Final sermon to the congregation: “I Wish You Love”

By the Rev. Melanie Morel-Ensminger
First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans
Sunday, May 19, 2013

While it is in the job description of a full-time parish minister that sermons have to be written nearly every week, some sermons are easier to write than others.  I remember during the Chattanooga ministry being asked to write a sermon about land mines, and in this ministry, there were sermons on the right of same-sex couples to marry.  These were easy – I was against the first, and FOR the second.  Sermons that touch on my most heartfelt passions are also relatively easy to write, and I’ve had no trouble penning sermons on New Orleans recovery and racism and classism and on the need for Unitarian Universalists not to forget or dishonor their histories.

Then there are the ones that take more research and analysis.  For me, sermons on scientific or technical topics are somewhat difficult, and therefore the sermons on military drones and social dilemmas were products of much rewriting.  And then there are the sermons that I care so deeply about, and are so emotionally fraught, that both writing them and delivering them are a painful challenge.  This sermon, my final one to this, my home congregation, is one of those.  While I have given farewell sermons to three other UU congregations, this one is by far the hardest to do.

This morning I take the prerogative of an out-going minister to pass along advice to you.  On my way out the door, so to speak, I have some wishes for the church’s healthy future.  (Of course, I won't be all the way out the door til May 30, and will be back to preside over Cathy Cohen's Memorial on June 15th. So maybe it's like I have one foot in and one foot out.)  Your prerogative, as always, is to take or leave the advice as you so choose.  So here goes, my wishes for First Church:

My first wish is:  Learn to make peace with difference, even emotionally charged difference.  Nelson Mandela once said, “You don’t make peace with your friends, you make peace with your enemies.”  If Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland can shake hands and promise to share power, and if Africaaners and the African National Congress can form a coalition government, then surely it ought to be possible for the much less earth-shaking differences in this UU church to be resolved amicably and without spiritual bloodshed.  It’s a fine line we walk in UU churches – neither being afraid of difference, nor attempting to paper them over.

In connection with that, I have a related wish:  Find a reason to exist beyond liking the people already here.  Liking folks, while a good thing in itself, is NOT a good enough reason to be church – in fact, it’s not even necessary, it's lagniappe.  If you join a church solely or mostly for the people there, you might have to quit if they leave, and the congregation is not likely to be truly welcoming to new folks.  (Why should you welcome new people?  You already like the people the church has now.)  The most important reason to commit yourself to a religious community is that you agree with and feel personally challenged by its larger goals and purposes, and you want to work to help make them come true.  Sure, it HELPS if you like the folks in the church, but it’s much more important that you like what they stand for, that you share their values, and want to participate in furthering the mission of the church.

Which leads me to a wish about the church’s mission:  Care more about mission than money or individuals or the building.  If a congregation is clear and committed on what it’s really all about, its real purpose, its raison d’etre, then everything else will fall into place.  When a church has mutually arrived at its shared reason for being, then fundraising becomes almost easy (you don’t even need a hurricane!), appropriate boundaries can be set for misbehavior, social justice actions become committed and clear, and the sense of community is strengthened by a focus on what is held in common.  Everything in a church is improved when a congregation agrees on why it exists, and what work they are called collectively to do.  I’ve always believed that the purpose of a UU church is to transform people so that they can transform the world, but you may come up with a different goal.  There is a great deal of momentum generated in a congregation in the act of discerning a higher purpose.  Organizational consultant Margaret J. Wheatley says, “There is no power greater than a community discovering what it cares about.”  I urge you to tap into that power, and not waste your primary energies caring for the building or worrying about money.

My fourth wish for you is to Take church leadership seriously.  Not everyone is cut out to be a church leader, and even those who are well-suited need two things in order to be effective:  a clear and concise description of the position with its duties and responsibilities, and second, some kind of training in how to be a UU church leader, because being a UU leader is different than leading a business and different from leading a nonprofit organization.  Once you have properly recruited and prepared your church leaders, support them by treating them with both respect and compassion.  Let leaders know your concerns, and leaders, listen well to what lies behind stated concerns.  Leaders and lay members need each other, as neither knows the whole story without the other.  And dissent that is unexpressed and goes underground is toxic to a UU congregation.

The best job description in the world and the best leadership training in the UUA will not produce perfect Boards members and committee chairs – just as vocational discernment and rigorous seminary education do not produce mistake-proof, perfect ministers.  We’re all human, so be prepared to forgive each other and learn from missteps in order to move forward in good health and good order.

Next, and this is very important:  I wish you would connect with Unitarian Universalism.  Yes, I know very well that this congregation has other UU churches who support First Church in its recovery, and we’re all grateful for them, but I’m talking about a different kind of relationship than needing and receiving financial and physical help.  I’m urging you as church members to read the UU World magazine; visit the UUA website regularly; sign up for the latest posts and updates and resources.  Church leaders at all levels should make an effort to read some of the UU newsletters that arrive here every week, with a special focus on the newsletters from the congregations in our region, and especially the three churches of the Greater New Orleans UU cluster.  Board members should communicate with the Boards of other UU churches, and the Worship, Religious Education, and Social Justice Committees should also be aware of trends and ideas and best practices in their areas of responsibility in the other churches – especially the healthiest, strongest, and biggest of our local UU churches, which is the Baton Rouse UU church.  I urge you to send high-level delegations (meaning Board members and committee chairs) to the annual district conference and to General Assembly every year; the Board should look over the program offerings of those gatherings ahead of time, and assign delegates to attend the workshops and presentations deemed most helpful to the church’s mission.  There is no reason in the world for this congregation to be so isolated!  Historically, lateral relationships between UU churches have been a source of strength, and First Church needs strength.

