A Sermon by Rev. Dr. Nina D. Grey

First Unitarian Church of Chicago January 4, 2009

We are not alone. I knew this even as I sat by myself in my living room to write this sermon. All I had to do was look out the window to see evidence of beings beyond myself sharing this planet. I am surrounded, we are all surrounded by a cloud of witnesses, both human and otherwise, living and once living, and there are the gleams in the eyes of parents expecting children not yet born. We are nurtured by a wide and deep spirit of love which preceded us, flows through us, and will follow in our wake.

And we dwell in time and space in a universe both constant and ever-changing. We see evidences of the constancy in repeating cycles of the seasons, in patterns of stars in the sky, in the seasons of a life, birth, growth, death and loss; and history too shows trails of stubborn constancy – ethnic and geographic feuding that is or seems never ending.

Yet in any of these realms, whether in the skies, the seasons, life stages, or historic antagonisms, there are also changes. Despite what the ancient biblical writer Eccesiastes said about there being nothing new under the sun, the Greek philosopher Heraclitus was more right. We cannot step in the same river twice. Change is the one reliable constancy. And there is often something new breaking in.

In Shakespeare’s As You Like it, Jacques cries that all the world is a stage and we are but players in it, implying something other than we is pulling the strings of our puppetry lives. Many ancient and medieval thinkers shared a similar view that we are like baby kittens held by the scruff in the mouth of an all-powerful God who ordained our paths before we were born.

But other theologians challenged the image. We do, they said, have some power to contribute, some good to add, if we answer the call of God or Love to be gracious, to be generous, to be forgiving, to seek justice. Post-modern God-thinkers call us partners in creation; partners, who will envision love, and justice. Partners, who will use our hands and feet to express the vision.

Whether we speak of God or a collective human spirit, the energy of life, or the power of love, whether a larger loving spirit embraces and holds us, or whether together we create that spirit, we are needed. Our vision, our hope, our actions are essential. None of us can do it all by ourselves.

Together abolitionists worked against slavery and for freedom. Together suffragists worked against oppression of women and for liberation. Together gay activists and allies worked and are still working for the civil and human rights of all people whomever they care for and are drawn to love.

And in our personal lives, we have sometimes dared a new thing. We have made changes, risked growth, and sought healing, and we have needed support along the way. We have needed friends or family, a church community, a counselor. And think, too, about ways you have supported others in making changes in their lives!

Holidays like the New Year offer us a time for thinking about how we want to live. They spur us to make resolutions about our weight, exercise, starting a new class, paying more attention to our spiritual lives, starting a meditation practice, or getting more involved in the community.

And sometimes crises come upon us unasked and unwanted, causing suffering and sorrow leading us to rethink the ways we are living. A woman, Ida, was in a hospital with serious and incurable respiratory problems. The nurses and others took loving care of her, and she began better to understand the power of love. She reached out to other patients on the floor.

The actor John Travolta and his wife now face a great loss. Their 16 year old son has suddenly died. Their grief will be terrible and it will raise questions as it always does. Life can hardly go on, for them, as usual.

And the people of Gaza were already suffering. But the end of one year and beginning of the next has brought a new rain of bombs, death and injury, greater suffering, loss and fear; and fear too and loss for Israelis in the path of rockets.

The youth of the courageous village Neve Shalom, Wahat al Salaam, half-way between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv also felt they could not go on as usual. They gave up the community-wide holiday party they were planning for everyone, and revised their plans. Instead they invited all their parents into a deep and profound discussion of this painful time.

The people of that village, Israeli Jews and Palestinians living together in one community, were already supporting humanitarian needs of Palestinians in Gaza. They had already confronted together much of the agony of this perennial conflict and its unequal power dynamics. They asked each other, “What are the next steps we can take? Together they want to add their human spirit to the loving spirit of all life.

Some change is destructive. Our culture’s capitalism has run amuck. Based on the false assumption that material progress can be limitless, on the amoral structures of deregulation, on the arrogant presumption that nature had no limits and was ours for the using, based on the prideful assumption that man is all-powerful, on the ignorant paradigm of discreet individuals acting without consequence, we have sometimes created changes more harmful than helpful. We yearn for a different paradigm in all our relationships, a paradigm that recognizes that we have some power, butnot all-power. What we want are models of partnership and cooperation rather than dominance. That is what the people of Neve Shalom, Wahat al Salaam are doing. They meet in community. They listen to one another. They share power for decision-making. Most of all they respect their differences. They choose a model of “power-with” rather than “power-over”.

