First Unitarian Congregational Society Brooklyn

Women’s Alliance Accomplishments 2011 – 2012

First U Bklyn — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 23:22:43 +0000

2011-2012 accomplishments:
Supplied a Field Placement Grant to continue supporting our female Seminarian, Beth Dana.
Contributed monetary support for additional productions of the highly successful play “Mother Wove the Morning”.
Establishment of a Google group so that we can communicate better about the activities of the Women’s Alliance fuubwomensalliance@googlegroups.com
Continue to administer The Miriam Campobasso Memorial Fund which provides financial assistance to Women’s Alliance and Congregational women with a life threatening illness.
A reception with our new interim minister, the Rev. Holly Horn.

Still to come in 2012:
Run a series of workshops on “Computer Literacy for the Mature Person.”
Address the issue of Gender with a film series.
Refashion the Older Women’s Support Group.
Reestablish our monthly Board Meetings which are open to all.

Moment of Witness about Occupy Wall Street

Marymost — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 15:00:23 +0000

Good morning! I’m Mary Most, and I was born and raised Unitarian. I came to this congregation about 19 years ago, and my children were raised here. I have served on the Bd of Trustees, and on the Communications Committee for many years. If anyone here would like to help with promoting the activities of our congregation, come find me. But today I’m up here to talk about Occupy Wall Street.

I work in the Financial District and I go to Zuccotti Park – or Liberty Square, as they prefer to call it — every day at lunch time. I pull on a pair of latex gloves and join the Sanitation team to remove garbage so they don’t get shut down for health violations. We collect recyclables and composting, because we want to do the right thing.

Pretty much every weeknight I drive in and drop off your donations of warm clothing & blankets. Whatever I can do to help.

I know there are many other people here in this congregation who have done their bit to support Occupy Wall Street — who else has gone to Zuccotti Park or to a rally? or donated supplies or money? or shared a link on Facebook? (Show of hands – there were a LOT).

When I go to Liberty Square, or Zuccotti Park, I feel a tangible surge of energy, of possibility, of hope, of the real potential for change. In this leaderless movement, there is no “They” – it’s US. Unless you’re one of the 400 people who are making more than the other 15 million of us COMBINED (and if you ARE, please see the Stewardship Committee!) – WE are the 99%. We’re in this together.

This sense of inclusion is something I always felt here at First U: There is no “they” here; it’s all “us”. Church as co-op. We define, we create where we’re going, and how we’ll do it, as a congregation.

There are many many conversations going on at – and because of – Occupy Wall Street. Facebook is brimming with political and economic discourse. People on the subway are talking about economic injustice. Charts and graphs are circulating. Within a matter of weeks, this has become a international movement. Today there are over 1600 “Occupied” cities.

The media is down at Occupy Wall Street. They interview someone and think they’ve got it covered… I laugh. Y’know the story about the blind scholars who try to describe an elephant? One touches the tail and says an elephant is just like a snake. One touches the leg and says an elephant is just like a tree. You can’t get the whole picture as long as you still use “They”. As long as you expect to find a single spokesperson. It’s like expecting any of us in this room to tell you what Unitarians should believe.

Occupy Wall Street is criticized because “They” don’t have a cohesive message, a list of demands. Here’s what I see going on in Liberty Square: you talk to 10 different people, you’ll get 10 different points of view. Everyone’s ideas are different, and everyone’s ideas are respected. Every one co-exists peacefully, in a participatory democracy.

Does that sound familiar? Yeah! OWS is a very Unitarian gathering.

So in keeping with my Unitarian principles, I support Occupy Wall Street. If anyone has donations you’d like me to bring, please find me during Coffee Hour. Thank you!

Youth Social Justice Program 2011-2012

First U Bklyn — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 20:53:22 +0000

The Youth Social Justice Program creates opportunities for community service and social action, teaches about community organizations in Brooklyn, and deepens Unitarian Universalist identity. The program engages the congregation’s senior high (9th-12th grade) youth in partnering with community organizations to put their faith into action. The main components of the program are monthly service projects and group reflection on the connections between Unitarian Universalism and social justice.

MARK YOUR CALENDARS! Saturday Service Projects
(these are tentative dates and may change)

October 8 @ East New York Farms
November 12
December 10 @ the UU-United Nations Office Youth Conference at FUUB
January 7
February 11
March 10
April 14 @ Hands On New York Day
May 12

Details about time and location will be communicated to parents and youth over the course of the year.

NOTE: All youth must have a signed permission form from a parent/guardian in order to participate in the service projects.

Rev. Mark Kiyimba to speak about the struggle for LGBT Rights in Uganda

First U Bklyn — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 21:24:27 +0000

Sunday, October 16, approx. 1 PM, Frances White Room, after services
The Role of the Church in the Struggle for LGBT Rights in Uganda
with Rev. Mark Kiyimba

With the overt participation and support of a strong evangelical community in the United States, the Ugandan parliament is currently considering legislation that would make homosexual activity a crime in that country, subject to possible capital punishment. The Unitarian Universalist Church of Kampala is one of the few worshipping communities in Uganda that welcomes lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people into its fellowship. In 2009 and 2010 it hosted conferences to protest the legislation that attracted more than 200 people, including gay and lesbian Ugandans and their allies who risked possible arrest for their participation.