I wish you would be a force for positive change in this area.  Focusing on your own recovery is a good thing, but it shouldn’t be all you think about.  Having a close circle of friends is a good thing, but it ought not be the main goal of a church.  For so many reasons, this congregation has real corporate power, even if you don’t realize it.  You have the power and you have the history to help bring about major change in Greater New Orleans and in Louisiana.  Shame on y’all if you squander that power and that history.

And finally, and most of all, I wish you love.  Not the namby-pamby love of a Hallmark card, not the misguided kind of love that lets another person get away with bad behavior because you love them or because you don’t like confrontation, not the insulated kind of love that keeps you focused on each other and your personal preferences instead of facing outward.  I’m talking about a strong, muscular, burning love that pushes you ever forward and outward, forcing you to rise to challenges, urging you to be your best selves beyond your comfort zones, and representing Unitarian Universalism to the surrounding community like a bright light in darkness.  I wish you THAT kind of love.

While it is sad to many of you and to me that this ministry is ending, I’m still glad to be a UU minister and glad and grateful to have been YOUR minister.  I am grateful for how you've shared with me your deepest spiritual experiences, your doubts, your struggles, your joys.  You have allowed me into your homes and hospital rooms, let me bless your children and unite couples and grieve the losses of those we love who died.  In our weekly sharing on Sundays some of you have been kind enough to say you found inspiration and meaning in my poor words.  If I have said or done anything that was helpful, I am glad; if I have been less than helpful or hurtful in any way I humbly ask your forgiveness.

We have accomplished a great deal together, in this too-short period.  Some were for the recovery of the church; some were for greater interfaith connections; some were for the advancement of our movement as a whole.  Some were on the cutting edge of social justice issues, such as our work on wage theft, undocumented immigrants, affordable housing, saving Avondale Shipyard, the work to institutionalize and stabilize the Center for Ethical Living & Social Justice Renewal.  I’m proud of us, of you, for ALL of it.

With all its difficulties and challenges, and yes, sometimes pain, I still believe in church.  I still believe that a strong and united religious community based in liberal values is the best and most redemptive vehicle for change yet developed by human beings.  I not only believe in church as an institution and as a model of community, I specifically believe in THIS church.  I have loved this congregation from the first day I attended worship in the summer of 1983; my experience at First Church has often been a model to me in the years of my ministry away from you.  It was my honor and pleasure to come home to my city and home to my home church to serve as your minister after the Storm -- as I always said, it's been great to be with a congregation that didn't think I had an accent and where I didn't have to learn the history and culture.  While I am sad that our relationship must end, I am grateful to have served First Church and proud of all we accomplished in our time together.

From the beginning of my time with First Church back in the 1980s, I have been struck by your near-miraculous historical ability to rise above disaster and near-disaster, by your extremes of generosity, by your stubborn commitment in the face of challenges.  I have every faith in this congregation, and feel confident that at the end of the transition period you will be set to start a new settled ministry that will be healthy and productive.  As we come to the end of this ministry, I find myself filled with love for First Church.  I mean it now and I've always meant it -- I wish you love.

Flower Communion Sermon: “Messages From Flowers”

By the Rev. Melanie Morel-Ensminger

First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans

Sunday, May 12, 2013

In the Victorian era of the 19^th century in Europe and America, there was an elaborate language of flowers.  Using published flower directories called “floriographies,” a person could carefully put together an assortment of flowers to convey a particular message.  For instance, a bunch of pansies meant “thinking of you” while a spray of ambrosia signaled that the other person’s feelings of love were reciprocated.  Meanings of carnations depended on color, with yellow ones sending the message “you have disappointed me” and striped or variegated carnations meant either a straight-out “no” or a somewhat less negative “sorry I can’t be with you.”

While today we don’t expect our flower bouquets to do that much communication for us, it is still true that flowers can convey messages.  I remember when my son was about 12 and he got me to drive from our house to a flower shop and then all the way across the town we lived in and up a mountain to deliver a dozen discount roses for Valentines Day.  In the present, my spouse Eric stops regularly at Harkins the Florist in our neighborhood for spontaneous no-reason bouquets.  I guess those messages are obvious. 

But Eric says he’s been in Harkins at times when another man has come in and asked for an apology bouquet, and gotten the question, “Exactly how bad were you?”  I guess professional florists have different levels of bouquets for different degrees of apology.

There are the flowers presented at proms and flowers thrown at famous opera singers and ballet dancers and flowers given to moms and grandmothers on Mothers Day and flowers sent to loved ones in hospitals and flowers delivered when someone has died.  A parishioner came to see me this week bringing a beautiful bouquet of flowers from her garden.  Flowers say, I like you, I love you, I’m sorry, Congratulations, Thanks for everything, I hope you get better, I miss you, I honor and celebrate the life you lived.  They even say something like, “I don’t know what to say.”  So even though we in the 21^st century don’t have books to tell us what each kind of flower explicitly means, flowers still communicate.

In our religious movement, flowers are prominent in three notable ceremonies.  There is the rose with thorns removed that is given to parents at the close of a Baby Dedication & Naming ritual, to symbolize how parents wish to protect their babies from all that would harm them.  And there is the corresponding rose with thorns given to young people at their Coming-of-Age ceremony to show that the adults are ready to accept the young people into the adult community on their own terms, without trying to shelter them.

