2018.10.14 Persistence: "A Teaspoon of Honey"

2018.10.14 A Teaspoon of Honey     Rev. Laura Bogle

Foothills UU Fellowship

Wisdom Story:  The parable of the Unexpected Guest in Luke 11

^5-6 Then he said, “Imagine what would happen if you went to a friend in the middle of the night and said, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread. An old friend traveling through just showed up, and I don’t have a thing on hand.’

⁷ “The friend answers from his bed, ‘Don’t bother me. The door’s locked; my children are all down for the night; I can’t get up to give you anything.’

⁸ “But let me tell you, even if he won’t get up because he’s a friend, if you stand your ground, knocking and waking all the neighbors, he’ll finally get up and get you whatever you need.

⁹ “Here’s what I’m saying:

Ask and you’ll get;
Seek and you’ll find;
Knock and the door will open.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++

“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.”

“The best way out is always through.”  (Robert Frost)

“The three great essentials to achieve anything worthwhile are, first, hard work; second, stick-to-itiveness; third, common sense.”   (Thomas A. Edison)

Ask, and you shall receive.  Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will open. (Luke 11)

Pull yourself up by your bootstraps.

I could go on…

These sayings are everywhere in our culture.  Especially in places like Forbes magazine in the stories of entrepreneurs – almost invariably white men—who failed a gazillion times before they finally succeeded and struck it rich.   Persistence is seen as an individual virtue.  Just keep trying, just keep trying and eventually you’ll win and be able to say “I did it!” 

All those inspirational persistence quotes and proverbs we so blithely post up in offices and waiting rooms—they are almost all about individual effort and individual success. 

The ones who work the hardest, who aren’t afraid to fail and keep trying—they are lifted up out of the pack as the paragons of virtue.  Just keep at it until you win or get your book published or climb that mountain or make a load of money.  While, truth be told, there are lots of others who tried just as hard, just as many times, and didn’t quite make it. 

Today, I want to pull out a couple good lessons from these cultural proverbs, and I also want to question them and propose some important additions for these political times.

The two good persistence lessons I see from the “waiting room” proverbs, and the story of the Unexpected Guest in Luke:

--defining a purpose bigger than yourself

--acting, using your agency; not letting others define you or your purpose

In the story of the Unexpected Guest in Luke 11, the neighbor wants to feed his friend who arrived unexpectedly—so he persists at knocking at the door until he gets what he needs – some bread.  He has a purpose bigger than himself – feeding his friend.  He acts persistently until he gets his neighbor to wake up.  I like this story, I think it can be an empowering story. 

But even this Gospel story has so often become sanitized in our culture – becoming a metaphorical story about individual piety and prayer: just ask God and God will deliver-- rather than a story about how we all need to be actually knocking on the doors of those with bread so that everyone can be fed.

If you are one who is marginalized, if you aren’t starting with the same resources and power as others, then your individual persistent efforts may not put you at the top of the stack, may not lift you above the pack.  You may not get the bread you need when you knock on your neighbors door in the middle of the night—you might just ignored or perhaps even get arrested.

The other day I called my Senators, again.  Like I have many times over the last 20 months.  I had a purpose bigger than myself.  I used my agency and I acted.  And frankly, I just felt defeated.

If individual persistence is all it takes to succeed then clearly I and many of you just haven’t been trying hard enough or often enough. 

Since November of 2016 I have heard from many of you who are asking “What can I do?  I don’t feel like anything I can do makes a difference.  Why keep trying, why persist?”

My question back to us is: how do you define “success” and “making a difference”?

We are coming upon another important election and it will be very easy to feel despair or elation based on who wins or loses.  I’m not saying those outcomes don’t matter, but the vote tally is not the whole picture my friends.

Rather than an individual actor going to knock on a door in the middle of the night, or one individual voter making phone calls or going into the polls, I invite you to think of yourself as just one part of a hive.  I want you to think of yourself as a honeybee.

Did you know that in its whole lifetime one honeybee only makes about 1/12 a teaspoon of honey?  1/12!! That honey bee works and works its whole life and doesn’t even make enough honey to sweeten my cup of tea.  Looked at this way, I find the life of a honeybee rather depressing!