Come and hear that congregation’s pastor, Rev. Mark Kiyimba, deliver a guest sermon, and later describe the current struggle to preserve the rights of LGBTs in Uganda.

Rev. Mark Kiyimba, UU minister and political activist, is the founding minister of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Kampala, Uganda. A speaker at GA in June in Charlotte, he has received international attention for his courageous public fight against the inhumane anti-homosexuality legislation now before the Ugandan parliament.

This event is co-sponsored by the All Souls Adult Education Program and the UU Office at the United Nations.

Rev. Dr. Horn’s words on CLF’s

First U Bklyn — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 17:18:34 +0000

Here’s a link to Rev. Dr. Horn’s excerpted piece “Another Kind of Knowledge”: www.clfuu.org/quest/2011/10/horn.html

The Church of the Larger Fellowship was founded over 50 years ago to serve the needs of isolated UUs (see our history). Membership in CLF brings you lots of benefits and services. CLF’s mission is to provide a ministry to isolated religious liberals, and to offer a spiritual home within the Unitarian Universalist movement. The CLF promotes the understanding and growth of Unitarian Universalism and institutes programs to that end.

Congregational Survey Closing Soon!

First U Bklyn — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 18:41:25 +0000

The Congregational Survey, created by the Senior Minister Search Committee, will be closing in one week on Friday, September 30! If you haven’t taken the survey already, we hope to hear from you before it closes. Because we are on a tight timeline, we unfortunately cannot extend this date.

The survey can be accessed at:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/fuub

We want to reach 100% of the members and friends of the congregation.

We encourage everyone to take the survey online as this will significantly aid the committee in the evaluation process. However, if you require a paper survey, you may call Rob in the office at 212-683-4988 X108 or speak to any member of the Search Committee. All paper surveys must be received in the office by Monday, September 26th (recently extended).

Note: Every family member aged 16 and over is entitled to take his/her own survey, but only one survey per person please!

