CALL TO WORSHIP
We are rooted in relationship.
You and me and we
Are woven together
And weaving still.
We are intertwined
With those who have gone before,
Those who are here,
And those who will come after.
We have freely chosen to be bound
To compassion,
To courage,
To creativity,
To inspiration,
To integrity,
To interdependence
To the whole and the holy
from which none can be separated.
We are deepening into love,
We are rising with life,
We are moving towards liberation.
– Alison Miller –
INGATHERING SERMON: “Rooted in Relationship” by Rev. Alison Miller
Psychologist Kathleen Brehony shares a story about twins who were born premature with very low birth weights. They were placed in incubators in the hopes that they would receive the extra time and protection for their organs to function fully. The first sister was born bigger with more vigorous heart and lung function, and the younger sister was tiny and frail with a very poor prognosis.
If anything pulls at our heartstrings it is a story of a child in mortal danger. The question of “why?” can’t help but cross our minds or lips at a time like that? Why? Why her? Why now? Why ever?
Our human instinct belies theologies that would assert the sinful nature of a human being as it draws its first breath. Regardless of the religion with which we were raised, the Dalai Lama’s teaching that all children are born “originally pure” rather than “originally corrupt” resonates in the chambers of our hearts. Does any child deserve to suffer?
Really, do any of us merit the suffering that comes into our lives? Well, ok maybe most of us aren’t so pure past the first weeks or so of life, and perhaps we have done things to contribute to the hardships we experience, or maybe we need to reckon with the ways we’ve contributed to the hardship of others. But why isn’t suffering distributed fairly? Sherry, bourbon, and martinis seemed to act as preservatives for a long life in the case of one of my great aunts, while the same habits led to the demise of another relative.
Our tendency is to question the justice of the universe when things go wrong in our lives, and to rarely ask or examine why good things ever happen. The Buddhists would teach us that our suffering is commonplace and that it in effect unites us. I would suggest that religions the world over are evidence that we have devised both simple and complex symbols, mysteries, and mythologies to come to terms with the meaning and significance of the pain that is our earthly ration to swallow.
Although, many of us do suffer trials we do not merit. How many of us also enjoy blessings or favors we have not earned and could never repay. One of the two twins faired quite well in that incubator, and surely in another time and another place, two girls four months premature would have no chance at life at all. Why? Why her? Why now? Why ever?
Why do miraculous events happen in our lives? Why do good things happen to people who don’t deserve it? Why is something positive and life affirming so often born from something we would describe as sad or terrible?
One compassionate nurse looked upon these two girls and thought about how they had spent their first months together in the womb. She suggested that the sisters be moved to another incubator that could contain both infants. “As soon as they were put together,” she writes, “the older, more robust twin put her arms over her sister, pulled her close, and fell asleep.” Four weeks later, both girls were big enough and strong enough to be discharged.
One of the reasons that good things happen in our lives is precisely because of that innate human capacity for goodness, for love, and for healing. This story and our immediate connection to the unmerited suffering of children, would suggest that most often we are born not marred by a propensity to do evil, not just as a blank slate – a tabula rasa – upon which a tendency towards the virtuous or the vicious can be writ, but most often we are born wired for love of one another and the world.
In the nurture versus nature debate, I am not saying that nurture is of no consequence. There is certainly a script written by parents or elders or mentors that plays a role in molding our morality. Yet, my experience with young children is that at the very first they expect and offer love. Our lives are graced by this quality. We are originally blessed with an ability to express compassionate care for people and our surroundings even before we have drawn our first breath. No one taught that sister how to be a sibling, it was instinct. This is our inherent worth to use the language of our first principle, and this blessing provides the impulse to move beyond mere assertion of our seventh principle about the interdependence of all life to acting it out over and over on the world’s stage.
Yes, other human beings are one answer to why good things grace our lives. Maybe we don’t pause to ask, “Why?” because deep down we know that is what we’re born to do, and just maybe that’s why so many reporters don’t find it newsworthy. It may not be news, but it is of ultimate worth and so common that it can frequently be found in the middle of news columns reporting on the latest disaster.
The furthest West I lived before moving here last month was in Tulsa, Oklahoma. That year gave new life to the meaning of “the winds come sweeping down the plains.” I remember one week when the tornadic gusts reached over 80 miles an hour wreaking havoc on the power lines, the landscape, and people’s daily routine. The consequences ranged from an inconvenience to quite serious. 70,000 Tulsans were left without electricity. For some this led to spoiled food and for others, one member at church, it meant the oxygen machine shutting off in the bedroom.
When I reflect on that storm though, what I remember best were the pictures of extension cords zig-zagging the streets from one side of the road to the other. In the middle of reporting on the tornado’s terrifying traits, was visual evidence of something else – how we are literally tethered to one another – how we human beings are intertwined with each other – how we interdepend. Yes, people were sharing electricity, or their generators before waiting to see if they would lose power. A storm or a crisis is a reminder of our vulnerability and that our resilience is located in strengthening the ties that bind us and moving them into the foreground.
