Rev. Melanie Morel-Ensminger

Following a Star (or something like one"

2012-01-19T08:33:00.000-08:00

A Sermon for Epiphany
The Rev. Melanie Morel-Ensminger
First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans
Sunday, January 8, 2012

This morning we come to the end of our holiday series, which took us through Buddhist Bodhi Day, Hindu Divali, Jewish Hanukkah, Pagan Yule, African-American Kwanzaa, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and New Year’s Day. (Don’t forget our Jazz Funeral for the Old Year on January 22, when the UUA Board will be our special guests.) Today’s service highlights what in the Greek and Russian Orthodox religious traditions is considered their Christmas, and in the New Orleans cultural tradition is considered the start of Carnival, and it’s also been the customary day to take down your Christmas tree. That day is January 6th, variously known as the Epiphany, the Feast of the Magi, Three Kings Day, and the Twelfth Day of Christmas.

The holiday commemorates the familiar episode in the nativity story related in the gospel of Matthew, in which wise men from the East, called magi (a Persian word that is the root of the word as “magic,” which means priests of the Zoroaster), follow a star that leads them to baby Jesus, whom they present with rich and highly symbolic gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. That 3 gifts that are mentioned led to a tradition that there were 3 men, but the Bible story does not give a number for the traveling wise men, nor were they kings, but hey, that’s the way myths develop. To help us celebrate in true New Orleans style, we will have authentic New Orleans kingcake at Coffeehour. Look out for the little plastic babydoll baked inside the cake – if you get it, it means you’re the king or queen of the day! The custom is that whoever gets the baby brings the kingcake next week, but don't feel obligated.

Over the holidays, I watched a program on PBS on the historical and scientific scholarship on the story of the magi – about where the wise men might have come from, how long their journey must have taken, whether they followed an actual star, or whether it could have been an unusual alignment of planets. It was fascinating, and I learned some things I didn’t already know, and someday, I just may preach about all that stuff – the back story, if you will, of the holiday myth.

But this is not that Sunday. Right now, today, I don’t care 2 figs if the story of the wise men and the star they followed is true is any verifiable sense, or if there’s a scientific explanation of the star that may or may not have been leading whatever number of wise men from wherever the hell they might have been from. That’s not important to me right now. What’s important is here’s this lovely story that millions of people have been telling for close to 2 thousand years, about some folks who were led on a long and difficult journey toward something they judged so important that they called it sacred, something that made them leave their comfort zones, something that drew them onward and outward to a place of hope and joy.

All of us need something in our lives – a touchstone, a lodestar – that points beyond ourselves and our own selfish needs and immediate concerns. The North Star was once considered essential for navigation and direction; it was called by sailors and explorers the lodestar; in the centuries since then, the term has come to refer to anything that leads or guides, that serves as inspiration or model. All of us need something to help direct us, to propel us forward when life’s events batter us and challenge our hopes for the future.

For some of us, that star might be another person. It might be our partner. Some of us were fortunate to find life mates early, when both were young and just forming, adult lives just beginning. Others of us found the loves of our lives only after years of mistakes and lonely wandering. Either way, when you have united with the right person, you have someone who watches your back, who supports and encourages you, someone whose loving critique call you back to your best self when you are tempted to lose your way. When you have found such a person, you might well sing to them, “You are my lucky star.”

For others of us, our lucky star might be a child, our own or a grandchild or a beloved niece or nephew or just a child we are close to. For short periods, we are granted the gift of seeing life through their eyes, and can behold, however briefly, the glory and beauty and wonder of the most prosaic things. We find inspiration in their optimism, their sense of possibility, their unconditional love; we are energized by their unquenchable spirits. We are inspired by the purity of their vision.

There are those among us for whom the guiding star is an ideal, like justice or peace. Our star always goes before us, lighting a way that has never been before, guiding and directing us, inspiring us to ever-greater feats of strength and courage. While we may sometimes falter, our star twinkles in a dark sky, and we find ourselves once again on the long path to recreate the world as a better place. And then there are those of us who feel guided by a relationship with the Infinite or Spirit of Life or God or Higher Power. Whether we feel this connection through prayer or through formal meditation or during devotional reading of sacred books or in natural settings, alone or in groups, we feel refreshed and renewed by our contact with the spirit that animates the universe. When we are low, we draw on that power and find it inexhaustible, leading us onward to greater meaning and purpose.

Many of us, like me, have found ourselves with different guiding stars at different times in our lives. Maybe we had no partner and we found our life’s purpose in important causes or in our spiritual lives. Maybe a time came when we had or adopted a child, or became connected to one through another relationship, and we unexpectedly found inspiration in that child’s trust and confidence. Maybe the love of a child brought us almost without volition to consider religion. Maybe a time came in our lives when we found a person to share ourselves with and suddenly it was as though every-thing fit together at long last. Or perhaps you are a person with more than one lodestar – there’s no law that says you can have only one!

What is the star in your life? What light do you follow? What shines before you and draws you ever onward? Each of us has something in our lives we consider larger and more important than ourselves, something that gives our lives hope and joy and meaning, something that shines in the dark-ness and brings us out of our times of despair and alienation. Everyone follows a star, or something like a star, even though not all of us describe it that way.

But not all stars are created equal – beware what it is that you give priority to in your life, what you make into your guiding light. Hedonism, personal pleasure, is ultimately empty and leads inevitably to the crushing burden of financial debt, substance abuse, or meaningless sex without authentic intimacy. You cannot buy or drink or party your way into fulfillment and wholeness. It never works, it always backfires. Even the love and commitment to another person, your spouse or your child, can be selfish and limiting; it will not work as a guiding star unless that more personal love leads to a wider compassion and love for other people, other children.

In the Monty Python spoof of the Christian story, The Life of Brian, the wise men get bad directions and end up at the wrong house in Bethlehem, and hilarious complications ensue. But in real life, following the wrong star can have drastic and tragic consequences. When you faithfully follow your true star, your life is deepened, and while you still encounter losses and challenges, you are better able to deal with what life deals out. That is the measure of whether the star you are following is the right one – are you better or less equipped to handle anger, grief, and setbacks? Do you generally feel more or less whole and healthy and fulfilled as a person? If you cannot answer these questions in positively, then it is time to re-think the direction in which you are going. It is time to choose another lodestar.

The wise men faithfully followed a star, and found what they were looking for, and it was for the good of all people. May the stars we follow be the same for us. AMEN – ASHE – SHALOM – SALAAM – NAMASTE – BLESSED BE!

Christmas Eve Homily:

2012-01-03T12:17:00.000-08:00

“No Chorus, No Lights, Just a Whisper”
The Reverend Melanie Morel-Ensminger
First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans
December 24, 2011

In Old Testament times, shepherds were not reputable people. They were not well-off owners of valuable livestock – in fact, they were mere hired hands, looking after someone else’s valuable livestock. Their job was to keep the sheep alive, make sure they were not stolen, eaten by wolves, or just plain lost. In fact, shepherds had such a bad reputation in those days that years later when the adult Jesus told a story about a “good shepherd” it was as shocking to his listeners as his other parable, The Good Samaritan. It was unheard-of. Everyone knew shepherds were unreliable, dirty and smelly from living amongst the flocks, and likely not honest. (Most owners would probably go look first at the shepherd’s hut if a lamb was reported “lost.”) I’ve often thought about how Mary and Joseph must have reacted when the odiferous and unruly group of shepherds piled into the stable that night so long ago.

But, as we are told in the classic Christmas story, “The Shepherd’s Whisper,” first published in 1941 by the newspaper columnist Heywood C. Broun (not his son the sportscaster) not all of the shepherds gathered on the hill outside Bethlehem that night went to follow the star and see the newborn baby. One shepherd, Amos, stayed behind.

He wasn’t nasty about it or anything. As he kept telling his colleagues, it wasn’t in his heart. He didn’t feel moved to go, and he certainly wasn’t going to go just because everyone else was. Plus, he had an important job to do: watch over a flock of frightened sheep to keep them from hurting themselves, for as everyone knows, sheep can panic easily and end up over a cliff or in a pile, with lots of injuries. And on top of all that, one of his ewes was near term, and would need his assistance with the birthing of her lamb. So he refused to go, stubbornly sticking to his guns in the face of ridicule and cajoling and even anger from the other shepherds (who apparently, true to form, felt no compunction at all about leaving behind all those valuable sheep to fend for themselves.) It was not in his heart, he had important responsibilities, he would abide.

It’s not that he didn’t see the bright angels, or hear them singing their joyous song, or notice the unearthly radiance lighting up the midnight sky. He saw, he heard, he noticed – but he remained unmoved. Signs from God, voices of commanding angels with voices like thunder, heavenly songs, weird bright stars – it worked for all the other shepherds, but not for Amos. It was not in his heart, he had important responsibilities, he would abide.

I like to think of Amos as one of the world’s first religious skeptics, maybe a proto-Unitarian Universalist. A staunch Humanist parishioner of mine years ago in Chattanooga once commented in answer to a jesting question that if he did hear the voice of God telling him to go do something, he’d get a check-up to see what was wrong with him. Let’s face it, for many of us religious liberals, choruses of angelic song and bursts of heavenly light just don’t have the effect on us that they seem to have on more conventionally religious folk. Some of us need something less dramatic.

A whisper told Amos that he was a Divine figure to the helpless sheep which depended on him. A whisper told him that he too could be a Savior in his own way. A whisper told him, that lowly and despised as he was, even as his concerns were dismissed by the other shepherds, that he had the ability to make his own choice. And he made it. How UU is that?

Despite all the fuss made over the centuries over the lights, the angels, the star, the chorus of voices and all, perhaps the real message of Christmas lies in Amos’s whisper. After all, if there were too much noise that night, how would anybody hear if the baby started crying? Or if one scared sheep bleated out in pain?

If we allow the sacred message of Christmas to be drowned out in loud tape recordings of carols we used to like but are now sick of, holiday jingles rewriting favorite Christmas songs til we can no longer remember the original words, frantic bell ringing that’s supposed to sound joyful, and peevish arguments over whether it’s better to say, “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Holidays,” then we will not be able to hear the more important but less flashy sounds of the season.

The most important things about Christmas are not the angels, the singing, or the lights. Despite all that, Jesus was born to two ordinary people in a country occupied by a foreign power. They are not well-off, not famous, not (despite the genealogies of Joseph in the nativity story of Matthew) of royal blood or lineage. They’re pretty much working class. Because of some bureaucratic order, they’re on the road, with no good place to stay, so they’re stuck sleeping with somebody’s animals. And yet the baby born that night grew up to change the world, and is still changing the world through the power of his teachings.

Mary and Joseph could be any homeless couple anywhere, like the man and his wife sleeping on a grate in Washington DC, a few days after Christmas in 1991. My son, then 9, tried to give them the $20 bill his Nana had given him but the man refused to take it. “I can’t take your Christmas money, baby,” he told Stevie. Instead, the man did accept some bills from my son’s father, and we were left to explain to Stevie about the man's pride not letting him take a large bill from a child.

That couple’s children could grow up to change the world. Children sleeping tonight at the Salvation Army Shelter just down the street from the church could grow up to change the world. Children in Central City could grow up to change the world. Children of undocumented workers could grow up to change the world. Children born tonight in University Hospital, in a barrio, on a reservation, in Iraq or Pakistan, could grow up to change the world. Unfortunately, little Keira Holmes will not grow up to change the world because she was killed this week in a shoot-out across the courtyard of the “Callio” housing project.

The whisper we need to hear says that each child, each person, each one of us, is important, no matter the status of our parents or the economic resources of our family, no matter our race or ethnicity or sexual orientation or gender identity, or what country we live in or what country we’re from. The whisper we need to hear says that since we have the potential to change the world, the decisions we make matter, the choices we make matter.

Let us draw hope and strength and courage from that message. Let us be inspired by the shepherd Amos to make our best efforts to be Divine figures, to be our own kind of Saviors, to be the people who change the world for the better.

“Sitting on Our Ticket” A Homily for Advent

2011-12-13T12:46:00.000-08:00

By the Rev. Melanie Morel-Ensminger
First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans
Sunday, December 10, 2011

This service begins a series for the winter holiday season. Next Sunday, we will celebrate our Winter Holidays of Light ser-vice, and will decorate the church tree. On December 21, in honor of the Winter Solstice and the longest night of the year, we will hold our annual Candlelight Labyrinth Walk at 6:30 pm. On Saturday evening, Christmas Eve, also at 6:30 pm, we will celebrate the birth of the Christ Child with a traditional service of lessons and carols and an open-table communion. After the service, there will be an Open House with Christmas goodies and hot cider to share. Then, on Christmas Day, we will delay our service til 11 am to give folks time to open presents, and I’ll lead a simple circle of sharing. On New Year’s Day, the service will also be delayed til 11 am, and our Director of Religious Education Lydia Pélot-Hobbs will lead an informal service. On January 8, we’ll mark Epiphany or Kings Day and will share kingcake at Coffeehour. Our annual Greater New Orleans UU cluster Jazz Funeral for the Old Year with a Dixieland band is set for January 22, so that we can enjoy it with the Board of Trustees of the Unitarian Universalist Association, meeting in New Orleans for the first time since Katrina.

This morning we look at Advent. For Christians, it is a time of waiting and quiet reflection before Christmas; it symbolizes the time of waiting for the birth of the Christ. For many children, Advent is the countdown to presents on Christmas Day, and there are literally thousands of Advent calendars to help make waiting easier.

Sometimes waiting can be positive. The old adage, “Good things come to those who wait” – said by many of our parents – became a common saying because it’s often true. Some things can’t be rushed. No matter what you do or what you want, babies take 9 months, seedlings take 2-3 weeks, bread dough takes about 40 minutes to rise, new kitchens take however long they take.

Unitarian Universalism is a religion of action, not of words, not even of meditation and prayer, although of course many UUs DO meditate or pray. Our historic watchword has long been, “Deeds not creeds.” Waiting is a form of inaction, and is not comfortable for most Unitarian Universalists. Waiting can even be harmful, especially if immediate action is called for.
If your toddler is wandering off in a mall parking lot, for instance, or if your kitchen catches fire while you are preparing your holiday dinner, waiting is not a good thing. In the story by Arnold Lobel, "The Letter," Toad glumly waits for a letter to come in the mail – even though his best friend Frog is right in front of him. In the story by UU minister Robert Fulghum, a young woman sobs in the Hong Kong airport about her lost ticket home – which she is sitting on top of. Waiting is sometimes the wrong thing to do, especially if it keeps people from doing what needs to be done.

The young woman in the Fulghum story had everything she needed to move on, but she didn’t know it. She was stuck, over-come with powerful negative emotions that glued her to her seat; she felt helpless and lost and confused and sad. So she sat and sobbed. If she had gotten up off her chair, she would have discovered that it was in her power to get where she wanted to go. No one was preventing her from getting there, she was stopping herself. She was sitting on her ticket.

In our congregational situation, waiting would also be wrong. No matter what decisions the Board makes, there’s important work to be done right now, and no reason to wait. The faithful, faith-filled work of coming back together as a congregation, of forgiving and reconciling with each other, cannot wait, and must be done now. We must start as soon as possible to learn clear UU pro-cesses and procedures and implement them; we must mend fences with our district and re-establish communications with the wider UUA. We must not succumb to the temptation to “sit on our ticket.” We already have everything we need to move ahead right now, to educate ourselves, to heal the congregation, to practice forgiveness, to better organize our committees and teams to perform their responsibilities in our shared ministry, to encourage attendance at district workshops so that our lay leaders can learn to be better church leaders. Waiting on any of this would be wrong.

Several years ago, in the newsletter of the Church of the Larger Fellowship, Eliza Blanchard wrote a short Advent meditation:

For Christians, [Advent] calls for reflection as well as joyful anticipation, since the infant they await represents redemption, salvation in the hereafter. For those of us focused on bringing about salvation in the here and now, the season offers us the opportunity to ask: What are we waiting for? There is no one anticipated event that we expect will save the world.… During this season, we may rest for a while in the glow of holiday lights, but we do not wait. We will not stop working for all to share life’s blessings. We light our lights, pick an avenue for change, and work in the world, knowing we have the power to make it a better place.

You know those holiday commercials that urge you to buy now, saying: “Don’t delay! Operators are standing by!” Let’s take those words to heart spiritually. We don’t have to wait; in fact, we should act right away. There is work to be done, and no reason to wait. Your family needs you, your church needs you, your city needs you, the world needs you. Don’t delay! Get up off your ticket! So might this be! AMEN – ASHE – SHALOM – SALAAM – NAMASTE – BLESSED BE!

“What Are We Waiting For?”

2011-12-07T12:51:00.000-08:00

A Sermon for Advent
by the Rev. Melanie Morel-Ensminger
North Shore Unitarian Universalists
Sunday, December 4, 2011

This morning we mark the season of Advent along with our sisters and brothers in the Christian community all over the world. This Advent service is part of our on-going holiday celebration, which begins with this service, and continues next Sunday with the Intergenerational Holidays of Lights service. After that, North Shore will enjoy a beautiful service of special Holiday Music. Just as a reminder, there will be NO service at North Shore on December 25, Christmas Day, when everyone is encouraged to enjoy their sacred time with their loved ones.

The folk at First Church want to invite you all to a special Winter Solstice Candlelight Labyrinth Walk in our Sanctuary on the night of December 21st at 6:30 pm. It’s a beautiful service, and a wonderful way to mark the longest night of the year and the turn of the seasons.

The UU holiday celebrations will continue into the new year as the congregations of the Greater New Orleans UU cluster come together with the President, Moderator, and Board of Trustees of the UUA to hold our annual Jazz Funeral for the Old Year on January 22. That service will begin at 11 am.

The word “advent” comes from the same root word as “adventure,” and means the anticipated arrival of an important something or someone. On the Christian liturgical calendar, the 4 weeks of Advent are said to represent 4,000 years of the faithful waiting for the Messiah. Orthodox Christians are still waiting, this time for what they believe will be the second advent, or second coming, of Christ at the end of all time.

As Unitarian Universalists, inheritors of a long and proud liberal religious tradition, Advent is still a time of anticipation for something important that’s coming, but we do not believe that our job is simply to wait. We religious liberals do not just wait, we also work for the changes that will bring about the new world we anticipate and hope for.

This sense of humanity being co-responsible with God for bringing about of the world of justice and peace and harmony is also a very Jewish idea. The concept that God needs us to help heal the broken world -- tikkun olam in Hebrew -- is characteristic of Hassidic Judaism and has become a hallmark in progressive Jewish circles as well.

In the early years of the 20th century, the proponents of the Social Gospel, some of them Unitarian and Universalist, brought that same idea to liberal Christianity, insisting that the Kingdom of Heaven that Jesus spoke of required the work of human beings in order to be completed. It was not enough, these reformers insisted, to be pious and to attend church and to read the Bible. Religion could not be separate from the way people lived their lives in the world -- instead, actions must be taken to bring Biblical ideas of equity and mercy to bear on current-day social issues. During this turbulent period of history, the NAACP was founded (with Unitarian minister John Haynes Holmes as one of the original co-founders), social service organizations were developed, and religious folk of many different Christian denominations got involved in advocating for racial justice, improving facilities and treatment for the mentally ill, prison reform, and changes in immigration law.

Although the Social Gospel movement lost energy and steam after the 2 world wars, when it became difficult to sustain a movement based on the idea of the improveability of humanity, the basic foundational concept of human beings in partnership with the Divine to bring about the Realm of God, the world of justice and peace, has never been lost. The idea that we human beings have a duty to help build the Peaceable Kingdom by the way we live our lives and how we behave and treat one another is still one of the most important aspects of religious liberalism. We do not believe that we are passive recipients of God’s favor, or that we are helpless pawns of an indifferent fate -- we believe that what we do can make a positive difference in the world. Not only that, but we believe that we have a moral and ethical responsibility to do so.

I do not know if this story is true, that it actually happened. But it feels true, and it should have happened. In the way that we can learn even from fictional stories, I offer this one to you: A story is told of a rural town in England that was badly damaged during the Second World War, and which began its heart-breaking and weary work of restoration when the war finally ended. In the old town square had stood a large statue of Jesus with his hands outstretched in an attitude of invitation. On the pedestal were carved the words, “Come unto me.” One night, during a night-time bombing raid, the statue had been reduced to rubble.
With the aid of master artists and sculptors, the statue was eventually reassembled -- all except for the hands, for no usable fragments could be found. It was thought that the artists could be asked to fashion new hands for the statue. But when word got out of the proposal, a public protest went up, and the people of the town insisted that the statue be left without hands.
Today, in the public square of that English town, stands a restored statue of Jesus, arms open wide, but without hands. On the base are carved the words, “He has no hands but ours!”

No hands but ours. We are the hands of God, Divine instruments for doing what must be done in the world. God has no hands but ours, and there is so much work still to do.

Advent may be a time of waiting, but what are we waiting for? Unitarian Universalists, whether theist or not, do not believe in the theological concept of an outside savior; we are not hoping and waiting for a Messiah; we do not have the luxury of thinking that a deus ex machina will arrive at the climatic moment and save the day. The time is now, and there are no hands but ours. AMEN – ASHE – SHALOM – SALAAM – NAMASTE – BLESSED BE!

“Eid Al Adha – Sacrifice & Delight”

2011-11-08T09:49:00.000-08:00

A Sermon by the Rev. Melanie Morel-Ensminger
First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans
Sunday, November 8, 2011

Today we look at the Muslim holiday of Eid al Adha, a holy time that celebrates the story told in the Qu’ran of the Patriarch Ibrahim’s willingness to obey Allah and sacrifice his son Ishmael. The willingness was enough, and at the last moment, Allah provided a lamb as a substitute sacrifice. For Jews and Christians, a similar story is told in scripture, only the Patriarch’s name is Abraham, the son is Isaac, and the sacrifice is a ram. For all three religions, the message is the same – honoring the dedication and commitment to God that leads to willing sacrifice, even of something treasured and beloved. (For those who look askance at a deity that would even ask such a thing, all three faiths stress that God did not allow the sacrifice to take place.)

If you think that this situation is one that could never happen today, think again. Just yesterday, on a reality television program (yes! I confess! I watch reality TV!) about in-laws in conflict, I watched as an over-protective mom demanded that her son-in-law sell his muscle car, a car he had lovingly restored and worked on since high school, in order to prove that he really loved his wife, her daughter. It was the worst thing in the world to that young man, and he agonized over it. As he delayed, the mother-in-law escalated her taunts. Then, as a tow truck arrived to take the car away, the son-in-law broke down and went inside the house to hide his emotions. The mother-in-law watched from the stoop as the car was hooked to the towline, and at the last minute, seeing that her son-in-law was willing to go through with it, she asked the tow truck driver to disengage. She was convinced the young man truly loved her daughter, and the sale itself was unnecessary.

“Sacrifice” is another one of those religious terms that we Unitarian Universalists have trouble with. In last week’s service, we looked at a selection from a young UU blogger who was near despair with this religious movement because of the inability or unwillingness of the UUs around her to discuss traditional terms like salvation, sin, and redemption in UU terms. The blogger Wondertwisted did not mention sacrifice, but she might well have added it to the list of words that UUs don’t want to talk about.

Sacrifice, like salvation last week, is a term that Unitarian Universalists can relate to better once we look at its original meaning. Sacrifice comes from two Latin words, sacer, holy or sacred, and facere, to make or to do – so its original sense was “to make holy” or “to perform a sacred function.” Like the familiar legend of the bluebonnets, of the Indian child who sacrifices her favorite doll in order to bring rain to her tribe, a sacrifice can be a giving away, a giving up, or a giving to one’s God. It is taking something that might be thought mundane or ordinary, and making it holy.

I want to talk about sacrifice today, and not just because today is the start of the Muslim holiday of Eid Al Adha, and not just because we religious liberals can relate to the original meaning of the word. I want to look squarely at the idea of sacrifice for religious liberals, because I believe sacrifice is not only essential to spiritual life, but to all meaningful relationships. I believe that sacrifice is inextricably intertwined with all the delight in our lives.

I know that’s a big statement, so let’s unpack it. Think of everything most important in our lives – intimate partnerships, parenting and grandparenting, being part of families, achieving success in careers and avocations, belonging to a religious community, even participating as active citizens in our country. Every single thing that we can name that is important to us requires a certain amount of sacrifice. Maybe we don’t use that word for our choices in all those different areas, but sacrifice is exactly what is happening.

Take your closest, most personal relationships, whether an intimate partnership, being a parent, or just being part of a family. In order for those connections to work and to satisfy us on emotional and spiritual levels, we have to give up at least a portion of some things that normally we hold dear – complete independence, total personal autonomy, the ability to do al-most anything we want anytime we want to do it. We sacrifice those things – even if we don’t think of it that way – for a higher good, the relationships, the connections, because we believe it is even more sacred to us than our freedom. And when things are going well and the relationship is in balance, we reap great delight from that sacrifice.

The same principle applies when we exercise our talents in work that is paid or in our favorite hobby or past-time. In order to get really good at cooking or playing trumpet or writing or selling or practicing medicine or law or whatever, we have to sacrifice some of our time in order to learn basic, intermediate, and then advanced skills in our field. We have to sacrifice financially, to be educated and trained in the area of our interest, perhaps also purchasing expensive tools or instruments or materials. But in the delight we get from gaining new skills and being able to get even better doing something we love doing, we tend not to think about the sacrifice involved.

What is true for intimate relationships and for work (whether paid or unpaid), is even more true in spirituality. Belonging to a faith community, committing ourselves to a religious path, requires sacrifice. Want to sleep late on the mornings of worship services and have all your after-work time to yourself? Gotta sacrifice that. Want to spend every cent of your money for your own and your family’s current and future pleasure and security? Gotta sacrifice that too. Want to have a life free of complications, conflicts, and challenging decisions? Oh yeah, gotta sacrifice that too.

No one in relationship, in religion, or in work is completely free. In order to be partnered, to be a parent or a grandparent, to be in religious or secular community, to excel at something, each one of us makes a sacrifice of some of our precious autonomy, our individuality, our ability to be on our own, our monetary resources. We sacrifice for our delight and most often find, when things are going well, that we don’t even think of it as sacrifice.

Many of you could tell a story of sacrifice if you began ot think of it that way. It might have been after Katrina, when you were living in evacuation in someplace maybe cleaner and safer than New Orleans, a place not riven by disaster. Maybe folks around you urged you to stay. But for whatever reasons crazy to outsiders, you gave up all that and came home to New Orleans, to your ruined house that had to be rebuilt, to your near-ruined city, and this near-ruined church. It was a sacrifice, given in love, for what you thought – and hopefully still think – was a higher good.

In the spring of 2007, when Board president Ann Maclaine called me in New Jersey to tell me First Church wanted me as your Consulting Minister, I was completely delighted and accepted at once. Only later – in fact, a few hours later, when my spouse Eric asked me about it – I had to sheepishly call her back and ask how much the compensation package was. I truly didn’t know, and frankly, I didn’t care. And when she told me a figure that was considerably below the Atlanta-area congregation that wanted me as their Interim Minister, it didn’t matter. It didn’t feel like a sacrifice, because I was coming home to New Orleans and to First Church.

Sacrifice and delight are indeed two sides of one coin. These two cannot be separated. If one is a devout Muslim or a Jew or a Christian, the sacrifices made in the name of Allah, Yahweh, or God, are worth it because of the religious delight one receives from adhering to the precepts of one’s faith and obedience to one’s God. Sacrificing for one’s partner – as that partner also sacrifices for you – builds our delight in one another. Sacrificing for one’s child, for the child’s health and well-being and future, is part of the delight of being a parent. Making certain sacrifices for one’s religious community and one’s home city, to ensure its health and continuity, enhances the delight we feel in those communities.

Of course, no one’s life is all sweetness and light, and none of us is always glad about the sacrifices we make. In fact, although it is true that most of the time – when things are going well – we don’t even think of what we’re doing as “sacrifice,” when we hit potholes and rough spots in our lives and relationships our sacrifices are suddenly revealed to us (and not in a good way). In times of conflict and controversy, things we once did for love are transmuted into onerous and painful sacrifices.

In really negative circumstances, we regret the sacrifices that we once made in perfect willingness; we might demand to be repaid (as when one former spouse demands recompense for putting the other former spouse through school), or we might want some kind of punishment to be inflicted on the party that hurt us, or we might draw a line on the sacrifices we’re willing to make in the future (as when parents decides not to loan their feckless adult child any more money).

When we begin to look at it that way, it might seem like sacrifice and delight are completely separate, or even that they are opposites. We might be tempted to say that when we’re happy, there’s no sacrifice, only delight, and that when things are bad, there’s no delight, only sacrifice. But underneath we know it’s not so. Sacrifice and delight are partners, and work together in all the most important aspects of our lives; it’s just that we don’t always see them in their true light.

So it is not a question of “Will I ever sacrifice?” or “Am I willing to sacrifice?” for the simple reason that, unless we are complete hedonists or complete hermits, we already ARE sacrificing in some area or aspect of our lives. The question is instead, “What in our lives gives us the most delight, is most valuable, most sacred, to us, and what are we willing to sacrifice for its sake?” An important follow-up question might be, “And am I willing to stay the course when things get difficult?” in our relationships and in our communities.

Eid Al Adha is a Muslim festival of sacrifice. It may sound strange to our ears, celebrating sacrifice. But maybe we too need a time to remind us that sacrifice brings delight, and to reflect on what is most valuable, most sacred, in our lives, to which we would willingly sacrifice. So might this be! AMEN – ASHE – SHALOM – SALAAM – NAMASTE – BLESSED BE!

“Salvation?”

2011-10-25T10:06:00.000-07:00

A Sermon by The Rev. Melanie Morel-Ensminger
Given at First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans
Sunday, October 23, 2011

Last August Music Director Betsy McGovern brought a new UU controversy to the attention of the Worship Team, all over a blog written by a young adult woman UU calling herself Wondertwisted, who posted a provocative piece entitled “A Dear John Letter to UUism.” Apparently the post generated comments all over the Internet and Facebook by UU ministers and lay UUs. I read the original essay and all the comments, and felt inspired to do this sermon. (Wondertwisted's blog can be found at http://wondertwisted.wordpress.com/2011/08/06/a-dear-john-letter-to-unitarian-universalism/ )

I was inspired to write this sermon, not just because there’s a recent uproar in our denomination, although that’s a good and legitimate reason to do a timely sermon, and not because I had read a book, but because I personally know something wonderful that I feel called upon to share. I want to talk about salvation in our church because I know that ours is a saving faith, because Unitarian Universalism saved my life.

I don’t mean that I was in physical danger, like the child trapped in the well in today's children’s story, or that I was in fear of losing my immortal soul after death, in the language of my Roman Catholic childhood. What Unitarian Universalism saved me from my own personal hell. As our former minister Suzanne Meyer preached in St. Louis in 2003:

…there are many kinds of private hells in which living men and women dwell every day. These are small personal hells of meaninglessness, banality, and loneliness. Hells of shame, hells of guilt, hells of loss, hells of failure. There are as many kinds of these small hells as there are people who live in them.

It didn’t feel like hell at first, as many of these small private hells do not. I thought I was finally, after years of struggle, on my way to financial security and material prosperity. I had a job I had worked hard to get and that for the most part I enjoyed. It was in high-level fashion retailing, a career I had aspired to since my teenage years. I had a beautiful little son and a marriage I thought was strong. If there were stirrings of feelings of loss, of something missing, of things not being quite or completely right, I diligently kept those emotions in check.

Even after our family first found Unitarian Universalism, here at First Church in 1983 (although in our former building at 1800 Jefferson), I still didn’t think that the church was mainly for me – I thought I was there for Sunday School for my son. Sure, I enjoyed the services, and I was glad to be making new friends, but it didn’t feel personal.

One thing I know for sure is that you can’t keep a deep and serious unhappiness a secret from your own body. I began experiencing stress-related physical symptoms – a mysterious rash that cleared up on my day off from the Laura Ashley store, lack of sleep, nightmares. I finally was diagnosed with cancer in 1985. I quit my job and underwent surgery, and spiraled into a depression. If I had to sum up how I felt, I would have to use words like shame, guilt, futility, uselessness, meaninglessness. In the words of the old hymn, I felt lost, I felt wretched.

I know Unitarian Universalism is a faith that deals with salvation because our faith saved my life. Within our faith and within this very congregation, I found purpose and meaning and community. I was, without elaborate or formal ritual, released from the burden of guilt and shame I was carrying. I was freed to believe, to have faith in, first of all, myself, and then in the power of life and love moving through community to make my life, and the world, better. I can hardly talk about this without great emotion, without choking up, because it means so much to me. “I was once was lost and now am found, ‘twas blind, but now I see.” That’s salvation, and I found it here.

I feel terrible about Wondertwisted’s heart-felt words and her less-than-good experiences with Unitarian Universalism. But I’ll tell you one thing that makes me feel even worse – the number of comments on her blog and on Facebook from UUs who discount what she shared, who basically tell her, “Move on if you don’t like it, we UUs don’t deal with salvation.”

Unitarian Universalism is, again in Suzanne Meyer’s words, in the business of saving souls. We are indeed a salvation faith. And we do this, not by promising people a better life after they die – in fact, we take no denominational position on any afterlife – and not by scaring folks about some terrible eternal place they end up after death. Most UUs believe that life on earth, this one right here, can be scary enough and terrible enough, without recourse to some after-life Hell. Our small private hells are sufficiently painful; I know that mine was.

Do you know what one of the most common reactions new people have to Unitarian Universalism? In essence, it’s “Where have y’all been all my life?” Nearly every new UU I speak to practically complains that they needed our saving faith at some challenging or sad point in their lives, but they didn’t know we were there. I resonate with that reaction, because it is similar to how I felt. And I feel now with all my heart that it’s almost a religious crime for us not to be shouting about Unitarian Universalism from the rooftops, especially from the rooftops of New Orleans, still reeling and wounded from Katrina, still filled with people chained up inside their own small private hells of alienation, loneliness, grief, and despair.

Unitarian Universalism is a saving faith, a salvation faith. More than anything else, our job as a church is to save souls. We can get so caught up in the details of rebuilding our building, and raising money to do that and still run the church, doing our community service projects, trying desperately to balance the budget, teaching children, recruiting volunteers, forming committees, endlessly meeting and debating and discussing, that we can easily start to imagine that any one of these things is the main thing we are about as a church. We can get distracted by these things for a while and forget that we are in the business of saving souls.

So many people come through our doors every Sunday who are not looking for Unitarian Universalism, who are not looking for another place to give their time and money, who are not here because they are rejecting any or all religion. They are here because they feel lost, lonely and hurting, because they feel something is missing, even though they may appear to all the world to be just fine and dandy. They have no particular interest in religion — our brand or any other brand. They just know that they’ve already tried everything else: alcoholism, workaholism, drugs, shopping, gambling, partying, travel, therapy, self-help books and groups and programs. There’s nothing left for them to try and besides, we don’t charge admission — even the coffee is free.

A few of the commenters to Wondertwisted’s blog understand because they too have experienced the saving power of Unitarian Universalism. Julian wrote: “I believe UUism saves souls. I do believe there is salvation in UUism.” Tim Bartik posted: “People NEED a positive message on how they can be ‘saved’ towards a better relationship with themselves and people and this world, and many have a need to address their relationship with the broader universe.”