Simply Peace

Jude Geiger — Sun, 08 May 2011 18:29:20 +0000

Peace Mosaic Reflection
What a week we’ve had. It was late on Sunday when my boyfriend, Brian, looked over from reading the e-news to say, “They killed Bin Ladin.” He was relieved, a long time NYC resident, Brian had been living here when the Trade Center came down. The non-profit he works for was in midtown at the time, and has since moved down to Wall Street. My first reaction was different. Ten years ago I watched the smoke from twelve miles away, and waited for some friends to come home from work. It put in motion my studying for the GRE’s, and the career change from Information Technology to Community Development and ultimately the ministry. On Sunday night though, I didn’t have an emotional response; I didn’t find a sense of closure – that door that was opened on 9/11 didn’t feel like it shut closed and I found myself still staring at that open door.
I was quiet, a little stunned, and left wondering what the news, the politicians, and the entertainment media would do now. I was left wondering what changed; what’s next; and most of all – why wasn’t I feeling anything. What does justice mean? What does peace at the end of a rifle mean? Look at how much we can accomplish and how little we can stop. It wasn’t till the next morning that I realized, “Oh my, I have to talk about this at a family friendly service about Mothers’ Day and Peace this Sunday.”
It’s an impossible topic; yet one that needs to be addressed since this saga in our nation’s (and planet’s) history continues to define and determine our policies, our priorities, and the generations being raised in its wake. And I rather not leave it to our entertainment media to teach it to our children. We can shy away from it, but the truth is – all of us – adults, teens, and children – see this constantly on TV, in print, and certainly on the internet. And right now, when I look at these sources of information, I largely hear a message that tells me that violence is the only answer to violence; that war is eternal; and that we can never be safe so stay on guard. I personally don’t agree with those three views. I pray to hear more people speak up to help break this cycle of war and violence who don’t sound to my ear as fringe themselves, or evangelical in their militant pacifism, or who don’t negate the genuine feelings of those that support the course our country is currently taking. But I don’t personally hear that yet.
I would love to say to all of us that there is a clear and easy answer to how we should feel in the wake of the news of the death of the world’s most wanted terrorist. But the truth is, that like it was for Brian and I, we’re all going to respond differently. And that’s ok. Some of us will find solace; and some of us will feel numb; and some of us will feel like we’ve only made things worse.; and some of us were born after 9/11 so we don’t fully understand everything that’s going on and will just feel confused; and some of us who were born after 9/11 never got to know a certain family member and from that loss don’t understand why anyone would feel conflicted at all. I believe all of these responses are valid and correct in their own ways. ‘Violence begets violence’ remains true… and… someone who has caused so much suffering in the world must be stopped. To paraphrase the Dalai Lama’s response to this, Everyone deserves our compassion and forgiveness, but that doesn’t mean we need to forget. Sometimes actions must be taken.
If I can take anything of value out of this latest chapter in this tragic story I would say that we can learn to accept each others’ different emotional, intellectual and spiritual responses – our hearts, heads and soul. I would say that we give each other room to honor our pain, or our relief, or our fear, or our satisfaction. That we hold each other in care; that we hold off from the judgmental cries we might see on Facebook status updates; that we talk about what this means with our families and friends. That we refrain from the easier next step of intellectually critiquing US Foreign Policy, and remain in the more difficult place of emotionally wrestling with what this means for our hopes of building a more vibrant and connected world community. I think most of us know how much easier it is to critique or judge a thing – and how much harder it is to make anew or build something from the fallout. The world needs a lot more of the rebuilding than the breaking down right now. Where do we choose to focus?
With this page turning, can we be inspired to change how we interact with the people sitting next to us in the pews this morning? Can we start with that? I swear, it is so easy to get lost in the rush of responsibilities, and homework, and deadlines, and budgets and annual meetings. It is so easy to forget that everything we need to build community – to craft peace – is right before us and we can’t see it for the details. I know I’m guilty of that daily, and I regret that I am not alone in that mistake.
As you can tell from the differences in the order of service this morning, or from the fact that I’m giving my sermon in a couple of parts, we’re moving the liturgy around in the hopes of helping to work through these feelings a little more. In a little while – during our time of prayer, meditation and reflection – we’re going to ask all of us to do a little bit of building up of our own. We’re crafting in service today a larger peace sign. It’ll be a mosaic made of small felt squares in colors the range of the rainbow. You may not know that our side aisle chapels each are dedicated to different purposes. The one on this side is dedicated to all the world religions. During our candle lighting later, we’ll use this chapel for its usual purpose. Our other chapel is dedicated to peace. It is there that we’ll gather after the prayer to choose our own piece of felt to add to our peace mosaic. In a little while I’ll explain the logistics of how we’ll all do this together, but for now I’d like you to reflect on two questions. With reverence, I ask you to consider what part of the picture can you add in your own life? What color do your efforts look like?
The Logistical Bits
As we prepare to silently reflect and light candles in our chapel of world faiths, I invite those who would like to, to come forward as well and place a mosaic onto our peace sign. By doing so, you are not making a statement of support or critique of any policy, or procedure, or worldly decision, or critiquing our soldiers who are risking their lives for ours. Rather, you are agreeing to help build a little more peace in the corner of the world in which you live – at home, at the office, in this congregation – with family, with friends, with strangers. There’s no right color to choose, or right place to put it on the mosaic. As my local Park Slope arts and craft guru teaches me, we all have a natural instinct when it comes to colors. As a group we’ll naturally make it look great. We don’t have to overly think about it. We don’t have to form a committee to make it work. We don’t have to fret whether the next person will mess it up. It just takes our intention, our effort, and allowing ourselves to listen to our own heart – and it will all come out just fine. I invite now folks who feel so moved to come forward and light a candle in our one chapel and then head over to our other to place a mosaic. Some of you may choose to do the same thing in the reverse order. That’ll work out just fine as well. After several minutes, Bill Peek will lead our choir and the seated in singing the next hymn that’s printed in the order of service. Some of us will still be lighting candles or placing tiles. The words should be easy enough to join in singing whether or not you still have a hymnal in your hands. I welcome you now forward.
Homily
Our songs this morning – particularly our anthem and offertory – have this sense of time passing. That’s the phrase Bill Peek used, and I know he’s right on the mark. Some things may feel like forever, but they’re gone in a blink or look different on second glance. And yet, springtime returns every year at just about the same time. I asked Bill (our music director) if he thought the John Lennon song, Beautiful Boy could work today. I know it’s written from a dad to his son, and we’re celebrating Mothers’ Day; but I realize that we celebrate Mothers’ Day every year, and we don’t celebrate Fathers’ Day as such, it falling on our Juneteenth celebration. So for those dads out there, I hope this song gives you a little more space this year in the celebration.
The song has a particular meaning for me on this day though. “Out on the ocean sailing away, I can hardly wait, to see you come of age, but I guess we’ll both, just have to be patient, yes it’s a long way to go, but in the meantime, before you cross the street, take my hand, life is just what happens to you, while you’re busy making other plans.” Life is just what happens to you while you’re busy making others plans. That line of the song might be my motto this year. Thinking I was sailing away to a warm blue ocean on the other side of this continent, only to realize that my family situation, and my mother’s health, meant it was best if I stayed close rather than 3000 miles away. So many have asked this of me individually, so I’ll say to all of you now, my mom’s not in critical condition. She’s just learning to live into her next stage of life as she struggles with walking and other problems tied to mobility and heart health. And I guess my dad and I are trying to learn alongside her just as well. Knowing how private my mom is, it feels very weird even talking about this, but I know how much more strange it would be for our community if I were to remain entirely silent.
We grow up as kids waiting for the day to get out of the house and be on our own – to be adults. If we’re lucky, our parents are still around and we still want them in our lives. Then twenty or so years go by and all of a sudden you’re wondering whether being a bit closer isn’t the right way to go. We have an image of our moms as the one asking us to take their hand as we cross the street. As we get older though, there comes a time when we have to be grown up enough to ask the same thing of our parents. Maybe we should learn to take and ask for each other’s hands all along the way, and then maybe it won’t feel so weird should we let twenty years go by.
If you’re 15 right now and trying to imagine yourself holding your mom’s hand while you cross the street – seeing how strange it might feel, and knowing how other folks might look at you doing so being nearly an adult — try to fast forward a couple of decades and consider what it might feel like then. The awkwardness, I feel, are mirror images to one another; but just as many of us can recall our feelings and family frustrations from our teen years, I’m sure our teens can also get a glimpse of what the future might be through the images of our multigenerational community all around us. We can learn to take what moments we can as they arrive; ever trying to remember the mothers in our lives who have reminded us to “have no fear, (and that) the monsters are gone.” For those who have their mothers with them, strongly in their lives, we celebrate with you. For those who wish they had the chance to say one more thing to their mom, or their son or their daughter – we love you – and we’re just a hand’s length away when you need.
It’s in this spirit that our words from the Call to Worship this morning by the Unitarian Julia Ward Howe were crafted. It’s from the deep connection between child and mother, which the original Mothers’ Day Proclamation of peace was made in 1870. “Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy, and patience.” Howe helps us to see the big problem of war, through the baby steps of starting at home. It reminds me of the contemporary slogan, “Think Globally, Act Locally.” To find a world at peace, we must act in our families, in our friendships and all through our community. I have no idea how to solve all the violence and war in the world. When I try to think of how to work through all the conflicts of all the people in the world, I simply have no clue. No clue. But I can try to speak more compassionately with those around me. I can seek to apply the words of Dr. Hicks that are printed at the top of our order of service this morning. ‎”Ask questions from the standpoint of curiosity, rather than arguing or debating another’s point of view.” For all of us who have ever asked the big questions like “Why is the sky blue?” – it’s with that spirit that Dr. Hicks words live in us. If you’ve ever had an argument with someone else, and you found yourself using the time where your opponent is speaking to formulate your response – not actually listening to them with more than one ear – Dr. Hicks is speaking to you. If we can’t find a way to listen with curiosity in our daily lives, we won’t craft world peace. We have to do it over the TV dinner if we ever hope to do it in the oil fields. World peace may be more complicated than that, but its first steps are that simple. Happy Mothers’ Day to all. May Julia Ward Howe’s dream come true in our lifetime.