 But look at it another way: every teaspoon of honey is the life of 12 honeybees.  A whole jar of honey, the lives of so many more.  How precious that one teaspoon of honey is, let alone a whole jar. 

The honey bee’s purpose is not to make the whole jar of honey by themselves.  In fact, it is impossible. 

Each honey bee’s persistent work over a lifetime is insignificant by itself, but entirely essential when seen as part of the hive, in relationship to others.

“The honey bee colony is a super-organism - a closely co-operating unit of thousands of individuals, which maintains its efficiency through being extremely well organised. There may be 50,000 workers busily foraging, regulating the temperature in the hive, guarding the colony or tending to the brood, as well as feeding each other, cleaning, creating wax, comb and honey.” (from https://www.buzzaboutbees.net/swarmingbees.html )

So, some lessons for collective persistence in these times from the honeybees:

·       Find your piece of the work and connect it to the work of others.  It might feel small and insignificant by itself.  But when part of a larger effort it is essential.

·       Trust that others have their part to do and will do it.  We don’t all have to be doing the same thing, in the same way. 

·       Know that you can pause to take care of yourself—making a jar of honey is a long-term project, and takes so many of us.  But also know that if you just totally check out, if you stop showing up altogether, if you don’t do your part – it matters, the hive is weakened.  We have lost an important contribution to the whole.

·       Know that each individual’s work is reflected in the larger group.  Ask yourself—when I engage in this work, am I producing joy and sweetness or gloom and bitterness?  Am I making honey with other people, or am I disrupting our organization?  Are we building each other up and taking care of each other?  Are we fertilizing flowers and creating new possibilities along the way? 

·       Remember that perhaps the wisdom of the group is far greater than any one individual.  In his book “Honeybee Democracy” Thomas Seeley describes the process a hive goes through when deciding to move.  Even though there is a queen, it is the whole hive’s problem and process to come to a decision. 

{Give example of Las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo}

How do I see this kind of hive persistence showing up in our local community?

Well, Emily’s description of the postcard group is one example – success there has been redefined – the relationships that have been created, the process of their gathering is just as important as the product.  They are a hive, with many people coming in and out, doing their part, taking care of each other.

If you were here last Sunday you got to hear the story of Jose– it took a whole network of people – a hive of relationships – many individuals doing their small part, just to help one person in immigration detention reunite with his family here in Blount County.

And I think about an organization like PFLAG Maryville, which was started to support members of the LGBT community and their families.  The local chapter here recently decided to close up for now.  One might look at that decision and think, well that was a failure, they just didn’t persist enough.  But here’s what I think—I think about all the relationships that group created over the years.  I think about who I know now because of that group.  I think about the life-saving impact they have had directly on people, and the ripples of possibility and change they opened up in this community. 

Persistence isn’t just keeping something going to keep it going.  Persistence can also mean getting real clear, together, about when and where to do the work—and knowing, together when to let it go.

And, of course, here in this congregation – I think we have persisted to see this day because we have done it together.  Our service of installation two weeks ago celebrated this interconnected hive of relationships we have – with each other, with the earth, with the ancestors, with members of the wider community.  We keep at it, sometimes wondering if it matters, wondering if we are making a difference, if we are “succeeding.”  We come here to be reminded we are part of something bigger than ourselves.  Our lives and what we do with them are insignificant alone, but absolutely essential as part of the greater whole.

May the measure of our success be the love we are creating.  May we work with humility, doing our part.  May knowing we are not alone give us the trust, the faith, and the strength to continue our persistent efforts—until the doors open, until the bread is received, until the jar is full to overflowing with honey.  May it be so.  Amen.

2018.9.23 Sabbath Practice: Thou Shalt Unplug

2018.9.23 Sabbath Practice: “Thou Shalt Unplug”        Rev. Laura Bogle

Foothills UU Fellowship

Wisdom “text”: Nowhere Man by JohnLennon (listen and read lyrics here)

“He’s a real nowhere man, sitting in his nowhere land

Making all his nowhere plans for nobody

Doesn't have a point of view
Knows not where he's going to
Isn't he a bit like you and me?”

