Our Commitment to the Wider Community
Preached 3/14/2021 at SouthWest UU in N. Royalton OH
By Rev. Meg Mathieson
The theme for the month of January was “Imagination” and the theme last month was “Beloved Community.” This month we are looking at “Commitment” and I just don’t think it’s quite as fun or exciting as a theme. All things considered, Commitment can sound like a bit of a drag, a responsibility, a chore. But it can also be uplifting and wonderful.
My favorite Indigo Girls song has the line “The closer I’m bound in love to you, the closer I am to free” and I think that captures it. Yes, being bound to some responsibilities, or groups or ideas can be limiting and a real drag, but have you ever been bound to something that is freeing, uplifting, empowering?
I remember being taught this concept in Catholic school. Perhaps some of you can relate. I was taught that submitting your will to God’s will was ultimate freedom - ultimate liberation. I sure didn’t understand it at the time, while memorizing the catechism didn’t feel at all freeing. I don’t think I understood it in my first marriage, either. It wasn’t until I met my current sweetie - we’ve been married 7 ½ years now - that I actually felt, I actually had the lived experience of being tied to something - that made me more free. I am incredibly lucky to be married to someone who supports me and empowers me, someone who, the closer I am wedded to her, the more free I am as a person.
That is a commitment that brings joy.
I hope that you have someone - or something, an organization, a pet, a faith, that gives you that freedom, that paradox of “the closer I’m bound in love to you, the closer I am to free.”
The board of trustees voted this week to extend my contract with SouthWest UU. I’m signing that contract gleefully because the closer I’m bound in love to SWUU, the closer I am to free. This is a commitment that gives me so much joy.
Last week, I spoke about the incredible, generative, nourishing and life-giving commitments that we make to each other here at SouthWest UU. The fact that through our most trying times, we have not lost a committee or a team or a group, and in fact have had new groups forming and new opportunities for activism and socializing flourish. We should be proud of our commitments because they make us more free than ever! I understand now how being bound in love to something can make you ever more free.
But we are not an insular community. Although it may feel sometimes like we are an island of blue in a red state, we are no island.
We are a people who profess to believe in and respect the interconnected web of all existence, and while it is often easier to extend our compassion and love to the environment, we also profess to believe in the inherent worth and dignity of each and every person. We are not an island, but deeply entwined, interconnected in Indra’s net, in an embrace with the very world that harms us precisely because we believe that we can change it for the better.
Because we are a people who believe that this faith is not only a thing that makes us free as individuals but that it is a thing - perhaps the thing - that has the ability to heal the world with love.
This world is hurting. This modern American society is full of pain. Witness the election to the highest office a man whose relationship to this country has been one of contempt and gaslighting. Make no mistake, we are a people who have voluntarily elected to be in a deeply, disturbingly abusive relationship with our leader, and we almost reelected him.
This is a hurting culture, a people who are suffering, at least in part, I believe, because of an overemphasis on individualism.
I believe that, in very simplistic terms, we humans have three basic needs: the physical, the emotional, and the spiritual. I see these as bubbles going outward, with your physical body in the center.
This is a holistic view. In the center is your physical body, I see this in red, the color represents the root chakra. So, we have specialists that help us tend to our physical bodies and keep them aligned and in good health. For instance, physicians, nutritionists, personal trainers, acupuncturists, chiropractors, etc.
Radiating out from our physical bodies is the energy that comes from our conscious selves, our emotions. I see that as green, representing the heart chakra. The specialists that help us with this part of our health include therapists, psychologists, mentors, shamans. Then further out, we have a field of purple, representing the crown chakra, and our spiritual selves. This field may be beyond our consciousness, yet it is deeply influenced by the health or lack of health of the other two, and needs to be tended to and kept in alignment and in good health. We have spiritual leaders, gurus, mystics, and others who help us to tend to this level.
So in essence, three parts: physical, emotional, and spiritual, and for the physical we have a doctor, for the emotional we may have a therapist of confidant, and for the spiritual we have - well, you might meditate or go to church or read the Dalai Lama or what have you.
But here’s the thing: this final level, I don’t know about the other two because they are not what I’ve studied, but this spiritual level, as humans we have corporate needs as well as individual needs. By which I mean that yes, you can feed your soul by talking to a spiritual leader or doing yoga or what have you, but there is still a need, as a human, as an inherently social creature, a powerful need that is not up for debate, a need to be in spiritual unity with others.
What does this have to do with commitment? Because we are a people who see past the lie of individualism that is pervasive in our culture. We are a people who reject the idea of putting a personal relationship with God, or a higher power on a high pedestal, to the detriment of the community. We are a people who acknowledge that we are a people.
