A CARING MINISTRY

 

September 9, 2007

 

IN-GATHERING MUSIC

 

WELCOME

 

OPENING WORDS AND CHALICE LIGHTING

(Text by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik; reader: Peggy Steele)

 

Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together; certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then with the breath of kindness blow the rest away.

 

HYMN

 

READING  (From Mary’s Way by Peggy Taylor Millin; reader: Charlie Pickle)

 

I was on a train on a rainy day.  The train was slowing down to pull into a station.  For some reason, I became intent on watching the raindrops on the window.  Two separate drops, pushed by the wind, merged into one for a moment and then divided again – each carrying with it a part of the other.  Simply by that momentary touching, neither was what it had been before.  And as each one went on to touch other raindrops, it shared not only itself, but what it had gleaned from the other.  I saw this metaphor many years ago and it is one of my most vivid memories.  I realized then that we never touch people so lightly that we do not leave a trace.  Our state of being matters to those around us, so we need to become conscious of what we unintentionally share so that we can learn to share with intention.

 

JOYS AND CONCERNS

 

MEDITATION, REFLECTION, PRAYER

 

OFFERTORY

 

RESPONSIVE READING (“Kindness” by Naomi Shihab Nye; done by entire congregation, one half of the group speaking the text in normal font, the other half the italicized, and all together on the boldface text at end.)

 

(Insert for order of service)

 

Before you know what kindness really is

you must lose things,

feel the future dissolve in a moment

like salt in a weakened broth.

 

What you held in your hand,

what you counted and carefully saved,

all this must go so you know

how desolate the landscape can be

between the  regions of kindness.

 

How you ride and ride

thinking the bus will never stop,

the passengers eating maize and chicken

will stare out the window forever.

 

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness

you must travel where the Indian in a while poncho

lies dead by the side of the road.

 

You must see how this could be you,

how he too was someone

who journeyed through the night with plans

and the simple breath that kept him alive.

 

Before you know kindness as the deepest think inside,

you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.

You must wake up with sorrow.

 

You must speak to it till your voice

catches the thread of all sorrows

and you see the size of the cloth.

 

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,

only kindness that ties your shoes

and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,

only kindness that raises its head from the crowd of the world to say

 

it is I you have been looking for

and then goes with you everywhere

like a shadow or a friend.

 

 

INTRODUCTION OF SPEAKER (Zee)

Linda Pickle is a retired Professor of German and Department Head. She and her husband Charlie have been members of this congregation since coming to BG in 1999. She has been active in church leadership during the past 8 years in a variety of ways. Linda organized and chaired the first Membership Committee and the first Hospitality Committee, and was President of the Board on 2 occasions, most recently last year. In 2002 she attended Midwest Leadership School in Beloit, Wisconsin. Today she is going to speak with us on the topic of "A Caring Ministry."
A CARING MINISTRY (Linda)

 

            Good morning! 

            I was struck a few weeks ago when Nancy Givens identified the lack of connection as the most serious problem at the core of addressing environmental concerns.  Bonfire’s poetry the following Sunday gave dynamic and eloquent voice to that same lack of connection as the cause of the strong strain of selfish materialism in our culture that we are all so influenced by.  Such selfishness is certainly not unique to US citizens, but it is perhaps an especially acute and deeply rooted problem in our culture and society. Think of the traditional American emphasis on individualism and of the exploitation of weak or non-existent social structures as our nation grew westward.  The land, the forests, the rivers, and the riches underground were often prey to the most ruthless individuals among us, unchecked by the rule of law, which didn’t yet exist on the frontier. That’s a bad habit of cultural behavior that we haven’t yet completely corrected.

            We are also a restless, unsettled society, built by immigrants on the lookout for a better place to be.  Weakening and often breaking family and regional ties, American demographic mobility, which has intensified in the past half-century, even here in family-centered Kentucky, has exacerbated the lack of connection.  Today we often literally don’t know the names of the people who live in the houses and apartments around us, much less stand by them when they have trouble or with them in common cause.

            Yet there also exists a long-time conflict in the US between the emphasis individualism and communal urges.  This was something that I hadn’t really thought a great deal about until 10 years ago when I was asked to teach a US film course at XFLU in China.  The purposes of the course were to provide listening practice and vocabulary enhancement for final year English majors and to give them a rough overview of the American cinema. So I chose some films that I thought were generally representative of important film types that also showed various things about American cultural traditions:

Before leaving for China, I watched all of these movies, most for the first time in many years, and was struck by the underlying theme of the individual vs. the community that they share.  And the ultimate message in each film always was that attractive and effective as individualism can be, communal connections are more valuable, lasting, and morally superior. The rootless gunman Shane saves the homesteaders from the evil rancher and his hired guns, but ends up riding away alone, wounded and perhaps dying, from the settlers’ little frontier community.  The Huey Long-style politician starts out as a man of the people, but ends up a corrupt exploiter who deserves being assassinated.  George Bailey is frustrated again and again in his wish to escape the confines of his provincial home town and has to learn through despair and a “what if” trip back in time, engineered by his guardian angel, that precisely his sacrifices to the common good have made life wonderful for him and everyone else in the town. In 1956 Cecil B. DeMille introduced “The Ten Commandments” by saying that this Biblical story is about freeing the individual from state control.  (You can see a video clip of his comments on YouTube!) Yet Moses is not a true individualist; he turns his back on the temptations of power and luxury to serve his people and to give them a new set of laws by which to live.  And Gilbert Grape has to decide between the pressing needs of his family and his own wish for freedom and escape into a new life somewhere far from his small town home.  He chooses to stay.

            Perhaps these films say more about my cinematic tastes than they do about US culture.  But I prefer to think that they are representative not only of American standard film types, but also of a great longing in our society for connection, for community.  This is also why church membership is such a striking aspect of our society.  Churches were often the most immediate and important site of communal life in our developing frontiers and cities.  They have continued to play that role to the present day.  In a strange land, surrounded by unaccustomed people and places, immigrants came together with those who at least believed as they did.  Today we are all still surrounded by people with differing backgrounds, experiences, and life goals.  The rich diversity of our society, one of its great strengths and beauties, is also one of its most stressful and potentially alienating qualities.  It is often hard to see the commonalities of our experiences outside of our families and the intentional groups to which we belong.

            And so we seek membership in groups that supplant or replace the close family and neighborhood ties that we have lost or perhaps never had.  We in this church also seek community, in spite of our UU emphasis on finding one’s own individual spiritual way, in spite of our rejecting a creed or doctrine that would tell us all how to be in the world.  But think about it - our 7 principles are all about connection, community, and caring.  We respect others’ rights, support the democratic process, are aware of our place in the interdependent web of existence.

            In his comments to us from this podium back in July, our board president Jim Martin called on us to build a beloved community among ourselves.  Caring is at the core of doing so. Jim has emphasized the importance of everyone connecting with our beloved community through involvement in our various programs.  There are many ways to do this. We are already connecting to and caring for each other by:

I’m afraid to point out individual examples of caring, because there are so many and I don’t want to appear preferential of one person or activity or another.  But I’m sure many of you could praise individual acts of caring kindness you’ve experienced or witnessed.  In doing all of these things, we are showing that our connections to one another. 

            But in spite of the many good things going on in this area of our church life, I think I am not alone in feeling that there is still something missing.  Many of you will remember that when we surveyed the congregation through small group conversations a couple of years ago, a caring structure to provide support to members and friends was named by many as one of the things most lacking in our church.  The same concern surfaced during the workshop that resulted in our new mission and vision statements, and it was also very prominent in the strategic planning meeting we held early this year.  Remember our mission: to be a caring community that encourages spiritual growth and actively works to improve our society and the environment. The first words of our vision statement are: Individuals are welcomed into our caring, open-minded community of seekers. And of course as a church community we have been demonstrating care and concern for each other for a long time. This is what has brought us together and what often keeps us coming back to this place and this group of people. Our mission and vision statements affirm and assert that we intend to be a caring community. But I think the key word there is “intend.”  The members and friends of this church have become so numerous that we no longer know everyone’s names.  We find ourselves at the coffee hour furtively peeking at nametags to see who we are talking to.  Or, in order to get past that awkwardness, we have to resort to the kind of direct question suggested by someone recently: “Excuse me, but do you know your name?”

 

Do you know the people standing around you in this room?  Let’s make sure – turn and greet each other by name.  If you don’t know the other person’s name, see if they do!

 

            So, now that you know each other, or at least some of us here, what next? How do we go about truly becoming what we say we are and what, in our vision for our future, we intend always to be: a caring community?  I think that one way is put into place a caring structure, and so a group of us have reactivated the Caring Committee, which has been more or less defunct as an identifiable body since Suzy Likes moved away several years ago, except for Roger’s continuing to send birthday, anniversary, sympathy, and get-well cards.  More about the new Caring Committee in a few minutes.

 

            But more important than that outer structure is the recognition, affirmation, and embracing of a caring ministry throughout our church.   As Peggy Taylor Millin said, “we never touch people so lightly that we do not leave a trace.  Our state of being matters to those around us, so we need to become conscious of what we unintentionally share so that we can learn to share with intention.”  To share with intention – not just to share our goods: money at the offertory, food for an ill friend, transportation for someone unable to drive, important though these things are.  But to share the idea of a ministry, of ministering to each other’s innermost needs: the need to feel welcome, the need to belong, the need to be treated with respect and kindness, the need to be listened to, the need to give all of these same gifts of openness and kindness to another – that is what a caring ministry truly is in its deepest sense.  It’s not only giving, but it is also receiving, because by receiving acts of kindness we grant the other the blessing of having given.