John Lennon.  I'm treating his song as sacred text today.  Text to be exegeted, interpreted like a scripture passage. 

The interesting story I found, somewhat ironically through the wonders of the internet, is the story that Lennon himself tells about writing this song.

Lennon: “I’d spent five hours that morning trying to write a song that was meaningful and good, and I finally gave up and lay down.  Then ‘Nowhere Man’ came, words and music, the whole damn thing, as I lay down…So letting it go is what the whole game is.”  (1980 interview.  See citation here:  http://www.beatlesebooks.com/nowhere-man )

Paradoxically, when he was trying his hardest to do something, to go somewhere, he was going nowhere.  When he let himself just be, then the song came to him.

What does this have to do with technology and practicing Sabbath?

The thing about my iphone and my computer is they let me be everywhere else but right here.  They let me fall into the trap of thinking I have important things to do all the time.  They are tools that enable non-presence.

Confession time:  How often have I been sitting at a stop light, and decide to just check my email?

Or I’m sitting at the gymnastics place where I take my daughter and rather than watch her I scroll mindlessly through Facebook.

Or I get up during dinner to check to see the text that just pinged on my phone.

Spiritual director Stephen Smith describes our current technological culture as “always on, always available and always looking for something else to do.”

Are you always on, always available, and always looking for something else to do?  We think we are going somewhere, checking email, Facebook, texts, etc. but actually we are nowhere.

Nowhere man 

Doesn't have a point of view
Knows not where he's going to

Isn't he a bit like you and me?

– maybe because he is constantly saturated with other people’s input and perspectives

– maybe because he is going in several directions at once – distracted by a youtube video while simultaneously toggling between email and Facebook.

Just this year, musician Chris Thile wrote in his song “Power Off and Carry On”:

"I come to blinking in the void of light rising from my palm
Whose is this dusty mind, lousy with thoughts that aren’t mine or even necessarily from someone who knows of what they’re speaking?"

Now, look, I am not anti-technology.  I found that story about John Lennon because I was able to go online and search for some background about his song.  I found those Chris Thile lyrics because I heard the song on the radio and then I could go look them up.  It’s amazing to be able to access so much information.

And I can genuinely say that my life has been enriched by connections I am able to maintain in some way through technology – social media, texting, even the classroom app my daughter’s 2^nd grade teacher uses so we can get more glimpses into how she is spending her day.

But there is this shadow side.  This way of being that some call “absent presence” that today’s technology seems to encourage in many of us.

Study earlier this year by the Pew Research Center found that a quarter of Americans say they go online “almost constantly” and another 43% go online several times a day. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/03/14/about-a-quarter-of-americans-report-going-online-almost-constantly/

What is the impact?

Nowhere man please listen
You don't know what you're missing.

What are we missing when we are absently present?

Can the connectivity found through technology really take the place of real, in-person, human interactions?  When we aren’t fully present to ourselves, or with those we love, or even with the cashier in front of us at the store, where are we?  What are we actually looking for when we are “almost constantly” online?  And what does it do to my sense of self, to my soul?

He's as blind as he can be
Just sees what he wants to see
Nowhere man, can you see me at all?

The question I am trying to ask myself more often when I reach for my phone or my computer is, “What is this really for?” Do I have a purpose here or am I simply avoiding being present to someone or something else?  Or am I, perhaps, trying to fill some kind of void?  That void can be a desire to feel loved and connected. 

It can also simply be the void of boredom, or a feeling that I don’t know what to do with myself.

An article last year in the Atlantic Magazine cited a recent study by psychologists who found that “two-thirds of men and a quarter of women would rather self-administer electric shocks than sit alone with their thoughts for 15 minutes.” https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/06/make-time-for-boredom/524514/

When we are constantly connected to input from other sources – whether that is social media or even television and radio—what we may be missing out on is ourselves.

Another question I am trying to ask about my technology use is “Who is this really for, and why?”  For instance, while I’m not planning to get off of Facebook anytime soon—though I have considered it-- I think it is important to remember that the platform is big business.  It is, of course, interwoven with a Western capitalist culture of consumption.