Palm Sunday Music Service

First U Bklyn — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 05:49:23 +0000

Palm Sunday Music Service
Johann Sebastian Bach

Cantata 196
Der Herr Denket an uns

from Cantata 148
Bringet dem Herrn Ehre seines Namens

works of
Georg Philipp Telemann and Christoph Graupner

Thais Schaller: soprano, Karen Geer: soprano
Adam Baritot: tenor, Andrew Cook-Feltz: baritone

Choir of the First Unitarian Church
with Chamber Ensemble

William Peek, organist and director

11:00 am, April 17, 2011

In 1722, the position of Cantor at St. Thomas Church in the city of Leipzig became vacant. This was one of the most notable positions in German musical life, and a number of prominent musicians applied for the position. After carefully considering the applications, the town council offered the position to Georg Philipp Telemann. When Telemann decided not to accept the position, it was next offered to Christoph Graupner. When Graupner was unable to obtain a release from his position in Darmstadt, the town council reluctantly went to their third choice candidate, and the position was offered to Johann Sebastian Bach.
Today, of course, Johann Sebastian Bach is understood to be among the most extraordinary musicians who ever lived. On Palm Sunday, we are delighted to offer two joyous works by Bach. The cantata Der Herr denket an uns (BWV 196) (The Lord is thinking of us) is a youthful work, probably composed in 1708. It is believed to have been first performed at the wedding of his wife’s aunt in a small country church near Arnstadt. Bach himself had been married in this same church less than a year before, and the cantata is as sunny and optimistic as any music every composed. The cantata Bringet dem Herrn Ehre seines namens (BWV 148) (Give unto God the glory of his name) was composed in 1723 during Bach’s first year in Leipzig. We will present the first movement of this cantata, a majestic chorus accompanied by strings and trumpet. This is a fully mature work, representative of Bach at the peak of his creative powers.
But we will also present several works by Telemann and Graupner, including two works for trumpet and strings and a beautiful soprano solo from one of Graupner’s many church cantatas. You can decide for yourself if the Leipzig Town Council indeed had a difficult choice to make.

This Side of Paradise

Jude Geiger — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 18:29:47 +0000

