action under the sheets, for a time you can sing to yourself as you wiggle your toes and make shadow puppets on the wall.   You might even be able to catch a revitalizing nap. 

 

And then it begins to get old. You begin to wonder what your friends are doing. You get a little hungry. You start to realize that being under the covers permanently isn’t really the life you imagine for yourself.

 

The problem is, pulling the covers off, getting up, and leaving the bedroom, requires a burst of energy and spirit we don’t seem to have. To make that effort feels like just another task to add to our already busy agendas. And even if we were to emerge from our self-inflicted cocoons, we’re not at all sure that there’s anything we can do to alter the feeling of overwhelm that sent us under the covers in the first place. As in the case of the box of crayons, a picture has been created that we’re just not too happy about, and feeling that our colouring days are numbered, we get back in the box and watch to see what will happen.

 

Perhaps it would be better to shrink our world and the reaches of our concern down, to say, just about the parameters of a king size bed. That would be manageable, right?...to only have to worry about what we can see and reach? It seems to me that many of us and many of our congregations are indeed in bed with the covers pulled over our heads.  

 

You know, I have recently joined the CUC’s national identity task force, and I understand that Kingston is stepping up to join in that conversation by having a service and a workshop on the topic in the coming weeks. (I believe it’s on March 22, so plan to be part of that, okay?) Joining the task force has pulled me into some intentional web-weaving between congregations...that is, we’re trying to band together in conversations about identity-naming. In that process, I’ve heard, not once, not twice, but three times, of a congregation that is not planning to participate in the national conversation because they are consumed with trying to take care of themselves, with trying to figure out their own identity, with focusing on their own issues. I completely sympathize with that point of view, and even wonder if they’re not right, given the demands on their resources, to delegate our national organization to the back burner. But I have to wonder how it is that working on the strength of our national organization is any different than working on the well-being of one congregation. 

 

You are probably familiar with the concept of circles of concern and circles of influence as presented by Stephen Covey in his bestseller The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. The number one habit he names is that of being proactive. And to that end, he describes the difference between circles of influence and circles of concern. 

 

Imagine a circle within a circle. The inner circle is your circle of influence and the outer circle is your circle of concern. The larger circle includes all the things which you are concerned about...many of which you cannot influence. Yet there are also things which you can influence, that is, the things in the inner circle. Reactive people, Covey says, focus on the larger circle, their circle of concern, and being reactive about all the things we cannot change is perhaps what sends us screaming to dive under those protective covers. But proactive people focus on their circle of influence. And he maintains that being proactive in your circle of influence also serves to increases the size of that inner circle. 

 

This is where the reading for today challenges us. Let me repeat Heifetz’ words:

“Indeed, the mission of bringing the applications of spirit, which is by nature beyond measure, to our daily efforts to live good and honourable lives seems estranged in the competition that measurement fosters. ...We seem to forget at times, that "if you save one life, you are saving the world".   

 

This religious business of ours is by nature beyond measure. It dwells and moves in the realms of the unconscious and the invisible, and can only be made manifest in the physical expression of how we live our lives, and in our ability to be truthful about how it dwells and moves within us. It cannot be measured accurately in numbers, or in projects and programs. It is not something that we can put on our ‘to do’ list and check off as completed, for in fact, this work is endless. Endless, but in a good way. We are never done. We are never complete. We are works in progress. 

 

The good news is that, even if it can’t be easily measured, this work is still squarely within our own circles of influence. We can make a difference in our own lives, and in doing so, we save a piece of the world. And when we save that little piece, the adjoining pieces, that which we touch or mend or comfort or plant or smile upon, those pieces are also saved, and our circle of influence grows. 

 

I’d like to encourage you to increase the size of your circle of influence, simply by being proactive in the areas where you have a chance to make a difference.   And, I want to highlight a particular area in which you have a chance to make a difference, and that is the CUC, the Canadian Unitarian Council.

 

And here’s the rub. It would seem that the CUC, for the most part (and it might be different here in Kingston because you have a constant reminder of the CUC with you in the presence of Jean Pfleiderer)...but for the most part, most of us don’t even notice the CUC. It’s not on our radar, let alone our circle of influence. From where we sit on our pile of blankets and pillows, it may as well be in a bedroom on the other side of the planet. We simply don’t see its relevance.  

