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How This Church Transforms My Life January 14, 2007
The Rev. Ms. Barbara J. Pescan
How this church transforms my life – a testimonial
My name is Mary Dudek and I have been given the privilege today to share my enthusiasm of UCE with my congregation. As an added bonus, tomorrow, we as a nation honor one of our greatest, Dr. Martin Luther King, who also is a personal hero of mine. So, I feel fortunate to focus my talk on the peace and social justice work that is part of UCE’s past and future.
To some, I must seem like a walking, talking peace sign, but these issues are very dear to me. On my desk, next to my husband’s photo, are three important pieces of paper that I view every morning at the start of my day. They are the US Bill of Rights, The UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the UUA’s 7 principles. These three are pledges that we as human society have made to each other and to future generations and they have helped form my values. I am so fortunate that I have found a congregation where these declarations also resonant and where I can live out those values in my interactions with each of you. As Barbara has said, it is good to have this place – this Church – where we can say the most important things and know they will be heard. I especially want to acknowledge the Peace & Justice group and my Covenant Group, the Independents. It is in these two groups that I feel the strongest sense of kinship.
Dr. King once stated “History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period…was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.” I think that this could again be said about our citizenry. There has been a deafening national silence on very important issues that I hope is now ending. Over these past years, I have found sanctuary here in our congregation as the good people within it could not be silenced. Instead, you let your voices be heard in letter-writing campaigns, petitions or even through acts of fasting or marching in demonstrations. Together, we stood up and spoke out for justice and a greater peace. That is turning the noble principles that we champion into a reality.
This follows our rich tradition here of social activism, including having had Dr. King speak here at a housing rally, participating in demonstrations for fair housing and the campaign to desegregate Evanston schools. UCE members even stood up against the Chicago Police Red Squad and the Vietnam War. More recently, we hosted Camp Casey and for one year read the names of the fallen in the Iraq War, so they would be kept in our hearts. Our RE program taught our children why the issue of global hunger and impoverishment matters to our congregation. And they created a beautiful mural to remind us all of their work.
It is because of this history and our commitment to a better world that I am a member of UCE. And when I come here on Sundays, I feel renewed and supported in the work that needs to be done.
Even our sanctuary design calls us to look out onto our world as we come together for our services. This wall of windows is reflective of our outlook, of our commitment to reach beyond our needs and ourselves. This world needs us good people to mean it when we say we will “nurture the human spirit for a world made whole.” I choose to do that with peace and justice work, others with environmental issues or with teaching our children values to last them a lifetime. Whatever your passion, you can bring it here and know that it will be received with open hands and open hearts.
This congregation is our congregation. It is made strong and healthy and can indeed have an impact on our world by everyone’s participation. In whatever way possible, I urge you to make your valuable and unique contribution to your church. We will all benefit from what you do. Thank you so much for being a community that matters!
Prayer and silent meditation -
For the everyday joys and sorrows And the ones here in the room with us but unspoken I say Yes.
To the humanity in the sadness and the joy I say Yes.
To war, and escalation of war, and to no discernable good end, I say No.
Before the families of the 3269 coalition dead in Iraq, I am silenced but for saying No to an increase of troops to Iraq.
Before the 47,657 soldiers with non-mortal wounds, and their families, I bow my head and pray there is care for you here at home. And I say, No, to an increase in troops in Iraq.
Before the officially counted 59,000 Iraqi dead and their families, I do not know what to say about your suffering in this war In the insurgency at the hands of your countrymen Of your years of suffering at the hands of Saddam Hussein Of the years of blockaded medical supplies Of the fact that the United States armed Iran and armed Iraq in the first place I say No; I say No more killing in the name of Jesus, or democracy, or Shia or Sunni or Islam I say, No to more killing in my name.
To those troops being deployed now, I say I want you to come home, Safely, and soon. To one of our own, Christian Isely, I say, I want you to come home, Safely, and soon.
To all those women and men, and to General Petraeus, I say, I want you to come home, Whole, and soon.
No more. No more. With the Iraq Study Group, I say No. With three-fourths of all Americans, I say No.
