WELCOME TO THIS FRIENDLY CHURCH

                                 First Universalist Church of Norway

                                                     May 9, 2010

           “Our mission, as we live our historic, liberal faith, is to nurture

             spiritual growth, honor diversity, and offer service with love”

 

PRELUDE(s)                                                                                                       

 

WELCOME AND ANNOUNCEMENTS

 

I want to welcome all of you to this Mother’s Day service.  On the cover of your Order of Service is a picture Count Ossoli, his wife, Margaret Fuller, and their son Angelino.  Margaret Fuller was perhaps the most brilliant woman of her day, an author, journalist, literary critic, and woman’s rights activist.  The editor of Waldo Emerson’s transcendentalist magazine, the Dial, she was considered the best read person in New England and was the first woman admitted to the Harvard Library.  Her book “Woman In the Nineteenth Century” is considered the first major feminist work in the United States and is still highly respected.  She was born May 23rd, 1810, and the Unitarian Universalist Association is celebrating the 100th anniversary of her birth throughout this year.  One of many many heroic American pioneers of our faith we’re happy to join in that celebration.                                                                                                   

 

UNISON OPENING WORDS            “Boundless Goodwill”                 # 596

 

INTROIT                                                                                                             

 

CHALICE LIGHTING WORDS                          by Yohann Amal                                 of the Council of Unitarian Universalists of France

 

In the name of compassion and loving-kindness :

Following the paths of Ibn Arabi, a Sufi master,we let our hearts dilate to enable them to fit all spiritual or existential [forms].For those who seek, our hearts have become church, temple, synagogue, mosque, sanctuary; stronghold for the poor, for those who are suffering, for minorities wherever they  come from.We believe in the religion of Love, which has no gender, and to which all   personal stories are leading,Because Love is our religion and our faith.

In this spirit we light our chalice this morning:

(Please wait until after the Chalice Lighting words are read to light the chalice and lead the congregation in our covenant)                     

COVENANT

Love is the spirit of this church.  These are our goals.

To worship God in Freedom,

To affirm the dignity of all people,

To dwell together in peace,

To serve one another,

And to seek the truth in love.

                                                                                                                              

HYMN                         As We Come Marching, Marching                      # 109

                                                                                                      

RESPONSIVE READING          “The Wisdom to Survive”                # 465

                                               A pledge to the Earth Mother, by Wendell Berry

CANDLES OF JOY and CONCERN

 

OFFERING, OFFERTORY, and Sung Response

 

From you I receive, to you I give

    Together we share, and from this we live.

 

ANTHEM                                                                        Heather and the Choir

 

SPOKEN and SILENT PRAYER, MEDITATION, REFLECTION                                                                                                               Richard

Earth mother and Father Sky, you are the engendering parents of that natural order of which we are brother and sister siblings of this world of birthing, growing, and dying life.

There is a balance in the natural world, a mutual nurturing and furthering from which we have lost our way, and in the process of estrangement and alienation we are losing our souls.

There are entire worlds of spirit we sense less and less as we sever our        connections with nature, and this severance affects our ability to feel          ourselves alive in trees and flowers, rushing brooks and singing birds.

We pray that the natural world be more and more a part of what feel and what we know, that a consciousness of growing things and the movement of the winds and waters and the currents of the air be things not brought to us only by the weather forecasters on our televisions, radios and palm pilots, but through our more regular participation in the wondrous things of nature all around us and our appreciation of their incredible and intricate beauties and mysteries.

On this Mother’s Day we send greetings to our mother the earth in the form of thankful observance of the myriad, truly of the unending, gifts which keep us awake and breathing, aware and growing.  We are thankful for the sun filled days that waken seeds and prompt their growth through the warmth that shines on them.  We are thankful also for the storms that darken our skies and from which come the rains that wet and fertilize the floors of forests, fields, pastures and gardens, that fill the vernal pools and wash the life enhancing dust of other seasons desiccated husks into the waiting soils.

There is a rhythm we are part of, a rhythm of life and death and seasons, of growth and decay and one change following another, of our own vitality in youth passing into the growing quiescence of age.

Let us, in the silence we will now share, reflect on, meditate upon, or pray our gratitude for these ways of nature’s balancing her munificence, aware that it is in coming, growing, aging and passing that the full panoply of evolutionary progress is made possible and productive, creative and fertile.

                                                           SILENCE

                            So it is.  So may it ever be.  Blessed be.  Amen.

 

MUSICAL RESPONSE                                                 Heather and the Choir

 

READING    from “After the Flowers Fade”   by Leslie Takahishi Morris

 

“... Our society likes to turn [values] into commodities.  Even peace signs, in my childhood the mark of a counter-culture, are now a fashion accessory, emblazoned in sequins on T-shirts and teenage purses.  The Buddhist sign for emptiness can be worn as a pendant made of precious stone, and you can buy gardens and parties, and picnics in kits.