Judith Donath, author of “The Social Machine, Designs for Living Online,” has commented, “If your objective is to get people to buy more stuff, you do not want a population of people who look at what they have and at the friends and family surrounding them, and think to themselves ‘life is good, I appreciate what I have, and what I have is enough.’

If your goal is to manipulate people, to keep a population anxious and fearful so that they will seek a powerful, authoritarian leader – you will not want technologies and products that provide people with a strong sense of calm and well-being. Keeping people in a continual state of anxiety, anger, fear, or just haunted by an inescapable, nagging sense that everyone else is better off than they are can be very profitable.” 

Nowhere man, the world is at your command.

So, what do we do about this?

Well, no surprise, I think we have to intentionally set aside a different kind of time, Sabbath time.

Sabbath time is time to put everything back in its proper place—ourselves, our phones, our computers, our relationships with each other, with the earth, with God or the source of our being.

Sabbath time is being present. Being, instead of doing.

As poet Christopher Giffen says, Sabbath time is resting “from being who everyone else knows me to be.” It is time resting “from being put together and up to speed.”

Sabbath time is being right here even if we are bored or confused about what to do next.  And then seeing where that leads.

Sabbath time is paying attention and being grateful for what we do have.  It is remembering that we don’t earn or create the gift of life.

Sabbath time is letting go of the fear of missing out – as Wendell Berry says, Sabbath “asks us to notice that while we rest, the world continues without our help.”

Sabbath time is engaging in purposeless enjoyment with others, like playing a game like we did in worship last week.

Sabbath time can be the lunch hour without your phone.  It can be a nap that lets creative thoughts arise in you.  It can be turning off your computer and putting away your phone at a certain time every day.

It can be setting aside a day a week to disengage from technology and see what that feels like.

Sabbath time is reclaiming ourselves, our inherent worth and dignity that does not depend on how many “likes” we get or how good we are responding to the email in our inbox.

You know, John Lennon wrote Nowhere Man well before the age of the internet- but the struggle is the same, just with different trappings.  And his spiritual wisdom is the wisdom of spiritual traditions around the world: “letting it go is what the whole game is.”

May we all find Sabbath time-- time to let go, unplug, be right here.

Amen.

2018.9.16 Sabbath Practice: Play!

2018.9.16  “Sabbath Practice: PLAY!”     Rev. Laura Bogle

Foothills UU Fellowship

Introduction

Our monthly worship theme is Sabbath—what are ways we as Unitarian Universalists can observe Sabbath?  What are Sabbath practices to cultivate?  Last week we talked about gratitude.  Today we are exploring PLAY. 

In his book Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal and Delight in Our Daily Lives, Wayne Muller describes play as “engaging in purposeless enjoyment of one another.”

So, our service is a little different.  We are not going to talk about play so much as we are going to play together!  You don’t get to sit there and just hear about play as a spiritual practice.

You will be invited to join in three different playful practices.  Now, for some of us this might feel uncomfortable.  Some of us grown ups have a harder time accessing our playful side – everyone has permission this morning to be playful and even silly. 

Here’s my invitation to you:  try it out.

Playful practice #1: mirror game

According to the Gospel of Matthew Jesus said: "Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven". (NIV)

Now that is sometimes interpreted to mean—humble, innocent, naïve, simple, lowly as in powerless.  But what if it means to be playful like children?  I mean, I actually don’t think children are as innocent and naïve and simple as we say they are.  What if this scripture, which is quoted so often, actually is inviting us to play?  Telling us that the most powerful or the playful ones.  Telling us that one of the keys to spiritual health, to finding a little bit of heaven, is to be playful, to play.  Afterall, what is it that children do best, *all the time*?  Everything can be turned into a game, into play.

As we talked about last week, part of observing Sabbath for UUs is remembering our interconnection with all of life, and remembering our place in that web.  Remembering that we receive so much that we didn’t create, we didn’t earn, we could never earn.  Sabbath is spending time delighting in those things—friends, the earth, our bodies, life itself—without expectation of producing anything, or buying or selling anything, or doing anything “right.”  Play invites us into that kind of Sabbath space.