To life, I say, Yes. To this undeclared war, I say, No And, No; and once again, No; and with all my breath, No; And for those who cannot speak, I say, No; And for all those who are dead, I say, No; I stand with them all, and say, No.
And for all those still enmeshed in Afghanistan and Iraq And those recently deployed and re-deployed, I say Yes. Yes to life. Yes to compassion. Yes. Safely. And, soon.
Amen.
Reading – “The Drum Major Instinct”, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Read by Annette Wallace, Worship Associate I often spend my spare time reading available sermons from Rev. King. His style was the style I grew up with, and I remember the discomfort that many had in the Baptist church when he started talking about Viet Nam and the worry that everyone had when he started coming up north. So much worry that when he was killed, no one was surprised. Many thought that he might have preserved his life had he stayed in the south and not talked about the war. Maybe.
When Martin Luther King preached this sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, on February 4th, 1968, he was exactly two months from his death April 4th at age 39.
Sermon – Rev. B. J. Pescan
My heart is so full. This week has been a mix of events and occasions that happen in a community. Early Thursday morning, Chris Isely’s son, Meredith Haydon’s step-son, Christian, who is in the 2d Platoon of the Alpha 2-7 Infantry Unit, First Brigade Combat Team, Third Infantry Division, United States Army, was deployed to Iraq, where he will probably be stationed in Anbar Province.
Yesterday we were privileged to ordain to the Unitarian Universalist ministry Kathleen Green, who was our intern and Summer Minister last year. Some ministers wait until they are settled in their first church before being ordained and installed in the same ceremony. It is a gift that our recent interns have requested that we ordain them: Abhi Janamanchi, Mark Stringer and Kathleen Green.
To ordain is confer orders upon, to send forth with the charge to further our faith with its people by serving its truth. Not every congregation gets to ordain a minister. It has been our good fortune and responsibility to have a hand in the ministerial formation of many interns. By providing an internship every two years, we also are participating in the long history of Unitarian Universalism. Olympia Brown was one of the first women ordained to the ministry by the Universalist church in 1863. We are carrying on that tradition.
Wednesday evening I witnessed the first commissioning of an Army officer in a church --- At First Unitarian Church in Hyde Park, David Pyle was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the United States Army Reserves, repeating the required oath of office after Marine Major Seanan Holland. I have been told that they are the first two members of our armed forces to be students at Meadville/Lombard since the 1920’s. Both are candidates for the chaplaincy of the United States Armed Forces. ∫
This church, the Unitarian Universalist movement and this particular congregation, changes my life in many ways. I would not have thought when I was a young adult that I would have become a clergywoman. But, when my father was diagnosed with the degenerative brain disease that ultimately erased his life, the presence of my home congregation in our family’s life entwined our lives with theirs so completely that we have been part of one another ever since. And, ministry became the path I chose to give something back to that communion of saints and sinners and friends.
I would not have thought when I was a young adult that I would have been so moved by the commissioning of an officer in the Army Reserves, nor that I would like him so much; nor that I would now be in a position to have my life entwined with his, and with that of an infantryman deployed to a forward operating base in Iraq. But, in that 12-minute ceremony, when David repeated the oath of office, and Rev. Nan Hobart said the prayer, it once again struck me what happens when we are transformed in this fellowship of Unitarian Universalists. I am connected to David and to Christian in ways, before this week, I was not.
I used to ask individuals to stand here and speak to “what this church means to me.” Usually the person said how he came to be here, what he liked about it, or what she looked forward to. In the last year or so, I have asked individuals to speak to what about being part of this congregation transforms your life, changes you. There is a difference. In this world where Oil of Olay promises that you never need to use any other product to make your skin beautiful; and where pills promise potency beyond your wildest dreams, so that you, too, can experience that 60 is the new 40 --- transformation seems very close at hand. What’s more, it’s affordable.
What I listen for in those five-minute presentations is the sound of someone realizing that their expectations of the gifts of religious community have something to with their own open-handed offering of their own gifts. It is not simply personal. Transformation happens in someone who first experiences something in herself giving way, a loosening of bindings of the imagined possible. Transformation is a personal, inner experience that has effects among the people and situations in the world we live in.
