Lives and Waters

Rev. Grace H. Simons

Each year, on this Sunday after Labor Day, we celebrate the re-forming of our community after the wanderings and tasks of the summer. Traditionally the vacation season for some of us, others in our area find summer the busiest time of year. And neither pattern is actually over, as some of our members choose September as a fine time to travel, and harvest season is in full swing with tomato trucks rumbling along the roadways and almonds being shaken from their leafy homes. Still, most of us return to a more regular routine as the summer wanes and schools and community activities resume their schedules. InGathering Sunday marks this general return and celebrates our religious community - its principles and values, its inspiration, its connection and community. It's a great time to be together!

Our Water Ceremony symbolizes the way our lives flow together after meandering - now separately, now in smaller groups - throughout the summer months. We come back somewhat changed by our experiences, with new insights, greater depth. Our community welcomes us and wants to share the new meanings. The Water Ceremony is a uniquely UU tradition, having been developed for one of the early meetings of the Women and Religion task force. Not that UUs are alone in using water as a metaphor for our lives or seeing the similarities. Those comparisons have been made since days long before our rememberings.

We know, of course, that all life began in the sea, and our blood and other body fluids are awfully similar in composition to sea water. In real ways, we carry our ocean heritage inside our skins. Without water, life and growth are impossible. In our reading, Marni Harmony reminds us of ways that we carry the sea in body and behavior. One of our hymns - Blue Boat Home - speaks of us dry land natives, sailing through space on our planetary home. And like water, we come in - and can rejoice in - our rainbow of colors and our varied forms.

Surely, our lives have a flowing quality, one day into the next. Beginnings and endings are sometimes hard to identify as elements of one moment stream into the next, today melds into tomorrow . Events and emotions spread throughout our being, like flavors in a beverage, salt in the sea. Sometimes we babble merrily along, the small stones in the streambed yielding cheerful tones and solutions. Some periods of our lives resemble deep channels with strong currents, carrying us with power and purpose. Other times may be more like calm pools, reflecting the world around us and harboring fish in the shade of overhanging boulders. Sometimes an obstacle dams up our energies, prompts us to seek ways around it or to build up enough pressure to move the thing out of the way. And now and then the flow of our lives must endure dry times, when it seems we shrink to bare trickles in a sere landscape. Our spirits long for renewal, for rain.

All these images seem apt, even agreeable, but we know that water can be dangerous as well. The same backyard pools that provide us with so much enjoyment occasionally claim the life of an unattended child. Thunderstorms wash out mountain streambeds and campgrounds. Even our dry valley experiences occasional flooding, with all the muck and destruction it can bring. This year has seen serious floods in Tennessee and the upper Mississippi headwater area. But as damaging as they were, none compare with the devastation of the recent ravages of the swollen Indus River in northern Pakistan. Record monsoon rains have swept away villages and farms along the roads and bridges that once provided links to the rest of the country and the outside world. Water can be devastating as well as life giving.

When channeled, however, the power of gravity and water combine to turn mill wheels like the one we visited on our multigenerational camping trip, they can produce electricity, and form new courses, even through rock. Water can also combat destructive forces, helping to hold soils in place against the wind and spectacularly battling fires like the San Bruno blaze this week or the wild land fires that break out across the West at this time of year. Water is very like us in having the potential for both good and ill, for both destruction and productivity, right in our basic nature.

We are different, though, in an important way. (Well . . . in a lot of important ways, but I only want to talk about one right now!) Water must follow the dictates of external forces - pulled by gravity, evaporated and lifted by heat, blown across vast sky-scapes and propelled by pressure systems. We humans are affected by plenty of external forces, but we have internal `engines' and `steering.' We have choices about what direction our lives will take, where we'll use our talents and abilities, and how much energy we'll devote to a particular purpose. We can decide to move against the flow, to hold fast as tides move in and out again. We can learn to hone our anger so that it becomes an effective tool, to control our fears enough that we can take considered and loving action. We can choose to make a positive difference in the world.

Some years, on InGathering Sunday, I tell the children the story of Higgins, the Drop With A Dream. Like many stories, it gives the inanimate - in this case, a drop of water - a voice, a dream and other human traits. Higgins wants to make a difference to a dry, wilting land. But he knows he can't do it alone. He has to have the help of other drops and he recruits them to join the effort. In a lot of churches, Higgins would not be considered an appropriate teaching story. Here. well, I wouldn't use it if I didn't think it's both appropriate and meaningful.