There once was a farm in a valley that was practically perfect in every way, except that it had no rooster to crow at the crack of dawn, and so everyone was always late getting out of bed.”(1) If only all our problems seemed so simple! But I imagine it didn’t seem like such a small deal to the folks on the farm. From missing newspapers to late milked cows, to plain cranky attitudes, life in this otherwise perfect valley was marred by its one lack, a missing rooster.
What’s our missing farmyard animal? What’s the one thing in your life, that if only it were present, would make everything seem to work out all right? Go with the first thing that comes to you, it’ll do. Or if you’re like me on a bad day, start making lists. What does it give you that you don’t already have? How would it make things turn out just fine? What need does it fill?
I love stories like this. They really can draw out the essence of our daily challenges and struggles and they use humor to do so. It’s probably true that each one of us in this room could think of something pretty quickly that would help them to feel more whole, or more at ease, or at least full of gratitude. Getting into that college program; securing that job; hearing better news about the medical results. Those are some really serious concerns. If you’re like me, I imagine in the everyday you can catch yourself putting the same value on smaller events though. Catching that traffic light before it goes from yellow to red; or missing those closing doors on the subway, or waiting for that email or that text message to arrive; or the anticipation you feel waiting for the next episode of Glee…
What’s happening in between? That moment between otherwise being happy about how things are and the next where we convince ourselves that things will only be good, or OK, if the thing we’re waiting for actually happens. Let’s start with the little things first. Try to remember what it feels like in your body when I mention these. That traffic light. Getting caught behind a slow moving pedestrian on a narrower block in Manhattan. The iconic subway rider that won’t move out of the way of the closing doors. I’m going to hazard a guess that at least one of these can drive you absolutely nuts.
What are we letting go of when we let this occur? We might have someone in our lives we love; we may have home and health; we may be enjoying a warm beautiful day on this side of paradise; but the traffic light, or slow moving pedestrian, can take it all away in the blink of an eye. We may be thinking about picking up our kids from their RE class, or prepping for the next congregational committee meeting, or just steeling ourselves for the rush of coffee hour instead of fully resting into this hour of reflection, refreshment and community connection. It’s so easy to fall into this habit. We’ve all been there, and we’ll likely all experience this sense of “momentary want” again – probably even today. The little things are just as easy to laugh at ourselves about – as they are to forget not to cling to them again and again. They’re not big, and yet they can all snatch from us the awareness of the awe in the living world around us.
…And the bigger things are much less easy to sweep away. Concerns for one’s home, or job, or prospects or health aren’t frivolous or insignificant. The death of a loved one, or feelings of concern for our friends who are grieving, are major turning points in our lives. For good or for ill, their effects will travel with us – possibly – for the rest of our lives. And yet, the simple truth is that the awe and wonder of this living, breathing world continues unabated in every moment. What happens to us, doesn’t change this truth; even if the awe and wonder becomes hard to see for a time… even if we can’t feel it for a while. A connection to our source, this life, remains. And yet those times of forgetfulness – those times of feeling disconnected from our source, will come. It’s the reality of a world full of promise and pain.
Our Universalist predecessors believed in universal salvation. They believed that when we died, all souls would be saved to heaven in glory. The reasoning went such that an all-loving, all-powerful God could not condemn anyone to eternal pain or misery. Personally, I’ve come to feel that salvation is accessible in our current lives, for all people, while we’re still living and breathing. I’ve come to see salvation not tied to death, or notions of original sin, but a salvation tied to life. A salvation responding to the hells of our daily making; a salvation responding to the hells of our communal making. It starts with being able to connect and reconnect with this awe-inspiring living breathing world. It’s a salvation that’s grounded in healthy community; a salvation that responds to our religious humanist forebears who found in religious community a saving grace from the false idolatry of the individual ego. It’s a salvation that liberates us from our ties to the mythic worlds of “what if,” the traps of “if only” and the fears of “no, not that.” It’s not a false sentimentality. It’s not wishful thinking. It’s not a brazen disregard for the horrors, and pains and tragedies of our world. It’s a salvation that reminds us of the honest connections we are ever blessed with. It’s the kind that puts into context all the complexity and nuance of our often frenetic yet ever poignant world.
Our reading this morning by Pema Chodron offers a Buddhist take on this contemporary Universalist message. “Moving away from our experience, moving away from the present moment with all our habits and strategies, always adds up to restlessness, dissatisfaction, unhappiness. The comfort that we associate with concretizing and making things solid is so transitory, so short lived.” (2) Alright, let’s take a little mini-poll here. By a show of hands, who here has ever wanted anything? Ok, keep your hands up if that thing you wanted you got. Ok, now here’s the tricky part. Please keep your hand up if after getting that thing you wanted, you at some point stopped wanting or enjoying it. And finally – keep your hand up if that thing you wanted that you got, you came to wish you never got it? Alright, I thought that was a pretty common occurrence. I’m glad it’s not just me… phew!
That, my friends, is what concretizing can lead to. We sort of chase our own tails for dreaming. Call the grass on the other side always greener, or just admit that sometimes we don’t really know what we want. The draw to make things appear more solid in our lives is very alluring, but it’s ultimately a fruitless desire. I don’t mean to suggest we ought to give up on development, or goals, or hopes; but rather I hope to inspire us to offer a more realistic appreciation for the moment we dwell in. Our world is more full of joy if in our daily strivings we remain rooted, as best we can, in a thorough appreciation for what is before us. It’s from this place of fullness that we realize salvation. And it’s available to us in every moment; including this one.