One commenter wrestled with the word. Susan Dorbeck wrote: “Now I’m struggling with what salvation means in this world, how to define it. What in me do I want saved? What do I want to save? Salvation is a big word. Does it mean comfort and solace? Does it mean an end to poverty and oppression? Does it mean hope and faith? Or the means by which we achieve those ends?”

Those are all good questions, and they are among the deepest religious questions there are. Why are we Unitarian Universalists not publicly wrestling and struggling with these important questions? Why is a devout and dedicated Unitarian Universalist young adult like Wondertwisted having to go elsewhere to have that conversation? Why aren’t all of us religious liberals using that language when we talk about our faith and our church to others? Do we really think our friends and neighbors are dying spiritually for a lack of joining a committee, having a stimulating conversation, hearing an interesting speaker, giving donations to a church, or drinking all that free coffee? Whether folks can articulate it or not, they want their lives to have purpose, they want to feel like they are living for something, they want their souls saved.

We are not misusing the word “salvation” to say that we are a salvation faith. We are instead going back to the original meaning of the word. In Hebrew, the word translated as salvation meant “to make sufficient.” In ancient Greek, the word meant “to make whole” or “to make healthy.” In both languages, the word used for salvation was almost exclusively secular. In almost every use in scripture, the word we know as “salvation” was focused on the here and now. When we use salvation on our terms, we are using it the way it was originally meant. We ought to feel just as free to use “salvation” our way as we do to use “church” our way.

I’m going to give the last words in this sermon to the spirited and passionate young woman who kicked this topic off. Here’s an excerpt from Wondertwisted’s September blog post, following up on the controversy stirred by her post in August. If you need me to say it, then I will – I agree with her completely.

If UUs don’t think the faith has anything to say about salvation — or redemption or transformation — then the Internal Revenue Service should revoke the tax-exempt status of every congregation with “Unitarian Universalist” on its shingle. And the good people in the meetinghouse should ask themselves what the heck they’re doing there. If they aren’t there for a chance at reforming their lives, their hearts or their communities, then why are they there at all?…

May we Unitarian Universalists claim our rightful place as a faith that saves souls, as a church that deals in salvation, so that we can reach out to all the folks in greater New Orleans in their own small private hells. So might this be! AMEN – ASHE – SHALOM – SALAAM – NAMASTE – BLESSED BE!

Three Word Mission

2011-10-04T13:40:00.000-07:00

A Sermon for Association Sunday
by the Rev. Melanie Morel-Ensminger
at First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans
Sunday, October 2, 2011

This past June, I had a kind of an epiphany at the UUA General Assembly, the annual meeting of delegates and members of Unitarian Universalist congregations from all over the U.S. and the world. For the past 7 years, one of the things that happens at GA is that certain congregations are awarded the title of Breakthrough Congregation. The UUA website explains what that is:

… the Breakthrough Congregation initiative was an effort to identify those congregations that had achieved significant and sustained numerical growth and give them an opportunity to share what they’ve done, and how they’ve done it.

Breakthrough Congregations are selected by the UUA’s Growth Team, and each congregation shares their story at General Assembly. I was especially struck by the presentation and video of the UU Congregation of Fairfax, Virginia, pastored by my friend and colleague Mary Katherine Morn.

To give you a little background, Rev. Morn has been serving Fairfax for 8 years – in fact, I did the Chalice Lighting at her Installation ceremony. Over the time of that ministry, the minister, Board, and congregation have together embarked on a conscious and intentional process of transforming important things about their church – how it was governed, how it thought of itself, what its purpose was, how they would treat each other, how they would present themselves to the world, and how they would welcome new folks.

One of the first things that the Fairfax congregation changed about itself was its Mission Statement. Now, UU congregations in general have a problem with Mission Statements. Sometimes they are too long, and almost nobody in the church, even those who helped write them, can remember them. Let me give you a couple of examples of this kind of Mission Statement:

•The First Unitarian Church of Wilmington, Delaware, inspires lifelong spiritual growth. We promote religious freedom and joyfully offer our community and our world the transforming message of our Unitarian Universalist principles. We share a freely-chosen faith that opens minds and deepens understanding of life's enduring mysteries. We rely on reason, intuition, personal experience, and diverse religious traditions. As individuals in community, we commit our energy and resources to this mission.
•Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of the Poconos: We are an accepting congregation, diverse in religious and spiritual expression, uniting in fellowship to enrich our lives and inspire the community by promoting Unitarian Universalist principles.

I defy anyone to remember either of those.
The 2nd issue with UU church Mission Statements is that sometimes they are so inclusive as to be almost useless. A Mission that is too anodyne, trying not to offend anyone, ends up offending by being too general. A couple of examples:

•Thoreau UU Congregation in Stafford, Texas: We are a spiritual community of open minds and caring hearts, working for social justice and religious freedom in Fort Bend County.
•From the UU Church of Lancaster: We are a welcoming, nurturing community that celebrates our spiritual diversity. Commitment to our Unitarian Universalist principles inspires us to create positive change in the world.

These statements are well-meant, and they're not offensive, but they’re boring. They could apply to almost any church.

You may be wondering how the First Church Mission Statement compares. You can judge for yourself – turn your Order of Service over, and there it is:

•We are a richly historic, diverse and inclusive, liberal rel-igious community of free thinkers, inspired by reason and spirit. Members of First Church commit to seek meaning and wholeness in our lives and justice in the world.

Not bad.

By contrast to all of these, the Fairfax congregation went in a different direction, and came up with a 3-word Mission Statement that the whole congregation could get behind, buy into, remember, and actively apply to their church life. Their Mission Statement is Grow, Connect, Serve. That’s it – Grow, Connect, Serve.

If you go to the UUA website and view the Fairfax Breakthrough Congregation video, or go to the Fairfax website, you will see how this Mission is applied through everything the church does. The congregation understands “grow” in both senses, as to grow in numbers of members, and to grow in spiritual depth. They strive always to connect authentically with each other, and also to connect warmly with newcomers to the church. They see service as part of who they are – service to their church and service in the wider world. Grow, Connect, Serve. It’s their mantra, its their reason for being, it’s their motto, it’s their mission. Over 8 years, living up to it has helped them become a UUA Breakthrough Congregation.

I was very impressed with everything I saw and heard about Fairfax, and I was also inspired – which is of course why the UUA exists, why we are in Association with other UU congregations, and why we’re celebrating Association Sunday this morning. We can help one another, we can inspire one another, we can learn from and teach one another.

But I’m NOT suggesting we copy the Fairfax 3-word Mission Statement. Inspired by them, I came up with one I like for us. Now, this doesn’t mean you have to like it – indeed, it would be great if this Association Sunday sermon would spark a congregational conversation to come up with our own 3-word Mission Statement.

The 3 words that I came up with have a few more syllables than the Fairfax Mission, but I think they fit us better. Try this out: Hospitality, Community, Solidarity. Let me unpack them one by one.

Hospitality is a term that has been associated with the city of New Orleans for hundreds of years. It is also a religious imperative, common in traditions both Eastern and Western. It means to welcome the stranger, to make guests feel at home, to treat a new person with honor and affection, to create a home that is warm and welcoming. Hospitality shares a common root with “hospital,” and so there is an implication of healing. For the Semitic tribes of the hostile desert in Biblical times, hospitality wasn’t mere politeness – it ensured the safety and even life of travelers.

First Church has been including a reference to “radical hospitality” in its self-presentation well before Katrina, and it has become even more important after the Storm. We’ve practiced hospitality with each other as we returned home to the city and to First Church, we’ve practiced hospitality as we’ve welcomed new members, and we’ve practiced hospitality to the thousands of volunteers who have come to take part in our recovery and restoration. Practicing hospitality as our congregational spiritual discipline is natural to us, and thus it is a good choice as the first word in our 3-word Mission Statement.

Community is a term often bandied about, commonly used interchangeably with congregation. But you can have a congregation without having a community. In a congregation, folks attend the same religious organization. In a congregation that becomes a community, there’s more – folks care about one another, help one another, support one another. But even more importantly, folks in a congregation that becomes a community are accountable to each other. They make promises about being in right relationship, they call each other back to those promises when during stress or conflict they become obscured. In a congregation that becomes a community, the members are strengthened by their bonds with each other, and always seek ways to enlarge the community. As the second word in our 3-word Mission Statement, we would proclaim our aspiration of the ideal of Beloved Community that Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of.

Many UU churches, like the one in Fairfax, speak of service, and service is a good thing. But there is something beyond service, beyond social justice issues and projects, beyond helping those who are oppressed and in need – and that is Solidarity. Solidarity says that we aspire to go beyond service and helping – that we aim to stand with those often considered “the other” or “those poor people,” whoever they are. We who have been victims of disaster and prejudice ourselves stand with those for whom that is their constant state of being. We who have overcome great loss stand with those in loss and grief.

There is a poster in the kitchen of the New Orleans Rebirth Volunteer Center, upstairs on the 2nd floor of the First Church Religious Education wing, pointed out to all the volunteers who have stayed here since Katrina. It portrays a community of indigenous people in Australia who collectively came up with a passionate expression of how they felt about the outsiders who came to “help” them. The poster says:

“If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”

Now, that’s Solidarity, and that is better, more just, more equitable, than mere service.

It took the Fairfax UUs 8 years to become a Breakthrough Congregation, and they did not have to overcome a major disaster and the attendant challenges of rebuilding membership, finances, and a building complex to do it. But it can still be an inspiration to us. We are only 6 years out from Katrina, and with the partnership of our Association and congregations and individuals within our Association, we have come a long long way. But we too can aspire to be a Breakthrough Congregation, we too can transform our habits and processes, and we too can start by changing our Mission Statement so that it inspires and challenges every single First Church member and friend to our finest efforts towards Hospitality, Community, & Solidarity. So might this be! AMEN – ASHE – SHALOM – SALAAM – NAMASTE – BLESSED BE!

"REBUILDING TRUST" A Sermon for the High Holy Days

2011-09-27T12:14:00.000-07:00

by The Rev. Melanie Morel-Ensminger
First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans
Sunday, September 25, 2011

This morning, we tackle a difficult subject – how to rebuild trust after a betrayal. However difficult a subject, this is an appropriate time of year for such reflection, since the Jewish High Holy Days of Rosh Hashanah, or the Jewish New Year, is on September 28, and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, falls on October 7. According to Jewish tradition, an angel of God keeps a book of the misdeeds of all human beings, for which they will be judged at the end of time. Offenses can be erased from the book, but only when there has been a change of heart and an attempt made to correct the situation. For centuries, it has been the practice for devout Jews to make amends to those they’ve offended as the new year and Yom Kippur approaches.

While all human misdeeds cause harm of one kind or another, betrayals of trust feel the worst. Whatever the situation, what all betrayals have in common is that the fabric mutual trust and love is torn by an act of either commission or omission of one of the parties. By this act, the trust necessary for maintaining the on-going intimacy of the connection is threatened if not des-troyed. Generally speaking for all such betrayals, several important steps must be intentionally taken by the offending party before reconciliation and the restoration of trust can take place.

This is not an easy subject to think about. There is not a person in this room who has not either suffered the betrayal of a loved one, or else acted as betrayer of someone who loved us. Most of us have probably experienced both at one time or an other, and it would be hard to say which end of that stick is the most painful. And as all of us know only too well from hard-won ex-perience, simply saying, “I’m sorry” just doesn’t cut it. As poet Ntozake Shange so strongly put it in her long play-poem that recently was made into a movie, apologies “dont open doors/or bring the sun back.” Apologies without action are mere words, sound and fury signifying nothing.

In the Jewish tradition, as we have heard in this morning’s reading, God’s forgiveness for offenses against God is sure and certain, with even the slightest attempt towards change for the better – an idea about the nature of God that influenced our Universalist ancestors – but not even God can forgive an offense against another human being. Only the offended person can extend forgiveness for the wrong done to them, and then only after an attempt to make things right again.

Religious ethicist Marie Fortune has written extensively on the subject of reconciliation, from such perspectives as survivors of domestic violence and church congregations harmed by the betrayal of trust of their ordained clergy. She has developed what she calls the “5 R’s of Atonement:”

Reconciliation = Recognition + Responsibility + Restitution + Repentance

Recognition comes first, and that’s appropriate. The very first step towards rebuilding trust after a betrayal has to be for the offending person to realize and acknowledge the wrong. For someone to keep insisting that “it was no big deal” or that “you’re just over-sensitive” is no way to restart a wounded relationship; indeed, this lack of recognition simply serves to make the situ-ation worse. Before any movement towards reconciliation can happen, therefore, it is necessary for the person who committed the offense to recognize and openly acknowledge that harm has been done.

After recognition comes Responsibility, for it is obviously not enough just to realize that one’s actions have caused a break in an important relationship, one must also accept responsibility for one’s behavior. Over the years of doing pastoral care, I have heard a creative variety of excuses for the failure to take responsibility. “It’s not my fault!” folks cry, “I was drunk-upset-angry-out of my head. I didn’t know what I was doing.” Folks really skilled at avoiding responsibility have a knack for turning the offended person into the responsible party; batterers often tell their victims, “You MADE me hit you.” But it doesn’t have to be offenses as large as physical violence; there are those who say, “You made me say that-quit my job-lose my temper-crash the car.”

The third R in Fortune's equation is Restitution. The wrong must be made right; what was broken must be made whole. If something was stolen, it must be returned or replaced. If there has been injury, it must be healed somehow. If it is impossible to repair the actual damage, then some other equitable way of restoring the offended person must be worked out, such as monetary compensation or substitution. This is an extremely important part of the equation, for without some kind of restitution, we are back to just words. If the U.S. Government had merely apologized to Japanese-Americans for their unjust internment during World War II without the accompanying restitution payments -- however inadequate -- the gesture would have been seen as an empty farce.

Finally, there is Repentance, a word that may be difficult for Unitarian Universalists, because of its association with more orthodox religious practice. Perhaps we should use the Talmudic term teshuvah, meaning “return,” instead. Before true reconciliation can take place, there must be a return to right relationship, a change of heart that leads to a change of ways. Someone who is not determined to change will surely repeat the offense; one cannot trust a person who is not willing to alter their future behavior.

Rebuilding trust after a betrayal in an intimate relationship is never easy – and it’s not always possible or even desirable. But in those situations where both the offended and offending parties desire that the relationship be repaired so that the former level of intimacy can be reached, the 4 steps of recognition, responsibility, restitution, and repentance must take place for authentic reconciliation to occur. (Of course, there are many cases in which one or both par-ties is either unwilling or unable to go through the full restoration process. A relationship of some sort may go on in such cases, but since trust cannot be restored, the prior level of intimacy and mutuality is forever lost.)

None of us likes to consider the possibility that someone we care deeply about will betray our trust, but there is no escape. Letting ourselves love means letting ourselves be open and vulnerable. Being in an intimate relationship with another person means there is the possibility that they will hurt us or that we will hurt them – in fact, it’s not just a possibility, it’s a certainty. We’re all human; we all make mistakes; we all act selfishly or thoughtlessly at times. But when such situations arise, the important thing is NOT to say, “I’m human, so shoot me” but instead to act in ways that restores the torn fabric of our relationships and rebuilds the trust that was broken.

This sermon is entitled “Rebuilding Trust” for a good reason; it has not been about “how to avoid having your trust broken” because that would be a weird sermon about how not to love other people. All of us have been in this situation and we will again, as long as we’re alive and in connection with others. Trust can always be rebuilt after a betrayal, but only as long as there is willingness to try on both sides, and only as long as the offending person recognizes the wrong, accepts responsibility, offers restitution, and returns to right ways of behavior. To extend trust without these conditions is to ensure future betrayals; to expect trust without these 4 Rs is to demand a relationship one has not earned. And intimate relationships, whether personal or in community, need trust in order to be authentic.

Reconciliation = Recognition + Responsibility + Restitution + Repentance

This is a formula for real relationships in the real world. So might this be! AMEN – ASHE – SHALOM – SALAAM – NAMASTE – BLESSED BE!

Annual Budget Drive Service: “Feeding The Flame”

2011-09-20T12:00:00.000-07:00

First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans
The Rev. Melanie Morel-Ensminger
Sunday, September 18, 2011

“Rise up, O flame.” We sang these words for our Meditation this morning. Some UU congregations use this round as a ritual way of lighting the chalice every Sunday. Ever since the tradition of lighting a chalice as a way to begin a worship service and other sacred time, during the mid-1960s, a clear and visible flame, rising up out of a chalice or other container, has been a holy symbol to us Unitarian Universalists.

It seems inevitable that we religious liberals would take up somehow with fire. As far back as there have been humans, fire has been sacred to us. Of the four ancient symbols once thought of as the elements of all life and health – earth, air, water, and fire, it is the latter that has stayed consistently consecrated across religious and cultural boundaries. Not all religions have sacred earth, or ways of sacralizing the air, but just about every spiritual path lights a flame.

At the most basic level, fire sheds light and lends warmth; it cooks food. It purifies and removes contaminants. It trans-forms chemically, making one thing into another thing. But like the other sacred elements, fire has its destructive aspect. Indeed, if you Google the theme of this year’s Annual Budget Drive, “Feed the Flame,” you will find that the vast majority of citations are negative, referring to rage as the fire that is fed.

For us, however, the flame is a positive symbol, standing for community and connection, for passion and dedication and commitment. Cherie LeBlanc’s powerful design shows many hands reaching forward, adding their bit, to make the flame grow higher.

In my letter to the congregation printed in the ABD brochure, I recalled a scene found in many fictional depictions, both movies and books. It is of a group of early humans, or human-like creatures, seated in a circle at night, and then one of their number bringing fire to them. On the ABD committee, we actually had a discussion of whether I was remembering right about such a scene in the iconic movie “2001: A Space Odyssey.” In the end, we decided it didn’t matter. Whether we’re exactly right or not, nearly of us can recall a scene like this. Maybe it’s even atavistic, an almost-memory from our earliest ancestors. Somewhere deep inside, we remember: Our community was once cold and dark and hungry and afraid, and then there was fire. Things got better, we got stronger, and we were no longer afraid.

This community has been our own metaphorical dark cold night. There were many outside our congregation who counted us out – but we never did. We drew closer, even when our symbolic campfire was held together by telephone wires. Our many hands, and the hands of sisters and brothers around the country, have fed the flame of our renewal.

We fed the flame of our renewed life with our own hard work, our ideas, our commitment. We fed the flame with contributions of our time and our money. To feed that flame, we learned new skills – skills in some cases that we never expected that we’d need to have, and perhaps never even wanted to have – and applied them to our building and to our ministry. To feed the flame, we held countless meetings and thoroughly aired every point presented.

To feed the flame, we told our friends about what was happening here – that despite all the work needed on our complex, this congregation is doing vital, important work in metro New Orleans, partnering with disadvantaged communities of color, with immigrant workers, and with the other two UU congregations, and that the work is being done from a strong foundation in worship and education and commitment to liberal spirituality. To feed the flame, we have cared for one another in times of illness, accident, loss, or other hard times.

While it has taken longer than we wished, we as a religious community are poised on the brink of a bright and shining new chapter in our congregational life. This year, we will complete the first of three phases of the new requirements of the improved state building codes, and we will open the Community Kitchen that we will share with the New Orleans AIDS Task Force. Our Sanctuary will have its own electricity, enhancing opportunities for congregational events as well as rentals. And we will finally have in hand a Permanent Certificate of Occupancy, ensuring our stay in the building and allowing us to move ahead with our plans and vision.

Everything we do as a congregation, from our quality worship, our excellent religious education for children and youth, our wonderful music program, our wider urban ministry, our care for one another, our relationships with our sister UU congregations here in New Orleans and around the country, and even our fun times together, like the Fellowship Dinner last night, rest on a foundation created by the Annual Budget Drive.

Every member and committed friend contributes regularly, as they can, to support the church operating budget, which then pays the salaries of our professional staff (the minister, music director, religious education director, and nursery care worker), as well as paying for our support staff, the church sexton, bookkeeper, and rental manager. The budget pays the mortgage to the bank on the building, the insurance premiums, and all the utilities bills. The budget covers purchases of worship supplies, sheet music, and Sunday School supplies. In smaller amounts, it contributes to our social justice ministry. The budget is the catalyst for all that we do as a church, and makes possible our life together.

We realize that we cannot just take the total goal of the ABD campaign and divide it up by the number of every single member and committed friend. We know that not every individual or every household can contribute the same amount – but every individual or every household can contribute some-thing, and every contribution is important to the whole. Every contribution feeds the flame of our life together.

My spouse and I have considered our commitment to First Church’s health and future, and considered also our personal situation. Despite our reduced circumstances from the closure of the nightclub where Eric worked, we have increased the percentage of our giving from my First Church salary plus housing to 5%. We do this as a sign of our hope and commitment. I hope that each and every one of you will give serious thought to increasing your contribution as best you can, to help feed the flame. Welcome the call from your Visiting Steward; it’s a chance to share stories of what First Church means to us.

When the flame is fed, it rises up and is more visible. It gives more light and more warmth. It truly becomes a beacon. Feed the flame, and let our light shine! The city, and the world, need First Church, and we need each other. AMEN – ASHE – SHALOM – SALAAM – NAMASTE – BLESSED BE!

“Learning to be Full”

2011-08-16T08:13:00.001-07:00

A Sermon by the Rev. Melanie Morel-Ensminger
First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans
Sunday, August 14, 2011

I want to start this sermon by thanking Steven for his help in putting this service together, for his testimony, and especially for his courage in being willing to be so open and vulnerable with his spiritual community; I also want to thank a couple of parishioners who helped behind the scenes with resources and ideas for this service, but who wished to remain anonymous. This is an important topic for all of us, and I appreciate the assistance I’ve received in getting this service ready for you today.

A large part of the job for any minister is pastoral counseling. And as your post-Katrina minister, it has been a somewhat larger piece of this ministry than perhaps it usually is. For almost 4 years now I have listened and tried to be of help as various parishioners have shared with me the challenges they were coping with, the difficulties they were facing. And while there was a great deal of variation in the stories I heard, there did seem to be a common thread. Whatever it was that figured as the “presenting problem” for the counseling session, nearly every person who sought counseling with me said they felt a lack, an empty place, a hole in their lives.

In addition, many of them also said they felt worthless or unworthy, as if they were a fraud in their own lives and fearful that other people might find out. Sometimes this was experienced as a voice in their head, not necessarily like a paranoid person hears voices, but just an inner voice that insisted they had no talent, were not lovable, and were incapable of getting ahead or getting better. For some it was the voice of an abusive parent or grandparent; for others it was particularly brutal teacher or a former intimate partner. Still others described it as a part of themselves that was always critical.

I know something about this, for inside of me is my own perverted version of my mother’s voice. While my mother, who died in 1992, was in her lifetime was highly critical of me at times, she never really said to me all the things I hear in my head. But that doesn’t matter, for me it’s real enough. The voice tells me I have a lot of nerve getting up to preach on Sundays, since I don’t know what I’m doing and no one wants to hear what I have to say anyway. The voice says I’m lucky to have a spouse, or friends, or family members that put up with me, because I’m not really worthy of love or respect. I have never been able to get rid of the voice, but there are times when it is fainter in my head. I know what it is like to feel like there is something missing, that I’m not completely whole. I hope that my having this experience makes me a better, more empathetic counselor and pastor. I know it makes me human.

But it’s not just me and folks in this congregation, or even survivors of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. Many, many people in our society feel this lack, and it is indeed what it is called in our reading and in Steven’s testimony – it is a spiritual emptiness, a disease of the spirit. But it is not just what you might call a passive hole, it’s a hungry, gnawing hole. It virtually demands to be filled, and folks try mighty hard to do just that, throwing drugs, alcohol, overeating, overwork, overexercise, meaningless sex, gambling, cruising the Internet, and shopping for things they won’t use that they can’t afford, and many other activities into that howling empty space. And you know what? Nothing ever works; not a single one of those things or actions can fill the void inside. In fact, the whole time you and I and other people are doing those things, we already know how useless it is, and we keep on doing it anyway. (In the rooms of AA and OA and NA, they say, “Crazy is doing the same things over and over, and thinking you will get different results.”) If addictions could be solved intellectually and rationally, by simply making a decision, they wouldn’t be addictions, and there’d be no such thing as 12-Step programs.

As any pregnant woman knows, if you’re craving chocolate, a nice tuna fish sandwich on whole wheat bread won’t work. If what you are craving is spiritual food, you will not be satisfied by any amount of eating, drinking, using drugs, gambling, shopping, or anything else. You must feed your soul what you are hungry for.

Spiritual food. You are the only person in the world who can say what that that might be for you, but it is possible to make of possible “menu” of what spiritual food could be. It would be activities that are life-affirming, life-nurturing, activities that draw a person out of their own head and into right relationship with others and with the Spirit of Life. They are things that help a person to feel ultimate life and love. These might include: meditation, reflection, prayer, appreciating nature, listening to music, dancing, reading wholesome books, journal writing, drawing/painting/creating, working for social justice, serving others, meeting with others for spiritual support, taking good care of yourself through eating and exercising in a healthy way, and getting enough sleep at night.

Let me say right now that if you feel like I’m saying you have to do ALL of these things in order to feel full and whole, then that’s your addiction, the nasty voice in your head talking. A healthy, whole person finds the two or three or so activities that work for them, and devotes themselves to those. (I say more than one because every single one of us needs to do that last one – taking good care of yourself through eating and exercising in a healthy way, and getting enough sleep at night.)

Now I’m going to play psychic, and tell you that I already know that the voice in your head is saying, as Steven shared with us, that you don’t have time for that kind of stuff. You are too busy, your plate is too full, you don’t have a free moment, to take time off to do something as useless as attend meetings, or sit and meditate, or write in a journal, or help out a food bank, or any of the other things on our list of spiritual food.

There’s an old story often used in counseling to help illustrate the things that fill the full plates of our lives. Go through it with me right now as a kind of meditation. Picture a large glass jar, and surround it with sev-eral big rocks, lots of medium-sized pebbles, and then an amount of sand. The big rocks represent the most important things in our lives; the pebbles are the sort-of important things, and the sand stands for all the normal and regular but mostly quotidian things in our lives. Now, put all the medium pebbles in the jar, and pour in all the sand that you have. If there’s any room left, put in one or two of the large rocks. If you are normal, if you fill the jar this way, you have several of your large rocks – remember, your most important, most valued, things – left outside the jar of your life.

Now pour everything out, and this time, put the big rocks in first. Next, add in the pebbles. Finally, scoop up and pour in the sand, shaking the jar a little to let things settle. This time is different, right? Lo and behold, everything, or nearly everything, fits. Best of all, the most important things in your life, went first. That’s how you have to treat your physical and spir-itual health – as one of the foundation rocks of your life. That has to go first; as Steven said, it’s what everything else in your life rests on and fits into. Now you have time.

Today we are announcing the start of a new spiritual support group in the church, called FULL, which stands for “Feeling Ultimate Life & Love.” The FULL group will be open to any person who feels spiritually empty, who senses that there is a lack in their lives, and who have had issues with any of the unhealthy behaviors and addictions that we have mentioned. The group’s first meeting will be Wednesday, September 7, beginning at 6 pm in the Large Classroom. In this first session, we will begin a process of sharing with each other, and practicing different spiritual disciplines with each other. We will also decide together what the group’s regular meeting schedule will be, and the group’s permanent or semi-permanent meeting location. I will lead the group at the start, but it is my hope that the group will eventually be self-sustaining and self-led.

Let me be clear that the FULL group is not meant to replace Over-eaters Anonymous, Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, or any other 12-Step group, but to be an added resource, a supplement, to what those groups do. The Feeling Ultimate Life & Love group is to help those of us who feel the need to experience UU-style spirituality with each other, in order for us to nurture and support each other in our quest for wholeness.

It may not be possible to completely fill the gaping hole in our souls, or completely silence the carping voice in our heads. But together we can feed on spiritual food, and help each other to feel more full and to realize we are not alone. Together we will support each other so that we’re feeling ultimate life and love, because that’s the only way we will truly feel full. So may this be! AMEN – ASHE – SHALOM – SALAAM – NAMASTE – BLESSED BE!

“Many Colors, One Palette”

2011-08-09T12:08:00.000-07:00

A Sermon for the GNOUU Hot Art Service
North Shore Unitarian Universalists
The Rev. Melanie Morel-Ensminger
Sunday, August 7, 2011

Back when I was an art major in undergrad school (that was back when I had this crazy idea that my career path would be “artist”), laying out my palette of oil paints was one of my favorite things. I loved squeezing out shiny squiggles of paint in lustrous colors with evocative names, such as viridian green and alizarin crimson and cerulean blue, and arranging them just the way I wanted on my palette pad. I took enormous pleasure in that process, and took my time doing it, but it was just the first step in creating a painting.

Years before that, I had felt a similar sense of satisfaction with boxes of 64 Crayola crayons. (Believe me, I had no truck with those little useless boxes of 8 colors or even 16 – all I cared about was the 3-tired boxes of 64.) I used to spend hours arranging and rearranging the crayons in what I considered to be the correct color order, since they never arrived in that "perfect" order. But of course the real creative part was taking the colors out of the box and making something with them.

On Friday afternoon, I had the honor of representing the congregations of the Greater New Orleans UU cluster at a demonstration at the Hale Boggs Federal Building in New Orleans. The ostensible purpose was to join a pro-test against the annual meeting in a New Orleans hotel of the American Legislative Exchange Council, known as ALEC for short, that is funded mostly by the Koch Brothers of Texas, with contributions from big tobacco, big oil, and big pharma. The group is notorious for feeding their member state legislators “model” legislation to protect the interests of large corpora-tions against the rights of workers, unions, minorities, and women. (You can find out more about the group online by googling ALEC, or by going to the website of The Nation to read the exposé that was published last month.)

But since the time that had been set for the anti-ALEC demonstration months ago turned out to be only hours after the jury in the Danziger Bridge case had brought in a verdict of guilty on all counts for 5 former NOPD officers for shooting innocent civilians in the days after Katrina, the gathering on Poydras Street took on something of a celebratory air. There was a sense that if there could be justice in the Danziger case – however delayed – that justice was possible in other seemingly hopeless situations.

Strung along the plaza in front of the federal building was a very diverse group. The locals included representatives from groups active since before the Storm in combating police brutality and after-the-fact official cover-ups, white anti-racists, union members black and white and male and female, students and professors from local universities, including a busload from LSU, immigration activists, and community organizers. There were about a dozen people who had come down from Ohio and Wisconsin, two states that have had recent bad experiences with ALEC-inspired state laws. There were Catholics, and Protestant Christians, Jews and Muslims, and not a few atheists. I met two Unitarian Universalists from the Baton Rouge church – a mother and son team, reminding me of all those demonstrations I went to with my son Stephen – and I saw at least one member of Community Church (Rev. Jim was and is on vacation in Colorado; he and I take turns representing us on community events when we can).

A folk singer led the group, numbering around a hundred people, in traditional protest songs, songs written for the Alaska oil spill as well as the BP oil spill, and a few that seemed to have been written for this occasion. Protest signs ranged from the serious to the silly, with LOTS of different ways to spell out ALEC; many signs bore color photos of different state legislators who had succumbed to the blandishments of the lobbying group.

I was glad to be there, and I was glad for the diversity that was present, but being among so many people of different ages, faiths, and ethnicities was not an end in itself. We were there for something, something important – to stand for justice, for democracy, to make a difference.

We Unitarian Universalists can get pretty excited about diversity. Workshops are held at district meetings and at General Assembly on the topic, and articles on diversity are published in the UU World magazine. Ministers and lay leaders question their counterparts from other churches, asking, How big – how many people of color – whether or not there are working class people in their congregations. And these are not invalid questions, because we Unitarian Universalists ought to be concerned about whether our religious message – our “good news” – is reaching as many people, and as many different kinds of people, as possible.

But much more important than diversity is purpose. We have to be gathering different kinds of people for a good reason, just as placing paint on a palette, or arranging crayons in a box, has to be for a purpose. From what I’ve read, I’m convinced that if they had to, the Koch Brothers could pull together a pretty diverse group of people – but I’m also convinced that even they did such a thing, it wouldn’t be for purposes of wider justice.

When I think about our cluster, the Greater New Orleans UU cluster, and I think about us fairly often, I have some of the same concerns. It is a good thing, a very good thing, that these three congregations have come together, and it is only natural that so much of our purpose for doing so in the beginning was for recovery and support. That was what we needed at the start. But now that we are very close to the 6th anniversary of Katrina, it is needful to ask What else is our purpose? It’s a good thing, a very good thing, that we came together, and I brag about us for doing that all the time when I’m around other UUs. But what are we together FOR? WHY are we together? What is the greater goal, the higher purpose, for these 3 disparate different congregations to be together for?

We are like different colors on one palette – impressive and attractive, but useless unless we’re accomplishing something. Ensuring each other’s survival through raising money, while a good thing, is not enough. Sharing worship in common, as we are doing today, also a good thing, is not enough. We must share a higher purpose together – and I hope that purpose is making the Greater New Orleans area a better, more just, more ethical, more equitable, more democratic, place for as many people as possible in every way we can.

Some might say we have to be completely recovered ourselves before we can reach out to help those even worse than ourselves, but they would be wrong. None of the three congregations – not even Community Church – is wholly and completely restored, and yet already we have been able to make large contributions to the city of New Orleans and the surrounding area, both through our own united efforts and through the work of our shared non-profit, the Center for Ethical Living & Social Justice Renewal.

The list of the community organizations, community groups, and individuals that we have partnered with and that we have been to help would take longer than to recite than we’ve allotted for this sermon. The important issues we have addressed include the destruction of housing projects in New Orleans and the subsequent lack of affordable housing, the closure of Charity Hospital and the push to raze a recovering Mid-City neighborhood for an unneeded behemoth hospital for LSU, wage theft, immigration reform and the right to remain, hunger, homelessness, aid for struggling urban public schools, the revitalization of our local culture and tradition such as the Mardi Gras Indians, food justice and the lack of fresh produce in so many neighborhoods, free healthcare clinics in underserved neighborhoods, care for families in the inner city who are dealing with the nitty-gritty of racism, official indifference, crime, and the public-schools-to-prison pipeline, and of course helping individuals, neighborhoods, and churches to rebuild and come back from Katrina’s destruction.

THIS is why we’re together. Because the people of New Orleans and the 5 surrounding parishes need us, need our voice, need our influence, need our hands and hearts, our work and our monetary contributions. Because justice and ethics and equity and democracy are too important to squabble over and much too big for any one congregation to do by themselves alone.

This is who we are, and this is what we are for. The congregations of First Church, North Shore, and Community Church, urban, inner city, suburban, exurban, rural, middle class, well off, working class, achievers, strugglers, retirees, employed, unemployed, old, middle-aged, young adult, and youths, gay, straight, bisexual, transgender, intersexed, and gender queer, black, white, and Latino – many colors, one palette, for the purpose of making the greater New Orleans area a better place for all of the people who live here.

So might this be! AMEN – ASHÉ – SHALOM – SALAAM – NAMASTÉ – BLESSED BE!