So, here’s your first invitation to play this morning.

Cathie and I will demonstrate.  You are going to find a partner. And decide if you want to stand or sit.  You will face each other.  No talking. You will put your hands up facing each other, but not touching.  You might actually have to look each other in the eye.  And then you will pretend that you are looking in a mirror, or that the other person is your shadow.  And you will move.  You do NOT get to decide who will lead.  You simply see what happens. 

Invitation to Playful Practice #2: Energy Ball

Dr. Stuart Brown is a psychiatrist and founding director of an organization called the National Institute of Play.  He originally honed in on the importance of play for healthy human development after an extensive study of homicidal young men and seeing how they were deprived of play in their young lives.

One of the things Dr. Brown says is that the basis of human trust is developed through play.  Power differentials can be erased when people are playing with one another.  Play allows us to be vulnerable in a safer kind of space than everyday life.  I think about this when I watch kids engage in rough play--  they push the boundaries of themselves and each other.  Dr. Brown says this is one way empathy gets developed.

He also makes a distinction between play and contests—humans and animals engage in play for the pleasure of it, for the learning that occurs, for the connection that occurs – but not to win, not to show domination. 

Play is a dance of invitation and acceptance.  Play moves energy around from person to person.

Playing can be a little dangerous, too. Have you ever seen kids playing and laughing and then suddenly someone is crying?  Play can walk that edge and sometimes when we think we are just being playful it isn’t received in that way by another person.  So you have to invite others into play with you. 

For our next practice we are going to play ball.  Except it is not competitive, there’s no way to mess it up, because the ball is a pretend ball.  You have to use your imagination.  Cathie and I will start by tossing a few different kinds of balls, if you catch a ball, then you have to pass it on to someone else.

Make eye contact with the person you are throwing to.  Invite them.  Make sure they are ready to catch the ball, we don’t want to bean anyone in the head.

We will end when all the balls get tossed back up front.

Playful Practice #3: Bingo

We’ve heard a couple of quotes this morning from Bernie de Koven, Since the 1970s Bernie was a play advocate for adults and studied and written about how groups that play together build strong community ties. He published many books, included “The Playful Path.”  He died just earlier this year, but left behind a huge catalogue of games through his website and book called Deep Fun – a lot of cooperative games, games whose purpose is simply to bring joy and connection.

“Sometimes, something as simple as a game of double dutch, or even single dutch with a lot of people jumping can transport you to a different dimension, where it’s all about being together, kind of like love.”

So, our next game is all about being together.  We’re gonna play bingo and it requires you to talk to one another.  A different kind of way to knowing and engaging with one another.  Whoever finishes first can come up here and ring the bell to stop play, but everyone wins really and the prize is connection.

2018.9.9 Sabbath Practice: Gratitude

2018.9.9 Sabbath Practice: Gratitude as the Wellspring of Generosity

Rev. Laura Bogle, Foothills UU Fellowship

WisdomStory: The Woman Who Lived in a Vinegar Bottle (listen here)

Well, that woman who lived in the vinegar bottle wasn’t a particularly pleasant person, was she? 

But how often I’ve been like her!  We’ve probably all been there at one time or another—unable to see what we do have because we are so focused on what we don’t have.

It strikes me that the moral of this old folktale is not that we shouldn’t want to change our circumstances – after all, who should have to live in a vinegar bottle?  Or, who should have to live in housing unfit for human habitation?  I applaud that old woman for wanting to get out of that situation!

No, wanting to get out of a terrible situation isn’t her problem.  The problem is that she’s unaware and ungrateful, and so just wants more and more and more and will never be satisfied.  She’s ungrateful for what she already has, and then she’s ungrateful for what she is given. 

I wonder, how might her life, how might our lives, be different if we regularly stopped to give thanks?

This month we are considering the theme of Sabbath—today and the next two weeks I’ll be considering specific practices related to Sabbath.  Today, it’s Gratitude, next week it’s Play, and the following week: our relationship to technology.