There’s another message that comes out of the words for all ages we heard this morning about our practically perfect farm. Did you notice how the rooster went to every animal in the farm before even trying to figure out how to crow on his own? It made more sense to him that the pig, or cat, or sheep, or duck might know better how to make a rooster crow than he himself did. The part about that story that I love even more, is that the pig, cat, sheep and duck also thought that they knew how to make that noise better than the rooster. If they knew so well, I wonder why they didn’t take on the role of morning wake-up call till then; and yet they remained certain they could. How often do we take on one of those roles in our lives? When are we the know-it-all expert? …When are we the rooster that’s given up all our power?
I’m sure there’s a few sermons in the question of being a know-it-all, but I’ll save that for another day. The second question though, really fits our worship this morning. I’ve reflected a bit about how we give away our connectedness with the moment, with our connectedness to this side of paradise, by ever wishing for the next great thing. How do we do that when we give up our own answers? How do we disconnect ourselves when we solely rely on others to save us from our unknowing, or our quandaries, or our sense of loss? In religious community, I applaud the rooster’s desire to learn from his peers and elders. I applaud his willingness to engage with his neighbor. But I’m concerned that it never occurred to him to even try to rely on his personal experience. Our UU sources talk about this. One of our sources is our own human experience, and our story’s hero takes a while to get back to the beginning.
What’s going on there? I’m going to guess that we’re all a little guilty of this in our lives. Think about a time when you’ve had a big decision to make and the first thing you do is call every close friend and ask them to tell you what you’d do. A certain amount of that is good for the process of reflection. But so often we go to the absurd extreme with it. We give up our connectedness with the moment in our repetitive mental musings – with the proverbial spinning of our wheels while going no where. Maybe we need the advice, but maybe we already know our answer. Maybe we already know how to speak our voice and do what needs to be done if only we were to try. A friend of mine says that, “We can’t rely on others to show us the beauty of a moment. Another person can’t give us the eyes to see that; we’re born with them and we have to learn to use them.”(3)
In the Christian tradition, there’s a verse attributed to Reinhold Niebhur, that goes, “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.” This great prayer of discernment sums up the quandaries associated with fearing what will come and fearing who we are right now. If we can figure out how to live out the words from the Serenity Prayer, as it’s commonly called, we come closer to an appreciation for the moment. We come closer to loving this amazing world as best we can just as it is. It holds an honest balance between loving ourselves (and the world) as we are, and loving the world and ourselves as we might be — without making ourselves or the world out to be wrong in the meantime. It calls us to give ourselves a chance, without struggling against the impossible; while lifting up a sense of ownership with our feelings and experiences.
In all of this, if we were to name it for what it is, we might say that there’s a hole in our hearts for what we sense to be missing in our lives. In some traditions, we’d call it a “God-shaped hole.” In others, we’d call it “living in a state of suffering.” In psychological terms we might label it “insecurity” or “co-dependence” depending on its manifestations and triggers. I believe each one of these has their merits. As a minister though, and not a psychologist (except for maybe in the pop sense of the word) I’ll stick with the first two names. “Living in a state of suffering” and “A God-shaped hole in our heart.”
Our reading this morning by Pema Chodron clearly is in the school of thought that engages our sense of suffering. It’s a philosophy that calls for deepening our sense of comfort with the groundlessness of life – that ‘not knowing what will be;’ that ‘acceptance of the present moment.’ “This moving away from comfort and security (she writes,) this stepping out into what is unknown, uncharted and shaky – that’s called liberation.” (4) I used the Universalist language of salvation before to reflect on this same sort of thing. As our religious tradition transforms, changes and grows we’re going to learn and develop more and more ways to express the complexity of life and matters of spirit in our own religious language. But I believe the core truths, the essential questions and challenges remain the same for us – we’re just learning better ways to translate them for our own hearts, minds and ears.
The “God-shaped hole” language may really work for you. Or maybe it’s a kind of language that’s really hard for you to relate to. As Unitarian Universalists, I’ll challenge us to be the best translators we can be. And I’ve given us a few ways to translate today. For the theists among us, when we give up our sense of faith in our own capacity; when we give up our sense of appreciation for Creation as it is; when we disconnect ourselves from a real communion with this side of paradise; we realize a God-shaped hole in our lives. We confuse ourselves into thinking that we’re alone; or empty; or unloved. We confuse ourselves into thinking we’re powerless; or incapable; or that the world is devoid of meaning.
None of these things are true. We are not alone. We are loved. Life is full of promise. Our potential and capacity for love and for life is an amazing gift – an amazing blessing that we only need to open ourselves up-to to know its full wonder. As Zora Neale Hurston audaciously proclaims, “Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place.” That’s the core message in living into this side of paradise, regardless of our personal theologies, or beliefs. Loving the moment, loving the world in all its nuance and beauty, loving ourselves and the beloved communities we build together, loving this life through all its uncertainty, is the process of crawling out of our places of pain and fear and hiding. Friends, this world is too full to forever find answers outside ourselves, and it is too full to forever think we hold all the answers for our neighbors. This living, breathing world is too full to hide from it, each other, and ourselves.
1- “A Lamp in Every Corner” by Janee K. Groshmeyer p. 88
2- “Comfortable with Uncertainty,” by Pema Chodron, p.43. 2003 Boston and London.
3- Brian Brewer
4- “Comfortable with Uncertainty,” by Pema Chodron, p.44. 2003 Boston and London.