“All of Us Humanists”

2011-06-14T13:35:00.000-07:00

A Sermon by the Rev. Melanie Morel Sullivan
First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans
Sunday, June 12, 2011

Once while I was serving the church in Chattanooga, the Rev. John Buehrens, then the President of the Unitarian Universalist Association visited and was our guest speaker. During the Sunday Morning Adult Forum after the service, a member of the church challenged him about the future of humanism within our movement. His reply is worth remembering; he said that humanism was now, and would always be, the foundation of all other theological positions within Unitarian Universalism. He went to elaborate that unless a spirituality embraced the inherent worth and dignity of every person, the value of reason, science, and the intellect, and the use of the democratic process (humanist positions all), that it would not fit with Unitarian Universalism. But, John added, humanism itself is evolving, and there must be room in our movement for those whose theology cannot be completely encompassed by the term “humanism.”

Now, I’m from here in Louisiana, where as you know politics is a spectator sport and a cherished form of entertainment, and I know a good politician’s answer when I hear one. John Buehren’s reply was a very careful yes-but-also-no. It happens, however, that I agree with his assessment, and I suppose it is the job of this sermon to explain to you why I believe that all of us UUs are also all of us Humanists.

Both Unitarianism and Universalism began as courageous heresies of orthodox Christianity, heresies that never denied the worth and value of Jesus’s teachings and message, but that did disagree profoundly with doctrines about the nature and person of Jesus. And the whole time these courageous religious liberals staked a claim to the name “Christian” -- even while denying Jesus was God and questioning the miracles and the bodily resurrection. This willingness to question and make our own religious decisions led later in the 19th century to an acceptance of the truths to be found in all the world’s religions, and to the Divine that could be found in nature. These understandings led further to the development of religious humanism among us in the early 20th century, which brought us to courageous stands on civil and religious rights for people of color in the ‘50s and ‘60s, and for women, and gays, lesbians, bisexual and transgendered persons in the ‘70s and ‘80s. And all the while, as we grew and changed and gained new revelations from new experiences, we never abandoned our spiritual roots.

UUA records indicate that even when humanism was in its heyday, it was never was the sole theological viewpoint in all our churches. By 1996, in an in-formal poll done by the Department of Ministerial Settlement, even the most traditionally humanist UU congregations admitted that their newer members were describing themselves as mystical humanists or Christian humanists, or using some other modifier. The “Fulfilling The Promise” survey done by the UUA at the end of the 1990s found that for the first time in a generation, what you might call “plain vanilla” humanists made up less than half of the respondents, although it remained the top faith position. (For those of you who like numbers, the breakdown was humanism 46.1%, pagan 19%, theist 13%, Christian 9.5%. The other 12.4% were spread among various minority positions and “not sure.” The reason it doesn’t all add up to 100% is that so many UUs were checking more than one option. )

In the Cherry Hill, NJ congregation, where I served before coming home to Louisiana in 2007, surveys of members in preparation for ministerial searches over the years showed a clear shift, with fewer people each time saying that God was completely irrelevant and that theological language made them uncomfortable. But still, it should be noted, in that congregation as in Unitarian Universalism as a whole, humanism of whatever stripe remained the majority. As Department of Ministry chair John Weston wrote at the start of the 21st century, “The humanist tradition is the common currency of our movement. If there is an ideological center to this movement, it lies there.”

Say the word “humanism” and the reactions you receive will depend on who’s listening. If your listeners are fundamentalist conservative Christians, you may get looks of horror. If you are in academia, you will get a polite reception. If you are inside one of the “temples” of UU humanism, you will get warm regard. If you are talking to a UU pagan or a UU Christian or a UU Buddhist who has felt shut out or belittled by staunch humanists in their churches, you may hear a litany of complaint.

Well, I can’t do much about the reactions from fundamentalist Christians, but I have a lot to say about what happens within Unitarian Universalist congre-gations. One of the things I am here to say is, Lay down your rhetorical battle weapons. We are not on different sides; in fact, we are all on the same side, and the sooner we realize it, the better for all of us, and for religious liberalism.

The fact is, all of us are humanists. Here in the United States, the govern-ment that was founded in the aftermath of the American Revolution was based in classical humanist understandings from the Renaissance; the word “senator” was taken from ancient Greece and Rome, which for our country’s founders were paradigms of civilization and culture. To the extent that we support representative democracy, it might be said that all Americans -- even the conservative Christians! -- participate in classical humanism.

I was raised as a humanist, although that word was never spoken in our house that I can recall. But I do remember asking my father why he first got involved in the organized labor and Civil Rights movements. He answered thoughtfully, “Because I just couldn’t stand the way they treated people.” Sounds humanist to me.

Almost all Unitarian Universalist Christians are basically Christian humanists. Christian humanism also developed during the Renaissance, and de-emphasized dogma and creeds, holding to an idea of a tolerant and loving God. These Christians taught that Jesus’s great gift to humanity was NOT his blood sacrifice but his moral example, his way of life to be followed, and that he was not a fully divine figure to be adored and worshiped. Sounds humanist to me.

Another kind of humanism is cultural, and I dare say there are few people in- or outside UU churches who disagree with it -- indeed, social conservatives are among those who are vociferously in favor of it. Cultural humanism is the core curriculum of any college or university worth the name: philosophy, art, music, language, and science. Although there have been inroads on the understanding of what ought to make up a liberal arts education, most universities still require a core load in these subjects -- even if they sometimes seem to apologize for doing so. The idea is that there are certain subjects that every person ought to receive a basic education in -- sounds humanist to me.

Religious humanism is, of course, the category into which Unitarian Uni-versalist humanists fall. Religious humanism takes a position against supernat-uralism, recognizes the value of scientific insights, and holds that orthodox religion can learn a lot from the understandings of the modern world. A religious humanist can be agnostic or atheist, or can even hold to what seminaries might call a “naturalistic theism” -- believing in what Ralph Waldo Emerson termed “the God of nature.” By the way, if you attend services at a congregation, you are by definition a religious humanist, because a secular humanist does not go to or belong to a church!

It is no accident that so many of the signers of the original Humanist Manifesto were Jewish, for Judaism is, like Unitarian Universalism, a creedless faith that is centered on behavior instead of belief. The message of the Hebrew Scriptures -- the Torah, the Talmud, the Mishnah, and all the rest -- can be summed up with the question, “How are you treating your fellow human beings?” Sounds humanist to me.

Buddhism is also in its essence a very humanist religion. It does not require belief in a Supreme Being, and is centered on human actions and relationships. Mahayana Buddhism requires of its adherents lovingkindness to all living creatures, and Zen focuses the mind of the practitioner on the present moment -- all that we know for sure that we have. Sounds humanist to me.

I contend, along with many other UU thinkers and theologians, that nearly ALL current-day Unitarian Universalists are religious humanists of one form or another. It’s just that, as John Buehrens told the Chattanooga congregation, humanism is evolving, and there are now many different ways to be a religious humanist. Today, there are atheist humanists, agnostic humanists, Christian humanists, Jewish humanists, Buddhist humanists, pagan humanists, mystical humanists, and so on.

Back in the 19th century, psychologist William James met a famous sage from India. The sage told him that in the Hindu worldview, the universe rests on the backs of 8 celestial white elephants. “What do those elephants stand on?” asked the rationalist James. “Another elephant,” came the reply. “And what is beneath that elephant?” asked James, and the answer came again, “Another.” At this point, the Mahatma interrupted and said, “Dr. James, I must tell you, it is great white elephants all the way down.” For us Unitarian Universalists, it’s humanism all the way down.

All humanisms share some common characteristics. First, a fascination with and honoring of the human. Second, an understanding that as human beings, we bear a responsibility for our lives and for this world. And third, that we humans are put together in such a way that we CAN be responsible for the way we live our lives and for the world. All humanisms, of whatever variety, share these 3 threads.

Taken together, these common themes stand in stark contrast not only to conservative orthodox Christianity, but to religious fundamentalism of all kinds, which insist that humanity is hopelessly depraved, inherently careless, helpless to improve, incapable of responsibility, and that therefore all volition and control must be submitted to divine and human authority figures. This fundamentalist position also contrasts sharply with the principles of Unitarian Universalism. It is no wonder why John Weston says that humanism is the “common currency of our movement” -- but common currency should never be mistaken for orthodoxy.

It is unfortunate that all the different kinds of UU humanists don’t always get along with another or even understand one another. For some years in the 1990s, across our denomination, many traditional UU humanists have expressed feelings of loss and dismay. This was chronicled in a coverstory in the UU World magazine in 1997 (for which I was quoted in a sidebar entitled “Ain’t I a Humanist?”). It is revealing that the World’s editor chose to title the article “The Marginalized Majority: UU Humanism in the 1990s.”

It is true that in the early fervor of young humanism that adherents were often rather loud in their dislike of any religious language whatsoever, or any ritual or spiritual trappings, what one humanist famously derided as "smells and bells." This distaste often extended to the utterance of a single word in the service. When I first arrived to serve the Chattanooga congregation, I ended one of my sermons with "Amen" -- and two older gentlemen stalked out, outraged.

There is a new version of religious humanism in Unitarian Universalism today. It is a religious humanism that still values the role of science and the intellect and continues to assert that orthodox religions must be transformed by modern insights. But today it is understood that these insights might include a broad range of ritual, practice, belief, story, myth, and study, and the use of religious language with new understandings. UU humanism has changed and grown and become more inclusive; I think that this is a good thing.

These hope-filled words come from my colleague and proud humanist Fred Muir:

The new religious humanism uses the language of balance, of balancing left and right sides of the brain, of reconstructing dualism in order to honor the interdependent web, of breaking up (but not eliminating) the century-old mantra of reason, rationality, and responsibility with myth, soul, ritual, and spirit. This is a religious humanism for a new century, a new millennium -- this will be the core of our Unitarian Universalist faith.

So might this be! AMEN -- ASHE -- SHALOM -- SALAAM -- NAMASTE -- BLESSED BE!

A SHORT BIBLIOGRAPHY ON UU HUMANISM

Muir, The Rev. Frederick John. “How We Got From There to Here: From Unitarian Christianity to Unitarian Religious Humanism,” in UUMA Selected Essays, 1999.

Ross, Warren R. “The Marginalized Majority: UU Humanism in the 1990s,” UU World magazine, Nov./Dec. 1997

Weldon, Stephen P. “Secular Humanism: A Survey of Its Origins and Development,” in The Journal of Religious Humanism, Vol. XXXIII, numbers 3 & 4.

Weston, The Rev. John H. “The Seven Humanisms and How They Grew,” Unitarian Universalist Voice, Fall 1996

Wintermute, Carol. “Varieties of Humanism,” in The Journal of Religious Humanism, Vol. XXXIII, numbers 3 & 4.

“Building the Beloved Community"

2011-05-26T14:30:00.000-07:00

A Sermon for Flower Communion
First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans
Rev. Melanie Morel-Ensminger
Sunday, May 22, 2011

My colleague Tom Owen-Towle was not a Freedom Rider, but 4 years later as a young seminarian he came down South to Selma, Alabama, following Martin Luther King’s invitation to interfaith clergy. He worked with other students to help set up the mass meetings in a field outside the town. His exact assignment, as he recounts in his essay “Ten Hallmarks of the Beloved Community,” was to remove cow patties from the ground so the big tents could be erected where civil rights movement leaders would speak to the crowds. It may not have been fun or glamorous, but it was important. It was his contribution to the Beloved Community.

“Beloved Community” is a phrase that was often used by Dr. King and other Movement orators. It referred not just to the people active in the civil rights movement, but to an ideal reality that, in Owen-Towle’s words, “includes yet always transcends our own skins, clans, congregations, collectives.” The idea of the Beloved Community is always open to those who not yet inside its embrace; it is always reaching to include more and more people from the margins. Like Jesus’ phrase “kingdom of God,” it refers to a time that is both here and not-yet.

It was inspired by the work of 19th century philosopher Josiah Royce, who urged,

Judge every social device, every proposed reform, every national and every local enterprise, by the one test: does this help towards the coming of the universal community?

It is a mistake to use the term Beloved Community to refer to a smaller subset, for example, one single congregation. Beloved Community is much larger than that. It is a reminder that no matter how much we feel affection for our individual church or denomination, we must always widen our embrace; we must always be ready to welcome the stranger, the outcast, the marginalized, the oppressed.

Owen-Towle asks, “What would be necessary to incarnate a version of the Beloved Community wherever Unitarian Universalist congregation is located?” and answers his own question with 10 points:

1. Beloved Community means holding to the difficult. In this point, “difficult” refers both to issues and to personalities. The point of building the Beloved Community is NOT for people to feel all comfy and cozy, and not to be challenged – the goal is to be, in Owen-Towle’s words, “to be adventurous in service of the prize.” Sometimes that will mean staying the course when the going gets rough.
2. Beloved Community produces where it’s planted. While it can be a good thing to spread compassion in areas far from where we live, our main responsibility is to bloom where we are planted. I once served a UU congregation that raised thousands and thousands of dollars to help people in a country over 5,000 miles away – and yet they gave virtually nothing to the impoverished city that was their county seat, a mere 6 miles away. Whatever we might do to help those who are faraway, we must be dedicated to the recovery and renewal of our own city and area.
3. Beloved Community requires vigilance. The Beloved Community is always in the process of being builded, it is never completely built. We must always ask ourselves, How can we be more welcoming? How can we hold ourselves accountable to this vision we hold in common? We can never drop our guard or stop being watchful.
4. Beloved Community honors the law of respect. How much stronger would we be if pervasive respect was manifested in our church and in our lives? We must treat everyone and everything respectfully, for it is the only virtue large enough to caringly include the “other.”
5. Beloved Community is open. The door never shuts in the Beloved Community – there are always more people and more ideas to be included. This is especially true for this congregation, for we remember and honor our historic name “Church of the Stranger.” Who’s not in the picture we have of our congregation, and how can we include them? That is always the question.
6. Beloved Community supports its members. Being of service to others also means being of service to each other. This is an area where this congregation excels – whenever an individual or a family in the church is known to be in need, the folks of this church spring forward to help, to be there for each other in concrete ways. We celebrate together, we mourn together, we are together in thick and thin. As long as we remember to widen the circle of our caring, we are building the Beloved Community.
7. Beloved Community members fight fairly. Striving together to build the Beloved Community does not mean we will not have disagreements and conflicts – in fact, these are practically guaranteed! What matters is how we treat each other in the midst of and through times of turmoil. We prove who we really are and what we really believe in by how we act when times are tough.
8. Beloved Community balances justice with joy. I don’t know about you (but maybe in fact I do), but I won’t be part of a group that is always deadly serious, that is always focused on a problem not solved, that is always grim in its pursuit of its goals, however noble those goals may be. The Beloved Community must have joyful celebrations together or there will not be enough energy and heart for the hard work. As revolutionary Emma Goldman once said, “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.”
9. Beloved Community is always changing. Our Transylvanian ancestor Francis David’s Latin motto “Semper reforma,” which can be translated as “always changing.” It is related to the idea that the Be-loved Community is never finished, never completed, that there is always more to be done. We can never allow ourselves to think that we already know what has to be done and what is needed – there is always more to learn.
10. Beloved Community is held in an eternal embrace. In the Beloved Community, there is a constant awareness of the past, the present, and the future. We honor the past, our ancestors, their work, their struggle, their hopes; we look to and plan for the future as best we can, while working as hard as we can in the present. We know we are connected to something larger than ourselves, however we define that Ultimate Reality. We rely on that, we lean back upon it, we are ever assured, as our Universalist ancestors used to say, “Rest assured!”

On this Flower Communion, as we have rededicated ourselves in our Flower Meditation, let us be renewed in our efforts to build the Beloved Community, not just within these sheltering walls, but ever outward, among all three UU churches in our Greater New Orleans cluster, to all the people and the land and air and water of this city and its surrounding area, and on and on to include eventually all people and all the earth. May our efforts be to the building of the Beloved Community, even though we may never see all the fruits of our labor. So might this be! AMEN – ASHE – SHALOM – SALAAM – NAMASTE – BLESSED BE!

“It Hurts When Buds Burst”

2011-04-26T14:49:00.000-07:00

A Homily for Easter
Delivered by the Rev. Melanie Morel-Ensminger
First Unitarian Universalist Church in New Orleans
Sunday, April 24, 2011

"It Hurts When Buds Burst" by Karin Boye

Yes, it hurts when buds burst.
Why otherwise would spring hesitate?
Why otherwise was all warmth and longing
locked under pale and bitter ice?
The blind bud covered and numb all winter
what fever for the new compels it to burst?
Yes, it hurts when buds burst,
there is pain when something grows and when
something must close.
Yes, it hurts when the ice drop melts.
Shivering, anxious, swollen it hangs,
gripping the twig but beginning to slip--
its weight tugs it downward, though it resists.
It hurts to be uncertain, cowardly, dissolving,
to feel the pull and call of the depth,
yet to hang and only shiver--
to want to remain, keep firm--yet want to fall.
Then, when it is worst and nothing helps,
they burst, as if in ecstasy, the first buds of the tree,
when fear itself is compelled to let go,
they fall in a glistening veil, all the drops from the twigs,
blinking away their fears of the new,
shutting out their doubts about the journey,
feeling for an instant how this is their greatest safety,
to trust in that daring that shapes the world.

It seems like only yesterday, but in reality, it was 20 years ago or more. My son Stevie was 7 and in the first grade at Audubon Montessori School, and I picked him up as usual at 3 o'clock, and we walked our regular route through Audubon Park to catch the Magazine Street bus. It was our habit to go over his day as we walked, but this day was different. He seemed downcast, so I asked him, “Do you feel all right, son?” His reply was glum. “I feel sad, Mom,” he said, “I’m all mixed up.” I squatted down so that we’d be eye-to-eye. “What's the matter?”

“I feel like I’m two different people fighting against each other. Sometimes one part of me feels like I never want to leave you and Dad, and I always want to be with you, and then I wish I could be all alone! What's wrong with me, Mom?”

All this anguish at seven! It nearly broke my heart. Well, I didn’t laugh, and I didn’t cry, although at that very moment I knew *exactly* what it felt like to be “two different people fighting against each other.”

“There's nothing wrong with you, son. You’re just growing up,” I said carefully, “That’s part of what it feels like to grow up --you feel two opposite things at the same time. It's kind of confusing.” I hoped I was being comforting, but I felt inadequate.
He looked at me and his eyes filled with tears. “But it hurts, Mom! Why does it have to hurt?”

Why does it have to hurt? Why indeed?

In the poem by Karin Boye that began this sermon, and the story for all ages by Fern Stanley, the writers project that all living things, even plants, feel this pain, the pain of growth and change. When the wheel of the year turns to spring, Nature makes new life the first thing on the agenda. We like to think of Springtime in descriptive terms worthy of Hallmark greeting cards: glorious spring, the flowers of spring, young love, spring green, new growth, new beginnings. We like to pretend that all this birthing is accomplished painlessly – but we know better. No birth is painless. It does hurt when buds burst.

There can be no doubt that most human beings fear the idea of growth and change. Once I heard a church consultant tell a large group of UUs that “the only person who likes change is a wet baby.” (And the truth is, not even them all the time.)

Culturally and socially, we glorify lack of change. At reunions, we assure long-lost friends and relatives, “Why, you haven't changed a bit!” Lovers smile into each other’s eyes and sigh dreamily, “I wish it could always be just like this!” High-school seniors scrawl in one another’s yearbooks: “Don’t ever change.” Pop songs insist “I Love You Just the Way You Are.” After Katrina, if you really wanted to pick a fight with a New Orleanian, all you needed to say was, “New Orleans will never be the same again.” But even before Katrina, we were not the same city we had been in previous years.

However we try to fight it, or deny it, or refuse to acknowledge it, change is our one constant. Human life can be filled with moments of transcending joy, and pain is the other side of the same coin –- the inevitable price we must pay for happiness.
In some fundamentalist traditions, human suffering and the pain of life’s changes is seen as an evil not natural to the world, but interpreted as punishments, the result of human disobedience. In such schools of thought, the ideal of eternal changelessness is offered as the ultimate heavenly relief for the pain and strife of human existence.

But pain is not our punishment for being human. Pain is a signal, an alarm that something is going wrong. We need pain. I have read of people who suffer from a malfunction of the nervous system that prevents them from feeling any pain. Far from being lucky, these unfortunate people must live sheltered and protected half-lives; without pain, their health, their very lives, are at risk every day. Because they cannot receive their body’s pain warning, they can become seriously, even fatally, injured without realizing it. Many of us, in our eagerness to “feel no pain,” can become similarly emotionally crippled.

Once again, the Wheel of the Year turns, and it is Spring again, and Easter is finally here. Here in New Orleans, we are blessed with warm breezes, the scent of flowers, and the buzzing of honeybees. The Earth seems young and beautiful again, and we humans get Spring Fever. Even we urban dwellers can’t help noticing the young green growing things thrusting up out of sidewalk cracks. We don't realize what such an effort must have cost; we don’t think about the pain of growing.

The only thing that is permanent in life, the only thing on which we can truly depend, is change. Change is part of who we are, part of being human. Everything must change. In order to be fully human, we must not just tolerate growth and change -- we must welcome it.

Seed Meditation

As we arrived this morning, we each got the opportunity to choose a seed from a mixed batch, all ready for Spring planting. Let us hold our seed in our hands.

Today is Easter; this is the season of new beginnings, of birth, of change, of young green growing things, of celebrating the new and the reborn.

Look closely at your seed -- and notice how different each seed is. Hold your seed loosely in your hands, creating for the seed a warm dark safe place in which to rest. Let us plant some seeds this morning, either literally, when you get home, or figuratively, right now, in your mind.

New seeds ready for growing. All they need is nurture, care, healing dark, and warming light, and they will give birth to something new, something that has never been before. Mixed as the seeds are, we cannot tell what they might be, or what they might become.

In this congregation, we are mixed as these seeds were mixed. We are old and young and middle-aged; we are Republican and Democrat and Libertarian and apolitical; we are Humanist, Pagan, Jewish, Christian, and Buddhist. We are women and men and intersexed and gay and straight and bisexual. We are partnered and single, parents and those without children. Like the seeds, we too contain vast potential; we too are in the process of becoming. What are we becoming? We cannot yet tell.

It is the season for planting, for new beginnings. What will sprout from the seeds planted here? What will result from the pain of this new growth? What unforeseen changes will take place this year? How will we deal with change? What does growth mean to us?

Let us be together and ponder these great mysteries, and resolve to grow and change, even when we are afraid.

GNOUU Earth Day 2011

2011-04-19T12:47:00.000-07:00

Shared Service with Community Church UU & North Shore UU
& with UU volunteers from New York, Massachusetts, DC, & Virginia
Under the Tree of Life at Audubon Park
Healing the Waters Meditation
The Rev. Melanie Morel-Ensminger

One year ago, on April 20th, an explosion rocked the Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico. Millions of barrels of crude oil poured into our Gulf, despoiling the coastline, poisoning nesting grounds, fouling the shoreline, contaminating oyster beds and shrimp and crab and fish habi-tat, putting thousands of people out of work and putting families, towns, parishes, and a whole culture at risk. More chemicals were dumped into our Gulf to counteract the oil.

While we struggle to maintain hope and optimism, we do not know all the implications of the spill and its chemical clean-up. We want to go on with our lives, we long for things to be “normal,” but we worry about the long-term effects of what happened.

On March 11th, the first of several earthquakes hit the eastern coast of Japan on the Sea of Japan, causing a massive tsunami and nearly inestimable destruction to people and property in towns, villages, and rural areas along a wide swath of the east Japanese coast. The quakes also caused catastrophic damage to the Fukushima Nuclear Power facility. To attempt to cool down the reactor, seawater from the Sea of Japan was pumped inside, and allowed to spill back into the sea. Later on in the crisis, more radioactive contaminated water was released back into the Sea of Japan.

No one wants a nuclear meltdown, and the seawater seems like the only alternative. We worry about the future, and about the radiation levels in the water now swirling in the currents of the Sea of Japan.

The Sea of Japan is just a way of talking about the part of the Pacific Ocean that borders Japan. To the north it connects to Russia through the Sea of Okhustk, and to Alaska through the Bering Sea; to the south, it washes Indonesia, and further, Australia; to the east, after flowing around the para-dise of Hawaii, there is North America and South America. Currents carry the seawater around the southernmost point of South America, where it meets the Atlantic Ocean.

The Gulf of Mexico connects to the Caribbean Sea (and indeed has been only half-jokingly called the northern border of the Caribbean), and then to the Atlantic. Closer than the edges of the Pacific, where radiation levels in California are elevated from the outflow from Fukushima, to the east are the Atlantic borders of Europe and Africa. To the south, the waters flow to the southernmost point of South America, where the Atlantic Ocean meets the Pacific.

In the middle of the Pacific swirls a giant garbage patch, consisting of plastic debris, chemical sludge, and other waste matter trapped by the ocean currents. Estimates of its size vary, and it cannot be seen from satellite photos since much of it is suspended in the water. But it is huge, and growing.

All the seas of the world are connected; all water is one. Our fragile planet is mainly water with a few land masses. Water is necessary to all life. Our bodies are made of water; in New Orleans, we breathe water. Water nourishes us, refreshes us, sustains us. And yet we ruin it, despoil it, poison it, use it and abuse it.

Let us take time this day to send our healing thoughts and prayers and wishes to the waters of the world. Let us be settled in our bodies, feeling our connection to Mother Earth, and drawing in deep cleansing breaths. With each outbreath, let us send conscious thoughts and prayers of healing to our Gulf – north to the Atlantic Ocean and Baffin Bay and the Norwegian Sea – south to the Caribbean Sea, and on to the South Atlantic – continue around Tierra del Fuego to the Pacific Ocean – and to the Sea of Japan. Let your healing travel on the currents of the oceans around the globe. In your heart, say to the waters, Be well, be well. Resolve that you will be a part of the healing of the waters by the decisions you make with your mind and the actions you take with your body. Be well, be well. Let us be together with the waters; let us be as one with each other; let us resolve to be part of the healing of the Earth and her Waters. Be well, be well.

Prayer for the Dedication of Community Church's New Building

2011-04-12T11:01:00.000-07:00

by the Reve. Melanie Morel-Ensminger
Sunday, April 10, 2011

This prayer is dedicated to my brother in faith and partner in ministry to the North Shore UU congregation, the Reverend Jim VanderWeele, without whom I don't think I could do the kind of ministry we are sharing together in Greater new Orleans.

Let us bring our hearts and mind together in a spirit of prayer and meditation.
We come together on this glorious spring day
to celebrate a new beginning,
for this Unitarian Universalist congregation and its ministry --
a near-miraculous phoenix-like rising,
not from ashes of fire, but from muck and mold of flood waters.

Here we are gathered in this beautiful new building,
the result of the work and dedication,
not only of this congregation,
not only of the three New Orleans-area congregations,
but of the combined efforts and commitment
of religious liberals all over the country.
We are filled with the spirit of gratitude.

This morning, we invoke the presence of the Spirit of Life
to bless this building and this ministry,
this congregation, its relationships, and its future:

While we know that this building will be the meeting place
of many like-minded people,
we pray that it will not be a Clubhouse,
where people’s connections and relations are limited to specific projects;

While we know that this building will take in many persons
who are spiritually wounded,
we pray that it will not be a Hospital,
where people will recuperate and get better and then leave;

While we know that this building will be a venue
for music and art and culture,
we pray that it will not be a Theater,
where passive audiences come to be entertained;

While we know that this building will be a center of learning,
we pray that it will not be a School,
where people gain knowledge and then move on.

May this building instead be as a Ship,
carefully loaded with hopes and dreams and plans,
riding on waters both smooth and rough,
carrying an entire community of diverse people,
picking up new passengers along the way,
bringing them all to the goals they have set before themselves –
nothing less than the rejuvenation and redemption of the Greater New Orleans area.

All this we pray in the names of all those who have gone before us
in religious liberalism in the Crescent City and beyond,
and in the names as well of all in life that we hold
to be true and noble and worthy – in short, Holy.
AMEN – ASHE – SHALOM – SALAAM – NAMASTE – BLESSED BE!

“WHOSE LIBERATION?” A Sermon for Passover

2011-04-05T13:53:00.000-07:00

First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans
Sunday, April 3, 2011
The Rev. Melanie Morel-Ensminger

I want to remind all of you that we will not hold services at our church over the next 2 Sundays. On April 10, we will join with our sisters and brothers of the Greater New Orleans UU cluster to celebrate the dedication of the new post-Katrina building for the Community Church congregation. It is a beautiful edifice and this will be a joyous occasion in our common long walk to recovery and renewal. There will be speakers from all 3 congregations, as well as a preacher from one of Community Church's post-Katrina partner churches, some very special music, and a reception will follow the 11 am service. I hope that as many of you as possible will be there, at the corner of Fleur de Lis and 38th Streets in Lakeview.

The following Sunday, April 17th, also at 11 am, will be our annual shared Earth Day service at the Tree of Life in Audubon Park, riverside of Magazine Street, on East Drive. The 3 congregations of the Greater New Orleans UU cluster will be joined by a volunteer group from our partner church, the Arlington UU congregation in Virginia, where our former minister the Rev. Michael McGee serves as senior pastor. There will be a combined choir from the GNOUU churches, and the Youth Choir from Arlington will give us the gift of their voices. The service will be followed by a potluck picnic – so bring your lawn chairs or blankets, and a picnic dish to share, and we’ll gather under the embracing arms of one of the oldest oak trees in the country for an inspiring service on “Sacred Waters.”

Thus, two weeks early, we honor the Jewish holy day of Passover, which will occur starting April 18th. While Passover began as a Jewish springtime celebration, marking both the passing of the seasons and the historic liberation from slavery, it has become a near-universal symbol of freedom. Those of us who have seen the classic movie “The Ten Commandments” cannot hear the story of the Exodus without picturing Charlton Heston as Moses, warning Yul Brynner’s Pharoah of the plagues to come, and later standing in front of a giant Red Sea, as the green Jello waves part for the Israelites to cross over to the Promised Land. We love the cinematic story, and we relate to the stirring theme.

We all like to think of ourselves as the Hebrews, escaping bondage into freedom. We thrill to the sense that God or the Power of the Universe is on the side of the oppressed and will with human help act to set things right. It is a powerful thought, and has heartened and inspired downtrodden people over the millennia.

Enslaved Africans in America, hearing the Biblical story from their slave masters and their ministers, saw themselves in the story of the Hebrews, and encoded messages of escape to freedom to the Promised Land of the North in their spiritual songs, “Go Down Moses” and “Wade in the Water,” which they brazenly sang in front of their masters and mistresses. (How the white folks never seemed to see themselves as the wicked Pharoah who ought to let “my people go” will always be a mystery to me. Perhaps it is a tribute to how nearly every person hearing the story manages to identify with the Hebrews.)

Later in history, in the Civil Rights era of the 1950s and ‘60s, Martin Luther King Jr. and other African American leaders used the story again in their struggle for legal and social equality. In his last speech the night before he was shot, Martin Luther King told his spell-bound listeners in Memphis (ironically named after a city in Egypt) that he had been “to the mountaintop” and had “seen the Promised Land” that he, like Moses, would not enter himself.

I say that the Passover-Exodus has become a “near-universal symbol of freedom” beyond Jewish people because being able to identify with it in that way, the way that sees your people as the Hebrew “good guys,” depends entirely on your existential point of view. As a graphic example, we heard in the excerpt from Tikkun magazine co-written by Rabbi Michael Lerner (who was the D’Orlando Lecturer a few years ago) that it is entirely possible from the viewpoint of the Palestinians to see present-day Israelis as modern Pharoahs, curtailing the freedoms of the Palestinian people, taking their homes and land, and proscribing and restricting their labor.

It’s also not hard to fathom why the Passover story would not symbolize liberation and freedom to Native Americans, and would resonate negatively with them. If you were an American Indian, who are the Egyptians and who are the slaves in the story? And who is already living happily in the Promised Land when the English refugees arrive, claiming the land has been promised to them by their god?

Indeed, the Pilgrims and the Puritans explicitly used the Passover metaphor of the Exodus to theologically explain their journey from England to the so-called New World (which was actually quite old to the people already here). To the newly-arrived colonists, who saw themselves as a “special people,” if not exactly as the Chosen People, the scripture story motivated them and excused their every action. Just as the Hebrews had moved into and taken over the land of Canaan in the Bible, by the sword if necessary, so did they have the right and privilege to take over this land, by violence if necessary. And so it was that a story ostensibly of liberation came to be used as a tool of oppression. It is no wonder that Native Americans read the Exodus story, as one member of the Osage Nation has written, “with Canaanite eyes.”

The western migration of Mormons, repeatedly persecuted by legal authorities for their religion and its practices, was also inter-preted by their leaders as the exodus of an oppressed people to a promised land of freedom and self-determination. At the Mormon center and museum in Salt Lake City, which Eric and I visited during the UUA General Assembly held there in 2009, we saw dramatic dioramas that portrayed the heroic Mormons as Israelites escaping from Egypt. We can be quite sure that the incursion and takeover looked completely different to the Ute nation.

This flexible and versatile story can be used in other current time political dilemmas, interpreted in different ways depending on who and where you are. If you are a resident of Houston, and feel overrun by poor New Orleanians escaping from the devastation of Katrina, who is Egypt, who are the Hebrews, who are the Canaanites whose land is invaded? If you are a displaced New Orleanian arriving somewhere after Katrina and find there good-paying work and functional public schools and decide, however reluctantly, to stay, who is Egypt, who are the Hebrews, who are the Canaanites whose land is invaded?

If you are a migrant worker coming to America from an impoverished and possibly oppressive country, with legal papers or not, who is Egypt, who are the Hebrews, who are the Canaanites whose land is invaded? If you are a low-wage worker in a place like New Orleans that attracts migrant workers, who because of their ambiguous legal status can be paid much less than you (and indeed even cheated of the low wages they are paid), who is Egypt, who are the Hebrews, who are the Canaanites whose land is invaded?

If you are an Iraqi or Afghani hearing the Passover story, who is Egypt, who are the Hebrews, who are the Canaanites whose land is invaded? If you are a young Egyptian who spent those recent days and nights in Tahrir Square, demanding freedom and self-determination, who in the story is Egypt, who are the Hebrews, who are the Canaanites whose land is invaded? Always we must ask oursleves, Whose liberation are we talking about? That is the perennial question.

While at blush the Passover story seems to be one that is quite clear in its depiction of “good guys” vs. “bad guys,” as we have already seen, it would be a mistake for us to see the story as simple good opposed to evil. The story is clear that not all Egyptians are bad guys; a clear example occurs early in the story when the daughter of Pharoah, a princess of Egypt, adopts a baby boy that she knows is Hebrew, and raises him in luxury and ease in the palace. (One story told by later rabbis says that the princess even gave up her title and place, and left Egypt with the Hebrews.)