Both drops of water and people can do more in cooperation with others than any of us as individuals can achieve on our own. It's true in many areas of life. That's why we have teams and work crews, organizations and task forces, and yes, even committees. It's true for our religious communities. Our Fellowship is gathered around shared principles and values. The words above our archway remind us that love is the lodestone of our congregation, the thing we believe has the highest power to guide our lives and our world. Service, truth seeking, friendship toward all complete the affirmation. Our Principles and sources are printed in our program nearly every week. The Principles lift up basic ways we live out our commitments to love and justice; ways we can live in harmony with each other and within our planet's complex and interdependent systems. The several sources we list attest to our belief that insight, inspiration and truth are to be found in many, even surprising, places - and that no one of them has the whole truth, the only story or message.

These are powerful - and radical - ideas and ideals. Any one of us can commit to them. In fact, I hope that each of us is committed to them and that our understanding of them keeps developing, growing deep and wide. I hope that our commitment becomes ever stronger and that we become encouraged, that is, increasingly able to act on our principles, even when we're fearful or under pressure from others who disagree. But I say those things are more likely to happen when we are part of a Unitarian Universalist community like this one. We need each other for support and challenge. We need each other's varied perspectives and talents. The Rev Mark Morrison-Reed writes, ".alone our vision is too narrow to see all that must be seen, and our strength too limited to do all that must be done. Together, our vision widens and our strength is renewed."

Our culture is becoming much more diverse and varied than ever before: in race and ethnicity, in culture and religion, in education and economic resources. At the same time, we have more technology and information available, more pressure to be busy and competitive, more challenge to support ourselves and our families in this weak economy. All these factors can be seen as threats. If they are, we may respond with fear. But fear makes it hard to think clearly; hard to choose actions based on love, justice and awareness of our interconnection. We see plenty of evidence that fear is on the rise in our society.

I say that Unitarian Universalism offers a great antidote to fear of the different, fear of change, fear of isolation. We see richness in diversity, look for insight in many places, claim our interdependence among the creatures and features of Earth. We have so much to offer our culture, so many paths to understanding that we have at least begun. I am not claiming that we have all the answers. But I believe we've begun to ask the right questions, to explore connections with those different from us, to turn away from fear and hate. These things take individual action, and more. Impacting on our society requires our shared effort, our common vision of the earth made fair and all her people kin. When we act together, we are more powerful than we may want to believe.

A couple of years ago, Van Jones challenged our UU General Assembly. Basically he said that we've been doing a good job of protesting abuse and oppression. He thought we'd gotten pretty comfortable with that role. "But," he asked, "are you ready to lead?" His words have returned to me again and again. What would it mean for me, for u s to lead? What would be required? Did Jones actually mean that we have the power to lead but haven't realized it? Is our vision too narrow, our self-image less than our potential, perhaps less even than our reality?

On this InGathering Sunday, we see very concrete evidence that we can do more than we thought. Our new building is nearing completion. We should be able to begin using it by the end of this month. I'm sure I'm not the only one who sometimes wondered if we would actually do this, if it would ever be a reality. Yet by working together and refusing to give up, we've arrived within sight of a great step forward - for our congregation and our ability to serve our members and our community. We are only beginning to glimpse the possibilities that will open up because of this achievement. What will we do now? What will we do next? What should we do?

These are significant questions and will take time to answer. We'll have to live into our new realities a bit before our vision becomes more clear and far-reaching. And we need to celebrate: to celebrate the reforming of our congregation and rededication to our ideals and Principles; to celebrate the new achievement now within our grasp; to celebrate the connections among and between us in this gathered community and the powers of love and life that bring us together; that inspire and strengthen us. We won't ignore the important questions before us, but this morning, it's time to sing, to gladly welcome each other and to share a meal.

September 12, 2010

[Ed. note: This is the unabridged version. Rev. Grace shortened her sermon by some for the early service and a lot for the late one, due to the time we spent on the water ceremony. If you were there, you'll notice the difference.]

Rev. Grace Simons left us a collection of her sermons when she retired in October, 2011. We have a brief biography of Rev. Grace, and the last edition of Grace Notes, a column she wrote for our newsletter.
We also have sermons by Rev. Joe Cherry, our Interim Minister.
Our Guests, who include visiting clergy, lay people and one rocket scientist.