Pride and Prejudice in the Multi-Ethnic Society

Rev. Patrick ONeill — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 16:59:46 +0000

I was born 64 years ago today – just yesterday, really. I was born only about seven or eight miles from here – or about six stops away on the A Train, as New Yorkers like to measure distance, on the West Side of Manhattan. Legends and stories about my birth quickly spread, as you might imagine. My mother used to say that I was an Irish Catholic baby delivered in a Lutheran Hospital by a Jewish obstetrician. “I should have guessed then that you’d grow up to be a Unitarian minister,” my father would later say.
I was born the seventh and last child of an Irish immigrant household consisting of my parents, Bill and Betty O’Neill, both of whom immigrated to America in the 1920’s; my paternal Grandmother, Katie O’Neill; and my siblings, John, Harry, Mary, Margaret, Catherine, Nora, and myself.
One story has it that my mother and my grandmother had a rather vehement argument on the day I was born about what I should be named. They were told to expect my arrival on March 17, St. Patrick’s Day, which pretty much pre-determined what a boy named O’Neill would be named. But then they were told to expect me closer to March 7th, which I’m sure you all know, on the Catholic liturgical calendar is the feastday of St. Thomas Aquinas, the great medieval theologian. When I arrived in between on the 13th, my mother thought I should therefore be named Patrick Thomas. But my Grandmother, however, warned that this would be a terrible burden for an immigrant boy born in America. “Call him Thomas Patrick,” my Granny argued. “The name O’Neill will be hard enough for him to overcome; don’t make it harder for him by calling him Paddy.” She said this to my mother in Gaelic. My mother answered her (in English) “If the name is good enough for the patron saint of all Ireland, it’s good enough for my boy.”
And that is how I came to be Patrick Thomas Aquinas O’Neill, and not Tip O’Neill like that fellow up in Boston.
Lest you begin to think that my Grandmother was not proud of her Irish heritage, let me assure you she was, immensely so. But like millions of immigrants to this country before her and after her, my grandmother’s vision and dream for her family is that they would become thoroughly “Americanized” as quickly as possible; this, in order to make possible their fullest participation in what used to be understood as “the American Dream.”
For my parents and my grandmother this pursuit of the American Dream was their singular vision from the day they sailed past the Statue of Liberty into New York harbor. America was the dream for them, the land of opportunity where their children and grandchildren would have no limits to where their own talents and education and ambitions might call them. It sounds corny to us today from our comfortable privileged cynical place in an America where such notions seem a hundred years out of date – if you are lucky enough yourself to be of a generation and an economic class that has never known deprivation or class discrimination or racial oppression or social exclusion. If your own family is now far enough removed from the immigrant experience that you can barely relate to what poor working-class people have been willing to endure and sacrifice in order to provide their children and their grandchildren with a better life – if your own experience has never included the first-hand encounter with hatred and bigotry because of the mere color of your skin or the faintest accent of your family’s native language or the religious background of your family’s heritage – if you really cannot imagine the insult to one’s soul that comes with ethnic slurs or stereotyping of any kind – then my sermon today may hold very little for you.
But if you feel as I do, that our great national experiment called America may currently be in need of some reclamation of what I was taught were the basic values that made this nation exceptional in its vision and extraordinary in its potential, if you feel uncomfortable, as I am uncomfortable watching the entire religion of Islam now come under Peter King’s Congressional inquiry for the actions of an extremist few – if you are made uncomfortable, as I am uncomfortable with the passage of state laws like Arizona’s where any person who even looks to be Hispanic can be stopped by police and required to produce proof of citizenship – if that feels just a bit more like Apartheid South Africa than like the United States of America to you – then maybe you can understand why I feel compelled to speak to this today.
You see, this is my St. Patrick’s Day sermon today. I write this sermon today for my grandmother, Katie O’Neill of County West Meath, Ireland, who spent more than a few years teaching me about pride and prejudice in a multi-ethnic society and how to distinguish between them. She showed us by personal example how to carry oneself with dignity and pride, and she taught us by personal example to respect the pride of others. But looking back now I appreciate most of all my grandmother’s profound understanding of the fine balances required for a multi-ethnic society to succeed. She understood, it seems to me, in a way that we don’t hear being voiced by enough of our leaders today – by enough of our Congressmen and Senators, by enough of our Governors or by our Supreme Court – my grandmother understood, she got it, that the whole sacred experiment of a multi-ethnic nation can’t work unless it is grounded in that most demanding and difficult of human virtues, namely, Tolerance.
I remember when I was still a pre-schooler walking with my Granny down Amsterdam Avenue to the market, and Granny would play a game with me, to see how many different languages we could hear along those few blocks. “That’s Spanish, Patrick. That’s Yiddish. There’s German. And that’s Italian there. Isn’t New York great, boyo…” She herself spoke with a brogue you could cut with a knife, but the truth is I could never hear my grandmother’s accent. And I could never hear my parents’ accents either. When I was in first grade I got into a schoolyard scuffle one day and came home with a bloody nose. ‘What happened,?” my Granny asked. “That boy said you talked funny, Granny,” I explained. She laughed and said, “Darlin Boy, but I do talk funny!”
Do you know that according to the 2010 Census there are now altogether more than 300 languages spoken in the United States. 300! Do you know that the New York City school system offers classroom instruction in 115 different languages today? One-third of all the children in urban schools across America today speak a language other than English at home. The state of Massachusetts offers drivers license tests in 24 languages. In California voting ballots are offered in six different languages. We are one nation in law and in definition, but we have always spoken in many different tongues. It is only one way in which we are a diverse society.
The term ethnic is derived from the Greek word ethnos, normally translated as “nation”. The term refers currently to people thought to have common ancestry who share a distinctive culture.