In the Haggadah, the order of service for a Passover seder meal, one of the opening blessings calls for the liberation of “all people everywhere” and invites, “Let all who are hungry come and eat” – regardless of background or religion. Another reminds celebrants to beware of “movements which free only some of us, in which our so-called ‘freedom’ rests upon the enslavement or embitterment of others.” (Ari Davidow)

The Midrash, the collection of interpretations and stories that accumulated around the Torah over generations, teaches that, while watching the Egyptians succumb to the plagues, the angels in heaven broke into songs of jubilation, and in a stunning early example of universalism, God rebuked them, saying, “The Egyptians are my children also – my creatures are perishing, why should you sing praises?” To commemorate this, and to remind us that we are all, oppressed and oppressor, children of God, in the seder ritual participants spill drops of wine for each plague, to reduce their own pleasure and joy for the suffering of the Egyptians. One Haggadah says, “Our joy in our liberation will always be tarnished by the pain visited upon the Egyptians.”

When we remember the beginning of the story, back in Genesis, that the Egyptians started off as saviors of the starving Hebrew people during a time of famine, we realize the fine line between acting well and acting wrongly. Good guys all too easily become bad guys, forgetting their unity with people they hold down and mistreat. The very act of oppressing others causes internal oppress`sion, eroding a sense of shared humanity, leading to bigger and more monstrous acts. It is easier than we let ourselves believe for a good guy to act like a bad guy. All of us, whoever we are, are both Egyptian and Hebrew.

How difficult this is! How much easier if we could reduce the world to opposites, this or that, red or green, heroes and villains! But that is not the real world, the world in which we live, in which even well-intentioned acts can have terrible consequences, and even ostensible bad guys deserve our compassion. The Pass-over story teaches us, in all its complexity, that we must weigh what we think and what we do, to try to see beyond our immediate gains and losses.

In her poem, “For Memory,” Adrienne Rich writes:

Freedom. It isn’t once, to walk out
under the Milky Way, feeling the rivers
of light, the fields of dark—
freedom is daily, prose-bound, routine
remembering. Putting together, inch by inch
the starry worlds. From all the lost collections.

This is our challenge and our responsibility. AMEN – ASHE – SHALOM – SALAAM – NAMASTE – BLESSED BE!

“ODD COUPLES”

2011-03-29T10:40:00.000-07:00

On/Off Series on Bible Stories for UUS
The Rev. Melanie Morel-Ensminger
First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans
Sunday, March 27, 2011

This is the second in an on-going off-and-on series of sermons on Bible stories for religious liberals, to interpret them in a modern way, for the lives we live now. The first sermon in this series was based on classic stories of sibling rivalry in the Old and New Testaments; it showed us that family conflict and competition for the affection of parents and authority figures was as old as Adam and Eve’s children. We also learned of the power of forgiveness in healing broken sibling relationships.

Today’s sermon looks at some unusual and unexpected love stories, some odd couples, in the Bible. Hearing these stories with contemporary ears, we discover how very ancient it is to break out of established categories to form loving relationships of all kinds.
This service is all about strange pairings, odd couples: the owl and the pussycat as in our children’s story, and then Naomi and Ruth; David and Jonathan; Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well from the Bible. In each case, we learn of two individuals who have broken social taboos and gone beyond the hard boundaries of gender, religion, and custom.

The words we used as our Responsive Reading this morning come from the story in the Book of Ruth. There are sometimes used in wedding ceremonies, but they are not the words of one spouse or lover to another. Amazingly, they are from a daughter-in-law to her mother-on-law.

It was the tradition in those days for a widow to return to her family of origin after the death of her husband. Normally, relation-ships between daughters-in-law and mothers-in-law in ancient Palestine were so fraught with negative emotion that it makes Ernie K-Doe’s song “Mother-in-Law” sound like a love story. Daughters-in-law were supposed to serve their husband’s mother and to please her in all things; physical punishment meted out to the daughter-in-law was not at all uncommon. Most daughters-in-law were likely relieved to be sent back home after the death of their husband. If a mother-in-law had been dictatorial and cruel when a husband was there to protect the wife, imagine how dangerous it might have felt to be around her without the interposition of the husband.

But here we have something that upends the rules of society, not only at that time, but even in our pwn time. (How many times have you heard someone say defensively, “I like my mother-in-law – really, I do”?) In words that are poetic and emotionally moving, Ruth begs Naomi to allow her to stay. In the old-fashioned language of the King James version, she says, “Whither thou goest, I will go.” The word used for when Ruth clings to Naomi is the same as the one used elsewhere in the Bible to describe the union of husband and wife – she “cleaved” to her. The two women proceed to establish a household together, caring for each other and supporting each other, going against all the rules of Hebrew society at the time. (Some scholars have speculated that they may have had an even more intimate relationship, but that’s not necessary for the story to be moving and boundary-breaking.)

In the story of David and Jonathan, a young shepherd is brought to the attention of King Saul – and at the same time, to the attention of the king’s son Jonathan. Seeing and hearing David, in that moment Jonathan is instantly smitten. One translation says that Jonathan’s soul flew out of his body and joined with David’s. Jonathan is so overcome with emotion that the story says that he strips off his rich garment to give it to David – which, since ancient Hebrews had no underwear, left Jonathan standing there naked.

Some time later in the story, King Saul makes an offer to David to marry Saul’s daughter Michal, saying, “This would make you my son-in-law twice over,” clearly indicating that Saul was aware of the relationship between his son and David. And when Jonathan is killed on the field of battle, David is inspired to cry out poetically, “How the mighty are fallen!” adding, “Jonathan, your love for me was wonderful, more wonderful than the love of women.” It’s hard to believe that even the most die-hard religious conservative can interpret all this as purely platonic love. The story of David and Jonathan shows us that same-sex love has occurred all throughout history, and that it has been chronicled honorably in scripture.

Perhaps the most interesting odd couple in the Bible we’re looking at this morning is Jesus and the woman at the well. While it is not in any way a conventional love story, since it does not show two people who are lovers or partners, it IS a story about the power of love to overcome difference. One of our challenges is, we religious liberals of the 21st century do not know how to hear this story; it’s a little bit like the story called “The Good Samaritan” – we have no reference to exactly how much Jews and Samaritans of the time hated and mistrusted each other, and so it doesn’t strike us as particularly revolutionary.

To get a better feel for how this story would have struck the disciples and other people of the time, Biblical scholar Helene Russell suggests that we try imagining this woman in contemporary terms, to picture her wearing tight jeans, a blouse that reveals too much bosom, her hair ratted up or maybe sloppily put up in sponge rollers, wearing too much make-up, chewing and popping her gum, possibly smoking a cigarette. Now, are YOU comfortable talking to her? Can you see why the disciples are astounded and uncomfortable when they find Jesus talking to her? Now can you see why the story is subversive?

And it’s not only her looks that are a problem. This woman has attitude to spare. Even though hospitality in this desert region is a cultural imperative, at first she resists giving the thirsty stranger a drink of water. Water from the hand of a Samaritan would be taboo for a Jew, and she knows it; she teases him about it. When Jesus tells her he can give her “living water,” she waxes sarcastic. “Yeah, gimme some of that so I don’t have to come down here and lug these jugs,” she laughs. She jousts with him over the religious differences between Jews and Samaritans, and Jesus tells her a time is coming, and in fact has already arrived, when those differences will not matter. And then Jesus throws her the biggest curve of all.

“Go get your husband,” he says slyly, and she replies, “I have none.” Jesus’ answer is, in effect, “Gotcha!” No, indeed, she has no husband, but she’s had 5, and the guy she’s living with now is not married to her. (The translation is ambiguous – it’s possible this man is actually married to someone else.) As anyone would be under the circumstances, the woman is amazed, and maybe a little afraid. After calling Jesus a prophet, she becomes a kind of prophet herself, running back to her village to proclaim the man who told her everything about herself. Amazingly, since Jesus does not even tell his disciples this, he reveals to her that he is the Messiah. What can it mean that he chooses THIS person for this revelation? How boundary-breaking is that?

Odd couples. A bird and a feline form a romantic attachment and run away together. A mother-in-law and daughter-in-law defy stereotypes and make a tender life together. Two men love each other truly, deeply, madly. A great teacher reaches out in compassion to someone whose gender, religion, ethnicity, and class are almost unsurmountable barriers to right relationship. What is the common theme?
Dr. Helene Tallon Russell, assistant professor of theology at Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis, says the stories show that clearly God is not interested in categories. God’s love and acceptance is extended to all, overcoming all the boxes we human beings put ourselves and each other in.

Put another way, the force that binds the universe binds us all. Transforming love, in all its forms, is what matters, not anything else. Not rules, not traditions, and certainly not social ideas of race, class, gender, religion, or ethnicity.
Why am I telling a bunch of rational Unitarian Universalists these old old stories? I want you to know these stories because the Bible is part of our heritage and our culture. But more importantly, I want you to be familiar with these stories because for far too long the Bible has been misused and misquoted and misinterpreted, to the detriment of women, gay and lesbian people, and religious liberals. Isn’t it great to have stories from the Bible that WE can use to support our positions on equality and diversity and justice?

The most important reason I want us to know these stories and integrate them into our religious life is that they are liberating. Isn’t it surprising and wonderful to learn that the Bible has such stories, stories that drive home the lesson that Divine Love crosses all boundaries, stories that remind us that the categories and customs that keep us separate and apart can be overcome?

God’s love or Divine Love or the force that moves the Universe unites all people across everything that serves to alienate us one from another. This lesson can be found in the Bible just as much as it can be found in the scriptures treasured and read by religious liberals. In fact, it can be said that this message is found in the other source partially because it was first found in the Bible. Let us take this lesson to heart and strive to be boundary-breakers in the name of love and liberation. So might this be! AMEN – ASHE – SHALOM – SALAAM – NAMASTE – BLESSED BE!

“Behind The Mask”

2011-03-15T11:35:00.000-07:00

A Sermon for After Mardi Gras by the Reverend Melanie Morel-Ensminger
First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans
Sunday, March 13, 2011

Five days ago, we were all swept up into the swirling joyous madness that is Mardi Gras, and many of us were a part of the show, by wearing masks – some plastic, some fabric, some with sequins and glitter, some with feathers, some plain, some beautiful, some fantastic, some scary. I bought a plain classic purple satin mask at Jefferson Variety, and decorated it myself with hot glue, sequin braid, and hot pink ostrich feathers. I had fun wearing it last weekend, but it was a relief to take it off. Note to self: long ostrich plumes are NOT a good idea during a windy Mardi Gras.)

Masks have long been associated with the city’s celebration of Carnival, and indeed, have become a kind of emblem of New Orleans herself. We New Orleanians seemingly wear masks at the drop of a hat. Masks and New Orleans are essentially linked in the public mind, what with Mardi Gras, Halloween, and the Day of Decadence. Masks may be the #1 souvenir taken home by tourists. The association between the city and masks goes back centuries. Back when Louisiana was under the control of Spain in the late 1700s, the authorities tried to ban the wearing of masks. It may not surprise you to learn that it didn’t work.

But the Spanish governor did have a point – masks act as a disguise, hiding what lies behind. It’s easier to get away with something when you are wearing a mask; it’s easier to conceal what’s really going on. To discover someone’s identity, to learn the truth, you have to go behind the mask. This principle applies not only to people in costume – but also to many other situations.

What folks think they know about New Orleans can function as a kind of mask. Example: New Orleans has been noted in the national media both as one of the fastest growing cities in the United States, and as a dying city. (It seems to me you really can't be both.) It sounds great to be “one of the fastest growing cities in the United States” -- but it is a mask. Look behind it and you see a city where a significant portion of our original population has still not been able to return after the forced evacuation 5 years ago. In reality, ours is a city depleted of its original citizens, some of whom are prevented from coming back, even as more affluent outsiders stream in.

Another mask New Orleans wears is her old nickname of The City That Care Forgot – the party town, Sin City. Sure, we’re comfortable wearing that mask; we’ve worn it for generations. We still have our celebrations and our festivals; we still eat the best and most diverse local food in the country. We still know how to laissez les bon temps roulez, cher. If visitors stroll the French Quarter or ride the St. Charles streetcar, they might believe the mask is our real face. Despite everything that has happened, we are still an incredibly beautiful and culturally rich city.

But go behind the mask, go to the 7th Ward or the Lower 9th Ward or Gentilly or Lakeview, and it’s clear that even now, 5 years after the Storm, vast areas of the city remain vacant, lost, destroyed. Neighborhoods that never had a vacant lot before Katrina show empty acres; some formerly prosperous middle-class neighborhoods exhibit only “jack o’lantern” progress, a few renovated houses standing out on devastated blocks. And some former working class neighborhoods sprout Mac-mansions, further depleting the stock of affordable housing in the city.

Even many of those abandoned homes are masks – some of them are actually occupied. With housing projects torn down, the term “affordable housing” itself a mask for what the city no longer has, and with many low-income home owners unable to access programs that rehab houses, some New Orleanians have come home only to have no homes. According to UNITY, some people – numbering in the thousands – are squatting in their own destroyed house, or one that belongs to someone else. Some are squeezed into the homes of friends or relatives as they struggle to rebuild or find a new home. They are, in affect, homeless in their own home.

In the cluster of UU churches that make up Greater New Orleans UUs, the mask might be how well we seem to outsiders – we hold worship, our Sanctuary looks gorgeous, we teach our children and youth, we gather for fellowship events and we work on social justice projects. We’ve jointly taught two interns. We host volunteers from around the country, and we do our best to show them all sides, the good and the bad, the fun and the devastated. But despite the new members and our active ministries and our visibility in the wider community, it is still a struggle. First Church lacks a permanent certificate of occupancy, and electricity to our Sanctuary comes from a tangle of extension cords. A few parishioners in all 3 churches are still without a proper home; a few still camp out in homes not yet completely renovated. We may look fine, especially with a casual look, but we’re all still in the struggle. Looking fine is our mask.

We especially need to get behind the mask when we try to engage in social justice. A mask that is often hard to shake off in justice work is our own privileged sense that we already know what’s best for someone else. When Katrina happened, I was astounded at the number of people outside of New Orleans – even UUs! – who told me that the city should not be rebuilt, or if it were, to be rebuilt “somewhere else.” (They never did say where exactly.) After Katrina, lots of good-hearted volunteers from around the country insisted they knew best where and how to direct their labor.

In doing social justice work as a UU congregation, it is necessary to go behind all kinds of masks, masks that keep us from seeing the true depth of a situation, masks that prevent us from realizing root causes in the issues we face, masks that hamper our effectiveness. One mask is is assuming we already know what ought to be done; another is the so-called conventional wisdom. While even the lowest level of charity is preferable to doing nothing, UU churches that want to have the greatest impact should go behind the mask and employ a clear-headed analysis in order to make true and lasting positive change, and in order to build right relations in the wider community. Social analysis requires going back to basics, looking behind the received wisdom about a situation, asking hard questions of ourselves and others to learn what we don’t already know about a given issue.

We UUs often say in our stewardship campaigns that folks should give to their church “till it feels good” and we often promote doing social justice work in our communities by saying how good it makes you feel. Donating money and time and effort to our congregations and to causes we believe in does indeed feel good, and that is a valid reason for doing them. But an even better reason is because we are all in this together. People who belong to a Unitarian Universalist church need to stand together with other folks in UU churches because we are all sisters and brothers in faith. We stand together with people in need in our city because we are all New Orleanians. We stand with people who have survived hardship in our country because we are all Americans. We stand with the people of Japan and New Zealand in the aftermath of the earthquakes because we are all human beings. When we take off our masks of difference, we find we are all the same. As hymn #134 proclaims, “Our world is one world/what touches one affects us all.”

Many of us wear invisible, personal masks that TV’s Dr. Phil McGraw calls our “social mask.” We hide things about ourselves that make us uncomfortable or afraid or ashamed, things that differentiate us from those around us, things that we feel will make other people dislike us, or get us fired, or bring down violence on our heads. The process of learning to wear such a mask starts very early on. In “The ‘me’ behind the mask,” a paper on the developmental challenges of gifted children, Miraca Gross tells this sad little story from several years ago:

S

eventh-grade Emma was deeply moved by a television program about the Czechoslovakian struggle for freedom from the USSR. The next morning she started to describe to some of the other girls in her class the pain of the Czechoslovakian people. The other girls looked her up and down, raised their eyebrows, and ostentatiously walked away. Emma realized her mistake, and the next day she engaged the girls in a conversation about clothes and make-up. They accepted her back, with relief. She was wearing the right mask.
http://www.sengifted.org/articles_social/Gross_TheMeBehindTheMask.shtml

Under pressure that is both internal and external, we wear masks to try to cover our original social class, our education or lack of it, our sexual orientation, our political opinions, our religion. We hide behind our social mask, afraid someone will find out we are not as we appear. We are silent when we ought to speak, fearing to give our true selves away. We spend money we do not have to live a life that we think we ought to have. We pretend to feelings we do not have and cover up feelings we do have. These are not the glittering and beautiful masks of Carnival, but are destructive and harmful. These masks are killing us.

When we go behind the mask and discern what is really going on in ourselves, in our communities and in our world, we are better able to do what must be done. We face the world as our authentic selves, able and willing to make common cause with justice-loving peoples everywhere, and make lasting contributions to the spread of freedom and justice and equality. So might this be for all of us! AMEN – ASHÉ – SHALOM – SALAAM – NAMASTÉ – BLESSED BE!

“Two Anniversaries”

2011-03-01T13:34:00.000-08:00

First Church’s 178th & Rev. Melanie’s 18th
First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans
Sunday, February 27, 2011

Reading Before Sermon, from the First Church History webpage,
with contributions by Meg Dacjowski, Mary Jo Day, and Rev. Melanie Morel-Ensminger

…On November 23, 1823, the church was organized along formal Presbyterian lines, Presbyterian standards were adopted and the congregation petitioned the Presbytery of Mississippi to be enrolled as The First Presbyterian Church in the City and Parish of New Orleans…. In the spring of 1824, Reverend Theodore Clapp took his seat for the first time at a meeting of the Mississippi Presbytery.

From the beginning, Clapp's ministry was controversial. In 1824, he was elected as President of the College of Orleans. While President, he was charged with promoting an inter-racial dance in which slaves and free people of color had come together with white citizens at a ball. For this, Clapp was fined $20.00 though charges were later dropped. In 1824 Clapp began to question the doctrine of eternal punishment for sinners. In his autobiography, Clapp claimed to have received a revelation of universal salvation “by witnessing the profusion, splendor, and beauty of a social entertainment” – i.e., a party held at the home of a parishioner.

From 1826, when Clapp was formally charged until 1832 when he was convicted of heresy, there was a continuous exchange of accusations, charges, recantations, rewording of statements, and other exchanges between Clapp and the Mississippi Presbytery. Some charges were doctrinal, others reflected personal conflict with members over "unChristian" (that is, immoral) conduct. The conduct charges were dropped but the doctrinal charges remained. These included the charge that Clapp refuted the doctrine of original sin, denied the Trinity, did not hold the doctrine of “decrees of God,” denied the Deity of Jesus, regarded observance of the Sabbath as optional, and did not believe in intercessory prayer. At his trial, after much debate and eloquent impassioned speeches on both sides, Clapp was suspended from the ministry until he showed “signs of repentance” on December 22, 1832.

Clapp's congregation had never been a particularly orthodox one, nor all that attached to being Presbyterian, and Clapp’s support in the church increased as the controversy with the Presbytery continued. On February 26, 1833, the congregation rejected his offer to resign and voted by a margin of 86 to 26 to continue Clapp as their pastor; the majority retained the church building and communion silver. (The minority retained the name First Presbyterian and purchased another building.) Later that year, the church was incorporated as the First Congregational Church of New Orleans. In 1837, the congregation was recognized as Unitarian by the American Unitarian Association, and was listed as First Congregational Unitarian Church in subsequent AUA directories as one of the churches of the “west.” So ends our Reading.

Sermon
On the evening of Sunday, February 26, 1993, I knelt on the scarred cork floor of the Sanctuary of the old church building at 1800 Jefferson Avenue, and the voting members of First Church pressed forward, linking hands in a living chain to lay hands on my shoulders to ordain me to the Unitarian Universalist ministry. In the living links of the chain of hands were 3 present and former ministers of the church – the Rev. Suzanne Meyer, Rev. Michael McGee, and Rev. Albert D’Orlando – as well as the Rev. John De Wolf-Hurt, District Executive of the Southeast District, and Rev. Bill Schulz, president of the Unitarian Universalist Association. I was nearly smothered from the press of people around me but it was one of the most meaningful events of my life, right up there with the birth of my son and marrying Eric.

My ordination by this church 18 years ago launched me into UU ministry at congregations as widespread as Ellisville, Mississippi; Chattanooga, Tennessee; Auckland, New Zealand; and Cherry Hill, New Jersey, before my return to my hometown and my home church 2 years after Katrina in August of 2007. I know I brought to all the churches I served a sense of the New Orleans spirit and the fervor for justice and good worship that I learned here at First Church. (This was not always in my best interest; in some churches I was accused, rightly as it turns out, of not loving that city as much as I loved New Orleans, and not loving that church as much as I loved First Church.)

I hope I have been able to bring here to you what I’ve learned and gained from those disparate locations and those years of ministry away from the church and city that I love so much. I hope I’ve grown and matured in these years of ministry, and I hope I have contributed in some small way to First Church’s and the city’s recovery and renewal.

What many First Churchers may not realize is how much this congregation and this city have contributed to MY recovery and renewal. Although I was living away at the time of Katrina, I too was traumatized by Katrina’s aftereffects, and being teased for over a decade for having an unusual accent and a strange obsession with food and music takes its toll on a person. It is not only good to be home, it is healing and comforting and fulfilling to be home.

That 18 years ago day was not only meaningful to me but also to the First Church congregation, because at the morning service earlier that Sunday, the congregation marked its 160th anniversary as an independent religious community. One of only 2 Unitarian churches to survive the Civil War, the First Church congregation had up to that time overcome 3 congregational splits, 6 wars, innumerable yellow fever and influenza epidemics, moves to 5 buildings in 3 locations, and several serious financial crises (once we were rescued by New Orleans Jewish philanthropist Judah Touro, and one crisis was solved, ironically enough, through redress from the state lottery).

The hoopla surrounding the church’s 160th anniversary gave the congregation a sense of accomplishment and feelings of hope for the future. Within a few years, the congregation made the brave step of selling its historic location at the corner of Jefferson and Danneel and moving down to this much larger campus on a major city artery. With the increased visibility and capacity came dreams of an increased urban ministry.

First Church has always had a history of urban ministry. The history page on our website by necessity can tell only a part of the whole story. It might sound like bragging, but it is only the truth that this church and members of this congregation have been involved in or leaders of nearly every single justice issue in the city of New Orleans since our breakaway from the Presbytery in 1833. Women’s rights, welfare of the poor and children and disabled people, improvement of the city’s drainage and water purity and flood protection, welfare of animals, education at all levels, the right of working people to organize, interfaith cooperation, free speech and free association, civil rights for people of color and gays and lesbians, speaking out against unjust wars, and care for our fragile environment – all these and more have been part of First Church’s agenda. It is a proud history, and an important legacy.

Today we are faced with some familiar challenges we have faced before as well as some new ones. We have rebuilt our building after a disaster before – only the last disaster before this one was fire, not water. We have come back before from heavy financial losses and giant deficits, and while this time there won’t be a Judah Touro or a Louisiana lottery to save us, we have saved our own selves at least once before. We have regained members before after precipitous drops in congregational membership. One of the best things about being a congregation with a 178-year history is that we have so much past to look to for inspiration and courage and hope.

We are poised once again to fulfill the promise of our history. Even though our building is not yet completely rebuilt from the Flood, we are already a center for community activities to promote spirituality, physical health, and wider justice. The Center for Ethical Living and Social Justice Renewal, the non-profit organization founded by the 3 New Orleans UU congregations which rents the 2nd floor of our Religious Education wing for the New Orleans Rebirth Volunteer Center, has hosted thousands of volunteers from all over the country and has brought its “Race, Race, & Recovery” dialogue to even more out-of-town volunteers through partnerships with other recovery organizations. Our close relationships with Community Church and North Shore have made all 3 congregations stronger and better-known. In a matter of months, our Community Kitchen will finally open and begin a new multi-parish food ministry, both by the church and by our partners the New Orleans AIDS Task Force. Our forums concerning the Gulf Oil Spill have garnered national media attention, and our efforts on behalf of local workers and in favor of a smaller Parish Prison are already bearing fruit.

But this is just the beginning. While I have always held that First Church could, and ought, to be a much larger church in terms of members than it has even been in the past, the number of members is not the only measure of a church’s health. Just as important to me is the quality of our congregational life and the vibrancy of our urban ministry, no matter our size. And I continue to believe that a church that “walks its talk” through putting its faith into action in the wider community will naturally attract like-minded people, who want a strong, muscular spirituality that makes a difference for the better in the world.

I pray that both First Church and I have many years of productive ministry ahead of us, and that our shared ministry aids in the rebirth and renewal of the city we all love. And I thank First Church for first recognizing my ministry, supporting and nurturing me in my quest for the ministry, and for being willing to ordain me. And now all these years later, allowing me to come home and serve the church and the city. I cannot imagine what my life would have been like if I hadn’t found First Church. I am forever in your debt.

When I first found this church, back in 1983, one of my first thoughts was, “I can’t believe this church has been here so long and I didn’t know about it.” I would have been religiously satisfied, and my life would have been enriched, a lot sooner if I had only heard of Unitarian Universalism quicker. Think of all the folks in the greater New Orleans area whose lives would be improved if they heard our saving message of justice and hope and inclusion. Let’s celebrate our 178th anniversary by making sure that many more people get the word. May more and more people hear the good news of our liberal faith and join us in our efforts to make New Orleans more just and more equitable. So might this be! AMEN – ASHE – SHALOM – SALAAM – NAMASTE – BLESSED BE!

Benediction
From Rev. Clapp:

However separated in space,
May we be cemented by tender and hallowed memories on earth,
And beyond the grave meet again,
To unite in that…temple not made with hands…
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God our Father,
And the communion of their Holy Spirit,
Be with you all,
Now and forevermore. Amen.

From Rev. Suzanne Meyer:

May the peace that passeth understanding
And the love that casts out fear
Be with us now and forever. Amen.

"Esau & Jacob & Other Sibling Rivalries”

2011-02-22T14:26:00.000-08:00

On/Off Series on Bible Stories for Religious Liberals
A Sermon by the Rev. Melanie Morel-Ensminger
First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans
Sunday, February 20, 2011

With this service, I start an on-and-off series of services on stories from the Bible for religious liberals. We Unitarian Universalists can tend to have awkward or uncomfortable relationships with the Bible, and this series is a way for me to try to “unpack” the stories to learn what we liberals can learn from them. The series won’t be numbered, because I’m not sure how many I will do, and they will pop up on an irregular basis on the church calendar. We begin with Biblical tales of sibling rivalry, since I am the oldest of my father and mother’s four children, and have quite a bit of experience in this area.

The most recurring punch line of the old Smothers Brothers comedy duo was, “Mom always liked you best!” delivered in a complaining whine by Tommie to Dickie. When my sister and I would fight as children, she would sometimes sneer at me, “Daddy’s girl.” Cain and Abel, Ishmael and Isaac, Esau and Jacob, Rebecca and Leah, Joseph and ALL his brothers, the Prodigal son and his older brother, the Smothers Brothers, my sister and me, your sibling and you, your kids – it’s all the same, Biblical times, the 1950s, or right now. Siblings say to one another, Mom or Dad likes you best. You are getting preferential treatment. It’s not fair, I hate you.

Experts in family systems and family counseling seem to agree that the root of nearly all sibling rivalry lies in the perception or actuality of a parent’s preference for one over the other. Wherever there’s a parent with a favorite child, however well they think they’re concealing their feelings, there are siblings filled with resentment and hurt.

Thank goodness, not all stories of sibling hostility end as badly as the one about Cain and Abel. Few angry siblings actually kill each other, although many, like Esau after Jacob’s trick, in a fit of anger, threaten to. And just as many, like Esau and Jacob, like my sister and me, go through periods of time without any contact at all. (And many, after the passage of years, cannot remember what their original beef with each other was.)

Rabbi Henry Kagan, who was also a practicing psychologist, reminds us that the stories in the Bible of families struggling with issues like sibling rivalry resonate with us today because they are OUR stories, only, as he says, “better written.” These Biblical narratives fascinate us because they are so very familiar to us. We know these people; we’ve even BEEN these people –

• a stepmother resenting her child’s older half-brother, and wanting both the mother and child gone, as with Sarah and Abraham’s child with Hagar, Ishmael. Did you ever wonder how Isaac felt about the disappearance of his older half-brother? It couldn’t have helped matters when his dad later almost sacrificed him. And did Sarah ever feel like the wicked stepmother?
• two sisters fighting over the same sweetheart, as with Rebecca and Leah. Imagine being poor Leah, revealing yourself on your wedding night to your groom, who was expecting to marry your better-looking sister – now THAT couldn’t have been a happy honeymoon!
• siblings being jealous over the accomplishments and achievements of another, as with Moses’ sibs Aaron and Miriam. God got so mad at Miriam’s complaints that she was punished with a disfiguring rash, which only went away when she and Aaron cooperated with Moses’ leadership.
• siblings fed up over a parent’s obvious partiality to a sibling, as with the brothers and Joseph’s multi-colored coat. (Joseph was, ironically, Jacob’s son, showing that Jacob had not learned a thing from his mother’s preference for HIM). Joseph only made things worse when he told his brothers that even in his dreams he lorded it over them.
• a “good” sibling incensed and incredulous over a parent’s indulgence of a “bad” sibling, as with the prodigal son and his brother. We love how the bad son is so emotionally and extravagantly forgiven by his dad, and we forget to have sympathy for the good son, back home, helping with the father’s business all those years, asking, “Where’s MY party??”
•two siblings arguing over which of them “has the better part” as with Martha and Mary fighting over who gets to sit near Jesus and who has to do KP duty.

On our Order of Service, we see a beautiful artistic rendition of the first meeting of Jacob and Esau, years and years and years after the story we told as our reading, showing what happened when Jacob finally returned to the land of his parents. As he approached the homecoming, he was anxious and fearful over how he would be received by Esau. And when Esau was spotted running towards Jacob’s entourage, Jacob felt the urge to run the opposite way. But Esau was rushing to embrace his brother.

Over the years that they were separated, instead of nursing his hurt and disappointment, Esau instead moved in the other direction, coming on his own to understanding and acceptance and forgiveness. Like the father in the prodigal story, he did not wait to hear an apology, but rushed head-long to express his joy at their reunion.

Modern psychology teaches us the same lessons. If you find yourself holding onto hostility or resentment for a brother or a sister because of the differential in the way your parents treated you, here are few tips to remember for making things better*:

• Gain some needed perspective by meditating or praying. It is a tenet in 12-Step programs to pray for a person you feel negative about; this invariably lessens the negativity.
• Change your point of view; try to see things differently. It may be that what you see as special treatment is really just evening things out. If one sibling is seen as weak or vulnerable by a parent, that sib may receive extra help. Ask yourself, Would I rather that my parents see me as strong and competent, or do I want them to think I’m needy?
• Show love and support for the sibling you are feeling hostile towards. I know this sounds counterintuitive, but this really works. By showing positive emotions to your brother or sister, you work your way into feeling more positive – and your efforts at encouragement may engender the same from them towards you.
• Stop comparing yourself to your siblings. If you’re thinking, “They’re so smart and talented with X,” they’re likely as not thinking the same thing about you in a different area. Every person has varying strengths and talents and gifts – that doesn’t make us better, it make us different.
• Find ways of having more friendly interactions. Go to movies, have meals together, maybe share a vacation spot. You lessen tension among your siblings by being together more often in casual ways that are fun and enjoyable. It's amazing how close my siblings have become with our monthly dinners and annual shared vacation.
• Forgive your parents. Forgive them and let it go that they might have liked one of their children more than they liked others. They loved you all the best they knew how; they tried their best to balance things as they saw it. Like most human endeavors, they fell short of their goal of perfect impartiality. You’re falling short of your goals too. Forgive and move on.
• Finally, and most importantly, look at the long term. If something serious was to happen to any of your siblings, most likely your first thought will not be, ”Mama liked her better.” These are the only brothers and sisters you’ll have; forgive them, appreciate them for who they are, and give up disliking them for their faults and short-comings.

For parents who are currently doing their darnedest to raise their children as impartially as they can, forgive yourselves right now. It is impossible for a human being, parent or not, to like all other humans the same. We are naturally drawn to people who share our interests, or who share our personality traits; this is only natural. But parents can strive always to LOVE their children equally, for different things, and can monitor their treatment of their children to ensure, not sameness of treatment (which is impossible anyway), at least a balance of treatment.

“Mom always liked you best,” Tommy Smothers complained to his brother Dickie, and maybe, just maybe, like Rebekah in the story of Esau and Jacob, she DID. So what? They’re grown-ups now and successful, respected in their field of endeavor. Maybe like Esau rushing to greet the long-lost Jacob, and like Joseph’s brothers begging his forgiveness in Egypt, we should all forgive each other and live in the present. You won’t be sorry you did.

May we learn from the stories of brothers and sisters in the Bible, and learn understanding, acceptance, forgiveness, and healing for ALL our relationships. SO MIGHT THIS BE! AMEN – ASHE – SHALOM – SALAAM – NAMASTE – BLESSED BE!

*Some insights for this sermon were gained from "Sibling Rivalry! Causes and Cures" by Becky Sweat in Vertical Thought, an Online Magazine for Tomorrow's Leaders.

“Standing on the Side of Love” Sunday

2011-02-15T12:23:00.000-08:00

A Sermon by the Rev. Melanie Morel-Ensminger
First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans
Sunday, February 13, 2011

On Wednesday, February 2nd, from 1 pm to a little after 2 pm, I stood shivering in the cold of the parking lot outside the office of Criminal Sheriff Marlin Gusman, despite my heavy coat, scarf, hat, and gloves. I was part of a circle that included Rev. Jim Vanderweele of Community Church, a Roman Catholic nun, representatives from Catholic Charities, the Restaurant Opportunities Center, organizers from the Worker Center and the Congreso of Day Laborers, and a group of Latino day workers. Everyone was heavily bundled up – with the notable exception of the Latino workers, who were wearing only hoodies and layers of sweatshirts. There was one down jacket for the five of them, and the man wearing it periodically removed it to warm up the next man.

The wind was so strong that everyone’s eyes were watering, and strands of Congreso organizer Jacinta Gonzalez’s long hair whipped about her face as she spoke. Over the loud barking of the police dogs kenneled near-by, she told of Gusman’s practice of “disappearing” members of the Latino community into unconstitutional indefinite prison time and Immigration custody after minor or trumped-up offenses. She spoke of fathers and husbands – and even mothers and wives – who simply never came home from work or an errand. Other speakers spoke of the injustice of having the workers do so much for the recovery of post-Katrina New Orleans, only to be racial-profiled, jailed, and deported afterward.

The group was the vanguard of a 24-hour action to raise awareness of the situation, and to force Sheriff Gusman to stop the harassment and unjust imprisonment of Latino workers. But when the action was planned, it was not known that those 24-hours would be the coldest of year so far. While the group huddled out-side without shelter, it began to sleet. Despite the weather, a group of about 20 stayed the course the whole time, spending the frigid night in sleeping bags and lawn chairs in front of the office. When Sheriff Gusman arrived for work Thursday morning, he insulted them and threatened them with arrest. Nonetheless, they bravely remained.