The 3^rd important religious ritual in Unitarian Universalism is the Flower Communion, which has several layers of meaning.  We remember and honor Norbert and Majia Capek, the courageous founders of Czech Unitarianism and heroes of the Nazi era.  We follow their intention for the flower ceremony by lifting up the value of diversity in religious community, and the reminder that human life is both beautiful and fragile, like flowers.  As they did, we make the children of our community a central part of the ceremony, to recognize their role as the future of the church.

But in every UU congregation that holds a Flower Communion, there are also the more particular meanings.  For a congregation in a time of transition, the flowers are appropriate because flowers are themselves a transition in the life of a plant.  No matter how showy, flowers are not the end product of a plant; they are a way station to fruit and new seed.  So flowers are a good reminder that a period of change, however uncomfortable, is temporary, and then comes the time of fruit and harvest.

In the same way that spouses and partners can apologize through the medium of flowers, a Flower Communion can be a small step in a journey of reconciliation and healing for a congregation experiencing some kind of conflict.  We have each brought a flower to represent ourselves, and we take home a flower that was brought by someone else, that stands for them.  In this way, we symbolically offer a bit of ourselves to each other in the congregation, and accept a part of another person in return.

For a congregation needing an infusion of positive feelings about the future, flowers are messengers of hope, saying, in effect, “There are good things to come.”   For congregations in the throes of emotion, flowers can say, “I hope we all feel better soon” and “See? There’s still lots of beauty and joy in the world.”

There is very little an outgoing minister can do to help with congregational healing in a time of transition – although unfortunately there is a LOT a minister could do that would be disruptive and cause further hurt and confusion.  I have been striving mightily to stay out of y’all’s way at this time and to make sure there is a clear space for your next minister to step into.

The healing and reconciliation that is needed in First Church can be helped by your next minister, but in point of fact, the real work must be done by all of you with each other.  You must remember that each of you is unique and fragile, beautiful and various.  You must decide that what you want in a liberal religious community is diversity, diversity of background, diversity of talents, diversity of opinions – and then you must devise your own ways of living comfortably with all that difference, finding ways to honor and incorporate the differences wherever you can.  You must come to grips with the fact that no one in the church is perfect and that like all humans everywhere, each of us makes mistakes.  You must take your courage in both hands and speak up when you think something might be amiss, and not let your questions and concerns go underground.  It is not mistakes that kill a community – it is the inability to process mistakes and learn from them and resolve not to make the same mistakes in the future.

Fragile, strong, supple, tender, beautiful, various, hopeful, joyful – so are the flowers of our Flower Communion and so are all of us.  Remember that, and treat each other accordingly.

May the blessing of the flowers be upon you. 


May their beauty beckon to you each morning 


And their loveliness lure you each day, 


And their tenderness caress you each night. 


May their delicate petals make you gentle, 


And their eyes make you aware. 


May their stems make you sturdy, 


And their reaching make you care.  

(from "Flowers have the Gift of Language" by Reginald Zottoli)

“The Whole Elephant”

by the Rev. Melanie Morel-Ensminger

First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans

Sunday, April 7, 2013

         This morning we try to look at the whole elephant.  I am reminded of a famous quote from the Buddhist teacher Suzuki roshi, which sort of sums up Buddhism and life, and the situation at First Church, in one sentence:  "Accept what is, as it is, and help it become its very best.”

         Of course what the wise roshi did not say is that first a community of people have to agree on “what is.”  Think of those blind folks and the elephant – they each had their point of view, and these points of view were very different, and seemed irreconcilable.  But what if they had gotten together and pooled their experiences, agreeing at the outset that each of their perspectives was valid but none of them was complete all by itself?  What if they had tried to put each of those viewpoints into a coherent whole?  Wouldn’t they have eventually gotten an idea of the whole elephant?

It’s been an exciting but sometimes painful period of time for this church community.  Since February, and ending with the vote after today’s service, we’ve been engaged in a process of openly sharing concerns and points of view about the future of ministry at First Church.  We found – surprise! that there were lots of opinions and perspectives.  For many if not most of us, this was a first-time experience of working out what could have been a conflict in an open and transparent group process.

Many of us have been trained, from our families of origin, in our intimate relationships, and in our workplaces, to keep conflict quiet and out of view.  We were often told not to tell things we knew to certain people – from the grade school warning, “Don’t tell Debbie what I’m about to say” to my mother’s well-intentioned, “Don’t tell your father, but…” Outside of a counseling context, few of us have had the healthy experience of sitting together in one spot and openly sharing our own feelings and experiences in front of diverse others, and then listening to their feelings and experiences, that may have differed, even drastically, from our own.  The process that First Church has just undergone is the kind of practice we can, and ought to, put into place in other areas of our lives.

I am proud of us, of this congregation that I love so much.  For the most part, folks have acted with integrity and compassion, and for the most part, communications have been open and responsible, mostly following guidelines recommended by Southern Regional director Reverend Kenn Hurto and our group process facilitator extraordinaire Valerie Lowe.  We can all be proud of the way the members and leaders of First Church have come through this process.  And I hope we all show our boundless gratitude to Valerie, and to Stephanie Baus and Alice Abel Kemp, who helped with the synthesis of all those meetings and gatherings and all those comments.  What a gift, what a blessing, their work has been for this congregation.  

