Giving is Good for the Soul
“We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.”
-Winston Churchill
Our congregation’s pledge theme this year is “Giving is Good for the Soul”. I can’t take credit for it – our finance committee has done excellent work getting our pledge campaign set up – but I love this theme, as this is one of my most cherished spiritual beliefs. I’ve had more money at some times in my life and less money at others, but it’s the times when I have been able to give something to others – my money, my time, or my intention – that I have felt truly wealthy.
I’ve learned a lot about generosity from being here at FUUFHC. This is a congregation of generous givers. When congregants learn, in Milestones or in a Caring Group, about a life crisis affecting members of our community, the first question I hear is usually, “what can I do for them?” Last year in our “Share the Plate” offering we raised over $4,000 to help NORWESCAP’s food pantry, and we are raising more this year, but we didn’t stop there – many congregants volunteered their time there on a Saturday, and our children put together a Bean Soup fundraiser to raise even more. This congregation gives generously to Chalice Lighter campaigns to assist other congregations, aware that we ourselves were helped by this in the past. And over the years we have made sure that this congregation has the staff and volunteer support to help us grow as people and reach out to a community that needs our liberal religious voice. We have created a warm, vibrant community here because of the gifts people share.
This year of economic turbulence has affected us to different degrees. Some of our members and friends have faced very hard times, while some of us have been barely affected personally. This pledge year, not everyone will be able to give as much as they would like to give. That’s why it’s ever more important for the rest of us to step up our pledging as best we can. Abbey and I will be increasing our pledge this year by 10%. I realize not everyone will be able to afford to do this, but if enough of us can sustain or increase our pledges in this economic downturn, we will not only continue to be able to minister to one another, we will emerge from these times even stronger, knowing that we have “embraced our challenges with strength, courage, compassion and integrity”, as our mission & vision statement puts it.
That FUUFHC is a place of many gifts, a place of generosity of spirit, is obvious, I’m happy to say. Our children understand it; first-time visitors often remark on it. Our members and friends live it, not just on Sunday but in so many ways throughout their lives. I’m grateful that this community inspires so many of us to live a generous life.
Blessed be,
Rev. Bob
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This Sunday, we had a wonderful celebration of the adoption experience here at FUUFHC. We heard stories from children and adults who are adopted, and stories from parents. We honored birth parents, we sang John McCutcheon’s “Happy Adoption Day”, we told our children the story “Families are Different”, by Nina Pellegrini, about different types of families and the love in all of them.
Many were moved to tears by the service, which featured many congregants sharing beautiful reflections on identity and family. It was one of those rare services that went beyond its subject matter, to remind us all of what a lovely world we live in, as complex and confusing as it can be.
I’d love to post a reflection or two from the service, once I have permission; for today here’s a prayer on the subject.
Love is the spirit of this congregation,
and its law is service to one another.
Everyone here, no matter what their situation,
seeks in some way to make a connection to
another life,
for to matter to somebody
is the crux of a meaningful life.
O spirit of love brought to life
by the way we are meaningful to one another,
O God of our hearts,
Be with those who reach out to others
in love, in hope, in prayer and concern, in support.
Be with those parents who are
going through the adoption process,
all that expectation and hope
and paperwork,
those weeks and months and possibly years
of waiting,
may they find their waiting awarded, that when the child arrives
it is loved beyond all expression.
Be with those who are not successful
in their search for a child, who are grieving this loss,
may they find an outlet for their deserving love
so that they know
they were not wrong to hope.
Be with birth parents
who have given life to another human being,
may they be given the strength to grieve what was lost,
and the joy to appreciate what was gained.
Be with parents of adoptive children who
are trying so mightily to raise their family,
dealing not just with diapers and report cards
and drivers’ licenses,
but also with the questions of identity that are brought
to them by their children, be with all parents,
may they have the strength to build a family. All anyone
really has to accomplish this is the “special glue called love.”
May it be enough.
Be with foster parents who
offer their homes and their selves
to help a young life, bringing family and home and love
to a child who needs it. May they have strength to help create
all the love and self-esteem they are doing their best to foster,
and may they know the joy of love returned
and the knowledge they have helped another good soul
grow into their best self.
May the spirit of life and love, be especially with
all our wonderful children who are adopted.
Help them to know they are loved and whole.
May they find wisdom for understanding
the complexities of their identity,
realizing their past means that they have more,
not less, and may the richness of their experience
help them find a sense of home and help create
a sense of home for others, as well.
Grant them understanding and compassion
for their birth parents, the mothers who carried them inside those many months,
and when, for so many possible reasons, they found they
could not carry them any further, they were able to give a great gift,
and relinquish the child to its new
family, a family created, as all families are, by acts of love
and devotion.
And for all of us,
in this human family,
may we know we are deeply loved,
and may we find a way to be meaningful to others
on the exquisite, brief journey we call life.
May we find blessing in
the words we can each say to one another,
“from out of a world so tattered and torn,
you come into my life,”
and O happy Day that
such a wonderful meeting can happen.
AMEN
This past sunday I spoke about the need for Unitarian Universalist congregations, in the wonderful words of Rev. Tom Owen-Towle, “Occupy Holy Ground”. By this I mean we need to affirm the specialness of things: the love-worthy importance of human beings, the sacred web of which we are a part, and the intention with which we gather together.
