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What is the Purpose?©
May 19, 2002
Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Midland
Jane Thickstun, Celebrant

Jill: I’ll be reading from the Unitarian Universalist Association Principles and Purposes.

Jane: And I’ll be reading the statement of purpose from the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Midland Bylaws.

Jane: The purposes of this society are manifold, but its primary reason for existence is to create and maintain a liberal religious intergenerational community which will:

Jane: a) Affirm, nurture, and promote our Unitarian Universalist values of individual responsibility and freedom of belief, democratic process, and universal interdependence.

Jane: b) Provide the opportunity for us to recognize and achieve our potential as human beings.

Jill: 3. Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations.

Jane: c) Provide a supportive and stimulating environment wherein we can examine, clarify, and strengthen our own personal value systems.

Jill: 5. The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large.

Jane: d) Strengthen and sustain us in our efforts to live our values by constructively influencing the larger communities in which we all function.

Jill: 6. The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all.

Jane: e) Join us in celebrating life’s joys, wonders, and rites of passage while supporting and comforting us in times of need.

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

This year I’ve been doing a sermon series on the seven principles of the Unitarian Universalist Association. It has been an interesting exercise. What I believe we have found is that while all of the principles seem on the surface pretty straightforward and easy for religious liberals to accept, when we start digging deeper we find that they offer significant challenges to our understanding of the world and to how we choose to live our lives. At the suggestion of the program committee, I’m taking some time this Sunday to wrap up our discussion of the seven principles, and in particular comparing them to our own Midland Fellowship’s statement of purpose as expressed in our bylaws.

At the end of the statement of the UUA Principles is a statement of purpose. It reads:

"Grateful for the religious pluralism which enriches and ennobles our faith, we are inspired to deepen our understanding and expand our vision. As free congregations we enter into this covenant, promising to one another our mutual support and trust." In other words, the Unitarian Universalist Association is an association of free congregations who promise each other mutual support and trust in order to serve the individuals in those congregations by deepening our understanding and expanding our vision. At the beginning of the statement of principles, it says the member congregations of the UUA covenant to affirm and promote the principles. Covenanting is like promising or pledging. Also in this statement is a list of the sources we draw from, which we’ll take a deeper look at next year.

The purpose of this fellowship is stated in the bylaws and in the poster over the table in the foyer. Bylaws define how an institution operates. But they also offer some reason for why the institution operates. Our original bylaws contained a statement of purpose, as all bylaws must, but it was totally rewritten and made our own when the bylaws were rewritten in 1980 and Cec Frye was president. Interestingly, our Fellowship of Midland adopted its current statement of purpose four years before the association’s current statement of its principles and purposes was voted in by the General Assembly in 1984.

Both statements are expressions of identity. They describe the reason for the existence of the different institutions - this congregation and the association of Unitarian Universalist congregations. An institution needs to have its reason for existence explicitly stated. It is important to stress that neither statement is a creed. As a free church, or liberal religious tradition, the idea of a creed is anathema to Unitarian Universalists. What is important to us religiously is how we live our lives, not what we believe about the unknowable. The principles are not used as a test for membership, and were never intended to formulate a common theology. But we still need some statement of identity. It is precisely because of our lack of a creed that many feel for a statement of what we do have in common; a formulation of certain values we agree on.

The fellowship’s statement of purpose starts by saying that "its primary reason for existence is to create and maintain a liberal religious intergenerational community which will: "a) Affirm, nurture, and promote our Unitarian Universalist values of individual responsibility and freedom of belief, democratic process, and universal interdependence." This statement is very similar to the UUA statement of principles. The UUA statement starts out: " We covenant to affirm and promote" and then lists the seven principles that we have been talking about all year, and that we heard in the reading earlier this morning. The principles are a later formulation of those same UU values referred to in our fellowship’s statement.

Hear the similarities in the wording. The fourth principle is: "A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;" our statement says "individual responsibility and freedom of belief." The fifth principle is "The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large;" our statement says "democratic process."

As I mentioned in my earlier sermon on the fellowship’s purpose, I had some trouble with the last phrase in the statement - "universal independence." That didn’t make sense. It turns out the bylaws have been circulating with a typographical error –still are – and "independence" is supposed to be "interdependence." This phrase makes sense and is reminiscent of our seventh principle, "Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part."

