by Barbara Coeyman, Intern Minister

A sermon given October 7, 2001

First Unitarian Church

Portland, Oregon

I attended a Unitarian Universalist service for the first time in 1991 at the First Unitarian Church in Pittsburgh, after several years of being unchurched. Weary to my core from living several full-time lives—as music professor, musician, wife, mother—I found welcome and comfort immediately in that massive hundred-year-old sanctuary with high ceilings and deep brown woodwork. As I worshipped, I sensed that there I could find spiritual focus for my hectic life. It felt right to be there and I soon joined the congregation.

Four years later, by then an active member of the church’s worship committee,

I led a summer service in that same sanctuary. That was my first time speaking from a pulpit. I still recall my topic: "The Arts and Spirituality." In preparing my Arts service, I again sensed that I was entering a new spiritual place, like I did when I first came to the church. As I delivered my "talk" from the pulpit, I realized that this was not the usual Music 101 lecture. There was some energy, some presence, in the sanctuary that was different from the university classroom.

By 1998, my life had taken several radical turns. By then I lived in Austin, Texas, having left my university teaching position up north. Trying to make some sense of a calling to ministry that I had been feeling for quite awhile, I hesitatingly enrolled in one course at Austin Presbyterian Seminary. I admit that I was nervous. There I was, one of

40 students sitting in long rows, not the professor commanding the front of the classroom. There I was, testing the waters of Unitarian Universalist ministry in a Christian institution. To my relief, that Presbyterian classroom was strangely comfortable. Like my first visit to the Pittsburgh church, it felt right to be at the seminary. By the end of that semester, I decided to leave academia completely to prepare for ministry full-time. The direction of my life was changing in profound ways.

Now, looking back on the past ten years, I understand better these experiences of entering new spiritual places and feeling at home. I may never know exactly when the call to ministry started. What I do know is that this decade-long process of spiritual growth has enabled me to move closer and closer to my authentic self. Being here—in ministry in this liberal faith—feels good. It feels like me. It feels like I am becoming myself.

This morning I want to talk about living authentically. Let me explain what I mean by this. I’m talking about realizing qualities, values, and activities that feel right to each of us, that put us in right relationship with our understanding of the world and life’s meanings. Authenticity is congruity between the self, one’s words, and one’s actions, granting a sense of genuineness and transparency, so that others also know who we are.

In our reading, May Sarton described authenticity as her own weight and density falling into place.

Certainly, humans are complicated. Each person is composed of many parts, many facets, that determine our identity. It seems to me that if most or all of our parts are reasonably congruent with one another, we have a better chance of knowing ourselves and thus living authentically. And when we have this feeling of our parts being in place, we are happier, with ourselves and with other people, and we find more meaning in life. Entering ministry has done this for me: frequently, during seminary, friends who hadn’t seen me since I was at the university told me that I was looking so happy. Happiness and authenticity are vital to ministry.

Often, to put the pieces of ourselves together in authentic ways, we have to let go of some pieces—people or activities, for example—that aren’t right for us. Letting go may not be easy. I’m not there yet but I am a lot better than I was ten years ago in letting go. As I like to boast, I work hard at letting go, which obviously, may be part of my problem. Letting go is important to becoming ourselves because sometimes the authentic voice inside us speaks so softly at first, that we must listen very closely to hear it. I’m sure my minister’s voice was speaking long ago, maybe even long before I began college teaching in 1985.

Back then, unfortunately, I was so busy being a "famous" scholar that I could not hear myself becoming a minister.

A sense of authenticity is important in many areas of life in addition to ministry. For example, authenticity is essential to the arts. In Early Music, the area of performance I specialized in, we actually used the word "authenticity" to explain performing old music as closely as possible to the way it sounded originally, by using old instruments and performing styles. Authenticity is also important to literary work like creative writing. An author who does not know herself is likely to produce writing that is lacking in a genuine voice. I think even places can acquire a sense of authenticity: in my short time here, Portland has impressed me as a city that understands its core values, as evinced in areas such as urban growth, respect for bikers, and development of public spaces, for example.

Growing awareness of our own authentic core can occur in many ways.

Reflecting on my own life outside of ministerial discernment, I’ve had many experiences that have said, "This is who you are, Barbara, and what your life is all about." The births of my two children rank high in clarifying life’s meaning. When my now 17-year-old son was born, I knew I had to get my own act together, to stay at least a month or two ahead of this new life I was nurturing. Three years later, during the birth of my daughter, I actually had the experience of myself being reborn and coming out the birth canal with her. Once she was breathing on her own, I sobbed—and not only from relief that the contractions had finally stopped. I sobbed for her new life, but I also cried for my new life as the mother of a daughter.