An ethnic group (or ethnicity) is a group of people whose members identify with each other, through a common heritage, often consisting of a common language, a common culture often including a shared religion and an ideology that stresses common ancestry and connected with a specific geographical area, with common traditions, including food preferences.
We ought to be clear that “Ethnicity” and “Race” are completely different categories altogether. It is primarily because of our country’s sad history of importing and later having to painfully excise the practice of African slavery that the artificial category of “race” ever became a hallmark of American self-understanding. Nor is the term “ethnic” exactly synonymous with “nationality.” Nation states in many parts of the world are lines drawn on a map for purely political purposes, often throwing in together ethnic groups that have never traditionally gotten along as neighbors, let alone as countrymen. Witness the terrible “ethnic cleansing” warfare in modern Serbia and Bosnia and the former Yugoslavia. Witness the ethnic warfare between Sunni and Shiite tribes in the Middle East, or the Hutu and Tutsi tribal warfare in Rwanda. Not to mention the most horrifying ethnic holocaust of all in Third Reich Germany, when millions of people were slaughtered simply because of their Jewish heritage.
Near the end of her life in 1977, the anthropologist Margaret Mead was asked in an interview, “If we human beings are truly social animals, why do we seem to have such a difficult time getting along with one another in this world? Why so many wars, why so much hostility and aggression and intolerance among people?”
Mead’s answer was very enlightening. “99% of the time humans have lived on the planet,” she said, “we’ve lived in groups of 12 to 36 people. That is to say, we’ve lived in small groups of people probably related to us; people who looked just like us, thought like us, ate and behaved like us, worshipped like us. We simply never needed to learn how to tolerate anyone who was different from us. But in the last 300 years, the population of the world rocketed from 500 million to 4 billion. We simply haven’t had enough time,” said Margaret Mead, “to learn how to get along in such a crowd of strangers.”
Since Mead gave that interview in 1977, by the way, the world population has grown by roughly another 2 billion or so. There are about 6-to-7 billion people on earth in 2011. The world is not getting any roomier, and we do not seem as a species to be growing any more adept at getting along with each other. According to World Almanac, at any given moment, there are some 72 different armed conflicts, civil wars, and/or international aggressions going on between major groups of people somewhere in the world.
In our own country today we are engaged in an endless cultural conversation about the challenges and problems we face in learning to adapt to a “Multicultural” and “Multi-ethnic” society. “Diversity” is a watchword now in virtually every aspect of American life. New realities are upon us, and learning to get along with groups of people who are quite different from ourselves is no longer optional. Shifting population within our country, as well as the international linkage of economic destinies, world trade, and an Internet globe where information is massively and instantaneously accessible – all these factors are at work making this world in our lifetime a place of startling interaction and breathtaking possibility.
The problem is we no longer have the luxury of time – in the evolutionary sense that an anthropologist like Margaret Mead referred to – to perfect the behavioral virtues required for graceful coexistence in such a brave new world.
In evolutionary terms, we are still challenged to act kindly and trustingly toward anyone beyond our own family campfire. And here we are suddenly at a point in history when our sheer numbers on the earth and our accelerated technology now throw whole cultures up against each other for better or worse. And the irony – and the tragedy – is that these social animals called humans are still learning how to get along with each other, how to tolerate each other’s mere presence in the world.
I realize that my Irish American family had many advantages compared to many other ethnic groups in America. Having Patrick for a first name was never really a disadvantage, as my grandmother worried it might be. We got Americanized right enough, my family at least. Accept for their having brogues, my family at least understood English as their primary language. My grandmother stopped using Gaelic in America and did not teach it to her grandchildren. And as fair-skinned Caucasians, we at least did not suffer the indignities of racial discrimination. As Catholics we fitted in with mainstream Christian culture in America. And as members of one of the largest ethnic immigrant groups in America we soon enough had sufficient numbers in the general population to control political power in major American cities and eventually see an Irish American elected president.
Oh, I will admit there have been times when I’ve not been proud to be Irish. When I was younger I was embarrassed by the stereotypes of the Irish as drunkards, for example. I was ashamed of the terrorist bombings carried out by the IRA in the name of British political oppression. I was embarrassed by the hatred in the faces of South Boston Irish during the school integration busing crisis in the 1960’s. I was embarrassed by Mayor Daley’s public disrespect of Martin Luther King in Chicago. I was ashamed of the history of the Irish riots in New York City lynching blacks in the 1860’s. But there was much more that I was proud of about being Irish and proud of Irish contributions to American society and to the world. And most immediately, I’m proud of the family I come from. I come from a loving home, great parents, a wonderful grandmother, the best brothers and sisters. Whatever I know about faith and hope and charity and tolerance, I learned first from them.
The American Dream did come true for more and more Irish, as the sons and daughters of laborers and longshoremen like my dad became college educated and entered into the middle-class as teachers, lawyers, social workers, nurses and artists. Other groups in America have had a much harder route to endure, with more violent oppression and bigotry continually poured down upon them. Racism is still the most corrosive social cancer of all, the one America has never and may never successfully eradicate.
Here is the point I am conscious of on my 64th birthday as another St. Patrick’s Day parade is about to form up on Fifth Avenue. Being an American is the most privileged position anyone in the world can occupy in this time of history, and I’m grateful that my parents made sure their children had this privilege. I’ll honor them this week by being proud of my ethnic heritage and proud of my name. But I’ll honor them most directly by always trying to promote the kind of tolerance that they themselves dreamed for their children when they came here ninety years ago. May you be proud of your heritage as well.
Happy St Paddy’s day to you!