I also remember an article with the following headline, “Home improvement and supply stores aren’t benefitting as much as they expected to from the storm.” So much of our current culture and our current economic system of capitalism is predicated on our separation – divided by fences or fear – we create a want or a need for each of us to have one of every home supply – even the things we could easily share and use only once a week, once a month, once every five years. But, not in a storm, not on a day like September 11th for my hometown of NY and for our whole country, not in a crisis. On those days, we remember who we are called to be and we practice coming together as if our lives depended on it – which of course they do.
One reason, I love church is that here we don’t wait for tragedy to strike. Here in this in-person and online sanctuary, here in our classrooms and our Zoom Rooms we practice being a community that is rooted in relationship every day, every week. Here we remind one another that we need each other our whole lives long, and together we can deconstruct what separates us and build towards the beloved community.
One of my teachers on the topic of human grace was a former parishioner named George in New York City. He was a man who had fought in the Korean War, but who never lost sight of the value of a human life, maybe because of what he witnessed in war. George was responsible for our Monday Night Hospitality program, which provided food for the houseless and low-income people in our neighborhood. He made moves and shifts to have our program live up to that title of hospitality.
First, he transformed the space where we served food into a space for fine dining. Every table was set with a tablecloth, cloth napkins, and a bouquet at its center. We brought out the china and silverware, and every table had a server. Every meal began with a short message or a grace, led by one of us ministers, one of our volunteers, or one of our guests. George recognized that even more than a meal, the people who dined with us on Mondays and on Fridays, craved connection, kindness and experiences that promoted their dignity, reminded them they were of worth, they mattered, and their lives of isolation and want could change for an hour and possibly much longer.
The second thing he did was apply for a grant and hired a social worker, so that some of our guests might find the support to find work or to connect with health services, so that hour might indeed nourish the roots for change.
Third, George fought a terrible system of tickets that had been created in NYC at the inception of this neighborhood feeding program. People had to get in line to get a ticket to get in line to get a meal, in two different locations. If someone showed up at our doorstep or another congregation’s doorstep without a ticket, we were instructed to turn them away regardless of whether we had more food. These tickets were a system that reinforced power continually being out of their grasp. They were an unnecessary barrier between our guests and the nourishment of food, warmth, shelter, and community. George asserted that we would nourish our guests as long as we had enough food, and if we started running out of room, we could buy bread and sandwich fixings to make sure no one was turned away hungry. We attended meetings together to advocate and remove the obstacle of the ticket system that impacted every meal in every congregation throughout the week. George, in particular, attended every meeting until the tickets were abolished.
This experience from when I was a new minister has been on my mind a lot lately as I look out the window of my office and see the houseless community camped across the street. What I have observed in these first few weeks is a group of people who is socializing and chatting most of the day together. I can see the ties that are being fastened between and among them – it is a space where strangers have become neighbors. Meanwhile, there are some people who don’t seem to leave their tents much at all. I am just beginning to learn about the lives of the thousands of neighbors, the children, youth, and adults who live on the streets of Portland.
What are the systems that need to be created or changed or abolished to allow for health, dignity, and new possibility to flow? Who are our partners and who are the leaders countering the culture of separation – of a ‘them’ and an ‘us’ – when the reality is only a ‘we’? How might we move to reveal the ties that bind us? What are the equivalents of the ticket system here that we need to get rid of? One example of this could be the barrier that people need to find work before they can have a home, when the research shows over and over that securing a home is what leads to developing the resilience and qualities of being able to find work.
Too often we get stuck in this idea of what we deserve, of what we have earned. Do I have the ticket? I have a ticket or a home… and, I am somehow better?… No. Who gave me that ticket and who decided not to give someone else a ticket?
The truth is that our call as human beings is to remember where we came from and how we got here, the ground of our being. Many would say by the grace of God go I. I might say that in part. Right now, I want to focus on the other part.
Remember the story of the twins. The girls whose connection, whose compassion for one another led to their healing. Well, there’s another girl or woman in the story, their mother, and another, her mother. Not to mention all the others, the people who made a difference in their ancestors lives during times of hardship and times of joy. All of us are interdependent in this way. No matter how we may deceive ourselves. There is only a “we.” None of us could continue to live, or especially thrive, without other human beings intervening on our behalf from time to time. Didn’t we discover that during the Pandemic. So, let’s all rip up our tickets and remember that our original blessing is that another cared for us and that we can do the same, right here, right now. But the paradox of our birthright – that we are wired for love – is only ours to claim if we give it away and then give it away again and again. For, by the grace of human goodness go us all.
Topics: Interdependance