 

Is it relevant? I’ve wondered that myself, when I’m feeling frustrated by a lack of communication or resources. But then I have to ask myself a couple of questions. First, what would it be like to be a Unitarian congregation in Canada, in Peterborough, in Kingston, without the CUC? And second, what is my responsibility in creating the CUC that we need? 

 

The Canadian Unitarian Council is quite young, as organizations go, and has been independent for a mere seven years.   It has been conceived and re-conceived, beginning as early as the 1820’s, and has existed in spurts and starts until 1961, when the Canadian Unitarian Council had its first Board meeting. The crayons finally jumped out of the box and began to draw and create a national organization. Scanning through the chapter on national identity in Phillip Hewett’s “Unitarians in Canada”, the picture they drew was of a national organization that had a corporate denominational identity, that had a voice that spoke out on public issues and that would play a role in the life of an emerging nation, and that would contribute to the health and welfare of each church and fellowship through shared experience and communication. This picture, through envisioned and drawn by the particular box of crayons...that is, the leaders and congregations that existed at that time...that picture, I suspect, may be similar to the picture we would draw today. 

 

What picture would we draw today? Do we even realize that the CUC and the role it is to play is ours to draw? If you were a blue crayon, what vision would you paint? If you were a yellow crayon, what sources of warm and sustenance would you create? If you were a brown crayon, how would you colour the ground on which we walk?   What is the life that we imagine for this liberal religious faith in this vast and beautiful country?

 

You may have noticed that I like to preach in metaphor. I love how images and stories can inform and re-direct us. You may also have noticed the ‘blurb’ I sent to you about this sermon, which asked the question, ‘how might we walk from island mentality to ocean mentality?’ At the time, I was thinking this sermon would be based in another metaphor...that is of being isolated islands that would benefit from getting wet...by using the ever-present resource of the ocean in order to connect with others.   I guess my metaphor has changed a bit, though the spirit of the question has not...how can we crayons walk from the box, sitting on the sidelines, to the page, and actively participate in drawing our vision and our future as the Canadian Unitarian Council?

 

Somehow, by some paradigm shift or some break in the fabric of our usual reality, we need to begin seeing each other (that is, each other as congregations) and then begin seeing the connections and vibrations and harmonies that exist between us. This is the CUC. It is the strings in the web, it is the wires between our phones, it is the water that connects us. Without us, there would be no CUC; without the CUC, we might still exist, but we’d be weaker and lonelier. Our existence, then is the relevance of the CUC...our strong, spirited, outspoken, existence. It is, in part, that ‘something larger’ to which we belong. 

 

I know, I’ve said some seemingly contradictory things today...first, that we should focus on our circle of influence, and second, that we should actively participate in the ongoing creation of the CUC, something that often sits outside of our field of vision. My point is, that the CUC is within our circle of influence...it’s just that we don’t recognize it as such. Changing the picture that was drawn years ago and has continued to develop, requires our action in order to come to life in the ways we dream for it. 

 

So just where does your world end? Just how far out does your circle of reality and engagement extend? To the edges of the bed? To the walls of the bedroom or your home? To the names on the pages of this congregation’s directory? To the outskirts of Kingston? Since we live in a reality where everything is nested within something larger, no matter how far out we extend that circle, to some extent we are still pulling a blanket over our heads, and focusing on the mini-world we create in doing so. I’m just asking that you blur your eyes for a moment, and recognize that your picture, your bedroom, is connected to and held with the embrace of all the other pictures and bedrooms of our Canadian congregations. We can influence that larger picture by including it in our field of vision, and by influencing what we can, no matter how near or far. 

 

To paraphrase a Helen Keller quote, I am only one crayon, but still, I am a crayon. I can’t do everything, but still I can do something. I can’t imagine being here in Canada and serving a Unitarian congregation, without the presence of the CUC. I can’t say what the CUC will become and how it might be re-imagined and drawn. But I do know that its relevance is dependent upon us, upon each of our colours.   And for a new and more effective CUC to emerge, we are all going to have to get out of the box. 

So may it be.

 

We gather affirming that we can accomplish these goals best when we work together.

We seem to forget at times, that "if you save one life, you are saving the world".