Over the time of the protest, members and friends of this church and Community Church, as well as staff and volunteers of the Center for Ethical Living & Social Justice Renewal, came and went, bringing rain gear, warm clothing, blankets, hot food and drink, and words of support. I am proud to say that the Unitarian Universalist community of New Orleans were where I always want us to be – standing on the side of love.

Standing on the Side of Love is a national, interfaith movement sponsored by the UUA, to bring the proactive power of love to bear on a variety of social justice issues. It is a simple but profound analysis that we bring to what otherwise might be thorny social challenges: What does it mean to stand on the side of love?

•On the right of the Latino community to remain in New Orleans after all their hard work for our recovery, Love says that we must work to support their right to remain, and on the right to hold their families intact and together, without fear of deportation.
•On the right of all workers – laborers, skilled craftsmen, housekeepers, janitors, waiters, busboys, whatever their work – to be paid for every single hour they work, Love says that we must work to enact Wage Theft legislation, first as city ordinance, later at the state level in Baton Rouge, and finally at the federal level.
•On the right of committed same-sex couples to marry and be equal in their civil rights to male-female couples, Love says that we must work for full equality, for legal marriage in every state – even Louisiana!
•On the rights of transgender, intersexed, and Queer individuals to live their lives in safety, free from harassment and violence, to find and retain housing and jobs, to walk the streets without fear, Love says that we must work for a world in which these rights are routine and normal.
•On the right of People of Color and their communities not to be subject to extra scrutiny in retail stores, racial profiling by authorities, discrimination in jobs and housing, redlining by banks and insurance companies, lack of police protection in their neighborhoods, and harsher prison sentences when convicted of a crime, Love says that we must work for a world free from racism in all its insidious forms.
•On the so-called “Don’t Ask-Don’t Tell” policy on gays and lesbians in the military, Love says that we must work to end this failed policy, which keeps able military personnel in fear, and unjustly expels them from military service, thus depriving our country of their talents and gifts.
•On the appalling suicide rate of teens who identify as gay, lesbian, or trans, Love says that we must keep all our young people safe, give them hope for a better future, and support them in the face of bullying and peer pressure.
•On the plight of the thousands of homeless people in our city, Love says that we must work to provide them with decent shelter, with food to eat and personal toiletries to use, and work also to find counseling, job preparation, and transitional housing to end the scourge of homelessness for individuals and families.

Martin Luther King, Jr. once said that “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Once you begin to use the lens of Love for analysis, you begin to see how justice is connected, across all categories. When you are standing on the side of love, you are compelled to be actively for all oppressed people, every group that is treated negatively for some aspect of their identity, to make yourself an ally in their cause in whatever ways you can.

For some of us, standing on the side of love might mean participating in a public protest, like the one in front of Sheriff Gusman's office, or attending and testifying at a City Council meeting, or being part of strategy meetings with groups under siege. For others, standing on the side of love might mean writing opinion pieces and letters to the editor or to elected officials, and signing petitions. For others, standing on the side of love might mean donating needed money and requested items. There are many, many ways to stand on the side of love.

It is very easy to feel overwhelmed by all the justice issues and all the needs in the world. It is easy to slide into a sense of helplessness, to feel that there are so many needs, so many problems, so many challenges, that it’s impossible to start. And for parents of small and middle-school age children, with all their responsibilities and commitments, the idea of going “out there” to stand on the side of love can be daunting.

On Martin Luther King Day of 1983, my son Stevie was 5 months old. I dressed him in layers that could be removed if the day warmed up, and brought him in his stroller to march in the Parade which was led by Mayor Dutch Morial and Jesse Jackson. The baby fussed at being surrounded by the legs of grownups, and I took him out of the stroller to carry him. Slowed me down by his weight, I ended up falling behind and walking with members of the Communications Workers Union, who noticed that I was juggling the baby while pushing the stroller. A man smiled at me and said, “Trade ya,” offering me his sign while holding out his arms. I don’t know exactly why, but I handed over my son and took the sign. Another union man started pushing the stroller, and I walked the rest of the parade with the CWA, my little son being lovingly passed from man to man. I saved that sign for years, telling Stevie it was his first civil rights march.

In 1985, when Stevie was 3, New Orleans Public Service was seeking a rate increase to support the construction of the Grand Gulf nuclear power plant. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission held hearings in New Orleans. That morning, I bundled Stevie into the stroller, packed the diaper bag with extra supplies, and boarded the Magazine bus. (The driver helped me get the stroller on board.) I rolled into the federal building, and into the hearing room, and there spotted several friends of mine of the activist community. When my name was called to testify, I left my son with those friends. I guess if they hadn’t been there, I would have had to have the stroller with me at the podium – I don’t know, I hadn’t thought that far ahead, I just trusted once again that things would work out.

In the summer of 1990, at the start of the first Gulf War, when Stevie was 8, his father and I took him with us to a protest at One Shell Square on Poydras (which at that time was still the regional headquarters of Shell Oil). The three of us marched and chanted with the others, following the leader with a bullhorn, on such slogans as, “No blood for oil” and “Bring the troops home” – at least we did until Stevie objected.
“Mom, the troops could come home dead,” he said seriously. I brought him over to the protest leader with the bullhorn, and told him my son had something to tell him. Stevie repeated his objection, and the leader asked, “What should we say?” and the boy replied, “Bring the troops home alive” and that’s exactly what we all chanted.

I tell these stories, not to say that my son, then or now, is a perfect saint – I love him, but he isn’t – or to say I’ve been some kind of model parent – believe me, I haven’t – but to stress that parents who care about justice can play a significant role in their children’s lives by helping them to be a part of movements for social change. You can do this in ways that work for your situation and circumstances, and yet that help educate your children about the ways things are and the way things ought to be.

Last Sunday, when we announced that the New Orleans Mission needed help with supplies for their increased client population due to the extremely cold weather, a family brand-new to the church volunteered to help make the delivery of donations. The young people who made that trip had their eyes opened to the lives of people much less well-off than themselves, and offered real help and support. You don’t have to be an adult to stand on the side of love – it can be done by people of any age and condition.

Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day. Pressure is all around us to make this a private day of flowers and roses and candy. But the UUA has offered us an alternative: turn eros into agape, turn romantic love into self-sacrificing love, turn the strictly personal into wider compassion for all those in need. Together, let us make Valentine’s Day – whatever else it might be – into Standing on the Side of Love Day. Find a justice issue that calls your heart and contribute in whatever you can. Do it tomorrow – and then do it again, and again. Let us live our faith in the world. Let us always stand on the side of love. AMEN – ASHE – SHALOM – SALAAM – NAMASTE – BLESSED BE!

“The ‘L’ Word”

2011-02-08T14:34:00.000-08:00

A Sermon by the Rev. Melanie Morel-Ensminger
First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans
Sunday, February 6, 2011

You know there’s a problem with the term “liberal” when you Google the phrase “liberal is a bad word” and you get about 4 million hits. I’m serious, 4 million. There’s even a book for conservative parents to explain to their children why being liberal is horrible – significantly, it’s entitled, “Mom! Help! There Are Liberals Under My Bed!” How bad is that?? (No matter how awful conservatives think liberals are, there’s no equivalent book for parents on the left.)

But it’s not just conservatives – many liberals are themselves running away from the word, preferring to say they are “progresssive” or some other moniker. It’s hard for me to know whether this is done because the liberals themselves dislike the word, or because they feel it’s been redefined by conservatives. I’m preaching on this topic today to reclaim our proud heritage as religious liberals, and to make it easier for us to use the ‘L’ word when referring to our faith tradition.

In our words used for Chalice Lighting, we heard a few of the standard definitions of “liberal,” and we learned of its many positive connotations. Look in any dictionary, whether print or online, and you will find that liberal is a great thing to be. To be liberal is to be generous, tolerant, free from prejudice and bigotry, broad-minded, open to change and new ideas and reform of the status quo. To be liberal is to be in favor of progress, to be unorthodox, non-dogmatic, and non-literal in one’s thinking. To be liberal is to promote greater individual freedom and participation in one’s own affairs. Who wouldn’t want to be liberal?

Our faith tradition has been identified with liberal theology since at least the 19th century. The Protestant clergymen (and they were all men and all Protestant then) who accepted the new rationalist ideas of Biblical criticism that originated in Germany in the mid-1800s were of different Christian denominations, but Unitarians and Universalists were in the majority.

It is important to note that our religious ancestors did not reject the Bible, only a literal reading of it. They professed to find in their reading of scripture no evidence of a Trinity, or eternal punishment or hell, or vicarious atonement (the idea that Jesus died for our sins). Indeed, the liberals found the concept of blood atonement – the notion that God needed the blood in order to be appeased and reconciled to humanity – barbaric and repulsive.

This rejection of orthodox Christian dogma led to accusations of heresy and dangerous heterodoxy – charges that were serious in the 19th century and could lead to loss of pulpits and livelihoods and removal of fellowship as ordained clergy. So religious leaders with the new ideas dubbed themselves “liberal Christians” in order to proclaim that while they had some new ideas, they were still within the Christian fold. It was at this time that the more conservative Christians began to view “liberal” as a negative term.

There’s an advantage to being a religious conservative that is summed up in the familiar bumper sticker “God said it, I believe it, that settles it.” A conservative accepts the creed or dogma handed down, and then needs no further exploration or examination. This does not mean that conservatives do not think about their religious position; there are many thoughtful religious conservatives – this morning’s reading before the sermon comes from one. It is not my intention to demonize conservatives – it is a legitimate philosophic position, and there are many things that I too believe ought to be saved or conserved. I don’t think it solves our problem to try to make conservative into a negative term, the way some conservatives have done with the word liberal.

A religious liberal has a harder time of things. I can explain to you what positions were held by religious liberals in the mid-1800s, but I cannot ask you to believe them, unless you are moved to do so by your heart, mind and experience. Religious liberals are always in the dynamic position of re-examination – of the past, of their own beliefs, of new information and new experiences. As has been said, we Unitarian Universalists are more of a religious movement than a static religion.

This idea that liberals can’t be pinned down to a permanent theological position leads to a critique by conservatives that we have no core beliefs. But we do. Go back to the definition of liberal – we believe in the importance of the open mind, that new information and new experiences must call into question old verities, old so-called truths. We believe that revelation is not sealed – that God or the Universe is not finished speaking to humanity, that we are not done with learning and expanding our minds and horizons. And we believe that religious truth, like scientific truth, must evolve and grow as new things are learned and new data is gathered. That is one of the reasons why education, both secular and spiritual, for all ages, is so important to us religious liberals.

The movement that characterizes liberal religion has led Unitarian Universalism from liberal Christianity in the mid-19th century to acceptance of the truths found in non-Christian world religions at the turn of the 20th century, to an embrace of humanist principles in the mid-20th century, and to rediscovery of pre-Christian pagan nature-based traditions in the late 20th century. The acknowledgment of the movement of the Spirit in our midst also led to our being the first major religious denomination to ordain women and to welcome them into pastoral (as opposed to only chaplaincy and educational) roles, and later, the first to recognize the rights of b/l/t/i persons and to ordain openly gay, lesbian, and transgender clergy.

As civil rights for African-Americans, second-wave feminism, and equal rights for gays and lesbians came to our awareness in the second half of the 20th century, liberal religion changed and grew. Over these years, we incorporated liberation theology, feminist spirituality, and queer theology into our understandings, into our preaching, our worship, and our training of new ministers. For us as religious liberals, this is as it should be. Our spirituality is not set in stone for all time, but progresses and adapts with new knowledge and insight into the human condition.

I am proud to be a religious liberal, and I have no problem with using the word. In fact, I wish “liberal” was an official part of our title. As merger between the Unitarians and Universalists was being discussed in the mid-1960s – this year marks the 50th anniversary of the merger – one of the issues on the table was the name of the new denomination. It is a lingering regret for me that the Merger Commission did not go with my favorite of the names on the proposed list: The Liberal Church of America. Now, that would have been much easier to say and much easier to explain!

We need to reclaim the word liberal. Since so many of us find it hard to explain what Unitarian Universalism stands for in a few words and a few minutes – the famous “elevator speech” challenge – saying we’re a liberal church is easy shorthand.
Last November, my colleague Rev. Dr. Jim Nelson preached a sermon for the 125th anniversary of the Neighborhood UU Church in Pasadena, California, in which he addressed his congregation’s concerns about being called “liberal” –

…Liberal has come to be a bad word these days, but we carry it proudly. We are a liberal faith community; liberal religion is what we profess. Liberal as in generous or bountiful; or befitting a free person, as opposed to servile, as in open-minded and free from prejudice. Liberal. We are liberals here.

Liberal, liberal, liberal! Got it? Not progressive, though we are that too, but liberals. So when people ask who Unitarian Universalists are, tell them we are liberals, that we believe in the freedom of belief; in inclusion, not exclusion; that we believe in justice and equity for all; that doubting is as important as believing; that we should use our mind in faith; that it matters what we do; that no faith has an exclusive claim to the truth; that God is a liberal too. When they ask you what kind of a church you go to, tell them you go to a liberal church.

Well, all I can add to that is, Amen. Tell your friends you go to a liberal church – and invite them to come check us out. Liberal is a good thing to be. AMEN – ASHE – SHALOM – SALAAM – NAMASTE – BLESSED BE!

“What They Dreamed : The James Stoll Story”

2011-01-25T10:18:00.000-08:00

A Sermon by the Rev. Melanie Morel-Ensminger
First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans
Sunday, January 23, 2011

This past September, I, like many UUs who subscribe to the New York Times, was surprised to read in the “Beliefs” column about a Unitarian Universalist minister that I had never heard of – but should have. The minister was the Reverend James Stoll, and he was the first openly gay UU minister. In addition to that distinction, he was largely responsible for the passage at the 1970 UUA General Assembly of the first anti-discrimination resolution for gays and lesbians by a major American denomination. And yet, I had never heard of him. I thought that was both astounding – and wrong.

The New York Times article and subsequent inquiries by UUs and reporters from all over the country spurred the UUA to search its historical records, and to provide heretofore unavailable information about this “unsung hero” of the BGLTI rights movement. And so I, like many other UU ministers, was inspired to preach a sermon about James Stoll.

In order to better understand James Stoll, it is necessary to first grasp the times and context in which he lived. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the United States was riven in what would turn out to be the first in a serious of cultural conflicts. Many progressives and liberals felt a loss of faith in American ideals, when, following the optimism and hope of the Civil Rights movement, there followed the ugly assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Senator Robert Kennedy, the revelations of the failure and fallout of the Vietnam War in the publication (by the UUA’s own Beacon Press) of the Pentagon Papers, and violent disturbances in American inner cities. President Nixon’s administration seemed to promote division in the country, assuring some citizens that they were part of a “Silent Majority” that still treasured old-fashioned patriotism, and rejected the riots, revolution, and radical philosophy attributed to liberals abd African-Americans.

The Unitarian Universalist Association was part of the bubbling cultural gumbo of the times. The Black Empowerment Controversy of 1967-1976 split the denomination, which had been a leader not only in civil rights, but in black empowerment. Our loss at that time of large numbers of African-American members has never been made up. Individual congregations, including this one, erupted into conflict over their ministers’ public stands against the Vietnam War and in favor of full equality for African-Americans. It was a difficult time, for our country and for our denomination, and the implications of what happened in those times still resonates today.

With all the ferment going on, some things were still almost unheard-of. While Unitarianism had once been on the cutting edge of women clergy (in the late 19th and early 20th centuries), by the ate 60’s, women ministers and women in elected congregational leadership were still rare in Unitarian Universalism in those times. UU hymns routinely celebrated the achievements of “man” and “mankind” as a universal for all humanity; women who complained were said to be "over-sensitive." When God was invoked at all, the pronoun used was “He.” And while there can be no doubt whatsoever that there had been same-sex loving UU ministers forever, none of them had been open and public about what we now call their sexual orientation.

Into this context did James Stoll embark on his path to UU ministry. He was born in 1936 in Connecticut, to an affluent upper-middle class family. He was sent to a boarding school in Massachusetts (where, he later said, same-sex relationships were fairly common among the students), and went on to attend San Francisco State University. At some point, he discerned a call to ministry and entered Starr King School for the Ministry, a Unitarian Universalist seminary located in Berkeley, California. As a telling indication of the isolation, fear, and loneliness which enveloped gays and lesbians in those days, Jim Stoll lived for two years in a house in Berkeley with another gay man – and neither realized the other was gay until years later.

After graduation in 1962, Jim was called as pastor to the Unitarian Universalist congregation of Kennewick, in Washington state. By the accounts of parishioners from that time, his ministry was a success. New members joined, drawn by Jim’s preaching, which – like many UU ministers of his age cohort – featured humanistic psychology, Beat Poets, existential philosophers, Kahlil Gibran, and Unitarian poets T. S. Eliot and e. e. cummings. He brought in guest speakers, professors from Starr King and from other Bay Area universities. He brought in samplings of the new music sweeping the nation. As one parishioner later said, “He was like a breath of fresh air.” He was especially beloved by the church’s youth, who idolized him.

Some of what the youth loved about him were things that would later get him into trouble. In a recent exchange on the UU Ministers Chat, there’s been a discussion about the prevalence among UU clergy and congregations at this time of marijuana smoking, adults having sexual or sexualized relationships with older youth, and even spouse-swapping at church parties. While these things were not totally widespread, we have to realize that they were not uncommon either. Jim’s personal use of marijuana and sharing it with church youth, and his double-entendre laced private conversations, are viewed by us today as inappropriate, but was seen by many UUs at the time as emblems of liberal freedom and open-mindedness.

Since the merger of the Unitarians and the Universalists in 1961, the joint youth organizations were on the forefront of many social issues and concerns. The Continental Conference (known then as now as a “Con Con”) of Student Religious Liberals, generally called SRL, was held in September 1969, at Camp Foret in Colorado Springs; Jim Stoll drove a carload of young adults to the event. One can imagine that not a few joints were involved over the 1200 mile trip, and there must have been many free ranging conversations.

The conference was vintage 1960s. The participants were college students, recent grads, and a few lucky high schoolers who wormed their way in, along with some ministers and church youth directors. They were eager to argue politics, discuss religion, find ways to change the world, and with any luck, as young people would say today, get a hook-up. Ho Chi Minh’s death that weekend occasioned a moment of silence from the gathering’s participants. Militant feminism was espoused by a young Texas college student, Barbara Merritt, who later became senior minister of the UU in Worcester, Massachusetts. A minor controversy erupted over whether or not the group could in good conscience listen to “America the Beautiful” in light of the Vietnam War and manifest injustices in the country.

On the second or third night of the conference, Jim Stoll went to the microphone. It was not an impulsive act. He had been thinking about making such a move for quite some time, and had taken the trouble to consult with close friends in the Bay Area. He was inspired in part by the Civil Rights movement (in 1965, Jim had, along with other UU ministers, accepted Martin Luther King Jr.’s call to interfaith clergy to come to Selma), as well as the Stonewall Rebellion, which had occurred in New York City the previous June, following the death of gay icon Judy Garland, but he was mainly motivated by his sense of personal integrity and authenticity.
In the words of his parishioner and friend Leland Bond-Upson:

Jim told us he could no longer live a lie. He’d been hiding his nature – his true self – from everyone except his closest friends. “If the revolution we’re in means anything,” he said, “it means we have the right to be ourselves, without shame or fear.” Then he told us he was gay, and had always been gay, and it wasn’t a choice, and he wasn’t ashamed any more and that he wasn't going to hide it any more, and from now on he was going to be himself in public.… After he concluded, there was a dead silence, then a couple of the young women went up and hugged him, followed by general congratulations. The few who did not approve kept their peace.

In the months following his revelation at the SRL conference, Jim found his ministry at Kennewick under fire. He was accused of using drugs (which he had been, but apparently no more or less than many other people, including other UU ministers) and inappropriate behavior with the church’s youth (which was probably also true, in one way or another, especially by today’s standards). In the official documents found at the UUA Department of Ministry, there is no overt reference to what were likely strong contributing causes for the ministry’s end – his open homosexuality, his counseling of draft dodgers in the church office, his growing a beard, his enthusiastic embrace of the counterculture.

And so he was let go. He moved back to the Bay Area, and opened a counseling practice, and traveled up and down the Pacific Coast, preaching gay liberation (as it was called then) to any congregation that would give him an honorarium and travel expenses. As he traveled, he worked to organize straights and gays throughout the UUA to bring the issue to General Assembly. That summer his efforts came to fruition when the GA voted to pass the first gay and lesbian anti-discrimination resolution in the history of American religion. Other denominations followed, some right away and some much later, but we were the first.

Because of the circumstances of his departure from Kennewick, he never again served a church as pastor, but through his counseling, his work with the ACLU and hospice, Jim acted as what we would call a Community Minister until his final illness. Before the New York Times article last September, he was nearly forgotten.

Jim Stoll dreamed of a country and a religion where people could be accepted and loved and promoted and recognized on the basis of who they really were and wbat talents they had. He wanted America and Unitarian Universalism to realize the full humanity of BGLTI people. He wanted what we all want, at bottom, which is for life to be normal, no matter who we are, no matter who we love, no matter our gender or gender expression. He was what we all are – a flawed and gifted human being, trying to do the right as he saw it. He was not perfect, but he was a hero, and he should not be forgotten.

Jim Stoll’s dream remains unfulfilled. There is still so much work to do. Not only do we continue to fight for equal marriage rights for same-sex couples, there are still appalling statistics for suicide among gay and lesbian and transgender youth, and thousands of BGLTI people face everyday prejudice and discrimination in housing and jobs, and casual violence from bigots, just for being who they are.

In order for us as a justice-seeking religion to move forward in confidence, we must know and honor those heroes and heroines who have gone before us, who blazed the trail we now walk. It is important for us to learn about those who went ahead, often at great cost to themselves, to make justice a reality for more and more people.

As we sing in what UU ministers consider the most sacred of all our hymns, may what they dreamed be ours to do; hope their hopes and seal them true. So might this be! AMEN – ASHE – SHALOM – SALAAM – NAMASTE – BLESSED BE!

“Sitting at The Welcome Table”

2010-12-07T11:37:00.000-08:00

A Sermon for Bring a Friend Sunday
by the Rev. Melanie Morel-Ensminger
First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans
Sunday, December 5, 2010

Welcome to Bring a Friend Sunday -- we are glad that you are here. If you like or are intrigued by what you hear this morning, we invite you to come to some of our holiday services this season, as we celebrate Advent and the many Winter Holidays of Light over the next 2 Sundays, and mark the Winter Solstice with a special Candlelight Labyrinth Walk on the evening of December 21st. On Christmas Eve we’ll have lessons and carols and an open communion, and the Sunday after Christmas will be another one of our special Celtic Christmas music services. The first Sunday of January we will hold our annual Greater New Orleans UU cluster Jazz Funeral for the Old Year with a jazz band, a parade marshal, and a real coffin in which to bury our concerns from 2010. (Come early! Seats fill up fast.) Join us for any or all of these very special holiday services.

I understand that there are now such things as Internet “cyber-churches” which you can join merely by clicking on their website. You can download sermons, sign up for cyber-fellowship events, and even take cyber-classes. As convenient as it might sound, I find I am troubled by this development. In cyber-church, where are the real, face-to-face, real-time relationships? It seems to me that cyber-church gives folks some of the payoffs of a real church and real religion, but without any of the challenges and deeper meanings.

There’s a quiz you can take on the Internet at the Belief.net site called “The Belief-o-Matic.” I’ve taken it several times, and I always come out Unitarian Uninversalist. (Last night, my score was 100% Unitarian Uninversalist.) But what if I were not a UU minister, and I took the quiz? What if I came out 95% or 100% UU, and didn't ever attend a UU church, should I go around calling myself a Unitarian Uninversalist?

I don’t agree with cyber-church and I don’t think you can be UU all by yourself. To me, there’s no getting around it: Real church and real religion make real demands on real people. Unitarian Universalism, as a liberal form of religion, may be different in a lot of ways from conventional faiths, but that’s one important thing that we share with all religions – within our congregations and in our association, we have mutual expectations of members, and as a religious community, we make reciprocal demands of each other for responsible and ethical behavior, both inside and outside of the doors of our churches. It takes a congregation to do this work; we need each other. As former UUA President Jack Mendelsohn says in our Reading, “We’re all in this together.”

In general, scholars speak of three kinds of religions – ethnic religions that one has to be born into, like Hinduism; orthodox religions that dictate certain beliefs from their adherents; and orthopraxis, religions that expect certain behaviors of their members.

Most Christian denominations, with some exceptions, are orthodox – there is a set of creeds that members must profess in order to stay members. Judaism, on the other hand, is orthopraxic – there are actions expected of a good Jew, but no beliefs.
Unitarian Universalism is another kind of orthopraxis; we are creedless, without any required beliefs. That is not to say that we make no demands of our members, but our expectations are ones of behavior.

In UU churches, there are certain expectations of those who are voting members. In an essay in a book about UU evangelism called Salted With Fire, my colleague Barbara Wells lists six expectations in her church’s Path to Membership:

attend services,
work on your own spiritual growth,
be involved in the life and work of the church,
contribute your fair share financially,
commit to actions in the wider world,
and connect with the larger Unitarian Universalist movement.

She writes that each of these responsibilities of membership are equally important, for each benefits the individual as well as serving the needs of the church.

By no means, however, does this list imply that membership in a UU church is reserved for well-off people with lots of free time. If someone is overwhelmed with job- or home-related responsibilities, it is understood that that person has less time to give. When a household has a low income, a large contribution is not expected. I tell prospective members at our church that a member pledges a balance of their time, talent, and treasure to the best of their current situation. And as different people will have differing amounts of time, creativity, and money, it’s also true that a single individual may have differing amounts depending on the circumstances of their life at a particular time.

And so we come together, not in cyber-space, but in a real building (that needs a lot of work); not alone, but mingled together with some folks who may be like us and some folks who may not be; some folks whose beliefs are similar to ours and maybe some folks whose beliefs are different. We have different experiences and different life circumstances, but we share some important things. We think that this life on this planet at this time has meaning, and that we can positively affect the course of history by our actions and decisions. And we all want to be with other people who share our values, who will stand with us and challenge us when we need challenging, and comfort us when we need comforting.

Stone Soup is a good metaphor for Unitarian Universalism. Alone, all by ourselves, we might not be able to formulate and articulate a clear theology, but together, we find we can do it. All those different ingredients come together and make something better, more nourishing, more interesting, more real, than the mere sum of the parts. We retell that story because it sounds like us.

Another good metaphor for Unitarian Universalism is the Welcome Table. While we normally use the flaming chalice as the pictured symbol of our liberal faith tradition, I think we could just as soon use a table that welcomes all. (Picture us all wearing little tables around our necks!) Every level of ability, every age, every gender, every orientation, every race, every color, every belief, every economic level – everyone is welcome who wants and needs to be part of a diverse spiritual community that encourages spiritual growth and demands the best from us, demands that we combine our efforts to make the world a better place. All of us sitting at the Welcome Table together, sharing that delicious Stone Soup.

In her book, The Holy Intimacy of Strangers, my colleague Sarah York writes:

Hospitality is less about what we may do for others than about who we are when we are with them. It is about serving our faith on behalf of the human community in our everyday interactions. Nurturing trust and goodwill, we create a space that hold another person with the deepest kind of respect.

She goes on to say:

The gift of hospitality is a gift of self, a gift of trust, a gift of courage. As host and guest share a mutual exchange of presence, it is a holy gift of the Spirit in their midst. Even if the host or guest is not aware of the sacred aspect of their exchange, it exists nevertheless.

At our best, that’s who we are – bringing to each other and to this liberal faith community a commitment of our hearts, minds, and bodies, covenanting with one another, with those who have gone before us, and with the Holy (by whatever name or concept that the Holy is known in our lives), pledging to do whatever is in our power to strengthen this community and to work together to bring the sacred gift of hospitality, the Welcome Table, to every person in the world. May all of us come to see ourselves bound to one another in such a covenant, and may we all sit together at the Welcome Table one of these days. So might this be! AMEN – ASHE – SHALOM – SALAAM – NAMASTE – BLESSED BE!

“An Ethic of Lives”

2010-12-01T09:42:00.000-08:00

A Sermon by the Rev. Melanie Morel-Ensminger
First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans
Sunday, November 28, 2010

We have all heard about the philosophy or ethic called “pro-life,” espoused by the Catholic Church and by some conservative Christian denominations, which covers their views on abortion and the death penalty. It is also sometimes called “the seamless garment” philosophy, since it is seen by its adherents as being “all of a piece” or completely consistent.

In an essay last summer for the online blog sponsored by the progressive Jewish publication Tikkun, UU seminarian Amanda Udis-Kessler posits an alternative to the pro-life ethos from the religious liberal perspective, which she calls “a pro-lives ethic.” I am grateful to Board president Max Oeschger for bringing the article to my attention, and grateful also for his patience in waiting for a sermon on the topic. (If this inspires or encourages anyone else in the church to recommend sermon ideas to the Worship Team and me, please feel free. We welcome suggestions on topics, and forwarded articles.)

What is en ethic of pro-lives? Udis-Kessler defines it thusly:

A pro-lives ethic is suspicious of principles, abstractions, and institutions, and challenges them when they do not support human and planetary wellbeing.

An ethic of pro-lives calls into account structures, systems, and individuals – what St. Paul called in scriptures “principalities and powers” – that prevent human beings, other living creatures, and the earth from being whole and healthy. Whenever a rule or law or custom inhibits or hinders the flourishing of abundant life, a pro-lives advocate would feel called, compelled, to step forward and make things right.

In her article, Udis-Kessler references an ethic of pro-lives specifically in regards to pedophilia by Catholic priests, opposition to the ordination of women, and abortion. In some respects, however, this sets up an easy, even a too-easy target, for Unitarian Universalists. For a variety of reasons, from congregational polity to our screening and training process for would-be ministers, and that we have no requirement for celibacy, our denomination has not experienced widespread abuse of minors by ministers. Secondly, women have been ordained and accepted as pastors in our movement since the mid-1800s, and finally, our denomination has been on record for decades as supporting a woman’s right to choose.

Thus, the three issues that are cited in the Tikkun article don’t have much resonance personally for UUs. It is far too simple for us to deplore how these particular issues are being handled by more conservative people of faith. In order for an ethic of pro-lives to resonate with Unitarian Universalists, we will need to raise other concerns and see how they fit with such an ethic.

What else would go into a pro-lives ethic? How can we religious liberals craft our own “seamless garment” of ethical consistency?

First and foremost, I think that active support for full human rights for bisexual, gay, lesbian, transgender, and intersexed persons – including equal marriage rights – has to be part of being truly pro-lives. Only such a position can keep thousands of human lives from, in Udis-Kessler’s words, being broken “by the world’s thousand injustices.” A pro-lives religious liberal feels called to be part of the repair of this terrible brokenness – in Hebrew, tikkun olam, to heal the broken world.

It may well be that the state of Louisiana will be one of the last to endorse equal marriage rights; indeed, Louisiana did not ratify the 19th Amendment giving women the vote until 1970 – at least we beat out Mississippi, which didn’t ratify until 1971! But even so, that does not negate the imperative for religious liberals working from a pro-lives ethic to actively stand up for it.

Another issue much in the news seems to call for the application of the pro-lives ethic, and that is immigration. Millions of people are adversely and negatively affected by our current unjust system. Families are torn apart; committed partnerships are split; children are forced to live away from their parents or one parent. It has been fashionable in some quarters to demonize undocumented immigrants, as though every single one were criminals or terrorists. But we know that is not true – and we also know that the simple fact of being in some way undocumented does NOT make one a criminal, despite what is claimed by demagogues on the Right.

Here in New Orleans, our recovery from the Storm would have been even slower if it had not been for the skilled and unskilled labor of many, many immigrants, some of whom were and are undocumented. From our pulpit last holiday season, we heard moving personal testimony from local day laborers about their lives here, about their victimization at the hands of employers, the police, street thugs, the criminal justice system, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known familiarly as ICE. Rev. Jim of Community Church and I have been active on the issue of Wage Theft, and have worked with local organizations in getting fair treatment of workers. A few church members from both churches have been a part of the local actions, and we’re always looking for even more of our members to get directly involved.

In response to the anti-immigrant legislation passed in Arizona, delegates to the Unitarian Universalist Association General Assembly last year voted to keep our 2012 GA in Arizona and instead of conducting business as usual, to turn that event into a week-long, fully realized educational opportunity and protest demonstration in favor of reforming current immigration laws. The UUA will be working with local Latino and pro-reform organizations to bring both light and pressure to this issue. You will be hearing more about this as we draw closer and plans get set in motion. I hope that many of you will feel called to be a part of it in whatever ways you can, from being there in person, to supporting those that go, to getting involved locally.

A third issue that fits into the rubric of pro-lives is the plight of people unable to find affordable housing. In a society devoted to flourishing, abundant life for all its citizens, homelessness would be unknown. While some conservative commentators scoff that there is no constitutional right to a home, I hope that all religious liberals would disagree. Every human being has the right to live in a decent home. It does not have to be luxurious or spacious, but it should not be under an overpass or in an abandoned post-Katrina building. And by “home,” I am not referring to a mission or a shelter. That America and New Orleans does not ensure that the poorest people have decent places to live is a scandal and a tragedy.

Closely related to homelessness is the is sue of lack of affordable and accessible care for mental illnesses. Locally, UNITY for the homeless, a consortium of some 60 groups working on homelessness in the greater New Orleans area, has found that over 86% of squatters in derelict buildings and houses are mentally ill. This is a shocking number. Pre-Katrina, many were receiving regular care and maintenance of their medications in the old Charity Hospital, but today, most get no care and no meds at all. What are poor people and working class people supposed to do with a loved one with mental illness? Why is there not a louder outcry from those with means to rectify this situation? How does lack of decent affordable mental health care promote abundant life?

Of course, in one sermon we cannot exhaust this topic. Once we commit ourselves to an ethic of pro-lives, we find that many social and justice issues are connected -- from racial oppression to despoiling the environment, to economic justice. I hope that some of you are thinking now of concerns that fit into a pro-lives rubric, and how they are all connected.

I know that I have sometimes felt at a loss when in discussions with those whose religious perspective is more conservative than mine. I often felt principled but inconsistent. Having the pro-lives framework is helpful to me. I feel like now I have something to say, a good answer, when I’m in one of those conversations.

In future, I plan to talk about how my religious faith brings me to a pro-lives stance, a perspective that values the enhancement and wholeness of lives already being lived in the world, and this principled viewpoint connects many different issues. I hope this brief look at the pro-lives ethic helps you as well. AMEN—ASHE—SHALOM—SALAAM—NAMASTE—BLESSED BE!

A Homily for Thanksgiving Sunday

2010-11-23T14:07:00.000-08:00

by the Rev. Melanie Morel-Ensminger
First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans
Sunday, November 21, 2010

Welcome to our special service of Thanksgiving, our annual Bread Communion. This is not a new ceremony to Unitarian Universalism; a service similar to this one was first held at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Kirkwood, Missouri, in 1976. Other UU churches hold Bread Communions around this time of year, but not all do. Part of the rich tapestry of our pluralistic religious heritage is that each UU church makes its own decisions about such things as annual rituals and holidays.