In that spirit, here’s a link to a wonderful song by UU songwriter Peter Mayer that talks about how everything - this whole wonderful universe we live in - can be considered sacred ground. We don’t need to look for miracles, because this whole amazing experience is simply miraculous.
http://jesspages.net/bestofuu/07/i-walk-it-with-a-reverent-air
The website the song is printed in, by the way, is composed by UU blogger (and dear friend of mine) Jess, and has some terrific UU sermons, prayers, along with her own writings.
And one more link on the wondrousness of the world. This is a clip from a comedian by the name of Louis C. K. who was a guest on the Conan O’ Brian show. Watching Louis talk about how easily we forget how incredible it is to fly on an airplane is something I’ll remember next time I find myself stuck in a one-hour delay…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoGYx35ypus
Rev. Peter Morales, one of our candidates for president of the Unitarian Universalist Association (Rev. Laura Hallman is the other), expressed the idea that welcoming people to our services is a way the congregation feeds the hungry - the spiritually hungry. When we welcome one another to our spiritual home, we are feeding the hungry. Welcoming is much more than an attempt to increase our numbers, and it’s much, much, more than basic politeness. Welcoming people who are spiritually hungry - and feeding them when they get here - is a vital service the congregation offers the community.
I thought about that in light of the story our guest minister, Rev. Viginia Jarocha-Ernst, told on Sunday. She recounted a rich man gave a leftover stale sandwich to a hungry beggar, thinking since he didn’t want it, why not do a good deed for someone else. That night, the rich man had a dream that night that he was eating with his friends at a deluxe restaurant, but the waiter, instead of brining him caviar or foie gras, brought him a stale sandwich. The rich man complained about this, but the waiter said, “Sir, this is heaven. You only get what you have given away.”
The economic turmoil in so many people’s lives right now often is accompanied by a yearning for a community that can help individuals determine for themselves, in a supportive and inspiring space, what is most meaningful. We here at FUUFHC, in our mission and vision and in our budget, have made feeding the spiritually hungry a priority for our ministry together. Let us continue to everything we can to offer the spiritually hungry in our community a place of sustenance, where they can nurture their spirit and be emboldened to change the world. It’s what we mean by “Sunday service”.
In faith,
Rev. Bob
Beloved reader,
In light of the tragic events in Maryville this week-end, I’d like to reprint the eloquent request written by our congregational president, Janice Parish:
Please hold Fred Winters and his family in your thoughts and prayers today. Mr. Winters was the minister at the First Baptist Church in Maryville, Illinois. An unknown man walked into services at their church this morning and shot Mr. Winters, who later died. Several congregants were injured as well. I do not believe any information about the man has been released. This is a sad tragedy, one that we can certainly relate to given the similar situation that occurred in Tennesse (a shooting at a UU Church) last year.
~Janice Parish
Let us hold the Rev. Winters, his family, his congregation in our thoughts and prayers, and also the shooter (who it turns out may have been burdened with a damaging mental illness) and his family. - Rev. Bob
As I have told my congregation, my wife Abbey is pregnant and if all goes well we will have our first child this summer. I have spoken to many of our congregation’s parents who assure me parenthood is an absolutely wonderful experience, provided we can forget about any expectations of sleep, free time, or sanity.
It’s funny how life happens in the midst of life. As we learned from Darwin, whose 200th birthday was in February, our distant ancestors simply split into two parts, via asexual reproduction. This was an elegantly simple way to do things: today there’s one of me, tomorrow there’s two, each an exact copy (more or less) of the other. Then we developed in all sorts of interesting ways: sex, ego, consciousness. We began to develop a personality – which complicates parenthood a great deal, as anyone who’s ever been a teenager or a parent of a teenager knows all too well. The UU Minister Forrest Church, writing about our single-celled past, wrote “we were immortal before we became interesting.” While cells do die, I think what he means is that since sexual reproduction came into the picture, each one of us is totally unique, and death takes on a whole new meaning for us. But so does life. With death, we lose something that is totally irreplaceable. But that irreplacibility makes our life very interesting and wondrous indeed.
But let’s not dismiss our single-celled ancestors too lightly. A recent study by Northwestern University found that, faced with psychological stress, individual cells are capable of cooperating for a common cause, when they are organized in a multi-cellular organism. What this means, basically, is that the concept of community goes way back. They used the brain cells of a worm 1 millimeter long for this study!
This month of March, we have five very different services involving numerous people, but they (and this was at most only partly designed) all focus on two themes: life, and community. From totemism to living out loud, from religion to the wonders of adoption to the meaning of community, each of these five services looks at what it means to be an individual life in the midst of other life. This is, perhaps, what religion is all about. The very word “religion” is related to the Latin religare, “to bind together”. These services will examine what binds us together, as individuals who are unique and yet also part of a larger community.
If this wonderful process of pregnancy, which we have so little ultimate control over, goes according to our hopes, then we’ll have a newborn in a few months. Even though I know Abbey pretty well and myself even better, who knows who this new person will be, what their personality will be like. But in the midst of uncertainty, there is a profound assurance I carry with me: whoever they are, he or she will have a community here at FUUFHC who believes he or she is beautiful beyond compare and worthy of love. Which is also, by the way, what I believe about each of you, at FUUFHC and throughout our wonderful world. Thanks for being there.
In love and faith,
Rev. Bob