Now, Sabbath might not be a word that you use, or think about very much.  For some of us, it is only associated with strict religious observance that keep us from doing certain things on a certain day.  For others of us it might simply mean a day off from work to watch sports and catch up on household chores. 

What I’m personally working on, and want to invite us all to consider, is observing Sabbath intentionally and centering our Unitarian Universalist value of the interconnectedness of all life. 

Yes, Sabbath is about rest—think about the original Sabbath in the Jewish and Christian traditions -- on the 7^th day God had seen all God had created and it was good and God rested.  But it is not just about getting to the end of the week and flopping over exhausted, to start it all back up again on Monday.  That is just the weekend, for those of us in working life.  Sabbath takes a little more intentionality than that, it takes practice and a spiritual rootedness. 

Theologian Walter Brueggeman says, practicing Sabbath “is about withdrawal from the anxiety system of Pharaoh, the refusal to let one’s life be defined by production and consumption and the endless pursuit of private well-being.” 

For the Hebrew people to practice Sabbath was to step outside the slave system of Pharaoh into a different value system. To remember they had value just from being, from being human, not from the amount of work they could do.  To observe Sabbath today is to counter to the capitalist values that we are constantly surrounded by, which also define our value based on what we can produce and what we can consume.

One way to observe Sabbath is to stop and consider all the gifts we receive which we did not earn, and could never earn through our effort, and to give thanks for those gifts.  To enter into a posture of gratitude.

When we stop doing and striving, we have space to remember the amazing gift it is just to be alive. 

That’s one of the things I hope we are doing when we gather for worship on Sunday morning.  We are simply being, together, lifting up that which is most important and valuable, and giving thanks.

Social scientists who study what helps people live happy and fulfilling lives have zeroed in on the effects of gratitude—(https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/materialism_gratitude_happiness )

Jason Marsh writes:  “Gratitude is proving to be about much more than the occasional “thank you.” 

Instead, the principles of thanksgiving give rise to a unique way of seeing the world.

The latest evidence suggests that, rather than simply being about good manners, the emotion of gratitude might have deep roots in humans’ evolutionary history, sustaining the social bonds that are key not only to our happiness but also to our survival as a species.”

One scientist after studying the impact of expressing gratitude in long term partnerships, calls gratitude “a relationship-strengthening emotion”.

Another scientific study (by Monica Bartlett and David DeSteno) found that people who were feeling grateful “devoted significantly more time to helping others than did the non-grateful people.”

A Sabbath practice of gratitude can re-fill our wells – helping us to approach life from a place of strength, connection, and abundance. 

This wellspring then flows out in further acts of generosity – generosity of time, generosity of money and resources, generosity of the spirit. 

Regularly spending time to reflect on what we are grateful for may actually be the key to fueling our action in the world for justice, for peace, for the Beloved Community.

UU ethicist Sharon Welch writes, “The wellspring of decency is loving this life in which people die, people suffer, there are limits, and we make mistakes.  The wellspring, then, of moral action… is a deep affirmation of the joy, richness, and blessing that the world is.  … The ground of challenging injustice is gratitude, the heartfelt desire to honor the wonder of that which is; to cherish, to celebrate, to delight in the many gifts and joys of life.”  (from Sweet Dreams in America)

What about those times when it is really, really challenging to find anything to be grateful for?  Is it possible for me to have a gratitude practice even when by all objective measures my life really sucks and the world is going to hell in a handbasket?  Spiritual teacher Henri Nouwen would say YES—and that’s perhaps the time you need to do it the most.

He says, “To be grateful for the good things that happen in our lives is easy, but to be grateful for all of our lives — the good as well as the bad, the moments of joy as well as the moments of sorrow, the successes as well as the failures, the rewards as well as the rejections — that requires hard spiritual work.”

That’s why we practice.

I will never forget the man I met at San Francisco General Hospital years ago when I was interning as a chaplain there.  By all objective measures, his life was really hard. He was homeless.  He didn’t have any teeth.  He was facing serious health issues.  His family had abandoned him.  And yet when we prayed together, he gave the most fervent and beautiful prayer of thanksgiving to God for what he did have.  For life. 