            I am one of those people for whom giving kindness is often easier than receiving it.  It is probably a matter of pride, of not wanting to admit that I am not strong enough to stand alone at difficult times (typical American!), and of not wanting to feel beholden to others.  That’s a silly and a selfish attitude, and I’m working on it, because almost certainly the day will come when I will need a great many concrete acts of kindness from others.

            By sharing in the caring ministry of this church, we will be practicing caritas, or charity, in the spiritual sense.  St. Paul, a man I don’t often quote, said in his first letter to the early Christian community in Corinth that of the three great Christian virtues: faith, hope, and charity, “the greatest of these is charity.”  Charity, or caring, is demonstrating love, attention, and kindness.  The Dictionary of the History of Ideas defines caritas or charity this way: “In the fullest sense charity is God's love. It is generous love, not appetitive in the sense that there is need to satisfy that in oneself which is incomplete, not stimulated by or dependent upon that which is loved. It is indifferent to value, seeking to confer good, rather than to obtain it. It is therefore spontaneous and creative, and it is rooted in abundance rather than in poverty. In this sense God himself is called love.” [end quote]  Caring is rooted in abundance rather than poverty.  It is God, the highest good, the Spirit of Life, or whatever high holiness we Unitarian Universalists may want to name.  Can we imagine that we would ever run out of charity for each other?  I hope not!

            So do you want to be part of the caring ministry of this church?  Do you want to be one of the UU Church of BG saints who march into Heaven or into whatever realm of earthly, communal rewards that you may long for?  If you do, witness to it!  Say: “I care!”

            Thanks for that witness!  Now to the reactivated Caring Comm. to help promote a caring ministry in our church.  As I looked around for models, our strategic planning consultant Ray Wilson pointed me toward the Caring Associate program at his church, UU Church of Indianapolis.  Its chair, Donna Marsh, was very generous in sharing materials and giving advice.  I also found a variety of other resources through the UUA website and the website of other UU churches. So much of the structure and many of the goals of the new Caring Committee, a subcommittee of the Membership Committee, is based on the wisdom of other caring groups.  I want to introduce the first group of Helping Hands Caring Associates now.  Would the Helping Hands please come forward?  They’re the folks with little hands on their nametags.  You can get one, too!

            I want to tell you a little about the structure of the Caring Committee and how it will function.  Two of these Caring Associates: Peggy Steele and Roger Phillips, will be writing you cards and notes at times of significant life events.  Four Caring Associates make up our Joys and Concerns team: Michele Newcomb, Holly Oglesbee, Katrina Phelps, and Charlie Pickle. They and I as Caring Coordinator will be doing our best to organize responses to caring needs. We’ve divided the church members and friends into groups of approximately 20 households each that correspond roughly to geographic regions:

Each Caring Associate will be the prime person responsible for coordinating caring responses for members and friends in his or her respective area.  Our thought in doing this is to make our responsibilities clearer, but also to make it easier for you to participate in our caring ministry, as you will have the chance to engage in caring actions for your neighbors.  Yes, that’s right – we expect you to take an active role in our church’s caring ministry.  We hope that you will be as generous as you can in responding to a request for a meal for an ill church member, or a ride to the doctor.  We will do our best to spread around the opportunities to serve in this ministry.  We don’t want any caring martyrs doing all the work for the rest of us!

            Another way that you can take part in our shared ministry is by telling me or anyone else in this group if you yourself have a caring need or if someone else among our members and friends does.  We will do our best to become aware of such needs and respond appropriately on our own, but we’ll need help from the rest of you. 

            The writer Alice Walker wrote recently that “we live in the best of all times.”  She thinks this is so because, she says, “There’s so much to do!”  I envy her positive spin on what to me often seems terribly daunting, if not hopeless, as I look at all the needs in this world.  Another quote appeals more to me.  That great American artist and wordsmith Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead said: “Somebody has to do something, and it’s just incredibly pathetic that it has to be us.”  I like that – the conviction that something has to be done, and the wry recognition that we human beings are not completely well equipped to do it. I hope that you also feel ready to be one of the somebodies who will do something and that you will join me and the other Caring Associates in our caring ministry.  Thank you.

 

AFFIRMATION OF HELPING HANDS CARING ASSOCIATES (insert)

 

Questions? (if there’s time)

 

            Thank you for recognizing that our Caring Associates will not and cannot do it all.  Caring is truly a ministry that every committed member and friend of this church must engage in. Having a professional minister in our pulpit down the road won’t change the necessity for all of us to practice caring.

            We’ll be in touch!

 

HYMN

 

CLOSING WORDS (Text by Helen Keller; reader: Holly)

 

I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish humble tasks as through they were great and noble.  The world is moved along not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest work.

 

PEACE SONG