And because of that wider view, that social view, we do have a commitment not just to ourselves as people or ourselves as a group, but to the wider community as well. This is why we are not just a single nondenominational church, but rather we choose to be in communion with the UUA. We are not an island of blue in a red sea, but rather we are a force, an intense force for love that reaches out, the fingers of love reaching out and reaching out, as I quoted Anne Lamott last week.
What is our commitment to the larger community? What do we owe to each other?
I would offer that we owe one thing: metta. Lovingkindness. I do believe that this religion, this movement, can save the world. I believe that it currently is. Saving the world. I believe that you are. We are. Saving the world.
By cultivating lovingkindness, by doing that work of humility whereby we deny individualism and keep our eyes on the good of the community, the congregation, the town, the city, the country, the world. By directing love where there is hurt and warmth where there is backlash and fear. It’s not easy. But this is our faith. This is what we do. This is our commitment.
I’d like to end with this poem by UU minister Rev. Sean Parker Dennison titled “How to Survive the Apocalypse.” I like how this poem feels extremely apt during these times. Perhaps this is not exactly the apocalypse, but lately reality has felt quite dystopian.
First, learn to listen.
Not only for enemies around
corners in hidden places,
but for the faint footsteps
of hope and the whisper of resistance.
Hone your skills, aim your
heart toward kindness and
stockpile second chances.
Under the weight of destruction,
we will need the strong shelter
of forgiveness and the deeper wells
that give the sweet water of welcome:
“We have a place for you.”
When the world ends, we must not
add destruction to destruction,
not accept a beggar’s bargain,
to fight death with more death.
In order to survive the apocalypse--
any apocalypse at all--
we have to give up
the counterfeit currency of self-
sufficiency, the mistaken addiction
to competition, the lie that the last
to die has somehow survived.
The lie that the last to die has somehow survived. Let’s sit in that for a moment. I think entire dissertations could be written about that line! Christians believe that Jesus overcame death through his own death. Perhaps he did. Or perhaps we all do, perhaps we all already have, in previous lifetimes. The lie. That the last to die has somehow survived. How does that line hit your ears in your particular social location? How would a gay man who lived through the AIDS epidemic hear that line? How about a black man who has been threatened by police?
You are all of those people. We are one. I invite you to open your heart to the reality that we are all one, whether we are living in physical bodies in this time and space or otherwise, we are all part of that interconnected web. And to this one mind, one heart, one web, we commit ourselves again and again with a love that reaches out and reaches out and reaches out. It is a commitment that makes us more and more free.
Preached 3/14/2021 at SouthWest UU in N. Royalton OH
By Rev. Meg Mathieson
The theme for the month of January was “Imagination” and the theme last month was “Beloved Community.” This month we are looking at “Commitment” and I just don’t think it’s quite as fun or exciting as a theme. All things considered, Commitment can sound like a bit of a drag, a responsibility, a chore. But it can also be uplifting and wonderful.
My favorite Indigo Girls song has the line “The closer I’m bound in love to you, the closer I am to free” and I think that captures it. Yes, being bound to some responsibilities, or groups or ideas can be limiting and a real drag, but have you ever been bound to something that is freeing, uplifting, empowering?
I remember being taught this concept in Catholic school. Perhaps some of you can relate. I was taught that submitting your will to God’s will was ultimate freedom - ultimate liberation. I sure didn’t understand it at the time, while memorizing the catechism didn’t feel at all freeing. I don’t think I understood it in my first marriage, either. It wasn’t until I met my current sweetie - we’ve been married 7 ½ years now - that I actually felt, I actually had the lived experience of being tied to something - that made me more free. I am incredibly lucky to be married to someone who supports me and empowers me, someone who, the closer I am wedded to her, the more free I am as a person.
That is a commitment that brings joy.
I hope that you have someone - or something, an organization, a pet, a faith, that gives you that freedom, that paradox of “the closer I’m bound in love to you, the closer I am to free.”
The board of trustees voted this week to extend my contract with SouthWest UU. I’m signing that contract gleefully because the closer I’m bound in love to SWUU, the closer I am to free. This is a commitment that gives me so much joy.
Last week, I spoke about the incredible, generative, nourishing and life-giving commitments that we make to each other here at SouthWest UU. The fact that through our most trying times, we have not lost a committee or a team or a group, and in fact have had new groups forming and new opportunities for activism and socializing flourish. We should be proud of our commitments because they make us more free than ever! I understand now how being bound in love to something can make you ever more free.
But we are not an insular community. Although it may feel sometimes like we are an island of blue in a red state, we are no island.
We are a people who profess to believe in and respect the interconnected web of all existence, and while it is often easier to extend our compassion and love to the environment, we also profess to believe in the inherent worth and dignity of each and every person. We are not an island, but deeply entwined, interconnected in Indra’s net, in an embrace with the very world that harms us precisely because we believe that we can change it for the better.