This kind of giving thanks was clearly a regular part of his spiritual life, he had been well practiced in it.  I thought, if he can do it, surely I can too.  I’m working on it J

Sometimes we UU’s get hung up on, “Well to whom are we giving thanks??”

So, let me tell you a story my colleague Christine Robinson has shared –

It’s an old folktale about an aged Russian man whose grandchildren begged him for a bedtime story about “the old country.”
The man stroked his beard, thought, and said, “Here’s a true story about my father. It was the bitterest cold of winter, and your great-grandfather rode his horse out to buy supplies in town, miles away. While he was on his way home, a blizzard struck -- the snow flew so thick that my father couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of him. He heard the wolves howling, the sun dimming, and feared that he’d never make it home alive.”
The grandchildren listening shrank back, eyes huge. Their grandfather held up a finger.
“You know what your great-grandfather did? He loosened the reins on that horse, and he prayed. “It’s in your hands now, God,” he said, and let the horse walk through the thick blizzard. When the wolves got closer, the horse began trotting. My father prayed some more, asking God to forgive him for leaving your great-grandmother, and me and six siblings. After what seemed like ages, he saw -- there! -- dark, looming shapes in the snowstorm: his house! his barn! He led the horse in and stumbled to the house, where he asked all of us to get on our knees, where we all prayed, thanking God for saving my father’s life.”

The storyteller leaned back, taking in his grandchildren’s smiles.
But one -- the youngest -- leaned over to her cousin and said, “He should’ve thanked the horse.”

“Here’s what I have come to believe,” says Robinson: “In the end, there is only a shade of difference between thanking God and thanking the horse.”

So, you might give gratitude to God or Goddess or the fairies!  or you might thank the earth, the universe;  or you might express gratitude to your family or friends, to the circle of this community. Or all of that!  I’m not sure it makes much difference.  But while you are at it, give some gratitude to yourself, for your uniqueness. For your way of being in the world that no one else has.  Remembering that you have value and worth just for who you are, not what you do.

Let us regularly pause from work and activity and wanting something more or different,

Let us pause to recognize how much we depend on each other and that which is bigger than any one of us,

Let us pause to give thanks for life,

And from that place of great gratitude, let our lives and our spirits well up with overflowing generosity, making a life that is good and beautiful not just for ourselves, but for all. 

May it be so. Amen.

We will now receive our offering as an expression of that gratitude and wellspring of generosity.

2018.9.30 Charge from the Ancestors

CHARGE FROM THE ANCESTORS

For the Installation of Rev. Laura Bogle at Foothills UU Fellowship on Sept. 30, 2018

A Collaboration between all four East TN UU congregations

ADAM: Our Unitarian and Universalist roots go back at least a couple thousand years, but it wasn’t until the 16th century that the first Unitarian congregations formed in Transylvania. Similarly, UU roots can be found from the beginning of early American history, but organized congregations did not emerge until the 1700s in the United States. 

CATHERINE: Our ancestors call us to remember our long history of the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. 

ELNORA: Likewise, there were surely UU beliefs in East Tennessee from the founding of the city of Knoxville in the late 1700s, but it wasn’t until 1868 that the first Unitarian congregation began meeting in Knoxville. Unfortunately, the congregation stopped meeting after only 8 months. 

A couple of decades later in 1891 a Universalist church was planted in Harriman. But the church was faltering within only a few years. 

FRED: In February 1895, when the Universalists held their national convention in Knoxville, they appointed Quillen Shinn as missionary to the South, a position he held for the rest of his life, riding on horseback over hill and through valleys.  

Soon the Unitarian Church of Knoxville was organized, but the group stopped holding meetings 18 months later because the community was not receptive to UU values. The Universalist Church of Knoxville also organized around this time and met sporadically. In 1917 the Unitarian Society of Knoxville formed, but it did not last very long either.

JEFF: Our ancestors call us to trust what rises up from the people, and to imagine and embrace a Unitarian Universalism that, like a hardy native plant, is indigenous to East Tennessee.