During these months, we were often surprised by the differing points of view of our fellow congregants.  People who knew each other well found themselves with radically different perceptions and experiences and interpretations of the same events.  Sometimes we left a meeting still confirmed in our original opinions; sometimes we left having been changed by the experience of truly listening to and accepting the viewpoint of another person.  This is not surprising, because the interaction of individuals who may disagree but who respect and care for each other is the foundation of Unitarian Universalist theology.  After all, if we just wanted to be confirmed in the opinions we already had, there’d be no need to join a UU church, not just famous but notorious in some quarters for the diversity of beliefs and viewpoints inside.

In our outside lives, away from the covenantal relationship of being together in a Unitarian Universalist congregation, we usually feel that people with different opinions from ours are wrong.  In some cases, we kindly feel they are misinformed; sometimes, we go so far as to judge them as dishonest or having evil motives – in other words, we normally figure those with opposite opinions are misguided at best or villains at worst.

In the Children’s Story earlier in this service, we learn something completely different.  Every one of the blind men in the old story from the Jain tradition in India had experienced something true and real.  What they all discovered was exactly what we have discovered in our church process – there are no villains or bad guys, no one completely in the wrong, just human beings with our different points of view, our varying experiences, our diverse perspectives, our own emotions and feelings, each of us trying to do our best as we see it.  And we also learned something we should never, ever forget, whether in the church or out on the world:  we can’t see the whole elephant unless we know and share what each of us noticed in our exploration of it – we cannot put all the pieces together unless we listen to each other.

It’s become something of a cliché in counseling to say that conflict in a relationship is like an elephant in the room that everyone pretends not to see.  During these months, we have all looked at and touched and talked about the elephant, and told each other clearly and openly what we experienced.  This process shrinks the elephant a bit, since conflict often looms less large with transparency, but it does not make the elephant disappear.  Having finished the process and having listened to each other, now we can see and deal with the whole elephant, and not just the part we or our friends were holding.

It is both the glory and the challenge of Unitarian Universalism to be religiously diverse.  Unlike traditions where orthodoxy, or right thinking, is the norm, we stress orthopraxy, or right behavior.  Right behavior includes owning our true viewpoint, that is, being open and accountable about our needs and experiences and feelings, not ascribing them to nameless others or keeping how we feel a secret so we can act behind the scenes.  Right behavior also means receptivity and compassion towards differing points of view; right behavior requires respect and tolerance for those whose opinions are different from yours.  Right behavior also means acceptance when a decision does not go your way, and not campaigning endlessly for the majority to change a vote you don’t agree with.

Whatever happens in today’s vote, it is my hope that First Church will move swiftly with the help and guidance of the Committee on Ministry to create and covenant a Right Relations policy for our congregation, as our 2 sister congregations in the Greater New Orleans UU cluster have already done, and as the Unitarian Church in Baton Rouge has had in place for many years.  An understanding of and commitment to right behavior and right relationship can get a church community through almost any challenge.  A Right Relations process will make First Church a better and stronger and healthier church. 

The truth is, we need each other and all our differences.  Despite the many times that our diversity makes us uncomfortable or drives us crazy, we’ll never deal with the whole elephant without hearing and knowing each other’s point of view.  Like a jigsaw puzzle that’s missing crucial pieces, we never get the whole picture without everyone’s honest opinion and perspective being taken into consideration.

The original version of the story about the elephant and the blind men came with a moral.  Jainist teachers assert that there is always some truth in what someone else says, and:

Sometimes we can see that truth and sometimes not, because they may have a different perspective which we may not agree to.  So, rather than arguing like the blind men, we should say, “You have your reasons.”  This way we don’t get in arguments.  In Jainism, it is explained that truth can be stated in 7 different ways.  So, you can see how broad our religion is -- it teaches us to be tolerant towards others for their viewpoints.  This allows us to live in harmony with people of different thinking.  This is known as the Syadvada Anekantvad, or the theory of Manifold Predictions.

If the Jains can find 7 versions of the truth, it’s probably true that Unitarian Universalists can find dozens, if not hundreds.  Our Universalist ancestors believed in forgiveness and reconciliation because they believed that God forgave everyone, and thus they would end up having to spend eternity with people who had been their opponents and adversaries.  We UUs today may not all believe in God or in an afterlife, but we are all together now, here, and we may as well come together, hear each other, make decisions that take everyone into account, and when necessary, forgive and reconcile when the decisions are done.

         Conflict and differences of opinion over leaders and goals and directions are normal in any human group, and perhaps especially so in congregations.  People usually come to a church for the deepest and most emotional of reasons – they feel alone or adrift, they are lonely or afraid, they feel misunderstood or alienated, they need folks around them who will be supportive as they enter into something new and challenging, like a new city, a new job, a new relationship, a new child.  And it is always true that when people’s most fundamental feelings are involved there is the potential for conflict – because the things you don’t care much about don’t have the power to get you riled up.

         Through this process we have learned how to see the whole elephant – how to get the whole and complete picture, including everyone willing to be included, listening with respect and care to each other, opening ourselves to the possibility of alteration and being OK with standing pat after taking in the other points of view.  This is the way for First Church to go forward into the future, with all meaningful decisions.  Remember this process – it’s important.

         Long-time members know that First Church has been through much bigger challenges in its history, even its recent history, and thus everyone can have confidence that the church can rise through this one.  The members and friends of this congregation can and will pull together to help each other through whatever feelings there may be about whatever decisions get made.

         As religious liberals, as UUs, we are called to be courageous, even as trust is scary and the future is unknown.  We are also called to love, even as we disagree, and I know First Church will rise to this sacred calling.  Because that is who this church is.