The second point in our fellowship’s statement is "Provide the opportunity for us to recognize and achieve our potential as human beings." This presumes the inherent worth and dignity of every person, our foundational first principle. As Unitarian Universalists, we don’t believe that people are born with the burden of original sin from which they need to be saved by an atonement of Jesus suffering on the cross. We believe that every life has worth and dignity, and that we have great potential which can be realized by affirming our worth while challenging us to grow.

The third point is to "Provide a supportive and stimulating environment wherein we can examine, clarify, and strengthen our own personal value systems." Whereas the UUA principles are a statement of our common value system, we also are responsible for our own personal value systems. That doesn’t mean our values are necessarily different from the values of our community, but with our Unitarian Universalist emphasis on the authority of individual conscience, it is important that we think for ourselves. We must each determine for ourselves what we believe, and how we want to act in the world. Ultimately the task is our own, but our community can help us and guide us. The third principle echoes this by affirming: "Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations."

The fourth point in our fellowship’s statement of purpose is "Strengthen and sustain us in our efforts to live our values by constructively influencing the larger communities in which we all function." This speaks to our second, fifth and sixth principles, which address how we relate to the world around us. The second principle affirms justice, equity and compassion in human relations, the fifth affirms the use of democratic process in our congregations and in society at large, and the sixth affirms the goal of wold community with peace, liberty and justice for all. Ultimately, this fellowship does not exist to serve its members, but to strengthen and sustain its members for service in the wider world, and the same applies to the denomination, the association.

A religious community supports and sustains its members in part by being there "to celebrate life’s joys, wonders and rites of passage while supporting and comforting us in times of need," the fifth and final point in the fellowship’s statement of purpose. It is in this community that we get married, dedicate our children, and are remembered when our life is over. We celebrate our joys and commiserate our sorrows at our weekly gatherings, and we reach out to those in our community who are in need.

This fellowship can help us clarify and live our principles in many ways. Its statement of purpose gives us something to strive for in creating and maintaining this religious community. The UUA principles give us something to strive for as a congregation and as individuals.

The first principle tells us that we and all others have worth and dignity, no matter who we are and no matter what we do. The second principle challenges us to be just, equitable, and compassionate in our relations with others, even those we don’t know and even those we don’t like. The third principle flows out of the belief in the inherent worth and dignity of all. It challenges us to accept ourselves and others and to encourage spiritual growth by accepting, by listening, allowing the other to blossom in their way, sharing but not imposing our own ideas. The fourth principle flows from our belief in individual conscience as the ultimate religious authority, and tells us our search for truth and meaning is something we must do for ourselves, recognizing that we can never see the whole truth and that the flip side of freedom is responsibility. The fifth principle says that not only do we trust our own conscience to guide us right, we believe that everyone’s conscience illuminates some truth and that everybody has a right to be heard, and requires us to use democratic process because we believe in the right of conscience. The sixth principle challenges us to create world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all, even though it can mean giving up some of our individualism, some of our interests, in the interest of the larger group. Affirming the seventh principle leads to a humble recognition that we –as individuals and as humanity– are not the center, and that we are at the same time extremely significant and extremely insignificant

The principles are demanding. They are meant to challenge us. We will not always live up to them, nor should we expect to. They are something to strive toward, ideals, beliefs that can guide our actions. Let us find in them inspiration to be the best that we can be, to affirm our own worth and dignity by treating others well and working to make our world a better place, to exercise our freedom by engaging actively in a search for meaning and by behaving responsibly. Let us use them to guide us, to remind us of our highest aspirations, all the while remembering that while they can shed some light, ultimately the divine light is in ourselves. May you see by its light and achieve your fullest potential.

Christmas UU-style
December 10, 2000
Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Midland
Jane Thickstun, Celebrant

I picked up a quote last year, when it was apparently making the rounds of newsletters. It goes: "Best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress, non-addictive, gender neutral, winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most joyous traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, but with respect for the religious persuasion of others who choose to practice their own religion as well as those who choose not to practice a religion at all..."