We are a gathered community within a gathered community. Few of us were lucky enough to be born into this church or into Unitarian Universalism. We did not merely find ourselves here, we choose to come. We choose to commit ourselves, we choose to make this our spiritual and religious home (however we might differently define those words). For the first time in the history of religion, a people have come together bound not by shared blood or beliefs or even shared traditions, but by shared values and a respect for each other’s journey. We are, as are all UU congregations, working and struggling and celebrating together to build a disparate group into one church community. A lot of the time we succeed, in ways that are a mystery.

We live in a gathered nation. Few of the people living in the United States today were born of pure Native American heritage -- and if we go back enough thousands of years, even their ancestors came from somewhere else. Some of our ancestors chose to come here, and came eagerly, full of hope and promise. Others of our ancestors came not of their own volition. Some came against their will altogether, dragged here in chains from their homelands. Others came in order to escape terrible conditions at home – famine, war, torture, political oppression, lack of economic opportunity, leaving behind shattered families and shattered dreams.

However they got here, they were Pilgrims all. For the first time in the history of civilization, people have come together to build a nation bound not by shared ethnicity or background or culture or religion, but by a democratic ideal of equality and freedom. Our country, more than 300 years after that first Thanksgiving, is still struggling and working together to blend these disparate peoples into one diverse rainbow tribe.

On our Thanksgiving Communion Table are breads from many cultures and nations: the French baguette, New Orleans French bread (which is really Alsation), Jewish challah, Mexican tortilla, Italian foccaccio, nan from India, pita from Greece, pumpernickel from Germany, cornbread from the American South, sourdough from the American West. White bread, brown bread, yellow bread, dark bread and light bread. Different tastes, different smells, different traditions -- but it’s all bread.

The bread represents the people of Greater New Orleans; it represents this church; it represents America; it represents the peoples of the earth. It is a table of bounty -- and yet we are aware that not everyone enjoys such bounty. It is a table of fulfillment and satisfaction -- and yet we know that not everyone feels fulfilled and satisfied. It represents our hopes and dreams and all the gifts for which we feel such overflowing gratitude -- and yet we recognize that not everyone is able to hold onto their dreams and hopes, nor does everyone receive the gifts that we do.

When we look at the breads of many nations on this table, we think of everything involved to bring them here this morning: the sweet richness of the earth itself, the sun shining, the wind blowing, the rain falling, the hard work of planting and caring for and harvesting the grain, the labor of grinding the grain into flour, bringing the ingredients together and making the bread, transporting it, cutting it, arranging the trays, and decorating this table. Elements were transformed, money changed hands, work was done -- and now we see before us a table laden with goodness.
We all have associations with bread, times of family, times of sweetness, times of feeling nourished.

One of the favorite bread stories in my family comes from my mother's childhood, when she and her best friend, my Aunt Faye, came into the kitchen and found a fresh loaf of bread cooling on a rack on the table. They both loved the taste of warm, crusty bread, with butter melting on it, and they thought nobody would mind if they cut off one end slice. But after they shared that slice, they were not satisfied, so they cut off the other end and ate that too. But still they wanted more, and they figured no one would care if they ate the bottom crust, so they turned the loaf over and cut off the bottom. But after eating that, they STILL wanted more. The upshot is, when my Grandmother walked in to check on her loaf, she found a sorry naked white rectangle on the rack, since Mama and Aunt Faye had taken ALL the crusts off.

Looking at this bread, we are reminded that always we are nourished and sustained by the hard work and sacrifices of others; we confess once again that we are interdependent, unable to get along without the help and support of others. Looking at the bread, smelling it, we feel a kinship with all those human beings throughout the milennia in all parts of the Earth who have loved the homey smell of bread baking, who have savored the wonderful taste of fresh bread, who have been nourished in soul as well as body by the eating of good bread. We are one with them; they are one with us. Looking at the bread, we acknowledge our unity horizontally and vertically with all human beings in all times and places; we recognize our interconnection and interdependence with each other, and with people all over the country and around the world we will never know.

When we eat bread when we are hungry, we know ourselves blessed by the bread, our bodies becoming one with the nutrients of the bread, the bread transformed by our eating of it. Yes, oh yes, bread blesses us.

Let us then bless this bread before we partake of it. Let us say together our unison words for the Blessing of this bread:

Blessing Over the Bread by Mark Belletini

In a world where the wheat & the weeds grow in the same field,
where suffering & greed often seem to us
to be as plentiful as joy & justice,
where mere desire is often mistaken for dire need --
the call to bless comes to us, swelling in our hearts,
the promptings of gratitude,
the urge to single out the graciousness of this life
with words of thanksgiving & beauty.
We bless this bread & this cider,
symbols of harvest, symbols of our gratitude.
We are glad to share them together.

Guest Sermon from One of Our Partners:

2010-11-18T19:21:00.000-08:00

“WHY I RETURN TO NEW ORLEANS”
A Sermon Delivered November 14, 2010
by the Reverend Dennis McCarty
At the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Columbus, Indiana

READING: from an Associated Press article, March 3, 2010, by Remy de la Mauviniere and Elaine Ganley

The moon was full, the wind roared, the tide was high, and people died by the dozens. After a wall of ocean water engulfed picturesque towns along [the] coast, residents, officials, and experts are all asking why. Was it due to climate change? A freak storm fueled by hurricane-force winds? The result of human greed over desirable land or bungling actions by government officials. [The truth is, it was] all of the above.

Many observers point to the thousands of miles of sea walls. . ., many too low, in severe disrepair or reportedly dating from the era of Napoleon. They also note the new houses cropping up behind them, tantalizingly close to the. . . poorly protected but much beloved shoreline.

Environmental groups say the storm should be a wake-up call about the danger of weak sea defenses, for scientists are warning that climate change will bring even fiercer storms and rising seas in the years ahead.

At least 52 people were killed when the storm. . . swept through [the] coastal communities between 4 AM and 5 AM Sunday, surprising victims in their sleep. On Wednesday, divers were still looking for bodies in the region’s submerged homes. Houses were ruined by the thousands and the livelihoods of many more were wiped out as oyster beds were destroyed, herds of cows drowned and fields of prized regional potatoes flooded with brackish salt water.

The damage stretched to the tony [offshore] vacation island of Isle de Re, but most of the dead were found on the. . . mainland. . . .”I built this house with my own hands. I worked on it every weekend, . . .a retiree. . . said of his inundated home. . . . “It tears your guts out.”

[But these tragedies didn’t take place in the southeastern United States; not in Gulfport or Biloxi, Mississippi, not in New Orleans, Louisiana. They took place in L’Aiguillon-Sur-Mer and La Faute-Sur-Mer, southwestern France.]

France has up to 6,200 miles of sea walls, with some of them built in the 18th century, said Deputy Ecology Minister Chantal Jouanno. And about one tenth of them--620 miles--”can be considered at risk,” she said. . . . The French could possibly look north to their Dutch colleagues for expertise in flood defense, for two-thirds of the Netherlands’ 16 million people live below sea level.

SERMON: “Why I Return to New Orleans”

To anyone who doesn’t actually live there, I suppose it does look like a recipe for disaster, to live in a city that’s below sea level. But it’s not that simple. For one thing--below sea level or not--this city is a major seaport. It has a population of a half-million people. Because it sits just a few miles upstream from the mouth of the largest river on the continent, it guards a very important waterway.

Even long ago, when people first began to live here, the land was barely above sea level. Centuries of human habitation, land development, and land reclamation have caused it to settle even more. Now, the lowest points of this city are twenty feet or more below sea level. In the past, storms blowing in off the sea, have caused major damage and loss of life. If the sea walls, water gates, and levies were to fail again, the death toll could be enormous. For that reason, I suppose it is natural that someone from an inland state would suggest that the citizens just leave this place to the elements and build somewhere else, on higher ground.

But again, it’s not all that simple. For one thing, there is no ground that’s much higher, not till you get many miles away. For another, more than a million people earn their livelihoods from the commerce, tourism, and manufacturing located in and around the city right where it is. And that’s not even counting the music, museums, educational centers, and festivals. So the people stay. They do the best they can. Oddly enough, they don’t seem worried by a situation we inlanders might see as nerve-wracking.

I’m not talking about New Orleans, though. Welcome to the Dutch city of Rotterdam, which for centuries has been the busiest, most successful seaport in the world. Nor is Rotterdam the only city besides New Orleans that lies below sea level. Twenty per cent of the whole Netherlands--and twenty-one per cent of the country’s population--live below sea level. Another thirty per-cent lie three feet or less above sea level. Any mildly healthy North Sea wave, looks down on more than half the country.

Yet, the people of the Netherlands are prosperous, peaceful, and perfectly happy to be where they are. They have no desire to tear down any of their cities--and no one seems to consider them crazy. They live at or below sea level--and have engineered some of the most impressive public works in the world to keep their feet dry while doing it.

Around the world, important seaports tend to be located near the mouths of great rivers--because navigable rivers are still the world’s greatest highways for commercial and industrial traffic. Where those rivers meet the sea, cargo ships from remote lands can shelter, unload their cargoes, then take on domestic goods to be shipped all around the world. The catch is--any place where a river flows into the sea is--by definition--going to be at sea level. What’s more, great rivers carry huge loads of sand and silt, drained from whole continents. Where they flow into the sea, they drop that sediment, forming deltas that may stretch for hundreds of miles. Rotterdam stands in the heart of the Rhine River Delta, New Orleans in the Mississippi Delta. On the Nile Delta, Alexandria is easily the most important seaport in Egypt. On the Yangtze River Delta in China, Shanghai has now become the busiest port--and the largest city--in the world. All these places are at or below sea level, vulnerable to storms and erosion. It’s a price we humans pay for being a commercial species.

Great river are important in other ways, as well. Besides forming natural harbors, they provide some of the most fertile land and productive wetland in the world. But they’re dangerous allies for agriculture and commerce alike. Great rivers often flood in spring, bringing suffering to those who live all along their banks, not just at the river’s mouth. Seaports on such rivers risk flooding from upstream during spring runoff as well as from the sea itself during major storms.

No matter what any religious sentimentalist may tell you, there’s no sign this world was made just for us. The mammoth forces that shape this world, do not follow the beck and call of humanity. Here in Indiana, we worry about tornadoes. In Utah and western Colorado, where I grew up, they worry about earthquakes. In New Orleans, it’s Mississippi River floods and hurricanes. We frail and vulnerable humans--no matter how clever we are--are still subject to forces that are much bigger than we are.

Alexandria and Shanghai have both been plagued by land erosion and flooding during this century. This morning’s Reading notes that France’s coastal lowlands also have a problem with flooding. On and on. Yet because of the resources they provide--coastal lowlands are where one third of all humanity--two billion people around the world--live, despite the dangers.

People in the Netherlands have used technology and ingenuity for centuries, to deal with the onslaughts of the North Sea. Back in 1953, for example, an unprecedented combination of high tides and strong winds brought flooding that killed almost two thousand people--twice the death toll of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. In the United Kingdom, that same storm breached sea walls and sent a fifteen-foot surge of water up the Thames River Estuary toward London--another low-lying port city--that killed three hundred more people. The storm also brought heavy loss of life to Northern Ireland and also Belgium.

Once the storm blew over, all those nations set about strengthening their sea defenses. The Netherlands, particularly, responded with a huge public works program called the Deltawerken, the Delta Works. This project took a generation to complete and consists of a huge, interlocked series of dams, dikes, sea gates, and other barriers. It’s such a dramatically conceived project that just this year, the American Society of Civil Engineers declared it one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World.

The largest single piece of the Delta Works is the Oosterschelde barrier, a two-mile-long dam that guards the estuary of the River Scheldt, northwest of Antwerp, Belgium. It’s made up of sixty-two huge lift gates that are raised in good weather, to allow normal tidal flow. During storms, they’re lowered, to block damaging storm surges.

An even greater engineering marvel is the Maeslant barrier, across the channel leading to Rotterdam itself. At the mouth of the Rhine River, a dam like the Oosterschelde would block the heavy shipping traffic. So they designed two huge, hollow, curved gates that look like like gargantuan rocking chair rockers, laid over sideways. When a storm is coming, the gates float out from each side of the channel on long arms, take on water for weight, and settle into place to block storm surges. Once the storm passes, compressed air forces the water out--the same way a submarine works--and the gates re-float and swing back out of the way. The two gates of the Maeslant barrier are the largest human-made, moving objects in the world.

In England, the British came up with storm-control designs of their own. To keep storm surges out of the Thames Estuary, they built a set of gates that look more like huge steel barrels, two hundred feet long, laid over on their sides. The upper halves are cut away, rather like a watering trough, so ships can float above them. Then when a storm is on the way, huge motors and counterweights rotate the lower half up and out of the water--again, forming a dam to keep storm surges from damaging London.

These engineering marvels have several things in common. They are all very large and complex. They were all expensive to build. But using the calculations of the nations that built them, they all save far more money by preventing damage and loss of life, than they cost. Finally--every one of these designs could be used, in various ways, to protect our Gulf Coast and the city of New Orleans.

But nothing like these designs has been built here. New Orleans is still protected by the same kind of sea walls and levies that have been in place for a hundred years: technology that’s a generation out of date. The very fact that modern technology hasn’t been put in place--when Europe has proven how doable, practical, and cost-effective it is--has to say something important about us as a nation and as a society.

First, we need to “get real” about the city of New Orleans. Considering all the various port facilities and authorities at the terminus of the Mississippi River--the Port of New Orleans, the Port of South Louisiana, the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port right at the river’s outlet--New Orleans is the hub of the largest shipping complex in the world. It’s easily larger than any other two ports in the United States, put together.

As Scientific American magazine noted in February, 2006: “Critics who say it is foolish to rebuild in such a vulnerable place are missing the big picture. In addition to being a cultural center, the Gulf Coast is the economic engine that drives the country. We can’t. . . abandon it. The [Mississippi] Delta produces one fifth of the country’s oil, one quarter of its natural gas, and one third of its seafood. Trillions of dollars of goods and crops flow through the ports there. These activities require extensive infrastructure and tens of thousands of employees who cannot live. . . in homes two hours away.”

It’s fascinating to me that while such European cities as Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Antwerp, and London, are protected by trillions of dollars worth of massive, high-tech machinery, our own Mississippi Delta gets rubble-and-earth technology hundreds of years old--along with trillions of dollars worth of excuses, delays, and bureaucratic wrangling. All while the people who move the commerce--not to mention the area’s other residents--are castigated for being so stupid as to live and work where they do. Yet New Orleans is no more vulnerable than any number of European and Asian port cities.

Any time I visit New Orleans, I find the same striking features. First--invariably--I find some of the best food, most unique local culture, and friendliest people I have ever met. Each time I go down there, I find myself humbled by the real kindness and hospitality of the people: their genuine desire to make me feel welcome and comfortable. That’s not to mention their passion for this city they call home and their real desire for me to understand why they love it as much as they do--even with the hardships and frustrations. I have literally seen New Orleanians get tears in their eyes, telling me how they feel about their city and how they refuse to give up on it, despite all the setbacks.

Before Hurricane Katrina hit five years ago, seventy per cent of the residents of New Orleans, had grown up there. In a culture that moves around as much as Americans do, that’s an amazing statistic. No other major city comes close. Even now, despite all the people forced to leave in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, a remarkable number have returned. I’ve heard amazing stories about struggle, frustration, and sometimes, real success, rebuilding their longtime homes and businesses, rather than building anew someplace else. The stories range from the heartwarming to the heartbreaking.

I also feel I should add: if someone spends Mardi Gras in the French Quarter--or, for that matter, six months in the French Quarter--they will enjoy some of the best food and music in the world, along with an amazing, floating party. But if that’s all you see, please don’t go home and tell people you saw New Orleans. Because you didn’t. You won’t find the real New Orleans in the French Quarter. You’ll find it out in the neighborhoods, where the people live. I don’t go back to New Orleans for the food or the culture, though both are wonderful. I go back to New Orleans for the people.

In those neighborhoods--if you listen carefully enough--beneath the warmth and hospitality and stories of human struggle and resiliency, you will also hear a more negative note. There’s a feeling of frustration in New Orleans that sometimes comes close to real anger. New Orleanians may not be able to recite the precise statistics and dollar amounts, but they know full well, how vital the mouth of the Mississippi River is to our whole nation’s economy. They know about the trillions of dollars worth of oil, gasoline, grain, seafood, and industrial products that flow through New Orleans--generating profit and prosperity in the rest of the United States. And they know just how little of that profit and prosperity stay in New Orleans.

In other words--if we define a just society as one where every person has reasonably equal access to the fruits of their own efforts and labors--then New Orleans is the perfect case study in what’s unjust about our society.

Let me elaborate: my experience is, the people of New Orleans deeply appreciate every bit of help they receive. My experience is, they would be kind hosts even if they had never suffered a catastrophe--because that’s the culture. But while the rest of us fill our cars with gas brought in through the Mississippi Delta, enrich our lives with goods and products brought in through the Mississippi Delta--and fatten our banks on money generated by the Mississippi Delta--New Orleanians have to live with the excuses, delays, and bureaucratic bumbling I mentioned before--that have destroyed so many lives and livelihoods there.

After the destruction of Hurricane Katrina, our leaders expressed amazement that such a thing could have happened. Yet, scientists and engineers had been predicting that exact disaster for years, due to faulty sea walls and levies, and the environmental degradation of the Mississippi Delta itself. The Mississippi River Gulf Outlet canal is called ”Mister Go” for short. It’s a little-used shipping canal that bypasses the lowest hundred miles of the Mississippi River. A flow study of the Mister Go, showed that a major storm would generate a surge of water exactly like the Thames Estuary surge of 1953, with the same result. When Katrina hit, that’s just what happened.

The knowledge was there. The fixes were there, too. But they had been mired in bureaucratic wrangling for years--and still are. Even after that disaster, things haven’t changed much. Investigative findings on the Gulf Oil Spill just this week, show the same pattern. The Gulf Oil Spill didn’t happen because technology and procedures weren’t available to prevent it. It happened because those in control just couldn’t be bothered to put the technology and procedures in place.

I can’t resist comparing this to what’s called the Cape Wind Project, off the coast of Massachusetts. Because of the steady, strong breezes off Cape Cod, the Cape Wind Project is a proposal to build a large array of wind-driven generators to supply electrical power to the east coast. You’d think that was a no-brainer. Massachusetts needs the power. Such a “green” generating project would avoid the exhaust emissions and other liabilities of steam generating plants. And it would be a landmark step forward in “green” technology. Polls show that a large majority of Massachusetts citizens favor the project.

Yet the Cape Wind Project has been held in legal limbo for ten years, now, by a consortium led by prominent figures with summer homes on Cape Cod--including former Senator John Kerry, former governor Mitt Romney, and the Kennedy family--in part because they fear a large, offshore wind farm would spoil the view out to sea, lower property values, and interfere with their yachting.

One can only wish that the management of BP Oil Company last summer--or the the Army Corps of Engineers in the last half century--had been as worried about the Mississippi River Delta, as the wealthy residents of Cape Cod are, about the view from their summer homes. But--that’s precisely the point. There’s a reason Rotterdam and London have adequate sea defenses and New Orleans doesn’t. The people who make the decisions about Rotterdam and London, live in Rotterdam and London. While the people who make the decisions about New Orleans are more likely to live in Washington or New York. We human beings always are more likely to invest energy and ingenuity when it’s our own livelihood or our own family that’s threatened.

There’s also a broader point--the real point of this whole discussion. We need to be humble when we advise--and judge--the unfortunate. Kahlil Gibran once noted rather icily, the wisdom of the fortunate sounds tinny in the ear of the miserable--especially when the misery comes from circumstances beyond their control.

So I do return to New Orleans every so often. I rejoice in people I’ve met there--from all around the country--who, I think, gain the same things I do, there. I go there for the human connections. I go there because I always learn something new. I go there as a reminder that people can be at their best in the midst of life’s worst difficulties. And I go there because it helps me stay humble. I always re-learn that the stream of human experience is long and deep and rich and various--and there are many things I don’t yet know--and an ounce of real listening and helping will gain me more than many pounds of what I think I already know. Amen. May it be so.

COMMUNITY OR IMMUNITY – YOU DECIDE

2010-11-16T14:01:00.000-08:00

by the Rev. Melanie Morel-Ensminger
North Shore Unitarian Universalist Congregation
Sunday, November 14, 2010

Once again the wheel of the year has turned and it is the time of year that North Shore’s Nominating Committee strives to fill all open leadership spots before the Annual Meeting, when the members will come together to decide together on new officers, a church budget for the next fiscal year, and any other important matters needing congregational discussion and decision. It has become commonplace to us as Unitarian Universalists; we take it for granted. We forget that our religious ancestors fought and some died for the right to decide on congregational matters within the local church. For Unitarian Universalists, there’s no pope, no bishops – there is, in fact, no outside authority at all that to which the congregation is obliged to give obedience. Our governance is congregational polity, or church democracy, and we should remember and appreciate that not all religious congregations enjoy the freedoms we have.

Of course, both the Unitarian Universalist Association and the South West District have influence over us. We are in covenant with them, and so certain duties and responsibilities are expected on each side because of that mutual covenant. We pay dues to them, and are expected to send delegates to their meetings to participate in their deliberations; in return, we expect resources and help from them in such areas as ministerial search, building loans, conflict management, religious education, and emergencies. But the UUA is an association of free and independent congregations, and sometimes there's a tension between UU societies and the larger denomination.

In much the same way, there is an inherent tension between the historic celebration of the primacy of the individual that has characterized our liberal religious movement and the need for connection in religious community. Over the decades, we have seen the pendulum swing from one side to another, from emphasizing individual freedom on one hand, to raising up the bonds of community on the other. Like balancing on the toy boogie boards of my childhood, there is no perfect middle place in which to stand; we have to keep jiggling and juggling between the two extremes.

A few years ago, I attended a conference on Medical Ethics. The presenter, Dr. John Banja, a professor of ethics at Emory in Atlanta, began his remarks by reminding us of the fictional character Robinson Crusoe. Robinson Crusoe had absolutely no need of ethics when he was first ship-wrecked and landed on the island. He could do anything he pleased. He was completely immune to the demands of living in community – because he was alone. You might say Robinson Crusoe's theme song could have been Simon & Garfunkel's "I Am a Rock."

But on the fateful morning that Crusoe spied the footprint of another person on the beach, his situation changed. He was no longer alone. His actions, decisions, and behavior would now impact the life of another human being. NOW he needed ethics; NOW he needed a code of behavior; NOW there was the potential – indeed, almost the certainty – of conflict with another person. Ethics, said Dr. Banja, are relational; you don't need them if other folks aren't around. And when other folks are in relation to you – whether in a church, a family, a neighborhood, or a workplace – you only have 3 choices: no relationship, community, or war.

When we choose to join a church community, we choose, in effect, to limit our personal freedom. Voluntarily and by mutual consent, we give up our immunity from obligations to others. Because of our covenantal relationship with the other individuals in the congregation, we choose to act with respect and compassion. We acknowledge the inherent worth and dignity of the others in our shared community by certain specific behaviors – for example, by refraining from insulting one another, by not needlessly causing another person pain, by acknowledging the reality and validity of experiences that are different, even radically different, from our own.

In covenantal community, we realize that one of the freedoms we give up is the freedom not to be bothered. Because we are in community together, there are some things we are just stuck with, such as contributing financially, and shared leadership. We agree in advance that we will all contribute funds to the church, and we will all rotate roles, that we will each take a turn at the helm. If you joined a food co-op, you would not expect everyone else in the co-op to do all the work and then deliver your groceries to you. You would be expected to do your part, or leave the co-op. In an intimate partnership, such as a marriage, if one partner just sat back and let the other partner slave away, doing all the work, that marriage or partnership would not last very long. In covenant, we each must do our part, even if that means sometimes stepping up in a way that at first makes us uncomfortable. If only those financially comfortable gave money, if only the people comfortable with being leaders accepted leadership positions, then most congregations would soon devolve into dictatorships by very small groups, however well-intentioned.

To participate in community, we must give up the idea of absolutes and move towards acceptance, tolerance, negotiation, and compromise. In community – just as in a marriage – no one person or group can expect to have everything exactly the way they want it. When we decide to be in relationship with others, we must learn to live with, and even love, the give and take that characterizes true community. Instead of striving to win over or beat out the others, we instead come to understand that we have to manage polarities and to "split the difference" or just live with the differences that can’t be split.

This is especially important in a Unitarian Universalist congregation. We are so different from one another – different in lifestyle, political opinion, social status, economic level, theology, philosophy, age, and sexual orientation – that the ideal of getting along beautifully all the time because we all agree on every single thing grows very dim indeed. And as Unitarian Universalism attracts more and more people of varying ethnic, racial, and cultural backgrounds, the diversity among us will grow even greater.

The cover story in this month’s UU World magazine emphasizes another hidden difference – that younger members don’t have the same expectations and experiences and “back story” that older members might have. Unless we want to be a denomination of just older folks, we’ll have to adjust and make changes in order to truly welcome younger generations.

Let’s go back to Robinson Crusoe and remember that Dr. Banja said that there are only 3 choices available to us when we are in close relationship with other human beings: community, war, or no relationship at all. Community or immunity? You decide. Me, I choose community – even though sometimes it’s a pain in the neck.

In a community, we become accountable, not just to ourselves, but to the others with whom we are covenanted. We hold the relationship in such high regard that we take the time to talk and to listen to one another; we strive to keep a caring, compassionate attitude towards each other. We watch what we say and how we say it and what we do, because we care if we hurt another person. We contribute financially, not because we're rich, but because such giving is part of being a church. We sometimes accept a leadership role or task assignment, not because we are dying to do it, but because it’s our turn, or because our community needs our particular skills at a particular time. In community, we can't have "I Am a Rock" as our theme song.

These are community ethics and community expectations. Yes, they DO limit absolute personal freedom, but then folks who want absolute freedom and who want to be left alone are well advised not to marry and not to join a church. But there’s a trade-off: the limits on personal freedom that stem from a commitment to a covenant also open even richer possibilities, like the possibility of deeper, more meaningful, more authentic relationships; the possibility of trust and harmony with diverse others; the possibility of developing skills and talents you may not have known that you had; the possibility of making a positive difference in the wider world – in short, the possibility of building the kind of society we say we want to live in. Community or immunity? You choose. What happens in this congregation and in our world is up to you.

Dr. Banja closed his address on ethics with these ringing words, “Is this feasible? It must be. It must be our foundation – our core values – the last bastion from which we will not retreat.” So might this be for this congregation! AMEN – ASHE – SHALOM – SALAAM – NAMASTE — BLESSED BE.

“BREAD, ROSES, & RUBIES”

2010-11-09T12:07:00.000-08:00

A Sermon for the Annual Budget Drive &
the 50th Anniversary of Ruby Bridges’ Long Walk
The Rev. Melanie Morel-Ensminger
First Unitarian Universalist Church in New Orleans
Sunday, November 7, 2010

In the fall of 1960, I had just turned eight, and was in the 3rd grade in Chalmette in St. Bernard Parish. At that time, my father, Barney Morel, worked “in the city” (as we used to say) as Sub-District Director of the United Steelworkers Union of the AFL-CIO. As such, he was known in local labor circles and in the local Democratic Party. And so he was selected by Mayor Chep Morrison to serve on a civic committee, consisting of representatives of business and labor and prominent socialites to help facilitate integration in the New Orleans Public Schools (and to provide political cover for the mayor, who could point to the committee as being responsible instead of himself).

The week my father first began meeting with the Mayor’s committee, he and my mother sat down with my sister and me (my sister was then seven; our two younger siblings were babies) to explain that we were going to go through a challenging time as a family and that we were going to stick together and be brave. They explained that Daddy was involved in something very important, but that some racist white people would not understand and would probably get angry. They said we were not allowed to answer the telephone any more, and that if we ever smelled smoke in the house, we were to go straight to the back yard and then to our neighbors’ house, where Mommy and Daddy would meet us.

It wasn’t until years later that I realized what was going on, and why my parents were so cautious. For weeks, our home phone rang off the hook with obscene anonymous callers, each of whom received my mother’s measured, “Thank you for calling” as she hung up. Thankfully, the threatened fire-bombs did not happen but it was a long time before I found out that other white families were not holding fire drills in their homes at that time.

On November 14, 1960, Ruby Bridges, having been selected by the committee as the ideal black student on the basis of a special test and interviews with herself and her parents, walked with an escort of federal agents (the NOPD had refused to guard her) through a gauntlet of screaming white adults and teenagers, many of them throwing garbage and using foul language, to enter William Frantz School in the Upper Ninth Ward as a first grader. It was the school my father had attended as a child. (It was also years later that I began to question why public schools in only working-class neighborhoods of New Orleans were first chosen to be “integrated” by only one or two or three black children.) The images of the primly dressed little black girl, walking with men in suit through hysterical angry crowds were broadcast across the nation and around the world, inspiring artist Norman Rockwell to create his strangely-named painting, called “The Problem We All Live With.”

At six years old Ruby was two years younger than I was. Every night, I sat with my parents and watched the news as this little girl so close to my own age bravely walked to and from school through angry crowds, escorted by gray-suited G-men. Every night, I wondered if I would have had her courage; every night, I wondered if I could have done what she was doing. Some nights I even dreamed I was with her, out there taking that long walk through those scary crowds.

Many years later, I actually met Ruby Bridges, along with Dr. Robert Coles, who wrote this morning’s story, as well as a book called The Moral Life of Children, which featured Ruby and Coles’ work with her as a psychologist as she went through her ordeal. They were appearing at a bookstore in the French Quarter, promoting new books they had written. Later that year, Ruby spoke at a service at First Church, in our old building, when the late Rev. Suzanne Meyer was our minister.

We retell Ruby’s story today at the same service that kicks off our Annual Budget Drive because there are important ways that these two things fit together. To any outside observer, there was nothing special about the Bridges family or about Ruby. Her parents were hard-working and ambitious for their children; they were devoted church-going people. They were loving and caring. Ruby was a sweet girl, good-natured, eager to please, eager to learn; she believed in God and in the Christian message with a child’s innocent faith. But together they did something extraordinary, something that required sacrifice (Ruby’s father was fired from the garage where he worked for allowing his child to integrate a white school), something that advanced not only their family, but people they didn’t know – and would never know. They wanted more than bread in their lives – they wanted roses too.

Dr. Coles asked Ruby during one of their counseling sessions how she was able to do what she did, walking that long walk through a mob threatening violence, and she answered thoughtfully, “I guess I knew I was the Ruby who had to do it.”

The members and friends of First Church are also ordinary, hard-working people. We are none of us rich, living off our gold-plated investments. (Not that we wouldn’t welcome such members, it’s just we don’t have any right now.) We too are church-going people, with a deep commitment to our faith. And we too are faced with a big challenge that requires sacrifice, with our church complex needing so much rebuilding and updating since Katrina, and an important ministry needing support, and we, we alone are the “rubies” who have to do it.

With the city in chaos and the state legislature publicly advising white parents to keep their children out of the public schools, Ruby Bridges walked the long walk toward equal justice. With the city once again in a time of chaotic change and the state legislature mandating improved building codes post-Katrina, we need to take the long walk of recovery together.

But it is not only recovery that we seek. It is not enough to simply rebuild our church complex up to today’s codes, not enough for us to finally complete the Community Kitchen that we will share with the New Orleans AIDS Task Force, not enough for us to get new furniture for the Sunday School classrooms and chairs for the Sanctuary, not enough for us to repair the front walk-way and put in outside lighting. All of that is necessary, of course – it is the “bread” that sustains and nurtures this faith community.

But we also need the “roses.” In the midst of threat and danger, little Ruby Bridges took time every school day to pray for the mobs who cursed her. If we do not strengthen our spiritual message, if we do not continue reaching out in the wider community, if we do not join with others in Greater New Orleans to widen the circle of love and justice and equality, then we are not doing our jobs. As Rev. Suzanne always used to say, “If we end the year in the black, with extra money, we are not doing our jobs.”

This morning we remember and honor the story of Ruby Bridges and her long walk, and we also kick off the church’s Annual Budget Drive. Commitment and courage on the part of ordinary people, working for love and justice, values that are precious to us – bread and roses and rubies. When you are contacted in the days to come by your Visiting Stewards, please remember the story of Ruby Bridges. There are no outside saviors who will step in and take care of what needs to be – there’s only us, stepping forward with commitment and courage to do what must be done both to keep our church going, and much more importantly, to keep our ministry in the city going. We are the rubies who have to do it.

“FEAR NOT” A Sermon for Halloween

2010-11-02T13:16:00.000-07:00

Sunday, October 31, 2010
The Rev. Melanie Morel-Ensminger
First Unitarian Universalist Church of Chicago

Angels must be really, really scary-looking. In the Bible, whenever an angel shows up, the very first words out of their mouths are, “Fear not” -- in other words, "Don't be scared!" "Fear not" is one of the most common expressions in the Old and New Testaments. Citations in an online biblical concordance run to 8 pages; it appears 7 times in Genesis alone. It seems from time immemorial, we human beings have had a lot of fear, and have needed a lot of reassurance.

Right now, our country seems awash in fear. Some fear is based in actual lived experience. People in the Northeast fear another terrorist attack; people on the Gulf Coast fear another hurricane and another oil disaster; people in major urban areas fear crime. Some fear is engendered by our elected leaders for their own ends. Some fear is politically-based for the upcoming election. On one side, there is fear of an overturn of recent legislation; on the other, fear that the country’s moral center has collapsed, fear that we will be seen by our foes as weak. Fear is the common currency of our time.

Personally, all this fear-mongering disgusts me, and I hate that it's being used to manipulate the public. It’s not that I don’t have a healthy respect for fear; fear can actually be good for you. The late Dr. F. Forrester Church, minister of All Souls UU Church in New York, wrote a book a few years ago called Freedom from Fear, in which he described 5 kinds of fear, some of which can save your life. But most of the time, fear eats you up and destroys your chances for happiness and peace. “Fear not” is a good message for all of us.

Since August 29, 2005, most New Orleanians have been living in a state of fear so enveloping that we don’t even consciously feel it any more. The fear in New Orleans since Katrina is compounded by the fact that all of us have something fearful in our pasts, and the hurricane and the oil spill gave us hooks to hang all our fears on. The costs of living in a constant atmosphere of fear are both psychic and physical – and the toll is being seen in the rise locally of stress-related diseases and the climbing rates of suicide and depression. The price of pervasive fear is very high indeed.

I have to say that there is at least one group of people in Greater New Orleans who seem to have found a way to let go of their fears, and those are the Unitarian Universalists. The congregation of North Shore across the Lake from New Orleans continues to attract new people and new families; they bravely soldier on despite a crippling mortgage, obtained in more prosperous times, that prevents them from calling a new minister. The minister of Community Church in New Orleans and I offer one service a month and consult with their committees; out-of-town UU ministers offer occasional services, and for the rest of the Sundays they present sermons by UU ministers read by trained Worship Associates. They are active in issues in their parish, and known in the community for their interfaith efforts, especially with local Muslims.

