Crossing Over

This is the text of the reflections I offered on Sunday, June 2, 2019 at the congregation I serve in Charlottesville, Virginia.  This was the Sunday of our annual Bridging Ceremony, the uniquely Unitarian Universalist rite of passage from "youth" to "young adult."  It might be worth noting that these words were illustrated by project images.  (I've put the images at the end of the post, and noted throughout where they came.)

Prior to the reflection we watched a clip from an episode of the BBC Documentary "Human Planet," about the "Living Bridges of Meghalaya."  It's awesome.

There aren’t too many rituals that we Unitarian Universalists all share.  The vast majority of congregations light achalice at the beginning of their worship services, covenant groups, and some meetings, but not all congregations do.  And many UU communities celebrate an annual Flower Communion, yet I don’t think it’s even most.

Back in 1967 the Rev. Peter Raible took songs from the hymnal that was then in use, Hymns for the Celebration of Life, and, as he described it, “freely translated” them, creating Hymns for the Cerebration of Strife.  One of the more popular, sung to the tune of “Holy, Holy, Holy” was, “Coffee, Coffee, Coffee:”

Coffee, Coffee, Coffee,
Praise the strength of coffee.
Early in the morn we rise with thoughts of only thee.
Served fresh or reheated,
Dark by thee defeated,
Brewed black by perk or drip or instantly.

Though all else we scoff we
Come to church for coffee;
If we're late to congregate, we come in time for thee.
Coffee our one ritual,
Drinking it habitual,
Brewed black by perk or drip instantly.

Coffee the communion
Of our Uni-Union,
Symbol of our sacred ground, our one necessity.
Feel the holy power
At our coffee hour,
Brewed black by perk or drip or instantly.

So there’s that – the Coffee Hour.  Yet not even all of us drink coffee.

No, the one ritual that I believe is celebrated in every Unitarian Universalist congregation is what we’re about to do here today.  As far as I know every Unitarian Universalist congregation marks the transition of its young people from being youth to being young adults.  We don’t have a first Communion.  We don’t have Confirmation.  We don’t have Bar and Bat Mitzvahs.  We don’t send our children out into the woods to come back adults.  Instead, we have the Ceremony of Bridging.

Bridges are symbols with deep roots in our cultural consciousness. From “The Bridge on the River Kwai,” and “A Bridge Too Far,” to “Bridge of Spies,” “Bridge to Tarabithia,” and, of course, the 1995 classic, “The Bridges of Madison County,” bridges evoke so much.

Fundamentally, bridges represent getting from here to there, here to somewhere else. (1)  They cross some kind of chasm, connect two places separated by some kind of gulf. (2)  Some bridges take a long time to traverse (3), while the journey over some others is pretty quick (4).  Some bridges are solid (5), when you’re on them you feel safe, secure.  Others are a little more … sketchy (6).  Some (7) are improvised, rather impermanent.  Others (8) you know can last for centuries.  Like those bridges in Meghalaya. (9, 10)

This morning I want to lift up three messages I find in this metaphor.  I’m talking particularly to our bridges, of course, yet I think we could all do well to listen.

First, even on the most solid of bridges crossing over from here to there is an act of faith.  You don’t always know (11) where there is.  We generally know where here is, but where there is, (12) and what’s waiting for you on the other side is not always so clear.  Sometimes you’re not even sure what’s under you, (13) what’s supporting you, what's keeping you up.  Yet we all have to cross over the bridges of our lives when we come to them. 

Oh, we don’t always have to be in a rush about it.  (14) Sometimes we’re able to take our time. (15)  Eventually, though, we all have to cross over the bridges of our lives. (16)  If we want to keep moving forward, that is.  If we want to truly be Alive, that is.