In our theologically diverse congregations, this one not the least of them, it is hard to be everything to everyone, and to avoid offending anyone. In attempting to do so, we often come out sounding as silly as those "Politically Correct" wishes. Some of you may feel left out this time of year. Maybe you come from a Jewish background and while you may celebrate Hannukah, it is not the major holiday that Christmas is, in secular terms as well as religious. Maybe some of you with neo-pagan leanings would prefer to celebrate the Winter Solstice, and if so, I encourage you to do so, and to invite the fellowship members to participate. Kwanzaa may have some appeal to those with African connections, yet I doubt that those are folks who feel left out this Christmas season. Since Christmas is a holiday with such an emphasis on family, probably the ones who feel most left out this holiday season are the ones who have no close family, or are separated from them for one reason or another. These are the people we need to be aware of most at this time of year, the ones we most need to be most concerned about including.

So how many of you will be celebrating Christmas in some fashion this year? How many of you have trouble with the religious meaning of the holiday?

Christmas is the biggest holiday of the year in our American culture today. We spend more money than at any other time of year, we decorate our houses, we go to parties, we drink eggnog and eat chocolate. What are we celebrating when we do all this?

One way of looking at it is to see Christmas as a secular holiday. The holiday we celebrate in this country has never really been only, or even mainly, about Jesus. Most of the traditions have entirely non-Christian and even purely secular sources. In a book called The Battle for Christmas, Stephen Nissenbaum traces how Christmas came to celebrated the way it is these days in America.

The Puritans in fact outlawed Christmas, which was celebrated much differently in those days than it is today. It was originally not more than a Christian veneer on a pagan celebration. Most of the Christian holidays were introduced to pagan cultures by coopting already existing holidays. In pre-Christian and even post-Christian agricultural societies, late December was a time of leisure and plenty. The harvest was in, the meat had been killed for the winter, but wasn’t frozen yet. After a period of hard work, the Christmas season was a time to relax and unwind, in other words, to "party." Nissenbaum says, "It was a time of heavy drinking when the rules that governed people’s public behavior were momentarily abandoned in favor of an unrestrained ‘carnival,’ a kind of December Mardi Gras."

With urbanization and industrialization, that kind of behavior became more threatening, and well-off, law-abiding citizens were afraid. In the course of a few decades, Christmas was turned into a domestic holiday, taking place indoors, within the secure confines of the family circle. Whereas once landowners gave food and drink to the peasants who lived on their land on Christmas; now the changing times and the domestication led to people giving instead to the dependents within their own household. Since the wife and kids already got to eat and drink the best of the household, the notion of the Christmas present came about - something you can get for those close to you that they don’t need or wouldn’t get for themselves. In order to create the illusion that the presents were gifts of the heart and not merely bought in the commercial market, Santa Claus and the Christmas tree were introduced.

So Christmas has historically been as much a secular holiday as a religious one. But does this mean it has no religious meaning? Or that we can ignore the meanings that Christianity imbues the holiday with if we are not Christian? What’s more, many of the stories and the songs revolve around the birth of Jesus. Is there a way we can find meaning in these that makes sense to us, so that we may sing and tell and listen with not just integrity, but with joy? Is it possible to make sense of the Christian symbolism in a way that it is meaningful to us as Unitarian Universalists?

The Christmas story is a story of a birth. I’m sure you all know that the birth stories in the bible are not accounts of eye-witnesses, but a story made-up long after the fact. If we are looking in them for literal truth, we look in vain. The intent was never to be a literal account, and we are free to interpret for our own age and circumstances, as we are with any work of literature.

The Christmas story is a story of the birth of a man whom some claim was the son of God. Of course as Unitarian Universalists, we know that we are all children of God–in other words, that each of us has a divine spark within. This story is about not just what this child Jesus represents, but what any child represents. It is an awesome thing--the largeness contained in such littleness. A baby contains all the capacity both for good and for ill which any person has the potential to bring into the world. Every child is what Jesus was--a child of God, an incarnation of an as-yet unrealized creativity, a potential Redeemer. Every child is a symbol of Incarnation, symbol of Advent--of what is to come. Each night a child is born is a holy night. It not a unique, but a universal event. That is why the myth still lives in the hearts and minds of so many. Each of us carries a piece of the divine within us, whether we know it or not, whether we care about it or not, whether we choose to even remember it or not.