Back in New Orleans, only a few yards from the break in the federal levee at the 17th St. Canal, Community Church UU moves forward with courage to construct their new church building. If only there had been enough money immediately after Katrina, they could have saved and improved their old building – indeed, they had already paid an architect for such plans, using donations from the UUA/UUSC Gulf Coast relief Fund – but instead FEMA forced them to tear it down and begin again. They barely have enough money for the construction, and no funds at all for furniture and furnishings and décor, but they move forward confidently, trusting that something, somehow, someway, will work out when the time comes. Meanwhile, they meet in the converted family room of a nearby house they call their “Annex,” even though there is no main building yet. Despite their many challenges, they have partnered with an innovative new school in the Upper Ninth Ward and offer tutoring programs for public school students.

At First Church, the “mother” church of the 3 UU congregations, members and unpaid volunteers (some from our dedicated partner churches) have done themselves work that would have cost thousands of dollars if done by professionals – laying floor tile, creating wainscoting to cover the ugly flood line, refinishing original woodwork, hanging sheetrock, mudding, and painting. We’ve devised an innovative plan in which the rebuilt church kitchen will truly be a Community Kitchen, owned jointly with the New Orleans AIDS Task Force, to provide meals to AIDS/HIV clients, and develop a neighborhood (maybe even city-wide!) Food Ministry. Believe you me (as my mother used to say), our monthly church work days, established pre-Katrina, are now something to see!

When the state building inspector informed us in August that post-storm updated building codes would apply to our church, we were faced with $150,000 of unbudgeted expenses to obtain a Permanent Certificate of Occupancy. If I told you that the congregation despaired and sunk into fear, you’d probably think that was only natural, but instead, members stepped up boldly, voted to borrow $50,000 from the depleted endowment, and then individuals generously came forward to loan the church money from their own personal retirement accounts.

In one of the ironic blowbacks of Katrina, the aftermath has given us much to be grateful for: the new, right relationship among the 3 UU congregations; the solidarity with other UUs and other UU churches around the country; and the realization of what really matters.

In Greater New Orleans, we have real, actual bases for our fears – that enough affordable housing may NOT be built or rebuilt in order to bring all New Orleanians home who want to come home; that the new police chief may NOT be able to overcome the culture of corruption and disregard that infects our police department; that more of our young men of color will succumb to despair and nihilism and continue to shoot and kill each other; that despite our having one of the highest incarceration rates in the world, more jail cells will be built, instead of the missing hospitals, mental health centers, day care centers, schools, and grocery stores that were lost to the Storm and not rebuilt. In some places, such very real fears might be sufficient cause to abandon the city altogether for comfortable middle-class suburbs or some other location with fewer challenges – but today’s New Orleanians are made of different stuff.

In the UU churches of Greater New Orleans, we could be afraid, very afraid, but we choose not to be. We could also be bitter – other religious groups made the choice to completely rebuild their congregations after Katrina before distributing money in the community, and we are among the very few churches that were not. But instead of feeling bitter, we feel grateful, grateful for all the UU individuals and congregations who have stood with us since the very beginning, and who continue to walk with us through this long, arduous process of recovery and renewal. We feel so much love and gratitude for the thousands of volunteers, UU and non-UU, who have come to the Crescent City and given their time and their sweat and their labor, as well as their money, to aid us in the necessary renaissance. There's a bumper stickers around the Crescent City that say, "Be a New Orleanian wherever you are" and we so appreciate all these honorary New Orleanians. We hope that First Church Chicago will continue to be “in that number” of the “Saints” who go “marchin’ in” with us.

We in New Orleans have chosen to live without fear, and we have advice for all those who want to do the same, no matter where they live. We have learned that choosing to live without fear means doing 4 simple but challenging things:

1st, remember it’s not all about YOU. However bad it is for you, it’s much worse for someone else. So get over yourself.

2nd, want what you have, and don’t obsess over what you don’t have or what you’ve lost. Focus on the folks who love you, and enjoy all the good things still available to you – good food, good music, dancing, festivals, and secondline parades. Be grateful -- gratitude is a good antidote to fear.

3rd, do what you can; don’t despair over what you can’t do. Yes, you will not be able to fix everything, but don’t let that stop you from doing what you are able to do. The journey of a thousand steps is made one step at a time.

4th, be who you are; stop imagining a better self who lives a better life. As the Buddhists say, “Be here now,” and don’t focus excessively on the future or the past. This is who you are and where you are -- so deal with it. [adapted from Freedom from Fear]

In the Wizard of Oz, the Cowardly Lion is the most courageous character, yet he is always afraid. When I was a child and learned of all my dad had done in the organized labor and civil rights movements, I told him I was proud of him for being so brave. “Oh no, Mimi,” he said, “I wasn’t brave – I was afraid all the time. I just did what had to be done.” There can be no better definition of real courage.

Courage is NOT being fearless – courage is not letting your fears rule your life. “Fear not” does not mean having no fear at all, because that is both impossible and unhealthy for us human beings. You will still be afraid, but freedom lies in choosing to go on, walking through, marching through, living through, yes even dancing through, your fears, and coming out on the other side, your true and authentic self, whole and safe and free. AMEN – ASHÉ – SHALOM – SALAAM – NAMASTE – BLESSED BE!

CAN UUs BE FUNDAMENTALIST?

2010-10-26T14:27:00.000-07:00

A Sermon by the Rev. Melanie Morel-Ensminger
Unitarian Universalist Church of Baton Rouge
Sunday, October 24, 2010

A few summers ago, a 90-year-old parishioner loaned me a book he apparently found stimulating. I say “apparently” because nearly every page had a sharp comment written in the margins; reading it was like having a conversation with him and the author at the same time.

The book was When Religion Becomes Evil: 5 Warning Signs, by Charles Kimball, chair of the department of religion at Wake Forest. Dr. Kimball’s Harvard degree is in comparative religion, specializing in Islam. As a Christian with expertise in the Muslim world, he writes with insight on how religion can lose its way. In his book, he theorizes about a tendency for religious people to claim that they are the protectors of their faith’s “true core” or fundamentals – thus the appellation “fundamentalist” can, in his view, be applied to any religion. Let’s look at Kimball’s 5 points on how a religion goes bad, and see if any of them can apply – heaven forbid! – to our liberal faith.

The 1st warning sign is an insistence on absolute truth, a dogged resolve by adherents to see themselves as right and everyone else as wrong or evil. Connected to this is the idea that this truth can be found only in one interpretation, a literal understanding of the faith’s scripture, what scholars call “terminal reading.”
All religions make claims about Truth with a capital T, but since final truth is ultimately unknowable by human beings, all such claims involve presuppositions and require interpretation. Most revered texts were written long ago, often in a language not used today, so that reading requires translation of culture as well as words. Sincere people can and do appropriate truth claims in substantially different ways, so healthy religion allows for various versions of their claims, diverse ways of looking at sacred texts and interpreting doctrine.

Can Unitarian Universalists fall prey to this tendency to see one’s self and one’s group as the only ones who are right? Scholar and author Elaine Pagels says, “There’s practically no religion I know of that sees other people in a way that affirms the other’s choice.” (Sojourners magazine, August 2004) Could that include us? Do you know any UUs who believe that their theology is the only one possible for an intelligent person? Do you know any UUs who disparage other people’s religions?
What about literal belief in sacred scriptures – is it possible for UUs to be literalist? Ironically, most Unitarian Universalists don’t hold to the literal truth of any sacred scripture in order to believe in them, but far too many UUs use a literal interpretation of sacred texts in order to dismiss them. “How can anyone with a brain in their head believe in such stupid stuff as miracles or angels or levitation or reincarnation?” these UUs scoff, thus relegating to the trash bin the entire set of holy books of the Jews, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, and Hindus.

You might say that fundamentalists in other faiths claim ab-solute truth in order to declare other faiths demonic; UU fundamentalists claim absolute truth in order to declare other faiths stupid. Other religious fundamentalists read their sacred scriptures literally in order to say they’re utterly true; UU fundamentalists read scriptures literally in order to conclude that they’re utterly false. Both are problematic terminal readings.

John Shelby Spong, retired Episcopal bishop of Newark and author of dozens of books, says he gets asked by liberals all the time, “Why…bother with the Bible at all? Why don’t you just abandon this dated book and start…over?” His answer was that we do not abandon folk tales because our moral consciousness has out-grown them; instead, we must abandon excessive claims being made for either the inspiration or the accuracy of stories found in religious traditions. (Spong online newsletter, 9/29/04)

Claims of absolute truth or absolute falsity must both be rejected. None of us knows everything, and no religion or philosophy has all the answers. Every religious text – even those revered by religious liberals! – contains outmoded tribal values, unscientific explanations of natural phenomena, xenophobic racist hostility toward foreigners and those who are different, and self-interested history, and yet every one also contains glorious poetry, great stories, and universal values of love, compassion, and community beyond boundaries. We should not throw the baby out with the bath water.

Kimball’s 2nd point is a demand for blind obedience, whether to a person in authority or to a certain interpretation of a creed. Usually this is accompanied by apocalysm – talk of the end of the world and the dawning of a new age in which followers will be singled out for special privileges. We do not have to reach far to find examples of how acceptance of unethical or immoral orders from a religious leader results in death and destruction – we all remember September 11, 2001, Jim Jones in Guyana, the Aum Shinrikyo nerve gas attack in Tokyo, the Branch Davidians in Waco. Sometimes a group will enforce conformity by using methods of isolation, deprivation of sleep and/or food, group pressure, or even psychotropic drugs – but whether or not such techniques are used, blind obedience is always a sure sign of religion becoming evil.

This is the least likely temptation for Unitarian Universalists, we who pride ourselves on our nonconformity and anti-authoritarianism. But there can be a kind of perverse conformity expected of UU nonconformity. Sometimes in the French Quarter, I see a group of young people, all dressed in black, their hair all dyed colors not found in nature, all sporting similar hardware and comparable tattoos? And I think to myself, How conformist they are in their nonconformity? We Unitarian Universalists must beware the tendency to enforce a group norm, to expect that we will all be alike in our difference from other religions.

While UUs resist giving much power to their religious leaders, some UUs can unconsciously elevate a particular minister or church or way of doing things to authority status, so that deviance from that theology or vocabulary or worship style can be seen as a kind of heresy. I remember the first time I attended worship in a UU church other than First Church New Orleans – how shocked I was that their Order of Service was so different.

To resist the pressure of groupthink, we should jealously guard our historical traditions of freedom of individual conscience, and congregational polity. The Buddha’s last words to his disciples from his deathbed can be our guide:

Do not accept what you hear by report, do not accept tradition, do not accept a statement because it is found in our books, nor because it is in accord with your belief, nor because it is the saying of your teacher… Be ye lamps unto yourselves.

The 3rd thing shared by unhealthy religions is the concept of an ideal time, when everything was in the past, or will be in the future, perfect. This can be an actual period that becomes idealized, as when certain conservative Christian groups extol the 1950s, or the memory of the Islamic caliphate for Sunni Muslims, or it can be an imagined time in antiquity or prehistory, as the Garden of Eden for some Jews and Christians, or Sumer or Crete for some feminist pagans. The perfect world might be in the future, as in the Second Coming of Christ for some Christians, or the return of Lord Krishna for some Hindus. With this mindset, people desire to get back to, or arrive at, the ideal world, and feel they have a mandate to establish their idea of God’s will on earth. Some set themselves apart, and withdraw from a world they consider corrupted.

We UUs don’t usually think there was an ideal past time (although many of us can idealize a certain time in a certain congregation), but most of us are committed to making a better future. Now, there’s nothing wrong with this – in fact, it can be quite laud-able, an expression of our faith in action. But like everyone else, we too can lean toward the view that what is right to us is automatically best for everybody, and a few UUs have been caught declaring – I hope in jest! – that if this law is enacted, or this per-son elected, they will move to Tahiti or Canada to withdraw from a country they consider hopelessly corrupted.

Healthy religion avoids the temptation to idealize a certain time, whether past or future. No one has a divine directive to impose their will on others, no matter how well-meant. (To do unto others without their input is the essence of colonialism.) We must also beware the impulse to leave when decisions are made we don’t agree with. This isn’t good for religious institutions or for democracies. The essence of diversity in religion or politics is that we are guaranteed that things will not always go our way; the nature of our covenant as Unitarian Universalists as well as Americans is that we will stick with our noble experiment despite the inevitable conflicts.

The 4th sign of a religion going wrong is connected to the defense of the first 3, and that is that the end justifies the means. We must defend the truth of our faith and of our holy book – therefore we must eliminate the unbelievers. Infidels are defiling our holy temple or our sacred land – so we must get them out any way we can. Bad people are keeping us from achieving the kingdom or preventing the return of our god – let’s kill them to reach our desired goal. Folks who ought to be in our group aren’t, or who used to be in our group have left – we must stop them. Or some among us have weird ideas, or are asking the wrong questions – we must protect our church.
We Unitarian Universalists don’t go as far as some other religions in this regard. We don’t kill or maim the people among us who think differently or who upset our institutional apple carts – we just find ways to get them to leave on their own, with only psychic injuries to show from the conflict. We act in ways most of our mothers would never have approved – we use insults or rude comments to make folks feel unwanted and unwelcome. Sadly, even UU congregations can erupt in vicious conflict, with folks acting contrary to their own principles.

The remedy to all this is both simple and difficult: Remember what was the whole point of the religion in the first place. Sure, religious tenets, scripture, sacred space and time, communal identity, and institutions, traditions, and structures are all important, and ought to be preserved to a reasonable extent, but they are not the reason the religion exists, they are not the ends of religious life. They may help facilitate a life of faith, they may promote a sense of belonging, but they are not the point. True religion’s mes-sage of compassion, of caring for others, especially those in need, can be lost, and under stress people can act in ways that are explicitly forbidden by their faith. In authentic religion the end and the means are always connected.

The last of Kimball’s 5 signs of a religion turning evil is Holy War. In an interview with Sojourners magazine, Bill Moyers said he keeps a file marked “Holy War” that is filled with depredations of every sort – Jew against Muslim and vice versa, Hindu against Muslim and Christian and vice versa, Christian against Jew and Muslim and vice versa, and even people of the same religion attacking each other. While almost all religions proclaim nonviolence as a primary value, zealous adherents can always find reason to wage war on unbelievers or apostates.

While I’d like to assure you that we Unitarian Universalists are immune to this one, I cannot. Although there’s been no out-right murder over internal conflicts in UU churches, there’s lots of evidence of character assassination and emotional destruction in UU congregations, caused by sincere, well-intentioned, and normally good people who were convinced they were right. District Executives in the UUA all have horror stories about congregations where someone was so convinced of the rightness of their cause that they were willing to nearly destroy their congregation in order to prove their point.

The solution, once again, is to remain true to the core principles of one’s faith tradition. Compassion and community are not just for when all is well, but are guidelines for times of conflict. Jesus told his disciples, “If you only love those who love you, what reward will you get? Even pagans love their friends and family.” And the Buddhist sage Thicht Naht Hanh says, “Peace is not a goal – peace is the way.”

In the final chapter of the book, entitled “An inclusive faith rooted in a tradition,” Kimball gives several “compass points” for direction in the uncertain times that lie ahead, giving the best hope for correcting the corruptions of religion. The 1st is a sense of the Transcendent, called God by many, but which is in essence something beyond the merely material. The 2nd is faith, a conviction of some things that cannot be scientifically proven, such as that life is worth living despite our pain and hardship. The 3rd point is hope, a feeling that things can get better through our efforts. The 4th, most important of all, is love – not as an emotion, which can be transitory, but as an ethic, as a way of life. Kimball adds that diversity and inclusivity are needed in order to see a more complete picture, in faith as in everything else.

“An inclusive faith rooted in a tradition” – Transcendence combined with faith, hope, and love – unity in diversity – welcoming people who are different from those already in the community – this sounds to me like an advertisement for Unitarian Universalism at our best, and is as good a description of our faith as I’ve heard. May we live up to it. AMEN – ASHE – SHALOM – SALAAM – NAMASTE – BLESSED BE!

Sanctuary Rededication Service

2010-10-12T11:04:00.001-07:00

Sunday, October 10, 2010
First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans
The Rev. Melanie Morel-Ensminger

Guided Meditation

Let us be together in a sacred time of meditation. If you are comfortable doing so, you may close your eyes.

Let us go back in time, back to October of 2005. Our Sanctuary is locked, but a few windowpanes are broken so that we can peek in.

The first thing we notice is the rank odor of mold that strikes us as soon as we come close to the window. As we press closer, we get a view of the destruction that Katrina wrought –

--the pews have come loose from the floor and are tumbled over each other like Lincoln logs;
--hymnals are tossed everywhere, waterlogged and discolored, a few sadly open to a well-loved hymn;
--our precious piano is upside down and clearly unsaveable;
--the beautiful plaster work of the walls, scored to resemble blocks of stone, is ruined, falling in sheets from the masonry;
--mold of different colors festoons the walls, far above the flood line, in ugly streaks;
--the wood parquet floor tiles are tumbled everywhere in the muck left by the flood waters.

Let yourself feel the emotions that this scene evokes in you.

Let us move forward in time, to May of 2007. With help from the UUA, the mold has been completely removed and the Sanctuary smells of fresh wood, as work goes on to rebuild.

Members and friends of the church, and volunteers from all over the country, work together to make our Sanctuary beautiful again. Creative ideas are birthed, and people gather to make them a reality.

In your mind’s eye, watch as the Sanctuary slowly comes to life –

--wood from the stage in the Fellowship Hall is remilled as wainscoting to cover the flood damage to the plaster;
--molding from the lost pews is remilled to form a cap for the wainscoting;
--the broken stained glass panes are replaced;
--the gaping hole at the back of the chancel is filled in first with sheetrock, and then with the beautifully restored stained glass window that honors the work of the Gordon Sisters;
--the ceiling with its ugly, perpetually falling acoustic tiles is covered with fire-resistant theatrical cloth, in panels lovingly sewn by church members and volunteers and bravely installed from high scaffolding by other church members and volunteers;
--the scarred concrete floor receives the gift of a custom-designed Labyrinth, and then the rest of the donated floor tiles are laid over the whole Sanctuary, and finished with a lovely fleur de lis.

From death to resurrection, not by supernatural miracle, but through the entirely natural miracle of church members and friends and UU volunteers working together to make things right and beautiful.

Open your eyes, if you haven’t already, and look around you, at the walls, the windows, the ceilings, the floors. This is our church home, and it has been remade, recreated, by the energies of our minds, our hearts, and our hands.

Let us be together in the silence, marveling at what has been accomplished, and giving thanks for this community of liberal faith.

Those recognized for their creativity and hard work on the Sanctuary:
The Gordon Sisters Window -- Mary Jo Day
Donation of Floor Tile -- Paulie Eisemann
The Labyrinth & Sanctuary Floor -- Marcie Brennan
Draped Ceiling & Wainscoting -- Reese Brewer
Finishing Work & Helpers -- The First Church Congregation

Words of Rededication

In late September 2005, when former First Church minister Suzanne Meyer and I peered through the broken panes of the stained glass windows that face Jefferson Avenue, the sight was both horrifying and heart-breaking. We saw and smelled what has been related in the Guided Meditation this morning. With our backgrounds in this congregation, and remembering what an herculean effort it had been for the members of this church to purchase this building complex, at that moment we both thought, Suzanne and I, that unless the UUA or some other entity entirely paid for the reconstruction, that it would be nearly impossible. We lit a voodoo candle we had purchased earlier that day in the French Quarter on the front steps, said silent prayers, and left with very heavy hearts.

We were so, so wrong. In our sadness over what Katrina had wrought, we did not have enough faith. While the UUA’s help in our recovery was important, and generous, that is NOT why this Sanctuary is so beautiful and inspiring today. As another former First Church minister Guy Lamothe loved to say, “You don’t GO to church, you ARE the church.” The single biggest factor in the rebeautification of this Sanctuary was, and continues to be, the dedication and hard work of our members, friends, and partners.

This morning we pause in the on-going labor of recovery to rededicate our sacred worship space and to express our deepest thanks and appreciation to those who came up with ideas and who spear-headed and/or directed the hands-on work, and all those who contributed to the various projects that have resulted in our renewed worship space. From those who swung hammers, to those who sat at sewing machines, to those who bent their backs carrying heavy loads, to those who gave money, to those who brought meals to the workers, all made significant contributions to our rebuilding.

I am reminded of an old story about a visitor to a European cathedral under construction in the Middle Ages. Speaking to a sculptor, a mason, and a carpenter, the visitor is told that statues are being carved, stonework is being laid, and pews are being built. Coming upon an old woman sweeping, the visitor asks what she is doing, and she replies proudly, “Why, I am building a cathedral!” Whatever it is that you did, however small you might consider it, you helped rebuild this Sanctuary.

This is no time for us to rest on our laurels, to think that anything is done, finished, and complete. This is a time to rededicate ourselves as a congregation for the work that still lies ahead. There is much to be done, and we are the ones to do it – with the help and support of UUs around the country, and with the contributions of contractors and licensed professionals, certainly, but it will be our heads and hands and hearts – and backs and wallets – that will do much of what remains to be done.

“Dedicate” comes from a Middle English word meaning to “proclaim.” Its primary definition is to set apart for religious or sacred purposes. In this service, we proclaim again our determination to use this spot, this space, for purposes sacred to us. This Sanctuary is holy to us, not because of some outside force or supernatural being, but because it is OURS by what has happened inside.

We have lived our lives in this space. We have argued over it, passionately discussed in it, laughed and cried in it, worked til we ached in it, danced in it, ate in it, sold Christmas trees in it, named our children, united with our partners, and mourned those we love who have died in it. We’ve poured our creativity and our money into it. Some of us have even slept in it a few times. And we have worshiped in it more times than we can count.

May our words and our deeds in our renewed and rebeautified Sanctuary show to the world our commitment to the values enshrined in our liberal faith, and may we find ways to re-energize ourselves for the work that lies ahead. AMEN – ASHE – SHALOM – SALAAM – NAMASTE – BLESSED BE!

50 YEARS OF UNITARIAN UNIVERSALISM

2010-10-05T10:20:00.000-07:00

A Sermon for Association Sunday
by the Rev. Melanie Morel-Ensminger
First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans
Sunday, October 2, 2010

One of the most difficult things about being a Unitarian Universalist is the name – few other religions have a 10-syllable moniker to contend with. Whenever one of us is asked what church we go to or what religion are we, we have to trot out the whole dang thing. And you can’t get away with just saying “UU,” since you then have to explain what that stands for – or what it used to stand for, and then what it stands for today. Why are we “Unitarian Universalists” anyway?

Fifty years ago, representatives from the American Unitarian Association, founded in 1825, and the Universalist Church of America, founded in 1790, met to sign official papers of merger, creating the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations. Although it may seem in retrospect to have been inevitable, since both denominations were liberal in theology and social issues, and both were dedicated to the principle of congregational autonomy, and the two had cooperated with each on various things for close to a century, it certainly did not seem to be a sure thing at the time. While it’s true that the Unitarians and Universalists had a lot in common, there were still enough significant differences to spark disagreement and controversy on both sides. As UU historian Russell Miller has written, there were indeed “deep differences of theology, class configuration, philosophy, behavior, and attitudes which cannot be easily overlooked or minimized.”

Conversations on merger had begun more than 100 years before, and had continued, off and on, through the decades. For several generations, they had been forming joint ventures, doing projects together, and recognizing each other’s ordained clergy. For years, all over the continent, Universalist ministers served Unitarian congregations, and vice versa, and strong Unitarian churches helped out struggling Universalist churches, and vice versa – as in Chattanooga during the 1890s, when the Universalist congregation met in the Unitarian building until they could afford to build their own. (There was a vote to see if the Universalist member were willing to merge with the Unitarian congregation where they had been meeting, but typically it was voted down.)

One of the most important differences that arose in the conversations on merger was numbers – numbers of people and amounts of money. In the mid-20th century, roughly the years 1948-1958, there was a tremendous burst of growth in Unitarianism, first, with the influx of post-war young parents of the children soon to be known as the Baby Boom.

The second reason for Unitarianism’s expansion during this period was the inauguration of the Fellowship Movement, under the guidance of Humanist minister Lon Ray Call and layman Monroe Husbands. With their leadership, all over the continent, groups large enough to be a Unitarian congregation but not yet large enough to be a church with a full-time minister were organized into lay-led fellowships that were grassroots, intensely local, and often very innovative in worship style. That they later developed characteristics of anti-authoritarianism, anti-clericalism, hyper-individualism, and theological conformity was not intended but should not have come as a complete surprise. At this period, fully one-third of all Unitarians were members of lay-led fellowships. But, interestingly, financial giving to the denomination did not rise as fast as the membership figures, and the AUA was often strapped for cash.

During the same period, the Universalists were declining in numbers while perversely growing stronger financially. Ironically, it can be said that Universalism lost by winning. The theological message of Universalism, that God is Love and will not condemn human beings to burn in hell forever, had caused its dramatic increase in membership in the early to mid-1800s. This was, as you might expect, a very comforting and attractive message and people flocked to Universalist churches to hear it. But as the 19th century drew to a close, other mainline denominations got the point and began to downplay or even discard doctrines of eternal punishment and rhetoric about the fires of hell. With the Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians and others dropping talk of eternal damnation, there was less and less need to join a Universalist church. (Even today, in order to regularly hear sermons that rant on hell, you’d have to attend the most theologically conservative churches.) Universalism as a theology won the day – but ironically Universalism as a denomination lost.

As their membership aged and dwindled and their congregations closed, bequests from deceased Universalists and the reversion of church property meant that Universalism was a denomination with a healthy endowment and an unhealthy membership roll. Thus, as Unitarianism and Universalism approached merger, there was a great deal of concern among Universalists that it might only be a “marriage for money” as many put it. And all the individualism, iconoclasm, and mistrust of authority that so strongly characterized not only Unitarian fellowships but also many congregations, led to a comparable mistrust on their part that the Universalists might be too old-fashioned, too bound with the past, and too centralized for consolidation to work. (I once preached a sermon about changes in our religious movement, beginning with merger, that was entitled “What Were They Thinking??”)

The class issue was complex and sensitive, just as class remains today for the merged denomination. Unitarianism in America grew out of the Standing Order churches of New England, officially sanctioned by the government and supported by tax dollars. Thus, Unitarians tended to be Establishment types, members of the ruling and professional classes, with access to economic power and resulting better education. Universalists, on the other hand, historically opposed and fought vigorously against the stranglehold of the official churches, and were, with the Baptists, instrumental in the “disestablishment” cause. Their members tended to be rural, working class folk, often farmers, with less formal education than Unitarians. (While the Universalists were not well-educated in schools, they tended to be self-taught and great book readers.) Interestingly, the individually richer Unitarians, due perhaps to their distrust of centralization as well as their philosophy of individualism and autonomy, gave far less, per capita, to their denomination and congregations than did the less well-off Universalists.

Another complication was the difference in organizational style. For many years, Universalists felt themselves to be under siege. Civic leaders in some places, as in Ellisville, Mississippi, put up signs that said “No dogs or Universalists allowed” as late as the 1900s. (Even earlier, George Washington himself had had to intervene during the Revolutionary War to allow a Universalist minister to serve as an army chaplain.) With their sense of persecution, it made sense for Universalists to have a powerful central organization and a constant feeling of having to battle for their right to exist. Conversely, Unitarians, with their establishment credentials and love of freedom, failed to give the AUA any organizational “teeth” until the end of the 1890s and the start of the 20th century. How a new merged denomination would be organized was thus a major question not easily resolved.

Finally, there were concerns on both sides about theology. Unitarianism had officially stepped away from its historical and traditional theism and liberal Christianity, starting in the time of William Ellery Channing in the mid-1800s (when in a controversial sermon he laid out the principles of “Unitarian Christianity”), continuing with the so-called Issue in the West in the late 1800s (when Unitarians took the word “God” out of their mission statement and substituted “the Good”), and culminating in the Humanist Controversy in the early 20th century.

This did not mean, of course, that individual Unitarians and congregations did not remain theistic and/or Christian – the freedom of conscience and congregational autonomy so important to both denominations ensured that there were many, although they were beginning to be outnumbered. Even today, there are congregations whose worship style is firmly, if liberally, Christian in content and style.

Although there were some Universalist ministers and lay people who were (if you’ll excuse the expression) devout humanists – notably, Humanist poet and hymn writer Kenneth Patton – and while there were strong affirmations within Universalism of a universal religious sense and the universality of religious experience (first articulated at the Universalist Convention of 1870), Universalism was still firmly holding the Bible and Jesus as central – although their liberal conclusions on both did not endear them to other Christians. (The Universalist Bond of Fellowship, adopted in 1953, read, “to do the will of God as Jesus revealed it and to cooperate in establishing the Kingdom for which he lived and died” – not exactly an orthodox formulation!)

In 1953, administrative functions of the two denominations in the areas of religious education, publications, and public relations were combined and the Council of Liberal Churches was formed. Many UUs who were youth during this period are very proud that the continental youth organizations merged before the adult denominations did. During merger talks in the 1930s, one name proposed for the proposed consolidated denomination was “The United Liberal Church of America;” another was the “Free Church Fellowship.” Former president of the AUA Frederick May Eliot called the formation of the council was “one of the most important events in the history of American Unitarianism.”

This was followed in 1954 by a joint commission on merger and by a joint biennial conference of Unitarians and Universalists in 1959. After that meeting, both denominations held plebiscites to make the final determination, which overwhelmingly affirmed the decision to merge. On May 25, 1961, merger was accomplished and the new combined denomination was called the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations. (What happened to “The United Liberal Church in America” or the “Free Church Fellowship”? you may well ask. The sad truth is, neither was willing to relinquish its historic name. Similarly, there remain today churches which so far have refused or neglected to incorporate the “other” name into their identity.)

The most hotly contested issues for most of the people voting in 1961 remain sticking points today for many UUs: To what extent is Unitarian Universalism part of the great “family tree” of Christianity? To what extent is Unitarian Universalism beyond Christianity, standing as a new universal religion? And is Unitarian Universalism a religion, or a way of being religious? (Sorry, those are not questions this sermon will answer – you’ll have to decide for yourself!)

One of the biggest lessons we learn (or are reminded of) from the merger 50 years ago is that there are no easy answers. Today Unitarian Universalism faces challenges in balancing the equal and seemingly opposing needs for independence and interdependence, pluralism and consensus, spirituality and social action. We still cannot expect to completely agree among ourselves on how much social action is not enough or too much, whether in our congregations or at the UUA level. Finances remain a challenge at the UUA level as well as for many if not most UU congregations. And you can still generate an argument among certain UUs over whether or not the ministerial credentialing process and settlement system violates our historic congregational polity. But if it wasn’t that, it’d be something else, because we’re a contentious bunch.

Despite our conflicts, here we are, 50 years later. There has been a deepening in recent years of spirituality and taking worship seriously in UU congregations. The children of the Baby Boom generation are now entering our churches, either as former UU Sunday School kids returning with their own families, or as unchurched seekers looking for freedom of conscience, spiritual relevancy, and work for justice and community in the wider world. After 50 years of Unitarian Universalism, we can say that we are more resilient than ever, with a saving message for all those who desire what we have to offer. We may not be the universal World Religion once envisioned at merger, but our saving message is as relevant as ever in the 21st century. May we always draw strength and inspiration from both sides of our religious heritage as we carry liberal religion forward to the next 50 years! AMEN -- ASHE -- SHALOM -- NAMASTE -- BLESSED BE!

UNFORGIVABLE SIN -- A SERMON FOR YOM KIPPUR

2010-09-22T09:51:00.000-07:00

by the Rev. Melanie Morel-Ensminger
First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans
Sunday, September 19, 2010

Recently, actor-philanthropist Brad Pitt was interviewed, and asked about his feelings about the BP oil spill. Pitt said he had never been for the death penalty, but he was thinking of making an exception for those responsible for the outpouring of oil into the Gulf. John Osterlyn on WRNO radio was outraged – how could Pitt be for the death penalty for this, and not for murderers? The answer is that each person’s unforgivable sin is different.

Sin is not an easy thing to talk about for UUs. Some say that we Unitarian Universalists don't have a concept of sin, but I don’t think that’s true. It might be fair to say that UUs are less interested in what Catholics call venial, personal, sins. Religious liberals tend to focus more on communal, institutional sins like war and violence. Are some sins more forgivable than others?

I was amazed when I learned about Holocaust survivor Edith Eger, who travels the country teaching forgiveness to former POWs. She says that those who forgive are freer. “Free from hatred, fear, the need for revenge,” she says, “[from] our own self-imposed prison.” Eger’s family was killed at Auschwitz. Eger says, “I have no time to hate because if I would hate today, I would give Hitler a posthumous victory, and I’m not about to do that.”

I was also amazed when I found out that the family of James Byrd, the black man dragged to death by white supremicists a decade ago, had publicly urged the jury not to impose the death penalty.

While I was serving in Chattanooga, the Journey of Hope, a group of activists (including musician Steve Earle), family members of murder victims, and of Death Row inmates, stayed overnight at the church. In that group, I met a man who blew me away when he told me that he was helping the teen-age girl who murdered his grandmother get an education while she was in prison. He visits her regularly – one of the few visitors she receives.

All of these people have discovered a secret – that hate keeps violence and cruelty going, but that forgiveness helps survivors to become whole. Turns out that refusing to forgive is a lot like carrying around rotten potatoes.

A teacher once told her students to bring a sack of potatoes to school. For every person in their life they refused to forgive, they put a potato into a plastic bag. Then they had to carry the bag with them for a week. The hassle of lugging it around made clear what a weight they were carrying inside. Over time, the potatoes rotted – a great metaphor for the price we pay for holding onto bitterness. Too often we think of forgiveness as a gift to the other person, but it’s really for ourselves.

What is an unforgivable sin? A Holocaust survivor teaches forgiveness. A family of a man viciously murdered begs for the lives of their loved one's killers. A man befriends his grandmother’s murderer. What is an unforgivable sin? I'll tell you – an unforgivable sin is one we choose NOT to forgive.

What old heavy rotting potatoes are we carrying, and why are we still carrying them? Yes, we’ve been hurt, betrayed, lied to, not been loved enough -- and the fact is, if we’re truthful, we’ll admit that we have hurt, betrayed, lied, and not given enough love too. Shouldn’t we choose to forgive?

The choice is ours to make. We can choose to be forgiving and forgiven people, or we can choose not to forgive, carry a bitter burden, and bear inside a burning need for retribution that ends, as all such internal fires do, in consuming our very essence, turning us into what we hate. Unlike the teacher in the story, no one is forcing us to carry those potatoes – we packed 'em our own selves and are choosing to carry ‘em around.

Yom Kippur, with its opportunity for new beginnings and healed relationships, has been recurring, according to the Jewish calendar, for the past, oh, 5,770 years. Christianity, with its message of forgiveness and love, has been around for nearly 2,000 years. So why isn’t the world a better place? Maybe it’s because we haven’t gotten the message.

In an adaptation of a traditional prayer of Yom Kippur, my colleague Mark Belletini writes:

We are free, not to promise to be good, but simply to get on with loving each other. We are free, not to vow great transformations, but to engage life with tenderness & understanding, & outpourings of kindness. We are free, not to swear oaths of everlasting loyalty & righteousness, but to continue to be generous to each other, to ourselves, & to the common good. At the start of a new year, we begin again in love.