 

When something becomes a commodity, it is sanitized, made more predictable, less risky.  So, as we pass another Mother’s Day, I’ve been thinking about the risks and paradoxes at the root of an observance that has become focused on merchandizing and consumption and a one-size-fits-all cartoon motherhood that leaves out the real experiences and intentions behind the observance.

 

Julia Ward Howe, best-known as the author of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” had both Unitarian and Universalist connections.  In 1872, disillusioned with the Civil War and then the Franco-Prussian war, she had the idea that mothers who were tired of sending their sons into inhumane conflicts could be a united force against senseless killing.  She told other mothers that they did not have to send their children into harm’s way, and this work led to the first international Mother’s Day of Peace.  Howe took this risk because because she believed mothers would tap into a deeper love for humanity, an overarching concern for life, a healing unity which comes from the fact that all are born from a mother, whatever the particulars of that relationship.  Hers was a risk-taking definition of mother love. ...

 

[The saccharin, greeting card] idea of motherhood does not take into account the realities of people whose relationship with their mother is conflicted, or those who have lost the ability to be with their mother through adoption, death, or illness.  Or those who have been denied the experience of parenting by life’s circumstances.  Ward herself lost her mother at age five; her husband educated children with multiple handicaps; later they lost a young child.  The day-to-day challenges of parenting demand more than the sentimental love of embossed flower cards. ...

 

Julia Ward Howe, speaking out for a Mother’s Day of Peace in the 1870s was a small voice in a sea of indifference, even among her own gender.  “The Ladies who spoke in public in those days” she said “mostly confined their labors to the advocacy of women’s suffrage, ... they were not much interested in my scheme of a worldwide protest of women against the cruelties of war.”  But in spite of her failure to create a broad-based women’s peace movement, Ward knew that motherhood has a universalist element to it. For mother-love is a risk-taking love, an expansive love which, at its best, goes beyond the natural affection and care for one’s own children and extends to the world’s children.”

 

After the flowers fade, even if you didn’t get flowers, even if you aren’t a mother, the real work of mother’s day remains.  Let us all. No matter where we are on the spectrum of gender, whatever our status as parents, not be indifferent.  Let us roll up our sleeves and take [the] risk.”

 

HYMN                                       Sleep, My Child                                     # 409

 

SERMON                 “Equal Opportunity Nurturing”                       Mr. Beal

 

In 1845 Margaret Fuller wrote, in Woman in the 19th Century “Male and female represent the two sides of the great radical dualism.  But, in fact, they are perpetually passing into one another.  Fluid hastens to solid, solid rushes to fluid.  There is no wholly masculine man, and no fully feminine woman.  History jeers at the attempts of physiologists to bind great original laws by the forms which flow from them.  They make a rule; they say from observation what can and cannot be.  In vain!   Nature provides exceptions to every rule.  She sends women to battle, and sets Hercules to spinning; she enables women to bear immense burdens, cold and frost; she enables the man, who feels maternal love, to nourish his infant like a mother ...”

 

Today, what Fuller went into the battle of words and ideas to fight for and against in the 1840s is still not a battle entirely won.  Indeed far from it.  Women who seem too masculine and men whose feminine side is not sufficiently hidden are still disparaged, are still called derogatory names, are assumed to be lesbian or gay and are made to pay a price for not being able or not choosing to conform to stereotypical gender roles.  This country has made too small an amount of progress in over the past forty years, though some ideas have changed amongst progressive, better educated, more widely experienced and, especially, younger people.

But those who do not behave in gender stereotypical ways are still harassed in schools and workplaces and in the job market.  We received a letter asking for support for a Prom for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender high school students in Southern Maine.  It’s to be a masquerade, so those students fearful of being seen entering it can do so without being recognized.  There are some students willing to risk being themselves.  Some students here at our Oxford Hills high school are confident enough to openly belong to an LGBT group that meets there.  I joined some of them, along with their faculty advisor, last fall in a vigil across from the Norway Library.  But there is a risk, and there are far more students who are gay or lesbian, bisexual or transgender than choose to belong to that group because of the risk they face not only from other students but also from too many family members and neighbors.  It’s a sign of progress that such a group exists at the high school, but our society is still far from being truly accepting of people for who they are, whoever it is they may be, however they choose or have been assigned by chance to differ from what’s considered to be acceptable ... whether its sexuality, disability, body type, mental health, or, especially at the moment, immigration status or, if you bear an Arabic name, your nationality.