The second message in bridges is that crossing a bridge can be a dangerous thing.  That’s why so many movies set a fight scene on a bridge (17) – it ramps up the tension (18), because we all know, viscerally, that when you’re crossing a bridge from here to there, (19) there’s always the danger of falling.  Of course, there are some bridges that don’t give any cause for concern (20) -- they're not all that high, and a fall wouldn't be so bad.  And there are others that are built (21) so as to inspire every confidence, constructed to assure you of your safety.  But not all bridges are like that. (22)  There are some bridges that are truly dangerous (23) to traverse.  We know that we cross over them at our peril. (24)

Yet even these we have to cross if we want to keep moving forward and be truly Alive.  The truth is that even when it’s a bridge like this – and I hate to tell you, if your doing it right, you’ll come to such bridges more than once in your life – even when it’s a bridge like this – and maybe especially when it’s a bridge like this – it is actually far more dangers to our life’s journeys if we refuse to cross, and instead settle for staying stuck where we are.

So that’s two things – as we live our lives we will be faced with crossing over a bridge the end of which we can’t always know, and we will have to cross them even though we do know that it can be dangerous.  The third lesson comes specifically from those living bridges of Meghalaya. (25) The third lesson is that the bridges that are the strongest (26), that will truly stand the test of time, are those that we create with others (27), those bridges that are really Alive not only because they grow and evolve but also because they are made by living and loving hands. (28)  

You who are bridging today are about to cross a bridge (29) from here to there, from being seen as youth to being known as young adults.  And this bridge you cross has been lovingly built and carefully tended by your parents, your siblings, your friends, your teachers at school, your teachers here at church, the people who make up this Unitarian Universalist faith, and all those who have crossed over this bridge before you.  You, too, have a part in building this bridge, because as you cross it you leave something of yourself.  You add your own unique beauty, and you strengthen this bridge for all who will cross over it in all the years to come.

In this distinctively Unitarian Universalist ritual, one of the few shared by every Unitarian Universalist congregation, we recognize that you are young adults; that you’ve reached a milestone, a turning point, a transition in your lives and that we, as a community that loves you, recognize, mark this moment and honor this passage.

Oh, one more thing.  Despite the roughly 1,200 words I’ve just spoken, in the end it is up to you to determine just what the bridges of your life mean, and what messages you will glean from your crossings.  (30)   

Pax tecum,

RevWik

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Of Bridges & Chasms

This is the text of the reflection I offered at the congregation I serve on Sunday, June 17, 2018.

Once there was a man, walking along in the countryside, when he chanced upon a woman hard at work doing something which seemed kind of strange.  By the time the man got there, she had already stretched out two long ropes in parallel, staking the ends on either side.  Now she was in the process of laying boards across them, and tying the to the ropes.  The man said, “Excuse me, but might I ask what it is that you’re doing?”  The woman replied, “I am a Bridge Builder, and I am building a bridge.”  “But that’s not a bridge,” the man replied.  “It’s just a path on the ground.”  The woman payed him no mind; she just continued on with her work of laying boards between the ropes and tying them in place. 

When she was done, she stepped onto the boards, and encouraged the man to join her.  He did, and she said, “Wait for it.”

A minute passed. Then another. And then, a minute which seemed to last an hour but was only a minute... passed.  [That’s from the Monty Python sketch, “A Minute Passed.”]  Suddenly, as if out of the blue, the ground began to shake.  The air was filled with the sound of a deep, rolling rumble.  And then a fissure opened.  The man looked down beneath him, past the wood and the rope, and saw a deep chasm below, at the bottom of which were very pointy rocks … and land sharks.  The woman looked at him and said, simply, “Now it’s at bridge.”

At the beginning of the month, during the Bridging Ceremony – that uniquely Unitarian Universalist rite of passage marking the transition of graduating seniors from youth to young adult – I said that a bridge takes you from here to there.  From this place to that place.  Yet also that a bridge goes over … something.  A bridge over troubled water, if you will.  Maybe it’s a rickety rope bridge over an awesome abyss.

Since the Worship Staff Team decided that our working metaphor for the month of June would be “bridges,” I’ve had a line from the song “Fortress Around Your Heart.”  The website SongFacts describes the song like this:

Sting calls this a "song of reconciliation." It uses an abandoned fortress within a walled city as a metaphor for a relationship that has been through a figurative war, with Sting now ready to put the battles behind him and build a new alliance based on what they had […]

The line that’s been echoing in my mind all month is this: “[L]et me build a bridge, for I cannot fill the chasm […]”  The reason we need bridges is that whatever is beneath it is unpassable without one – the living bridges of Meghalaya make it possible to cross the monsoon-swollen rivers, for instance, or the Duge Bridge in China which is 1,854 ft  (a third of a mile) above the Beipan River below, making it the highest bridge in the world.