The Christmas story is a story of a lowly birth. Once in Royal David’s City, all paid homage to the lowly babe lying in a manger–the star, the shepherds, the wise men. It serves to remind us to pay homage to those less fortunate than us, that the divine is not only within each of us, but within the least of those who inhabit the earth. All children of God deserve our gifts. In remembering the poor at this time of year, and those less fortunate, we are paying homage to the divine principle that exists in all of us.

As the story of a birth, the Christmas story is also about the birth of something new. It is a symbol of rebirth and renewal; a reminder that the divine is within me and you, and that we have the potential to be like Jesus was. In remembering that the divine seed exists within us, we honor the creative principle in ourselves. And just as the king was born in a manger, that creative principle may not show up as a talent for writing symphonies. It needs to be recognized, nurtured and honored, no matter how small or insignificant it may seem.

In the words of UU minister, Barbara Rohde, "Christmas reminds us that the truly divine, the gifts of the spirit, can only enter the world through us. Christmas reminds us that spirit is more than inner feeling; it must be made incarnate in the world as truth spoken, as beauty created, as love and compassion given. Deep joy comes in feeling the quiet, secret movement of the child within us; but the greater joy, and what we are called to do, is to labor to bring forth that child and let it live in the world. . . . A few births are easy. Children arrive almost before we know it The right words are there on the tip of our tongue. The simple loving act was done spontaneously, almost without thought. But most births are truly acts of labor; some are long and difficult and filled with pain. When the child is born, there are thousands of Herods around us who would slay it through violence or neglect or indifference. Yet our fear of Herod is overcome by the joy of birth. Rejoice. Rejoice. For unto us a child is born. And the story of Christmas tells us that we, too, are part of the holiness of creation." (In the Simple Morning Light, p. 16)

"Why not a star? Some bright star shines somewhere in the heavens each time a child is born. Who knows what it may foretell? Who knows what uncommon life may yet again unfold, if we but give it a chance?"

We can explain the star now. It was in all probability a super nova in its dying burst of fire. We can understand it as a natural phenomenon. Yet we don’t have to thereby rob it of its symbolic nature. It can be a perfectly understood natural occurrence, and at the same time still be "a fitting symbol for the birth of one whose uncommon life has been long remembered," and for all birth of all potential, all possibility.

The Christmas story is not just one story. Christmas stories abound, and all are as true as the one in the gospel. All share a germ of wisdom that speaks to the spirit of this season. I’d like to share a poem by Jim Wickman:

The last few leaves hang limply on the tree
... and clouds scud low in the sky;
The winds sing louder than a murmur
... and rain drops pelt down;We choose to be inside where it's warm, and tell stories.

We tell stories . . . and we may wonder,
"What do the stories tell us ?"
We tell the story of two lovers who each sacrificed
their most precious treasure out of love for each other . . .
What does the story tell us ?

We tell the story of a strange being who stole all the things from a town,
and awoke to find that he had not upset their lives one whit . . .
What does the story tell us ?

We tell the story of strange happenings in the sky
and an unbelievable birth on Earth and the life that followed . . .
What does the story tell us ?

We tell the story of a young girl with a question
and the answer given her by an adult
who wrote with wisdom for all who are young or old . . .
What does the story tell us ?

We tell the story of a miser who experienced the pain and the joy
of Past and Present and Future all in one night . . .
What does the story tell us ?

Perhaps each story tells us that it is a "true story"
embodying a wisdom which reaches beyond mere fact to touch Truth . . .
Perhaps each story tells us that
even in this darkest time of year there is reason to hope . . .
and to expect that our hope will become reality . . .
Perhaps each story tells us that
the promise of tomorrow must begin in the fullness of today.

So come, oh come, Emmanuel. Come into our midst and give us peace and hope. Come into our hearts and remind us of our possibility. Come and remind us that we ourselves are the Incarnation, but that we also are the creators and must make incarnate the divine within.

Dark is the night
whose sky-full of space
is starless of fancy
with its promise of grace.

So, let the merry bells be rung,
let the carols’ claims be sung;
let the candles kindle dreams,
let love’s season work its schemes;
let life’s hope be born again,
let the joy of Christmas reign. (The Numbering of Our Days, p. 33)