March Martyrs Remembered

Forty-eight years ago this month, our country was changed by a group of people united across lines of religion, gender, class, and race.  Four of them – a young black Baptist deacon, a white Unitarian Universalist minister, a white Episcopal seminarian, and a white Unitarian Universalist Detroit laywoman – were murdered, shocking the conscience of the country, and resulting in the passing of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

In the winter and spring of 1965, Martin Luther King, Jr. and his lieutenants assumed leadership of a voting rights drive in Selma, Alabama, launching a campaign that they hoped would force Congress to enfranchise blacks across the South.  After “Bloody Sunday,” when state troopers set upon peaceful marchers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, King called for support from religious leaders across the country, and thousands of clergy, students, and lay people rushed to Selma.  Never before in history had so many people of all faiths and classes and colors come together to stand for human liberty.

Selma was no walk in the park; the campaign had already claimed one life, Jimmy Lee Jackson, the youngest deacon in the history of  St. James Baptist Church, who was shot while trying to protect his mother during an attack by police inside a crowded café following a peaceful protest.  Still, over 100 UUs responded to King, among them ministers Clark Olsen, Orloff Miller, James Reeb, Cliff Hoffman, and laymen Henry Hampton and Robert Hoehler.

After a demonstration on March 10, Olsen, Miller, and Reeb ate dinner at a black cafe, and were attacked as they were leaving by 4 white men with clubs.  Olsen and Miller were roughed up, but Reeb was hit squarely on his temple, and died the next day. 

After watching Reeb’s funeral on TV, Detroit UU Viola Liuzza told her husband and kids, “I’ve got to go.”  Taking the family car, she arrived in Selma and was made a shuttle driver with Leroy Moton, a 19-year-old Selma native, as her guide.  On March 25, returning to Selma from Montgomery, a carload of KKKers, one of them an FBI informant, fired a shotgun directly at Liuzza, killing her instantly.  Moton, covered in her blood, played dead and thus survived.

The fourth Selma martyr was Jonathan Daniels, a young white Episcopalian seminarian from New Hampshire.  Despite the murders of Jim Reeb and Viola Liuzza, he had bravely stayed on, trying to change the hearts and minds of white Episcopalians in Selma, teaching in voter registration schools, and driving volunteers.  He was killed by a shotgun blast from a white storekeeper that summer.  The storekeeper pleaded self-defense and was acquitted.

Jackson, Reeb, Luizza, and Daniels.  They remind us that freedom and equality are ex-pensive; some paid with their lives. They leave to us their unfinished work of equality and dignity – work that can only be done by people united across all the barriers that separate us.  May they inspire us in the work that remains.

Why We All Need The Goddess

A Sermon for Women's History Month
by The Rev. Melanie Morel-Ensminger
First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans

1st Reading:            

A Creed for Free Women (and such men as feel happy with it)           

by Elsa Gidlow

I am.

I am from and of The Mother.

I am as I am.

Wilfully harming none, none may question me.

As no free-growing tree serves another or requires to be served.

As no lion or lamb or mouse is bound or binds,

No plant or blade of grass nor ocean fish,

So I am not here to serve or be served.

I am Child of every Mother,

Mother of each daughter,

Sister of every woman,

And lover of whom I choose or chooses me.

Together or alone we dance Her Dance,

We do the work of The Mother,

She we called Goddess for human comprehension.

She, the Source, never-to-be-grasped Mystery,

Terrible Cauldron, Womb,

Spinning out of her the unimaginably small

And the immeasurably vast--

Galaxies, worlds, flaming suns--

And our Earth, fertile with her beneficence,

Here, offering tenderest flowers.

(Yet flowers whose roots may split rock.)

I, we, Mother, Sisters, Lovers,

Infinitely small out of her vastness,

Yet our roots too may split rock,

Rock of the rigid, the oppressive

In human affairs.

Thus is She

And being of Her

Thus am I.

Powered by Her,

As she gives, I may give,

Even of my blood and breath:

But none may require it;

And none may question me.

I am. I am That I am.

2nd Reading:

i sat up one night   by ntozake shange

i sat up one nite walkin a boardin house

screamin/cryin/the ghost of another woman

who waz missin what i waz missin

i wanted to jump outta my bones

& be done wit myself

leave me alone

& go on in the wind

it waz too much

I fell into a numbness

til the only tree i cd see

took me up in her branches

held me in the breeze

made me dawn dew

that chill at daybreak

the sun wrapped me up swingin rose light everywhere

the sky laid over me like a million men

i waz cold/I waz burnin up/a child

& endlessly weavin garments for the moon

wit my tears

i found god in myself

& i loved her/I loved her fiercely

Sermon:

In honor of Women’s History Month, we take up a topic that has been suppressed and repressed over centuries, and only in the last 50 years or so has been rising again from the second wave of the women’s rights movement.  In this sermon we look the refeminization of the divine.  That our congregation is currently hosting the new, updated version of “Cakes for the Queen of Heaven,” the UUA curricula on feminist spirituality first published and brought to this church back in the 1980s, is an additional good reason for us to look at this phenomenon.

“Feminist spirituality” – now there’s an interesting term.  By that I mean the notion of the divine feminine, God as female.  I believe that it is important for us religious liberals to incorporate feminist spirituality into our worship, practice, and religious education.  