Within these walls none of these things should be looked askance at in any way.  What should matter here, as Martin Luther King taught us, is the content of one’s character.  What should happen here whether we speak of it in terms of building community or friendships, whether we think of what we are doing when we gather as socializing or worshiping or acting to make our immediate surroundings or the larger world a better and a more humane place, is nurturing.  Is feeding each other.  Is feeding our spirits, our souls, our hearts, our minds, our sense of value and personal worth, our feelings of being contributing members to the unfolding of what we have come to believe is true and right.

What makes each of these things possible is accepting each other for who we are, including the strengths and weaknesses which are part of making us who we are.  And the quirks and idiosyncrasies and small crazinesses each of us possess and that we bring to the mix that makes us what we are as a gathered and a covenanted people.  In this we differ somewhat from other similar groups, because this is our intention, this is what we are openly and publically and affirmatively about.  If we’re being who we say we want to be, this is not something we have accidentally stumbled into and will go along with if no one actually points it out.  Nor is it one of those things we know but don’t talk about.

Quite the opposite.  Nurturing the whole person is what we are about.

Equal opportunity nurturing.  Nurturing equally given, equally received, equally shared, and equally acknowledged.  Nurturing in both a maternal and a paternal sense, in Margaret Fuller’s sense of feeding and care-taking as non-gender specific.

It occurred to me as I was writing this, to look at the UUA’s Statement of Principles and Purposes.  I’m going to read the first section of it, that begins “We, the member congregations of the Unitarian Universalist Association, covenant to affirm and promote:

1) the inherent worth and dignity of every person;

2) Justice, equity, and compassion in human relations;

3) Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth

in our congregations;

4) A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;

5) The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large;

6) The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all;

7) Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

These are familiar to most of us, but looking at them in the context of thoughts on “nurturing” I was struck that none of them are at all specific about any particular form of nurturing.  Perhaps “encouragement to spiritual growth” comes close.  But they seem to primarily reflect the individualism we’ve often been noted for and which in terms of contemporary needs and interests is one of the things for which we are most often criticized.  Nurturing can perhaps be assumed as underlying the principles references to “community,” “acceptance of one another,” and the reference to peace, liberty, and justice as being “for all.”

A larger context is mentioned or implied, but there’s no clear reference to anything corresponding to nurturing.  Although, like the worth and dignity of every person, the responsible search for truth, the rights of conscience, the democratic process, justice, equity and compassion in human relations, all are under differing degrees of assault, not only in this country but abroad.  Things we took for granted when those principles were adopted are no longer guaranteed.

We list the interdependent web of all existence, and call attention to our participation in it.  But there’s nothing about the need to nurture and care for that web.  No acknowledgment that the interdependent web is fraying as whole species disappear, whole forests and glaciers disappear, and countless incidents of chemical pollutants entering our soil, air, rivers and oceans occur.   And while the adjective “interdependent” implies our human responsibility for protecting and preserving the web, nothing in our principles calls us to any kind of action.  We celebrate those things to which our principles call attention, but is a simple celebration, however heartfelt, enough?

We’re in the same relationship to our principles and purposes it seems to me as we are to this church.  They are important, as this church is important.  They are to be celebrated, as this church is.  And they need to be nurtured and cared for lest by inattention to what’s happening to them or to the changing meaning of them they lose their central value in our lives or simply disappear.

Mother’s Day is an entirely appropriate occasion for considering nurture and nurture’s necessity in our lives, nurture of all kinds and from all sources and from the entire spectrum of genders.  May we see and know ourselves to be nurturers, of each other and in the interests of our world.

HYMN                   When My Free Spirit Onward Leads                          # 324

                                                                                                                              

CLOSING WORDS                          from Julia Ward Howe, slightly adapted

 

“Let women [and men] now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel ... with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace.”  And to that let us sing “Amen ... Amen ... Amen, Amen, Amen.

 

PARTING CIRCLE

                “Carry the flame of peace and love until we meet again.”

POSTLUDE(s)

 

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The UU Heritage Week at Ferry Beach, in Saco, will be held this year from August 28 - September 3.  The Rev. Gordon Gibson and thwe Rev. Dave Johnson, among others, will be giving presentations on the Unitarian Universalist presence and participation in the Civil Rights movement.  For more information go to the Ferry Beach Park Association website at www.ferrybeach.org.

 

By now all supporting members and friends of this First Universalist Church of Norway (and some friends we hope will choose to become supporting) have received the packets of information about the 2009-2010 income and expenses.  In addition, everyone for whom we have an e-mail address has received a copy of last Sunday’s Stewardship service.  We hope you will look at them carefully and if you decide to make a pledge to return it no later than May 23.  On the basis of the financial support we can hope to receive for the 2010 - 2011 church year a budget will be prepared for action at our Annual Congregational Meeting.  Thank you for whatever consideration you can give these matters.