In the story, the Bridge Builder built her bridge before the chasm opened.  Yet she wasn’t just random in her location.  Somehow she knew about the fissure there; somehow she knew that a chasm was coming. 

There are those who say that a chasm has opened up in this community.  There are those who fear that it’s unpassable, and that it might be impossible to fill.  It goes by many names:  the Lead Minister’s performance (or lack thereof); the gaping budget deficit; distrust of lay, and professional, leadership; an unnecessarily combative and divisive approach to the work of racial justice; a focus on the work of racial justice to the exclusion of everything else; a steadily eroding membership; the Lead Minister’s personality, or perceived engagement, or leadership ability, or preaching style, or the limitations stemming from his mental health; the pervasive sense of a toxic dis-ease.  I could go on, but by whatever name it’s known, there are those who see a deep and dangerous chasm having opened up, and who fear that the best we have is a rickety rope bridge that we might not all be able to cross safely from here to there.

There are others, of course, who don’t see anything wrong at all.  People for whom this talk of chaos and chasms is … confusing.  They’re happy with things the way they are, or happy enough, and didn’t see any danger until people started talking about it.  And for some of these people, it is those who are crying, “Chasm!” who have caused it.

What are we to do about this situation?  Is there a bridge we can build, or one already existing, that will takes us safely from this place to that place?  Or is this chasm as unfillable as to some of us it seems? 

One thing we can do – one thing we can all do – is to take the Committee on the Ministry’s survey.  This is the same survey we took three years ago, and while it doesn’t go deep into actionable specifics, that’s not what it was intended to do – then or now.  This is a “pulse survey,” one which is designed to “take the pulse” of the congregation, to provide a snapshot of who we are right now, and how we feel about it.  In the crassest of terms, it’s a customer satisfaction survey.  I say, “crass,” because we’re not really “customers” here, we’re members of a common, covenanted community.  I once heard someone say about UU congregations, “We’re not a drive-through restaurant where you can order, ‘a supersized community with a side of social justice.’  Instead,” this person said, “we’re like your mamma’s kitchen, where if you want something you can go ahead and get it for yourself.  ‘And while you’re at it, would you be a doll and get me an iced tea?’”  (That’s what my older son says when he wants his mom to get something for him, “Would you be a doll …?”)

I say that calling the survey a measure of “customer satisfaction” “crass,” because it’s not – or, at least, shouldn’t be – just our “satisfaction” that’s important.  A part of what being a Unitarian Universalist is all about – or, at least, should be all about – is recognizing that it’s not my needs that are paramount all of the time … maybe even most of the time.  To the extent we really are, or want to be, as diverse as we claim, it should be important to me that you get what you need, at least some of the time, even if that runs counter to what my perceived needs are.  If we’re just in this for “what I get out of it,” then we’re doing it wrong.  Thus ends that sermon-within-a-sermon.

One thing we can do about this dangerous division, this chasm some of us are talking about, is to take that survey – for all of us to take the Committee on the Ministry’s survey.  All of us.  Each of us.  Surveys – any kind of survey – are notorious for engaging the most enthusiastic and the most disaffected.  The vast majority of folks in the middle of that bell-shaped curve rarely feel motivated.  Kind of like mid-term elections.  Yet just like mid-term elections, it’s vitally important that everyone – no matter how you feel about the various issues at play here, no matter how strongly you feel about them – it is vitally important that everyone participate, because it is vitally important that the results of this survey really reflect the voice of the congregation as a whole.  Your voice matters.  Wherever you are in all of this, your voice matters.  (If you haven’t gotten an email from the Committee on the Ministry – it was titled, “We want your opinion” – of if you’ve lost it, or if you don’t do email, please seek out a member of the Committee on the Ministry so that they can make it possible for you to participate.)

The results of our survey might just show us that the divide isn’t as deep as we’d thought, or it might show us a way to building the bridge that we need to cross safely from where we are now to where we are going.