Because we are a people who believe that this faith is not only a thing that makes us free as individuals but that it is a thing - perhaps the thing - that has the ability to heal the world with love.
This world is hurting. This modern American society is full of pain. Witness the election to the highest office a man whose relationship to this country has been one of contempt and gaslighting. Make no mistake, we are a people who have voluntarily elected to be in a deeply, disturbingly abusive relationship with our leader, and we almost reelected him.
This is a hurting culture, a people who are suffering, at least in part, I believe, because of an overemphasis on individualism.
I believe that, in very simplistic terms, we humans have three basic needs: the physical, the emotional, and the spiritual. I see these as bubbles going outward, with your physical body in the center.
This is a holistic view. In the center is your physical body, I see this in red, the color represents the root chakra. So, we have specialists that help us tend to our physical bodies and keep them aligned and in good health. For instance, physicians, nutritionists, personal trainers, acupuncturists, chiropractors, etc.
Radiating out from our physical bodies is the energy that comes from our conscious selves, our emotions. I see that as green, representing the heart chakra. The specialists that help us with this part of our health include therapists, psychologists, mentors, shamans. Then further out, we have a field of purple, representing the crown chakra, and our spiritual selves. This field may be beyond our consciousness, yet it is deeply influenced by the health or lack of health of the other two, and needs to be tended to and kept in alignment and in good health. We have spiritual leaders, gurus, mystics, and others who help us to tend to this level.
So in essence, three parts: physical, emotional, and spiritual, and for the physical we have a doctor, for the emotional we may have a therapist of confidant, and for the spiritual we have - well, you might meditate or go to church or read the Dalai Lama or what have you.
But here’s the thing: this final level, I don’t know about the other two because they are not what I’ve studied, but this spiritual level, as humans we have corporate needs as well as individual needs. By which I mean that yes, you can feed your soul by talking to a spiritual leader or doing yoga or what have you, but there is still a need, as a human, as an inherently social creature, a powerful need that is not up for debate, a need to be in spiritual unity with others.
What does this have to do with commitment? Because we are a people who see past the lie of individualism that is pervasive in our culture. We are a people who reject the idea of putting a personal relationship with God, or a higher power on a high pedestal, to the detriment of the community. We are a people who acknowledge that we are a people.
And because of that wider view, that social view, we do have a commitment not just to ourselves as people or ourselves as a group, but to the wider community as well. This is why we are not just a single nondenominational church, but rather we choose to be in communion with the UUA. We are not an island of blue in a red sea, but rather we are a force, an intense force for love that reaches out, the fingers of love reaching out and reaching out, as I quoted Anne Lamott last week.
What is our commitment to the larger community? What do we owe to each other?
I would offer that we owe one thing: metta. Lovingkindness. I do believe that this religion, this movement, can save the world. I believe that it currently is. Saving the world. I believe that you are. We are. Saving the world.
By cultivating lovingkindness, by doing that work of humility whereby we deny individualism and keep our eyes on the good of the community, the congregation, the town, the city, the country, the world. By directing love where there is hurt and warmth where there is backlash and fear. It’s not easy. But this is our faith. This is what we do. This is our commitment.
I’d like to end with this poem by UU minister Rev. Sean Parker Dennison titled “How to Survive the Apocalypse.” I like how this poem feels extremely apt during these times. Perhaps this is not exactly the apocalypse, but lately reality has felt quite dystopian.
First, learn to listen.
Not only for enemies around
corners in hidden places,
but for the faint footsteps
of hope and the whisper of resistance.
Hone your skills, aim your
heart toward kindness and
stockpile second chances.
Under the weight of destruction,
we will need the strong shelter
of forgiveness and the deeper wells
that give the sweet water of welcome:
“We have a place for you.”
When the world ends, we must not
add destruction to destruction,
not accept a beggar’s bargain,
to fight death with more death.
In order to survive the apocalypse--
any apocalypse at all--
we have to give up
the counterfeit currency of self-
sufficiency, the mistaken addiction
to competition, the lie that the last
to die has somehow survived.
The lie that the last to die has somehow survived. Let’s sit in that for a moment. I think entire dissertations could be written about that line! Christians believe that Jesus overcame death through his own death. Perhaps he did. Or perhaps we all do, perhaps we all already have, in previous lifetimes. The lie. That the last to die has somehow survived. How does that line hit your ears in your particular social location? How would a gay man who lived through the AIDS epidemic hear that line? How about a black man who has been threatened by police?
You are all of those people. We are one. I invite you to open your heart to the reality that we are all one, whether we are living in physical bodies in this time and space or otherwise, we are all part of that interconnected web. And to this one mind, one heart, one web, we commit ourselves again and again with a love that reaches out and reaches out and reaches out. It is a commitment that makes us more and more free.