BETH: After World War II, the young adults who stayed to live in Oak Ridge began to create the city’s institutions, among them Fred and Louise Drosten. In the Fall of 1948, people from Oak Ridge and from Knoxville gathered to meet with Lon Ray Call from the American Unitarian Association, and by 1949, a single congregation--with two campuses, one in Knoxville and one in Oak Ridge--began to meet. Rev. Dick Henry would preach in Knoxville in Sunday mornings and Oak Ridge on Sunday afternoons. Within a year, both Knoxville and Oak Ridge had grown enough to stand on their own, and continued on, no longer as twins, but as neighbors. 

ADAM: Our ancestors call us to listen to young adults, to spread the good news of a Love that leaves nobody out everywhere it can go, to invest in that mission, and to know that our founding story is that we’re better together.

CATHERINE: TVUUC boldly accepted African American Jim Person as a member during a time when that put the church on the wrong side of the law. The school board met about the matter and called the Unitarians “Communists,” and the church was no longer allowed to meet in the school space. 

On the other side of town, the City of Oak Ridge had been established according to Jim Crow laws, and that built-in racism required and still requires work to untangle and dismantle. In the 1950s, Unitarians worked diligently toward integration of schools, businesses, housing, and even the local cemetery.  

ELNORA: In 1968, in the wake of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination, the Poor People’s Campaign came through Knoxville on its way to DC, and members of TVUUC fed 2000 people in their efforts to support the cause. 

FRED: However, following Dr. King’s assassination, there was a general disintegration of the coalition around civil rights, and some African American leaders didn’t feel that they could make a movement or a difference from their positions within UU churches. This schism had a deep impact, especially on the national level. 

JEFF: Our ancestors call us to perseverance, courage, and patience, as we work toward the Beloved Community.

BETH: The seeds of a new congregation began in conversations in 1984 between the Oak Ridge and Tennessee Valley UU churches. A couple of years later Westside UU Church in Farragut was formed. 

It would be another 24 years until the Foothills UU Fellowship was chartered, but seeds were being planted. In 1988 the Smoky Mountain Unitarian Group -- also known as SMUG -- was a small group that could fit around a table at a diner on 411. 

ADAM: Somewhere around the early 2000s Chris Buice, minister of TVUUC and a former member of the Smoky Mountain Unitarian Group, encouraged the creation of a Small Group Ministry in Blount County. The small group soon began to launch larger events and worship services. Once established, the seed of the small group ministry grew very rapidly. 

CATHERINE: In March 2006, the congregation now known as Foothills UU Fellowship, began meeting as a satellite ministry of TVUUC, first meeting at Maryville College, then in two other locations before moving to our current space at the Smith Life Event Center. In 2008, the congregation was chartered as a UUA congregation. 

ELNORA: Our ancestors call us to prioritize building relationship first, to remember the Fellowship is not a building, and to know that seeds planted may bear fruit many years later.  

JEFF: In July 2008 our congregations were deeply affected by a tragic shooting at TVUUC, motivated by hatred and resulting in the loss of two precious lives and injuries to several others. Out of this terrible tragedy came resilience and hope and the Side with Love movement that seeks to harness love’s power to stop oppression. 

BETH: Our ancestors call us to resilience, strength, and hope in the face of fear, hate, & oppression. 

ADAM: In January 2018, East TN UU ministers and congregations worked together to host the UUA annual Board meeting in Knoxville, where our UUA president Rev. Susan Frederick-Gray reminded us that “This is no time for a casual faith.” Importantly, she added, “This is no time to go it alone or to think that we are in this alone.” 

CATHERINE: Our ancestors call us to dream big and to work together in partnership with our sibling congregations and our denomination in order to fulfill our vision of radical love and justice for all people.

ELNORA: In the nearly 70 years since the formation of the Oak Ridge and Tennessee Valley congregations, our four congregations have been served by somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 ministers, each bringing their particular ministry and wisdom and together working to support East Tennessee UUs in living out our values in our congregations and in our communities. 

FRED: Our ancestors call us to celebrate the richness and strength of long relationships that take time to deepen and grow.