For some UUs, especially but not limited to those of older generations, the idea of God itself is suspect, and thus it seems extra meaningless to try to imagine God as female.  But many other UUs are finding, sometimes to their surprise, that learning about early goddess religions and visualizing the Divine as feminine has profound effects.  And these profound effects can cross age, gender, culture, and orientation boundary lines, opening up not only new perceptions but also widening a person’s internal view of themselves.  The original "Cakes for the Queen of Heaven" curricula had an introduction entitled "Why Women Need the Goddess."  But in this sermon, I am asserting that we ALL need the goddess – not just women, but men and children, and the earth, too. 

After all the insights of the second wave of the feminist movement in the 1960s, it might be obvious that women need the metaphor of the Goddess for 3 basic reasons:

1)  to celebrate and affirm the female body and its rhythms and cycles;

2)  to legitimate female power and to value female will; and

3)  to reflect the sacred power within women and children and nature, of birth and death, of creation and destruction, and to see their essential interconnectedness.

In a society -- our society! -- where certain properties and characteristics labeled female are devalued, where a particular kind of female body is objectified and made into a commodity for the marketplace, where women and girls are disproportionately at risk as victims of violent behavior in the home, at school, at work and on the street, women and girls surely need the transforming symbol of the Goddess.  The concept of the Goddess has much to offer women who are struggling to be rid of the established prejudices of the patriarchal system – that female power is evil, that the female body is a product, that female willpower and assertiveness is "bitchiness."  Hardly a week goes by when we don’t see in the news media stories of women being denied jobs or promotions or equal pay, or of sexual harassment on the job or at school.  And it’s not just “out of the world” where this is a problem – women UU ministers still don’t receive the same compensation as male ministers with the same level of training and experience, and are still not given the opportunity to be senior minister of our largest and most prosperous congregations at the same rates as male ministers.  (We've even lost ground in this area, as three of our largest congregations that had women Senior Ministers have chosen to call men as their successors.)  Fifty years after the second wave of feminism, we are still fighting some of the same old battles. 

Patriarchal religions such as Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam, are based on assumptions of male domination and female inferiority, despite relatively recent efforts in all three to mitigate women's position.  (While there are many positive aspects in all 4 religions, attempts at mitigation without addressing the underlying problem amounts to simply striving to make women more comfortable within their inferiority.  As Archbishop Tutu of South Africa once said of apartheid,,  "We don't want our chains made more comfortable – we want our chains removed.")

So we can agree that women need the Goddess, but what about men?  In a patriarchal structure, men, even those who are atheists, have a Father-God made in their own image, their father-son relationships are made sacred, and their primacy in the world made divine right.  So the thinking might be:  Men are just fine, they've got all the power – it’s women who need help, woman who need the Goddess.  Those men ready, through their own social or spiritual development, to reject the patriarchy and its religion can now move on ahead to agnosticism or atheism without considering anything else.  

But that would be wrong.  The devaluation of the human body, the spirit/flesh, sacred/ secular false dichotomy, the relegation of caring and nurturing solely to women, the glorification of violence as both erotica and entertainment, and the perception of nature as something to be used and consumed (thus bringing us to our current ecological crisis) – all of these have been just as injurious to men as to women.  (In The Temple of My Familiar, Alice Walker has one female character tell another, “Men are damaged by the system, as we are.”)  Oppressions always damage the group on top as much as the group on the bottom, only in different ways.  Assumed superiority is just as hurtful in its way as assumed inferiority.

Perhaps the saddest of the list of damages suffered by men under patriarchy is the separation of men from the processes of birth and the raising of children.  We are fortunate that, at least in some progressive families, this situation is beginning to change, although it is true that while men shoulder more of the responsibility than their fathers and grandfathers did, it is still overwhelmingly the woman’s job, even if she works outside the home.  But only when men are equally, lovingly involved in all aspects of childcare and child rearing that the children of our world will be valued and properly cared for.  As a matter of politics, workplace rules about time off for childcare will not change until men are more involved.  The nurturance of the next generation is truly human work, fit for all genders, and needing to be honored.  

 Finally, men need the Goddess and the power of that symbol in order to reclaim and value inside themselves those qualities that our patriarchal culture has categorized negatively as "feminine":  the powers of connection and realtionship, of birthing and creativity, of relating, of caring and feeling and emotion.  These are human qualities, and need to be developed and promoted in every person.  The current Men's Movement is beginning to address some of the issues involved in patriarchal assumptions, and how these have damaged men, and men's relationships with children and women as well as with each other.  But, still, how often have you seen a “joke” on a sit-com or a commercial about a man having to “turn in his man-card” for being too emotional or caring too much about some topic deemed strictly female?

But it is not only adult women and men who need the balancing corrective of the feminine divine.  Our children too need to know about the Goddess.  While many children strive to form their own views about God, especially lucky UU children, they are still members of a popular culture that places men on the top and claims that God is male.  It is both affirming and empowering for children to learn that there are many different ideas of God.  UU children need to be armed with liberal spiritual insights to counter the ones so prevalent in our culture.   Unitarian Universalist kids need to be able to see God as invisible "like the wind," God as animal, such as a lion or an eagle, God as mother, God as grandfather, God as a fellow child.  As adults, children with this kind of religious background might be expected to be open and welcoming to theological viewpoints different from their own—an important quality in adult Unitarian Universalists, and greatly needed in 21^st century America.

Women, men, and children need the Goddess as a life-affirming symbol of the power of the divine female.  But that’s not all.  The earth desperately needs the Goddess too.  One of the oldest names given to the earth, "Gaia," has also become the name of a scientific theory and movement that holds that the earth's matter – the air, water, and land surfaces, as well as the plant and animal life upon it – forms the complex system of a unified whole, that in fact, that we are all part of one living being.   The Gaia scientific movement has inspired in turn a religious movement, Creation Spirituality, and a political movement, Eco-Feminism or the Green Movement, all 3 of which stress interdependence and interrelationship, as does our 7^th UU principle.