Before and after marriage and childbirth, many other experiences have crystallized life meanings for me. I matured tremendously traveling around Germany by myself one summer after college with only backpack and Eurorail pass, learning a new language as well as how to survive on my own. A decade later, I felt exhilarating potential as I looked out from the George Washington Bridge to the west side of Manhattan during my move to graduate school. Some years later, in Pittsburgh, I remember that moment in an Al-Anon meeting when the light went on for me about the effects of growing up in an alcoholic family. As I heard another woman explain that she did not cause the dysfunction in her family of origin, I started to let go of years of guilt I had built up living with alcoholism in my family. And I continue to find new dimensions to life’s meaning every time I get off a ski lift and stand atop a snow-covered mountain gazing at sky and trees and valleys below. Now, I admit that my contentedness with life’s meaning is enhanced all the more if I’m also able to successfully negotiate the trails down from the summits without falling or tearing or twisting various parts of my body.

Alas, probably like all of us, I’ve also had many experiences that have not been congruent with my authentic self. I lived in Austin for five years before coming to Portland. Austin is a beautiful city, but having spent most of my life before Texas in the lush hills of Pennsylvania and West Virginia, I never made peace with the heat, the dryness, and the flatness of the Southwest. Since coming here, I’ve heard many Oregonians talk about the current heat wave and drought. My friends, this is not hot and dry, compared to where I’ve just come from. In Texas, I used to feel totally spent by the end of the four- or five-month summers, when virtually all life forms turned brown. I learned how much green mountains matter to me.

Weak personal relationships and bad work habits have also kept me from myself. For years, I allowed negative people to pull me into dark, inauthentic, depressed places in myself, so that eventually it felt like parts of my spirit had died. In working toward tenure at the university, I became so over- committed to publishing or perishing that I lost connections with my family and also with myself. I understand what May Sarton is talking about: there were years when I ran about madly, afraid of never having enough time to do all I needed to do before I died.

If living authentically is so great, why is the search for ourselves often so hard? For one, living authentically may require cutting through layers of negative conditioning, as from families of origin or past religious experiences, that have shaped us for a long time. It may take a lot to establish clear goals for our lives and believe in the greatness we are capable of finding in ourselves. I also suspect that often the self we think we are living is not really the self that is there. We may be so self-absorbed that we have little clue about how we are really living. I think self-absorption is also part of the current national picture. Nations develop authentic identity just as individuals do. While the United States is a great country, in many ways it is self-absorbed, oblivious to the arrogance and self-righteousness it presents to other people. I met many "ugly Americans" when I lived in Paris in the early ‘80s. Collectively, Americans are not as loved as we think we are. Sometimes it takes a major tragedy, personal or national, to wake us up.

I also think some people don’t find authenticity because they convince them- selves that they don’t want anything more from life, because opening up new visions usually involves some risk. Over the years, I’ve had various friends decline to go folk dancing with me. They couldn’t possibly try it, they said, because they didn’t know how to dance and they might make mistakes learning. So they missed out on the whole process of dancing, which in the long run, is not about the feet anyway, it’s about being together.

Discovering our authentic selves may involve risk. But there is also much we can do to help ourselves. For instance, believing in ourselves and also being patient, go a long way. Self-confidence and patience are qualities I will remind myself about any times between now and February when I take my final exams at the Unitarian Universalist

Association in Boston as I move one step closer to my goal of ordination and full-time ministry.

We can also help our search for authenticity by remembering our roots and those who have come before us. Their stories often help us assess our own story. I’ve been researching a Connecticut-born Universalist minister, Mary Billings. In 1885, at the age of 60, Mary moved to Texas—yes, hot, dry, flat Texas, then without air conditioning. In Texas, during the last twenty years of her life, Mary not only became an ordained minister but also helped organize the Universalist mission center for the state.

Standing at her Texas graveside this summer just before leaving for Portland, I drew strength from Mary’s story of moving half way across the country in pursuit of a new career and a new life.

Finally, I think what’s most important in our search for authenticity is to be in nurturing environments. Having nurturing environments that strengthen connections within ourselves and to the world around us is one reason we go to church, one reason we seek to discover or to enhance our spirituality. Ten years ago I found comfort, strength, and glimpses of myself when I first entered a Unitarian church in Pittsburgh. Here today in this church, our liberal faith invites all of us to continue to search for who we want and need to be, to explore to our fullest potential what it means for each of us to be human.

May we all grow in our understanding of that authentic spirit that gives life meaning.

Blessed Be. Amen.

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Copyright 2001, Barbara Coeyman.  All rights reserved.