There’s another way we can “fill the chasm.”  For many, the divide has to do with our congregation’s finances.  There are people who, for a variety of reasons, oppose the deficit budget the Board brought forward at the congregational meeting – which is why it was voted down – and there are those who opposed the deficit budget last year, too.  And there are those who point out that we have not, in a long time, supported our own community to the extent we have needed to in order to support any budget.  The UU consultant who worked with us earlier in the year said that we were one of the most under-performing congregations as to its financial support that he has ever worked with.  Let that sink in.  Just about any faith community, in any tradition, anywhere, struggles with finances – usually it’s because they have less than they need.  In fact, one church expert says that you can tell a lot about the health of a congregation by whether they see these budget problems as “a crisis,” or “the cost of doing business.”  But Mark Ewert said that we were one of the most underperforming congregations he has ever worked with.

For some of us, this financial situation, and especially the budget gap proposed in last year’s and this year’s budgets represents the deep chasm we simply can’t cross.  And yet, if 100 people made a pledge of $400, the budget gap we’re talking about would be taken care of.  And if 100 people make a pledge of just $10 a week, we’d have money left over to do things like begin to replenish our building reserve fund (something that is extremely important yet which we haven’t been able to do for years now).  For some people this $400 would be an addition to what they’re currently pledging.  For others, it would represent their first pledge – there are a lot of people who are engaged with the community who have never supported the community, financially, beside what they put in the plate when they’re here.  Pledging gives the Board an idea of what resources to expect in the coming year; it helps leadership build the budget.  You can always change your pledge from one year to the next if your situation changes, but your pledge is your best estimate of your ability to generously support this community.

Last year we began the practice of automatically renewing a person’s pledge at the level it was the year before.  If you pledged $1,500 dollars last year, you will automatically be registered as pledging $1,500 this year as well.  This is a practice which many congregations have taken on, especially larger congregations such as ours.  We will continue to make general appeals, of course – and a letter is going out this week to remind people of the expectation that the people who call this place their spiritual home will do what they can to support it.  And we will continue to make personal visits with those who request them, and those who have shown in the past a greater willingness to change their pledges from year-to-year, yet anyone can change their pledge at any time.  Anyone can, say, add $400 to the amount they pledged last year, or make a first-time pledge of $400 … or more, of course!  A colleague of mine likes to point out the we UU’s don’t require people to tithe, don’t require people to pledge 10% of their income.  He reminds folks that you can always 12% or 15% if you want!

There are pledge cards available at each of the entrances to the sanctuary, and clearly marked boxes to receive them.  You can also pledge online.  But this is one chasm, one cavernous canyon that we can fill.  It’s one deep division we can get across, bridge or no bridge.

Some of the other gaps between here and there will be harder for us to navigate.  Yet I believe that we can.  In fact, I feel certain that we can … if … and I’d say only if … everyone involved remembers that everyone else involved is motivated by a common love of this congregation.  It’s not personal, however personal it might seem.  The “sides,” if you will, in this discussion of where to go, and what to do, next all would like to see this faith community be as healthy as it can possibly be.  There are some strong disagreements about just what this community is and should be, and some very strong disagreements about what will constitute “health” and what we need to do to be healthy, yet despite these disagreements, the motivation is the same.  I truly believe that.

And I believe that if we all can remember that, if we all can believe that of each other, then it is not only possible, but extremely probably that we will get where we need to go safely.  Let me repeat – this is not personal, even though some of the issues revolve around individual persons.  This is all about the community.  So let’s focus on that.  Let’s strive to keep our common love of this community before us at all times, and let us act out of that in all of our interactions.  There is no need for combativeness; no need for defensiveness.  There is no need for acrimony on anyone’s part.  Let us assume good intentions of one another, recognizing that that does not mean that the solution to all of this will be simple.  It won’t.  It is possible that we won’t be able to fill this chasm; it is possible that not everyone will be able to, or will want to, cross the bridge that gets built.  Yet we need not “tear the congregation apart.”  However we get there, wherever “there” is, this community – made sacred by all who have gone before us, and held sacred by all who call this place “home” now – will be made healthy through this process, if we behave in healthy ways through this process.  We can do it.  I know we can do it.  If you believe that too, let me hear you say, “Amen.”

Pax tecum,

RevWik