Women and men raised in patriarchal religions and secular cultures – that is to say, we ourselves – have lost much of that sense of communion with the earth and the wider universe, that feeling of unity, oneness with all of creation, that our ancestors took for granted.  The Bible’s notion of stewardship, of being responsible for the upkeep of something that doesn't belong to you, has degenerated in our time to domination and control, with men having dominion over women, children, animals, and the fruits of the earth, as well as the earth itself.  The perversion of "stewardship" into "ownership" led directly to the depredations of the Industrial Age, the effects of which we are still suffering.

Many secularists and many UUs have rejected the unacceptable Father-God and all that goes with him – but ironically have nothing to take his place, leaving a vacuum.  Into this vacuum rush all kinds of ways to deaden our pain, to silence the spiritual yearning within.  Cosmically alienated individuals search for what they yearn for through mind-altering chemicals, the numbness of alcohol, immersion in work, and the temporary respite of sexuality without mutuality.  Our modern psychosis isolates us not only from ourselves and other humans, but also from the wholeness of creation and the kingdom of the spirit, which we deny because we associate it with the patriarchal religion we have rightly moved away from.  

In the lonely quest for they know-not-what, many estranged people fall victim to the easy answers of fundamentalism or the just-as-easy eternal skepticism of the irreligious.  Where do we go from here?  I say instead, let us reach out for the Goddess, to find out what it might mean for all of us, men and children and women and the earth, to have a concept of female divinity.

There's a practical reason for UUs to include the divine feminine as part of our congregational lives.  Younger people coming into our churches are not afraid of spirituality and theistic language.  They may well be dissatisfied with the religions of their past, if they had one at all, but they have not rejected all religion.  They are not only willing to explore diverse interpretations of the spiritual, they seem to realize intuitively that more spirit is exactly what their lives of estrangement and separation need.  We will lose our young people unless we are willing to explore feminist spirituality within the context of our Unitarian Universalist "free and responsible search for truth and meaning."   That includes the Goddess.

All of us, men and women and children, need the Goddess, for wholeness, for healing, for transformation, for our present and for our future.  We need the Goddess for she reveals something about ourselves and our lives, something that has been missing, something we’ve been yearning for.  The realm of the spirit is alive and it is oceanic in its diversity.  It is just as wrong to claim no name for it as it is to claim only one.  Marge Piercy speaks of the challenge of naming in a poem:

Like any poet I wrestle the holy name

and know there is no wording finally

can map, constrain or summon that fierce

voice whose long wind lifts my hair

chills my skin and fills my lungs

to bursting.  I serve the word

I cannot name, who names me daily,

who speaks me out by whispers and shouts.

Truly, the Shekinah – the spirit of God/dess – lives in each of us, if we will only stop and listen to those "whispers and shouts."  Grateful for the religious pluralism that is our heritage as Unitarian Universalists, let us celebrate what we ALL might gain in knowing and honoring the Goddess.  So might this be!   AMEN – ASHE – SHALOM – SALAAM – NAMASTE – BLESSED BE!

“Looking Behind, Looking Ahead”

A Sermon for the 180th Anniversary of

First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans

The Rev. Melanie Morel-Ensminger

Sunday, February 24, 2013

Only two years after being seated on the Mississippi Presbytery as the minister of First Presbyterian Church of New Orleans, The Rev. Theodore Clapp had formal charges of heresy and immoral conduct lodged against him.  The proceedings ground on for 6 long years, back and forth.  Finally, Parson Clapp, as he was familiarly known, was convicted of heresy (the immorality charge was dropped) in December of 1832.

It was a fair verdict – Parson Clapp WAS a heretic.  In his sermons, he had denied the divinity of Jesus and the doctrine of the Trinity, asserted that Sabbath observance was optional, and said he did not believe in intercessory prayer.  Perhaps even more disturbing to the Presbyterian authorities was his rejection of hell and the doctrine of eternal damnation (he was famously inspired to universalism while at a party at a parishioner's home). 

News traveled slowly those days.  Word of Clapp’s conviction did not reach New Orleans until February of 1833.  Meetings were held – and we have to assume in the homes of members as well as at church – and many discussions ensued.  (Good thing they had neither email nor parking lots.) 

As with any issue in any church at any time, people were divided.  There were folks were wanted to keep Parson Clapp as minister and those who were appalled by his heresy.  On February 26, 1833, a majority of the congregation voted to keep Clapp and to remove their congregation from the Presbyterian faith.  (The minority retained their ties to Presbyterianism, and their descendants are our neighbors at First Presbyterian across Claiborne Avenue.)  In 1837, the congregation was listed in the directory of the American Unitarian Association, and has remained ever since as a Unitarian, and later as a Unitarian Universalist, church.

 Since February 26, 1833, this congregation has weathered countless church fights, 6 major wars (the congregation really had to struggle to survive the Civil War and the Vietnam War, a hundred years apart), several local epidemics (Parson Clapp’s close observations of mass deaths in his diaries are still taught in epidemiology at Tulane Med School), and many cultural and social issues – emancipation, women’s suffrage, humanism, integration and civil rights, second-wave feminism, gay rights, paganism, the environment, to name a few -- that resulted in congregational conflicts.  The church has also survived and overcome bankruptcy, a fire, a firebombing, lack of building maintenance, a major church split, and of course the destruction of Hurricane Katrina.  We have had 2 ministers with tenure over 30 years, and a large number of short-term ministries, especially during periods of stress, such as after the Civil War and during the Depression.   (Our current average ministry, not counting interims, since Rev. Albert D’Orlando’s retirement in 1979 is slightly over 6 years.)