Our new leader, President-Elect Barack Obama, knows something of this. He wants our voices, our participation.

He wants us to share our gifts with each other, and develop grassroots networks to support the values of freedom and justice for all. He wants to listen and learn with other leaders, and help America be a partner with nations of the world. These democratic, participatory values reflect his blue-print for change. But no blue-prints exist that will take us exactly where we’d like to go.

There are role models, but no guarantees when we try to build creative personal lives and relationships, or create cooperative international partnerships.

One thing is essential. To create models that assume the equality of all people and shared participation and decision-making, we need spiritual maturity. Too little ego leads to fear, too much to overconfidence and pride, or maybe they are the same thing. We need something we try to teach the children: the capacity and willingness to share. When we are too much afraid, we grasp, hoard and cling. This is the foundation of domination.

A willingness to let go, admit others can be right, make compromises, and seek our common ground, these open the door to greater possibility.

Ecclesiastes was partly right, there is often much not new under the sun. And his vision was dimmed by the more static times in which he lived. Spiritual evolution can help new spirit to break in. Humans have grown in a capacity for awareness. Even as long ago as the time of Jesus, the religious prophets and teachers saw what was really real. Hidden by patterns of inequity was human equality. The universe could bend, with our help, toward justice and love.

In the book of Acts, St. Paul testified to the necessity of all our gifts for the good of the whole. And in more recent times, science and systems thinkers have taught us that everything is connected to everything else. The teachers and prophets were right. We are interdependent.

The naturalist and writer of memoirs Annie Dillard understands that while utterly beautiful, each part of nature is imperfect in itself.

We need one another. The ethicist Sharon Welch reminds us to make room for each other’s powerful talents for we all have something to add to the great spirit of love, together, but not necessarily all at once. All at once we may be a noise. In respectful conversation we are a jazz improvisation.

The late Unitarian minister Edward Everett Hale reminds us we cannot do everything, but we can do something, and we should do the something we can do for the sake of a new, more loving, compassionate spirit breaking in.

A spiritual master once invited his disciple to tea. As he poured tea into the cup of the student, it just kept flowing in and overflowed. Why do you pour so that my cup overflows, asks the student. And the master replied, unless you empty yourself, there is no room for something new to come in.

For something new to break in, we may need to empty ourselves of some of the old: perhaps the belief that that it is all up to me or you or Obama, that you have nothing to offer. Perhaps we have to let go of clinging to the impossibility of something new, or the hopelessness of trying to change. We may have to let go of anger, resentment or fear.

Like the winter landscape, we have to let go to make room for a new spirit to break in; make room, space, and time, for hearing, listening, and stepping back; for thinking, praying, meditating or , silence. Turn off the outer sounds to hear the inner voice. Dare to discover what it is that you might have to offer. Take steps one at a time to develop new gifts.

In the beginning we are all beginners. You may have a hidden gift for prophecy, for praise, for beauty and appreciation, for insight, vision or hope; you may have a gift for acceptance and loving criticism, for group building, for caring, for courage and honesty, for anger carefully expressed, or for forgiveness.

The groups you are part of family, committee, choir, or political party have members each with special gifts. Make room for everyone’s gifts and contributions.

I am part of the ad hoc group of players for the Emancipation Proclamation. At our rehearsal I watched how Finley listened to others, and made room for Zarinah’s co-direction. This is partnership at work.

Our country is at a time of danger and opportunity. For creative change, we all need to take seats at the table, bring our vision, patience, and ability to see truth in others’ views. We all need to bring humility and hope, a willingness to take steps without full knowledge, without clinging to results, to keep on and stay engaged, to praise with thanksgiving, to process disappointment and learn something new.

And we need to give ourselves permission at times to step back, reflect, and let winter’s wisdom hold us and new insight come. We want to work and rest in a nourishing, health-giving cycle of activity and self care. In these ways we make room for a new spirit. We prepare to return to a spirited engagement with life. Then we partner again with the spirit of love and make changes for the sake of life. Amen.