At last Sunday’s joyful worship service we held a child dedication for the Copeland family and our annual Water Ceremony. Pictures may be seen in our private Facebook group. I asked the gathered congregation to consider sharing one or two words of intention: How will you let yourself be known in this coming year? How will you reach out to know others?
Here’s a bit of my reflection from the service for those of you who weren't able to be there--
The poet William Stafford wrote,
If you don't know the kind of person I am
and I don't know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.
Have you ever felt like the people around you don’t fully know you? I mean, really know the fullness of you?
It’s a common experience – there are people we’ve known for years, at work, in our neighborhood, where we volunteer, perhaps even people here at the Fellowship.
And yet when it comes right down to it, we’re not sure how well we really know each other. I’m not talking about anyone intentionally misleading each other. I mean the more subtle ways we keep from knowing one another: We leave our interactions on the surface, perhaps as a kind of protection.
Maybe we just make nice to avoid topics on which we disagree. Perhaps we don’t know each other simply because we don’t stop, slow down, and share, and ask, and listen.
It is a deep human need, to feel as if we are known.
And a deep human fear, to think that we will never be fully known.
Or even worse, that if we let ourselves be fully known, we won’t be loved or accepted.
For many people, of many religious traditions, including historically in our own UU tradition, experiencing God has been an experience of being fully known and fully loved.
Nan Merrill, in her translation of Psalm 42 of the Hebrew Bible, uses the word Beloved for God.
“My soul thirsts for the Beloved,
for the Living Water.
When may I come and behold
your face?
…
Deep calls to deep
At the thunder of your waterfalls;
All your waves and billows
Have washed over me.
By day You lead me in steadfast Love;
At night your song is with me”
There is a depth in every one of us that calls out to meet the deep in others. A depth in us that wants to be met with Love.
Perhaps God is what happens when the depths of each other meet.
Jewish theologian Martin Buber said: “When two people relate to each other authentically and humanly, God is the electricity that surges between them.”
Maybe God isn’t the word or the framework you would use. What word do you use for that transformative experience of being deeply known and loved for who you are?
The Universalist in me simply affirms that there is a greater Love that is beyond my own small self, a Love that knows and holds all of us, and that can be known in authentic and intimate relationship with another human being.
If we miss knowing the depths of each other, we miss God, we miss the big Love that is possible.
And as the poet says, “a pattern that others made may prevail in the world, and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.”
Our world today is full of superficial sound bites, campaign slogans, easy categories, and frankly not a lot of depth, let alone honesty.
We are a community of faith that puts covenant above creed, that puts relationship above belief. And so, our spiritual work is to go to the depths with each other. We practice here so that we can do it other places.
One of the ways we practice is through our small groups called Circles of Trust, based on the work of Parker Palmer… these groups covenant to meet monthly and to deeply share from our lives and listen to each other. The format isn’t intellectual discussion and it’s not group therapy. It’s a different kind of meeting each other on holy ground where our deepest truths may come forth. We make several agreements about how we will be with one another—including my favorite: no saving, no fixing, no advising!
Parker Palmer says: “We believe that we will find shared truth by going up into big ideas, but it is only when we go down, drawing deep from the well of personal experience, that we tap into the living water that supplies all of our lives.” (A Hidden Wholeness, pp.123-124)
Our congregational covenant also calls us to practice this kind of depth – a few highlights of what we agree to in our covenant (you can read the full text here):
- to listen to each other
- to be a welcoming place
- to be authentic and support each other in our vulnerabilities
- to speak our truth in ways that honor other people’s truths,
The more we practice it here, the better we might be at it out there in the rest of the world. The rest of the world where, as Parker Palmer says, “Animosities are unraveling the fabric of our civic society, degrading democracy’s infrastructure. Anything we can do to help people form relational ‘habits of the heart’ will help.” (https://www.thesunmagazine.
I’m glad to be engaged in this practice with all of you and look forward to a great year together.