Even during Parson Clapp’s ministry, when so many non-members attended services that the church’s nickname was The Strangers Church, the actual official membership has been rather small.  With the exception of a short post-World War II period of the Baby Boom, the church has never had a large bustling membership.  And yet, over our history our church has had an outsize impact on the important justice issues of our day in every era.

At this time, the week of our 180^th anniversary as a heretical progressive religious congregation, we look back at our past to gain inspiration and hope.  We know what our church’s ancestors faced, and what they managed to overcome.  We draw the spiritual conclusion that we can certainly overcome whatever challenges we have to face in the present, since our current troubles really don’t seem as bad as what we’ve already triumphed over.

We learn a spiritual lesson from our looking back – that it’s important that the majority of church members prevail when there’s a conflict.  Conflicts are messy and uncomfortable, and conflicts are usually NOT what most folks come to church for – but only by sticking with the church through such hard times can the congregational majority achieve what they want.  It was a minority in the church who wanted to stay Presbyterian and get rid of Parson Clapp; it was a minority who disliked the methods and message of Rev. D’Orlando; it was a minority who were afraid of what standing up publicly for gay rights would mean.  But because congregational decisions were arrived at democratically, the majority was able to move ahead in the directions they had chosen for themselves.  Democracy in all its complications and participation when the going gets gets rough become for us a spiritual discipline, and like most spiritual disciplines, hard to stick to.

Another lesson we learn from First Church history is that there are few quiet times in liberal religious life.  While some of us might long sometimes for the quiet meditative sort of spirituality characteristic of Quakerism or Buddhism or cloistered Christianity, Unitarian Universalism is usually NOT that kind of faith and New Orleans is not that kind of city.  We are a religion of action, a religion of words, and quite often, a religion of conflict, in a city vibrant with sound and music and coping always with the mechanisms of change.

A third important learning from First Church’s past that we carry forward with us is the importance of our young people.  Especially since the 20^th century, and I would especially lift up the interim ministry of Rev. Krista Taves, the education of our children and their participation in the life of the church has been a major hallmark of our religious identity, and since Hurricane Katrina, an important engine of our recovery and renewal.  If we were not known in the community and among the other local UU churches for high-quality, professional religious education for children and a lively group for youth, we would be a much, much smaller congregation than we are.  And it is not just in numbers that our young people have enriched us – they have brought major issues to our attention with their passion and commitment.

We look forward also assured that while social justice issues can certainly rile up the folks and cause a ruckus, they also energize and revitalize our wider ministries.  I cannot tell you how wonderful it is for me to go places in the city and have strangers congratulate me on the things First Church stands for.  This city needs and wants our voices and our bodies, and we are strengthened by adding our partnerships in the Center for Ethical Living & Social Justice Renewal, the Greater New Orleans UU cluster, and the New Orleans AIDS Task Force as part of our public ministry.

What lies in our future no one knows, but we can perhaps discern some patterns.  The largest and healthiest churches in our denomination have long stable ministries, so that is something we ought to strive for (no matter who that minister is) as we also work towards financial stability.  It has been predicted at one UU conference recently that the coming trend is conjoined congregations in one locality, reducing duplication of effort and sharing resources and even paid staff – so we may want to look to make our connections with the Greater New Orleans UU cluster even stronger.  First Church has spent a large of our history disconnected from the wider UU movement, and yet the UU friendships we developed after Katrina might help us to be more UU than ever, keeping abreast of what’s happening in our faith tradition, and appropriately utilizing the resources that the UUA and the District and the Region can offer us.

And finally, our theological evolution over 180 years has been tremendous.  From our start as a Presbyterian congregation, we became unorthodox, liberal Christian; moved first toward a radical humanism that evolved almost into its own orthodoxy; and then embraced earth-based and feminist spirituality and neo-paganism.  We incorporated Buddhist meditation and Jewish holidays into our worship.  Liberal Christianity circled back into our congregation under Rev. Suzanne Meyer (whose Candidating Sermon back in 1988 was controversially entitled “Just as I Am, Without One Plea” after the traditional Baptist altar-call hymn).  Rev. Marta Valentin brought a new mysticism into our services post-Katrina.  The Feeling Ultimate Life & Love Group, called the FULL Group, showed a core group at First Church who were willing and even eager to explore a wide variety of spiritual disciplines.  We are at our best at First Church when our worship life engages people physically, intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually, and encourages members to go deep in whatever spiritual path they have chosen.

Democracy, controversy, religious education, engagement in social justice – this is what we carry forward with us from our 180-year history.  Financial and ministerial stability, strong lateral relationships and connections with the larger Unitarian Universalist movement, and internal theological and spiritual diversity are part of what we hope to fully realize as we face our next 180 years.

As Jyaphia Christos-Rodgers wrote for our 175^th anniversary:  “The fleur de lis, the chalice, and the flame, together rising from the water, rising from the soul of a people, in a city that remembers with care.”  As we have before, we will again – we rise.  We rise from and with our city.  We rise with and because of our sisters and brothers in faith, those close by and those far away.  We rise because of our love for each other and our commitment to this faith and this church.  No matter what, we rise.  We rise.  We rise.