We change slowly, even reluctantly. My study of family systems theory tells me that in terms of defining a self, I can move away from my assigned, learned place in my family only a few degrees of difference. Most of us do not, like Prince Gautama, leave the palace and go out into the world to become Buddha. Or, like St. Francis, leave our families’ wealth and position behind to choose lives of poverty among the creatures of the forest. Or, like Mother Teresa, begin a ministry of care to the poor and dying in Calcutta. Or, even like Dr. King, who as a young man took on the responsibility to speak for African Americans, for all Americans, really, and who knew from the beginning that what he was saying brought him close to death at the hands of those who did not want him to say it.
Transformation can move along a continuum. It may be unintended. I begin my journey in one direction and travel along quite pleasantly, joyfully, even. . . and then, the unthinkable happens, the unplanned --- a child becomes ill, a spouse receives a diagnosis, we discover we cannot have our own biological child, a drunk driver hits my car, there is an aneurism, a war, a stroke, a tumor, an arrest, a death.
There is a turn; and it’s usually a turn that requires a sharpness of attention we are not prepared or expecting to have to give. Then, we have some choices about how we will be present to these challenges. Sometimes, transformation happens slowly, with intention applied over time. Sometimes, it feels like transformation ripens all of a sudden. A child is born, a relative makes a choice that affects the whole family’s future, your beloved says Yes, and you say Yes.
There it is: You say Yes to your life as it seems to be unfolding before you. You can say that yes in a small voice, with doubt and anxiety crowding you at the edges – it can still lead to transformation.
It is what the poet Mary Oliver writes about continually, pointing to the ordinary surface of things below which a richness abides until we are awake enough to see it, to hear it, to know it is meant to change us. “Going to Walden”:
It isn’t very far as highways lie. I might be back by nightfall, having seen The rough pines, and the stones, and the clear water. Friends argue that I might be wiser for it. They do not hear that far-off Yankee whisper: How dull we grow from hurrying here and there!
Many have gone, and think me half a fool To miss a day away in the cool country. Maybe. But in a book I read and cherish, Going to Walden is not so easy a thing As a green visit. It is the slow and difficult Trick of living, and finding it where you are.
∫
How this church transforms my life --- for forty-five years, continues to transform my life --- is in that “slow and difficult trick of living,” in remembering, and forgetting, and remembering again to find it where I am.
I am grateful to be present to the celebrations of ordinations; at the bedside of someone in the hospital; in a difficult meeting where there is disagreement and too-quick anger; up close to or at a distance from someone who is suffering a loss; in the dedication of a child; in the troubles of a family that tells their story with rough words that catch in the throat but they tell it nonetheless because sorrow shared is easier to bear. It is the slow and difficult/Trick of living, and finding it where you are.
These are the final words of my charge to Rev. Green at her ordination yesterday. I give them to you on this day before the remembrance day of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., to think about what this religious community offers you as paths to and celebrations of your own transformation.
No life of faith is for the faint of heart. Who do we think we are to clothe ourselves in these robes, these trappings of the learned, when, ever since words of religion were written down and taught, they have ignited the world to excesses of ignorance and killing? You will forget this and remember again: Life is made of beauty and terror. The suffering of the world touches all of us, not just as metaphor, but really, today and tomorrow.
So, speak no theologies that cannot be spoken in the presence of burning children. And, claim no greater efficacy for the practice of our faith than that we work now to leave the world we touch better for our having been here. I can charge you no better than this: to speak the truth as you discern it; to listen; to forgive; to attend to the sorrows of your heart; to take joy in beauty; to sing. Go well, my friend. Teach us by your life and ministry to renew our own. Amen.
Let it be so for all of us in this tough and tender enterprise: that we teach each other by our lives and ministries to keep well our own lives, and to welcome that “slow and difficult trick of living,” finding the depth in life where we are and letting it transform us. Amen.
Benediction – And let justice roll down like waters And righteousness like an ever flowing stream. Let us go out in power and in courage And may we realize the dream, May we actuate the dream, May we learn to live the dream, making peace.
You may find these websites of interest:
www.icasualties.org/oif/ www.iraqbodycount.org
www.winwithoutwarus.org www.americasaysno.org Unitarian Church of Evanston
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