So might this be! AMEN -- ASHE -- SHALOM – SALAAM – NAMASTE -- BLESSED BE!

“FINDING OURSELVES” A Homily for Ingathering/Water Ceremony

2010-09-14T18:31:00.000-07:00

by the Rev. Melanie Morel-Ensminger
First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans
Sunday, September 12, 2010

In November of 1980, a group of 350 Unitarian Universalist women and some supportive men gathered in East Lansing, Michigan, for the first ever Women & Religion Convocation on Feminist Thealogy. It was an historic event in several ways, for not only was it the first time that UU women came together for such a conference, but it was also at the opening ceremony that a beloved UU tradition was born. Troubadour Carolyn McDade, composer of “Spirit of Life,” worked with UU Lucille Longview to create a special ritual, during which all the participants brought water from their homes to pour in a common bowl, symbolizing their coming together for the convocation.

Many of the participants were so deeply moved by this first UU Water Ceremony that they returned home and introduced the ritual to their congregations. Now, 30 years later, this ritual has become a tangible symbol of unity in diversity, held in Unitarian Universalist congregations all over the world, and all over the United States. To my knowledge, Rev. Mike McGee brought the Water Ceremony to First Church back in the 1980s, so we’ve been doing it about as long any UU church in the country. Many congregations hold the ceremony on the Sunday that marks the official start of the new church worship year, as we do.

As e. e. cummings said, we find ourselves in the sea, and in all kinds of water. We are made of water, and water resonates with us, it renews us. My spouse Eric periodically needs views of what he calls “Big Water” to renew his spirits – and that can mean the Mississippi at the Fly at Riverview, or Lake Pontchartrain from the twin span, or a short drive to the Gulf in Hancock County. Even a quick dip in backyard swimming pool can be incredibly refreshing. Water means a lot to us, even to us New Orleanians, who understand in a deep, experiential way how water can both nurture and destroy.

We find ourselves this year at a kind of crossroads. We have come such a long way from the destruction of the floodwaters of Katrina. Our Sanctuary has been transformed into a gorgeous and elegant worship space, lacking only lighting and chairs to feel truly finished. This space shows the love and care of the people of this church, working with their own hands to reclaim this space and resanctify it.

But we know much remains to be done. We need to raise a minimum of $150,000.00 to finish the electrical and fire systems in order to receive our permanent Certificate of Occupancy and get our kitchen completed, so that our shared ministry with NO/AIDS can begin and start serving the community. UUs around the country have been alerted to our situation through the article in the online version of the UU World magazine; many are reaching out to us with offers of help. Board President Max Oeschger called me yesterday to tell me he had a frutiful conversation with former UUA President Rev. John Buehrens, assuring us of his support and his certainty that the money will be raised (and his promise of a personal donation toward our goal). When Max told me that, I said I always knew we would.

And so we begin a new worship year with this familiar and beloved ceremony of mingled waters, waters that symbolize all we’ve been through, all we’ve felt, all we’ve done, and all we've faced since the beginning of the summer. One way or another, it’s water that’s helped us face ourselves over these months. We’ve come through the BP oil spill and another Katrina anniversary, and the Saints have won their first game. We’re geared up for another year, and we know, deep down in our hearts, that however we find ourselves in this year, that we can rely on each other, on the bonds in this community of liberal faith, to lift us up, hold us together, give hugs and pats on the back and kicks in the seats, as and when needed.

This is the start of our worship year and this is our church. Water communion has come again, to remind us that we are one. In a spirit of gratitude, let us hear the words for benediciton over the mingled waters; let us bless the waters that have so abundantly blessed us.

"IN PRAISE OF WORK" LABOR DAY SERVICE

2010-09-07T09:22:00.000-07:00

by the Rev. Melanie Morel-Ensminger
North Shore Unitarian Universalists
Sunday, September 5, 2010

Before I begin this morning’s sermon "In Praise of Work," I want to remind you about our annual Water Communion ceremony which will be held next Sunday, led by Patricia Stout. For those of you who may be unfamiliar with the concept, this ritual involves the people of the congregation bringing a small amount of water from their summer to share with the congregation. Each person who wishes to take part in this informal ritual of regathered community is asked to bring a small amount of water -- about a film canister worth -- and be prepared to share aloud (if you wish) where the water comes from.

On this Sunday before Labor Day, let us contemplate work -- indeed, let us praise work. Work can give life purpose and boundaries and meaning; work can be ennobling, uplifting, and enriching. Work can even form, consciously or unconsciously, an important part of our identities. This can be both a good thing and a bad thing.

I remember that soon after my father retired from his 36 years of work in the organized labor movement back in 1975, my mother asked me to lunch with her. Over the clink of glasses and the murmured conversations of the crowded restaurant, my mother leaned across the table to me and said theatrically (I come by it honestly!), "I think your father’s losing his mind!"

After I picked my jaw up from the table, I was able to get from my mother the real cause of her concern -- without his work, my father felt aimless, purposeless, out-of-sorts, confused. If he were not Barney Morel-the-AFL-CIO-subdistrict-director, then who was he? What was he supposed to do with the rest of his life? And in his pain and confusion, my father was indeed driving my mother nuts. Barney eventually worked through it, collaborating with me on an oral history of his work in the movement, and shortly after that, taking up golf. (And soon, my mother had other complaints about him, but it wasn’t that she thought he was losing his mind, it was that she never saw him.)

Many people, both women and men, have had similar experiences after leaving a long-time job, whether voluntarily through retirement, or against their will by being laid off or through a business closure. It is no coincidence that many of our present-day surnames -- names like Smith, Wright, Wheeler, Baker, Ferry, Farmer, Priest or Cohen, and even ethnic names like Ghandi (meaning grocer), and so on -- come from the occupation of one of our ancestors. So much of who we are, for both good and ill, is tied up in our work, often it is hard to extract the core of ourselves from what it is that we do.

Ministers are not immune from such concerns. A while ago, there was a discussion spanning several days on the UU Ministers on-line chat group about the difference, if any, between "doing ministry" and "being a minister." Were they the same? Was there a real distinction to be made in saying "I am a minister" or "Ministry is what I do but it’s not who I am"? No consensus was reached on these questions, but there were days of fruitful and interesting exchanges. You may interested to know that I came down on the side of "being a minister" -- that most of time I feel that ministry is who I am and not just what I do. (Now, whether this will cause me difficulty in the the time after my retirement, I guess I will find out out about 15 years from now.)

If we are going to identify so strongly with what we do, then it is important for us to be involved in work worth doing, or what the Buddhists call "right livelihood." If our work demeans the human dignity of ourselves or of others, if our work puts ourselves or others in some kind of danger, if our work is based in faulty ethics or a lack of connection to other human beings or to the earth, or even if we are simply unsuited for the work we are doing or the people we are doing it with, then we may find our spiritual and emotional unease making itself felt both psychically and physically. We may experience recurring nightmares, inability to sleep, or other physical symptoms without apparent clinical cause.

I don’t know about this reality just because I read it somewhere, although the phenomena is well-documented; I know this is true because it happened to me. Back in the early 1980s, soon after I had joined 1st UU Church in New Orleans, when I was a store manager for Laura Ashley (a job, by the way, I had avidly pursued and which I thought of as my dream job), two things started happening. I had nightmares several times a week, and I developed a mysterious skin rash that usually cleared up on my days off. I sought the advice of a dermatologist, and flunked every skin sensitivity test he put me through. I was not allergic to anything in particular, I just kept getting this rash. His diagnosis: urticaria, which in laymen’s terms apparently means, "red rash that the doctor can’t figure out."

When I quit retailing in 1985, it was mostly because I realized my heart wasn’t in it. I was meant for something else, only I didn’t know what it was yet. My deeper involvement in my church with my newly-freed time first drew me to become First Church’s paid professional administrator, and later still, to the UU ministry. I finally found what I was supposed to be when I grew up, and I joy-fully embraced the life it offered me -- with all its privileges, hardships, life changes, growth experiences, low pay and all. (The late Suzanne Meyer found this bumper sticker for me in a Baptist book store: I like this job so much, I’d do it for nothing. In much smaller type, it says further, Unfortunately, they know that. (Needless to say, I never did put that sticker on my car.)

In those days, I didn’t know about Rumi, the Sufi mystic and poet, but unconsciously I was following one of his most compelling directives: Let yourself be drawn by the stronger pull of what you really love.

Now, now not all of us have the security and luxury of being able to drop everything and follow Rumi’s urging. Not all of us are able leave our jobs and take up an entirely new career direction, as First Church's sponsored seminarian, Deanna Vandiver, has done, or as our ministerial intern Charlie Dieterich did. Many of us are caught in jobs that we keep in order to pay our bills and cannot afford to think whether or not we feel somehow "fulfilled." Indeed, some of us have jobs that don’t even pay all of our bills. Others of us, while we may be making more money and may not be doing actual drudgery, still feel trapped and do not see a clear way out of our predicament.

Maybe we should take a step back and think in a new way. If we cannot do work that is what we truly love, then perhaps we can find ways to bring what we truly love to our work. We could build more meaningful relationships at our places of work; we could get into the mindfulness, the zen, of even routine tasks; we could witness whatever faith sustains us in the way we do our work, whatever it is.

In fact, that step back is essential for all of us. All of us can get too caught up in what we do, mistaking our work for ourselves, mistaking comfortable routine for what must be done. All of us could benefit from being able to take some valuable perspective on the work we do. In his diaries, Leonardo Da Vinci wrote:

Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer. Go some distance away because then the work appears smaller and more of it can be taken in at a glance and a lack of harmony and proportion is more readily seen.

Maybe that’s what Labor Day is really all about -- that little relaxation we can use to sharpen our judgment, to see our problems and challenges at work in a new light, to discern for ourselves whether or not we are letting ourselves be drawn by the stronger pull of what we truly love.

This morning let us sing a song in praise of work, work worth doing, right livelihood, work that enriches and ennobles our experience, work that gives our lives meaning and identity and purpose. In honor of the working women and men of this congregation and all around the world, please join with me in the special hymn of working people, a song very appropriate for Labor Day, "Solidarity Forever."

“WELCOME TABLE”

2010-08-17T12:27:00.000-07:00

A Sermon by the Reverend Melanie Morel-Ensminger
First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans
Sunday, August 15, 2010

Yesterday I presided over a vows-renewal ceremony for two young men who were married last Monday in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The couple wanted their local friends and family to celebrate with them, and I was honored to preside over their ceremony. But it was a shame to me and painful to the two grooms that so many members of both families refused to attend. Despite the filled ballroom at the French Quarter hotel, there was one empty table that was meant for the family members who did not choose to attend. It was heart-breaking. It is hard for some people to welcome difference, to have their expectations over-turned, to be open to change. Few of them mean to be cruel, but it turns out to be cruel just the same.

If you look at the illustration of the Welcome Table on the front of the Order of Service, you will see a different picture – a table with all kinds of different people seated around it, their body language radiating happiness. The Welcome Table is a symbol of what almost all of us say we want, but it turns out to be not as easily achievable as we might hope.

Openness to new people and new ideas is a hallmark of Unitarian Universalism, and yet many UU congregations have difficulty attracting and retaining new members. Not a single UU church I know of has a sign that says, “No new folks,” but many congregations have trouble making newcomers feel welcome.

It’s nothing so obvious as a sign or a “Unwelcome” mat. Most congregations that are unwelcoming have no idea that they are. It can be subtle things such as the excessive use of acronyms and initials that new folks don’t understand. Or it can be well-meant assumptions about new people, such as asking if someone is married, or where they work, or where they live. While these may seem like innocuous questions, they could be painful for those who are recently separated or divorced, or who are prevented by law from getting married, or who have just been laid off, or who’ve been unemployed for long weeks of fruitless searching, or whose current address might the nearby Salvation Army center, or who are camping out in an unfinished house since Katrina.

Other congregations, in an attempt to be inclusive, will make generalizing assertions that can alienate newcomers. When potential new members meet with me in my office, I usually tell them that nearly all statements that start off with “All UUs agree…” or “Most of us feel…” are wrong, but you do occasionally hear church folks go down that path. It’s easier than trying to explain just how complicated we are.

Some newcomers, with their fresh eyes and their new perspectives, can make observations that longer-term members find uncomfortable and unwelcome to hear. Hearing from a relative stranger that our unfinished building is a turn-off hurts, however true it may be. A new person asking why this congregation or any other UU congregation is not more diverse in terms of race and ethnicity reflects back to us critical things we may well have thought ourselves, and may make us feel defensive. Some newcomers may make suggestions, which can sometimes be met with a resigned reaction from a member. “That won’t work here” or “We tried that some time ago and it didn’t work.” It’s a pretty effective way to keep people from making suggestions.

I want us to listen closely to new folks who may give us feedback about ourselves, especially when it's hard to hear. What they say is important, and we need to hear it. No person and no institution can improve without first learning where they fall short. Some criticisms may help us become a better church. Some suggestions can help us grow stronger, even if it’s something we think we’ve attempted in the past.

Many of you may have heard of the Unitarian Universalist Association’s comprehensive social justice campaign called “Standing on the Side of Love.” To stand on the side of love means to support equal marriage rights for same-sex couples, and equal treatment of their families; it means supporting non-punitive immigration reform, and standing with undocumented workers and workers who are cheated of their earnings. The recent demonstrations in Arizona, where Unitarian Universalists were so prominent, were an example of Standing on the Side of Love, as were demonstrations in favor of civil marriage rights for same-sex couples. Our local protests in front of restaurants that have been cheating workers of their wages is another example.

But Standing on the Side of Love can also happen on the inside of a UU church. We stand on the side of love every time we welcome a new person, new couple, new family into our congregation. We stand on the side of love when we’d rather hear about a new person’s journey and what they hope for from this church community before we overwhelm them with information about us, and what committees need more volunteers. We stand on the side of love when we welcome new ideas and listen patiently to what seems like a criticism.

In my observation, too many UU churches end up as clubs – virtual closed groups, with a special, hard to understand language, and with lots of expectations not spelled out, just “understood” by the longer term members. Sadly, most of them don’t know it, and still insist that they’re friendly and welcoming. They might be friendly and welcoming to each other, but newer folks are just not feeling it.

One thing I’m proud of about First Church is that in our past we were known as The Stranger’s Church. Unfortunately, this was not because the church was especially hospitable to new people, but because our minister’s preaching was something of tourist attraction. On Sundays in the 1800s, there were more strangers than members. If the members then had gotten into the habit of welcoming and incorporating new people, who knows? Today we might be famous as one of the largest Unitarian Universalist churches in the country.

Look back at the cover of the Order of Service. For us – and by “us” I mean this church as well as Unitarian Universalism as a whole – to truly become a Welcome Table like that picture, we need to remember that all people are welcome here, that new ideas, new perspectives, and honest observations are welcome here; that a wide variety of political opinions are just as welcome here as a wide variety of theological viewpoints. I would like for us to be known as the Strangers Church once again, but this time, because of the warmth and openness of our genuine welcome.

My shorthand way of expressing this idea is to say that ALL people are welcome, but not all behaviors. We have a covenant of expectations of how we will treat each other – with respect, with gentleness, with courtesy even in disagreement. We promise to listen to each other. We will assume good intentions, we will do our best not to be defensive with each other. Every single person willing to live by these covenants, these expectations, are welcome here.

Who is welcome here? Everyone. How do we make sure all our outward and inward barriers are broken down? Let's work on that together.

May we take the steps necessary so that we are ever more welcoming, always widening our circle to draw in more and more people. So might this be! AMEN – ASHE – SHALOM –SALAAM – NAMASTE – BLESSED BE!

“THE ART OF COMMUNITY”

2010-08-10T10:58:00.000-07:00

A Sermon by the Rev. Melanie Morel-Ensminger for the
Greater New Orleans UU Shared Service: Hot Art in a Cool Space at
North Shore Unitarian Universalist Congregation
Sunday, August 8, 2010

When I was a little girl, paint-by-numbers kits were very popular. In our house we had several framed paintings that my mother had painstakingly completed on our dining room table, carefully filling each space in according to the number on the little paint containers. Some of the finished paintings were attractive, most of them were colorful, but not a single one of them was art.

Around that same period, there was a black-and-white show on TV with a guy named Jon Nagy who taught viewers how to draw. In a way, I guess he did, but it turned out that by closely following his instructions, you could learn to draw just like Jon Nagy. You might have been making a drawing of a recognizable object with realistic shadings, but it wasn’t art.

You can’t make art by the numbers or by slavishly copying someone else. Sure, you can learn certain techniques, certain media, such as oils or watercolors or clay, the use of perspective, and theories of color and shading and shaping. But there’s a certain something that cannot be taught or shown that must be present to make Art with a capital A. There must be genuine creativity, a spark of genius, flashes of imagination to be able to make something that could be recognized as art. The true artist has to trust in a force greater than themselves.

These are all things that cannot be given or even taught. They certainly can’t be forced. Building a community is similar. You can learn certain rules or guidelines, and you can find out how another community gathered and formed itself, but there’s another, more ineffable, ingredient that’s needed for a group to grow into a community. In other words, building a true community, like creating a work of fine art, is less of a science and more of an art.

Surrounded by all this creativity and beauty from the annual Hot Art in a Cool Space show, in a gathered congregation that consists of people from all 3 area UU congregations, some UUs from elsewhere who are staying at the New Orleans Rebirth Volunteer center, and some folks form the wider community, we are in an appropriate setting to compare art and community, and to see what they have in common.
My mother had fun with her paint-by-numbers kits and the finished products decorated our home, but she was only following a preset pattern designed by someone else, just as I was when I slavishly copied the techniques taught by Jon Nagy. Even if she had completed a kit perfectly and even if I had copied Nagy precisely, we wouldn’t have made works of art. Community is the same way – it can’t be imposed or forced or designed by someone from the outside.

Almost 5 years ago, after Katrina, good folks from the UUA, with the best of intentions, came into greater New Orleans and spoke with the ministers and leaders of all 3 area UU churches. At the very beginning, they had some ideas about the near-forcible merger of all 3 or at least 2 of the local UU churches. To the UUA’s credit, when they ran up against considerable opposition, they backed off, but they did encourage us to work more closely together than had happened pre-Katrina.

If anyone had said to us 8 or even 6 years ago, that the UU churches of greater New Orleans would be holding regular shared services, raising money together, doing social service projects together, and speaking with one voice to the wider UUA, there would have been loud derisive laughter. Many, if not most, of us would have bet heavily against the proposition. (I would have been one of them.) But here we are, continuing our new practice of sharing services several times a year, having come nearly to the end of the Greater New Orleans UU cluster’s shared capital campaign, which was very successful especially given the recession, and with the consortium of congregations sharing ministers to help each other out. As congregations and leaders, we know each other better than we ever have before, and in less than 5 years, we have done more things together than we did in all the years before the Storm. And while we have not reached perfect covenanted community among the 3 congregations, and haven't yet within each of the congregations either!, we are further along that path than most of us ever thought possible.

No one could have made us do it, we had to want to, and we had to do the work of community ourselves. There were things we could learn from other UU groups and congregations, but since what we were creating had never been done before, there were almost no examples to draw on. We had to use our imaginations, we had to be creative, we had to step bravely forward into the unknown together. We had to welcome each other into our different church homes and welcome the diversity of outlooks that otherwise would not be present in our deliberations. Most of all, we had to trust – trust each other and trust the process.

Growing each of our congregations is much the same. We can learn how other UU congregations – especially those the UUA designates as “Breakthrough Congregations” – do outreach and incorporate new members; we can even learn from each other’s best practices. But in the end, each of our 3 congregations is different enough that not everything will translate. What works in Uptown New Orleans on the border of the University neighborhood and Broadmoor might not work in Lakeview or across the Lake, and vice versa. First Church, North Shore, and Community Church still have to rely on their own imagination and creativity; we each still have to be courageous and welcoming. And we still need to trust – trust in some force greater than all of us, trust in the saving message of Unitarian Universalism, trust that growing and changing is worth the discomfort they so often bring.

Let us learn from these beautiful works of talent and creativity that surround us this morning. Community, like art, is so much more than following certain rules. Let us continue to build our own strength so that we can be of help to people in need the community around us. Let us rededicate ourselves to welcoming now people and new insights, building up our Greater New Orleans UU cluster, bringing the saving message of our liberal faith to more and more people in the parishes of St. Tammany, Orleans, Jefferson, and St. Bernard, and to folks on the border with Mississippi. Let us use all that we have and all that we are to accomplish the great task set before us.
So might this be! AMEN – ASHÉ – SHALOM – SALAAM – NAMASTE – BLESSED BE!

“CELEBRATING MARGARET FULLER: Biography as Theology”

2010-05-25T09:41:00.000-07:00

A Sermon for the Margaret Fuller Bicentennial
By the Rev. Melanie Morel-Ensminger
First Unitarian Universalist Church in New Orleans
Sunday, May 23, 2010

From time to time, we lift up a significant person in Unitarian Universalist history as the fit subject for a sermon. For example, on Mother’s Day, we honored Maja Capek for her role in establishing the Flower Ceremony. This morning, we celebrate the 200th birthday of another UU foremother, Margaret Fuller.

We do this not because we UUs have raised certain individuals to divine status, as when a Christian minister preaches about Jesus, or because we think a person has received a unique divine revelation, as when a Muslim cleric sermonizes about Mohammed. We do it because we religious liberals believe so strongly that the way a human life is lived is part of theology. That is, we say that a person’s lived experience exemplifies a person’s truest and most deeply held religious tenets.

Margaret Fuller is an excellent example of this principle, and the way she lived her life will resonate with today’s Unitarian Universalists. Al-though she lived and died within the first part of the 19th century, so much of her biography will sound familiar to our 21st century ears. And what doesn’t feel commonplace will ring true as the necessary precursor to our experience. Because she lived the way she lived, our lives move in ways that are now routine for us.

I do not know how and why Margaret Fuller, so famous, so admired, in her lifetime, is almost forgotten today. Her story would make a terrific, if somewhat melodramatic, movie – a little Jane Eyre, a little Henry James, a little cowboy and Indians, and finally winding up with a great romantic tragic ending. Who could resist? I am glad to take this opportunity to bring her back to our lineup of UU forebears.

Margaret Fuller was born in Cambridgeport, Massachusetts (now a neighborhood of Cambridge), on May 23, 1810, the first child of Margaret Crane and Timothy Fuller. Timothy was a prominent attorney, elected to the State Senate when Margaret was 3. From Boston he wrote home, “Tell Margaret I love her if she learns to read.” While this expression of conditional parental love sounds jarring to our ears, it was just the impetus little Margaret needed and she did indeed learn to read at that tender age. It was the beginning of an education that was unheard-of for girls in the early 19th century – her father basically outlined a course of study as if she were a boy preparing for Harvard, her father’s alma mater. The curriculum included Latin, Greek, grammar, history, math, music, and modern languages. By 6 she was translating Virgil.

Her father basically home-schooled her and was a strict taskmaster. Margaret learned early on that achievements brought her father’s approval. Kept up late at night to recite to her father on his return from the senate, she suffered migraine headaches and insomnia, which plagued her all her life. But other than earning her father’s elusive affection, it is not clear what possible purpose this rigorous educational regime might have. There were absolutely no roles for women in education once “finishing school” was done. Such teaching positions that might have been available did not assume such a background, neither Harvard nor Yale admitted women, and female educational institutions of higher learning had not yet been founded. Timothy Fuller knew this even better than his daughter; it is not clear what he could have been expecting. While the explicit challenges of her intense education could not have been clear to Margaret at the outset, she began to sense that something was wrong. One biographer wrote of her recurrent headaches, sleeplessness, and depression, “she was living a problem the more oppressive and insidious because she couldn’t name it.” (I am reminded of a short article in the Times-Picayune from the 1980s that I carried around in my wallet until it fell apart; it reported that women suffered from more depression than men and wondered if that could have anything to do with women's place society. No duh.)

She did her best to cope. In 1818, after her father’s election to the U.S. Senate, and his move to Washington, DC, she began to attend The Port School, a Harvard-prep academy that allowed girls to attend. She and her father exchanged long, recondite letters. By age 10, she mastered the classics and began reading in French. At 11, when the rest of her family moved to Washington, she moved in with relatives to attend the Boston Lyceum for Ladies. Her aunt and uncle bring her with them to services at First Church Unitarian.

When Margaret was 12, seemingly realizing what they had done, her parents threw a ball in her honor, to help their daughter with her social awkwardness and increase her circle of friends. It must be admitted that Margaret could be insufferable, with her high-toned intellectual conversation and her complete lack of and interest in social chitchat. The affair was an unmitigated disaster. Ninety young people were invited, but only a few showed up. Afterwards, those few refused to speak to her.

Still flailing to help Margaret fit in, they transferred her to an elite Young Ladies’ Seminary in Groton, Massachusetts, in 1824, in order to increase her chances of a suitable marriage. For whatever reason, she did not end the year there (and one can only imagine poor Margaret sticking out like a giant sore thumb there), but went back to The Port School to study Greek and Latin. Only a year later, she left school forever to continue once again to homeschooling under her father. At only 15, she became close friends with such leading progressive and Unitarian intellectual figures as Lydia Maria Child, James Freeman Clarke, Frederic Henry Hedge, George Ripley, and William Ellery Channing. They basked in her admiration, and admired in turn the intensity, intelligence and breadth of her conversation.

While she enjoyed the intellectual companionship of male friends, she found the society of most women to be deadly dull. Both to stimulate herself and perhaps with an eye to developing more female friends, she instituted winter “Conversations” for young women of her acquaintance. Over 5 winters, 20-25 young women gathered in the parlor of a friend’s home to talk over the questions of the day in structured discussions. It helped, but it did not fill Margaret’s yearning. In a letter, she poured out her heart: “With the intellect I always have, always shall, overcome; but that is not the half of the work. The life, the life! O, my God! Shall the life never be sweet?” How sad is that?

More and more she found herself in a class by herself. (Edgar Allan Poe said there were 3 types of human beings: men, women and Margaret Fuller.) There were no examples, in her life or in her extensive readings, of women like herself. She saw little chance of a conventional future, with loving spouse and children. She would have to blaze her own trail, alone, often lonely, sometimes despairing, but always, always bravely.

In 1831, when she was 21, her father forced her to return to church at First Unitarian in Cambridge. The joyful, grateful tone of the worship so jarred her sad spirits that she complained of it in her diary, but later that day, still feeling her off-and-on depression, she took a long walk in the “meditative woods” outside town and there found herself refreshed and renewed. Afterwards, she referred to that day as her conversion experience.

In 1833, Margaret’s father retired from politics and moved his family out to Groton. Margaret was devastated to be so far from her friends and the life she had cobbled together. For the next 2 years, she was able to visit Cambridge only 2 or 3 times a year. During this time, encouraged by her father, Margaret begins to write for the Boston Daily Advertiser, the New England Galaxy, and the Western Messenger – and, under her father’s direction, becomes the full-time governess for her younger siblings, which she finds “a serious and fatiguing charge.”

With her deep love for the restorative powers of nature, it is no wonder that she was drawn to the philosophical teachings of Transcendentalists like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Bronson Alcott, both of whom she met in 1836 when she was 26. Margaret and Waldo shared their writings and their thoughts with each and engaged in fearless intense debates over ideas. Their passionate and platonic relationship ran hot and cold for the rest of their lives. That same year, her father died, ending his physical influence and his power over her person. She became the de facto head of her family, and was obsessed with keeping the family financially secure. She started giving language classes to young ladies and teaching at Alcott’s innovative Temple School to help make ends meet.

The following year she accepted a better-paying position at a school in Providence, Rhode Island; among her subjects was an historical exploration of “female culture” – one of the earliest examples of academic gender studies. Her earnings went to send her 3 younger brothers to Harvard, where she still could not go. 1837 was also the year she was accepted as the first woman member of 2 previously all-male intellectual societies, The Transcendental Club and the Coliseum Club. In addition to teaching and attending meetings, she wrote for various publications, and began her long career as a public speaker. The pace, in addition to her chronic anxiety, ruined her fragile health and she left her teaching position and moved with her family to Jamaica Plain, outside Boston.

In 1839 she apparently felt well enough to embark on a series of seminars for women called, as those parlor gatherings years before, “Conversations,” held at Elizabeth Peabody’s bookstore in Boston. These are considered to be a major development in organized American feminism; they also launched her as a public leader of the Transcendentalist movement. That same year, Emerson promoted her as the first editor and literary critic of The Dial, the influential Transcendentalist magazine. Other contributors included Ralph Waldo Emerson, Bronson Alcott, Henry Hedge, Caroline Sturgis, Ellery Channing, Henry David Thoreau, Theodore Parker, Elizabeth Peabody, George and Sophia Ripley.

Two years later, at age 31, having given up her lease on the house in Jamaica Plain, she began an uncertain existence, moving from the home of one relative or friend or another. Her younger sister Ellen had married the nephew of Margaret’s friend Unitarian minister William Ellery Channing, and she and her mother were virtually homeless. Her finances grew even worse when The Dial, in financial straits, ceased to pay her while she continued to work. In her private writings, she reflected painfully on her status as an unmarried woman, surrounded by married friends; she pondered women’s rights, suffrage, sex, and the expectations of women’s place and role in society. She suffered another setback in her health and was chided by Emerson: “You have played the martyr a little too long alone; let there be rotation in martyrdom!” (Still, he had seen nothing and done nothing until her health collapsed.)

In 1842, Margaret and her mother leased a large house and began a boarding house for young Transcendentalists. She continued her Conversations and her language classes, and her reputation as a public intellectual grew. In 1843, the Conversations became increasingly political, as Margaret delved into abolition, suffrage for African Americans and women, women’s rights, and gender roles. She wrote a controversial article for The Dial, entitled “The Great Lawsuit: Man vs. Men and Woman vs. Women” in which she contended that the ideals of the American Revolution were unrealized for women, African Americans, and Native Americans, and declared human freedom to be a universal right. Horace Greeley was so impressed he published an excerpt in the New-York Tribune.

With a married couple, she traveled to the Western wilderness areas of Illinois and Wisconsin (remember it was 1843!), where she was transported by the beauties of the West, but was disheartened by the injustices to Native Americans. Unlike other white travelers of the era, she took the time to get to know Native American women and men and learned their stories. She had other adventures too, shooting rapids in a canoe, sleeping overnight in a barroom, and witnessing the hardships of white pioneer women. On her return, she wrote Summer on the Lakes about her experiences, spending time in the map room of the Harvard Library to complete the manuscript – the first time any woman had been granted such a privilege.

Her reputation had grown to the point that Horace Greeley offered her a job with the New-York Tribune, writing reviews of literature, drama, and art, and penning social critiques – this time, at a salary equal to male reporters. For the 20 months she was with the newspaper, she lived in New York City. On behalf of the paper, she made a groundbreaking visit to Sing Sing prison, gathering women prisoners (mostly prostitutes) in seminars similar to her Conversations with Boston female intellectuals. She also went to hospitals, asylums, immigrant enclaves, and urban slums – one of the first of the “muckraking” investigative reporters.

In 1845, her essay the “The Great Lawsuit,” revised and expanded, was published as Woman in the Nineteenth Century. In it, she examined the role of women from every possible perspective and fearlessly challenged the existing social order. Reviews of the book ranged from “bold” and “brave” to “indelicate” and “horrendous.” The books caused a sensation and offered encouragement to women reformers everywhere.

The next year, she publicly denounced the Mexican War; she did not feel that her country was living up to its professed ideals. So it was fortuitous when her friends Marcus and Rebecca Spring offered to take her to Eur-ope with them if she would agree to tutor their son; she leapt at the chance. She sent back dispatches on famous art, music, and literary figures, and on social conditions in England, Scotland, and Paris, thus becoming the first female foreign correspondent for an American newspaper. She met and engaged in conversations with George Sand, Thomas Carlyle, William Wordsworth. (While she admired George Sand, also known as Mary Ann Evans, Margaret did not aspire to wearing men's clothing.) She was welcomed and respected. It was perhaps the most fulfilling time of her life.

In England she met the Italian revolutionary Giuseppe Mazzini and became interested in his cause. With the Springs, she traveled to Italy and spent time talking (in Italian, of course!) to the locals, learned more about the political situation – Italians were trying to throw off Austrian and papal control and establish a democratic society. She wrote of a sense of belonging, how she felt removed from American racism and misogyny. She was excited by the revolution, found herself simpatico, and left the Springs to settle alone in Rome, for the first time in her life completely on her own. She was 36.

In Rome, she met the revolutionary nobleman Marchese Giovanni Angelo Ossoli, 10 years her junior. They became friends, then lovers; Margaret became pregnant. Having many years before given up any hope of a partner and children, one can only imagine the fulfillment she experienced. At some point, before the child was born, they were secretly married. (The marriage was secret because Margaret, as a Unitarian, was Protestant and Ossoli as an Italian nobleman, needed a papal dispensation for a public ceremony.) Their son, Angelo Eugenio Filippo Ossoli, was born September 5, 1848 and baptized on November 3, in Reiti, where Ossoli’s sister lived. The couple called the baby by the nicknames Angelino or Nino, which can be translated as Beloved or Darling.
The couple left the baby with a wet nurse in Reiti and returned to Rome, where both resumed revolutionary activities. Margaret sent reports on war activities she observed – making her the world’s first war correspondent. She worked in a hospital caring for those wounded in the conflict, and began a history of the Italian Revolution. She wrote urging for an American Ambassador to be sent to Rome to support and advise the revolutionaries.

In 1849, French troops invaded Rome to restore the Pope to power; Ossoli was arrested but released. The revolution collapsed and the couple fled Rome for Reiti, and lived together as a family for the first time. Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning visited them there. Margaret continued working on her Italian history and decided it would be more lucrative to have it published in America.

The Ossolis made plans to relocate to New York City, where there was a large Italian community. Strangely, Margaret began to have an intuition of something terrible happening. In the spring, she wrote to a friend:

I am absurdly fearful, and various omens have combined to give me a dark feeling. I am become indeed a miserable coward, for the sake of Angelino. I fear heat and cold, fear the voyage, fear biting poverty. I hope I shall not be forced to be as brave for him, as I have been for myself, and that, if I succeed to rear him, he will be neither a weak nor a bad man. But I love him too much! In case of mishap, however, I shall perish with my husband and my child, and we may be transferred to some happier state.

They booked passage on a merchant ship; everything that could go wrong did. Soon after sailing, the captain died of smallpox. Other crew members also caught the disease; some died, some survived. Little Nino was infected but recovered. In mid-July, the ship encountered a terrible storm, likely a hurricane, and on the morning of July 19, 1850, the inexperienced first mate, to whom the command had fallen on the captain’s death, ran the ship aground off Fire Island, New York. As the ship broke apart in the surf, onlookers looted cargo from the ship but did nothing to help. Some of the crew made it to shore, but all 3 Ossolis drowned. Only the baby’s body was later recovered.

Laying the foundations for the modern women’s movement; insisting that spirituality was connected to nature and to lived experience; encouraging women of every ethnicity, class, and culture to rely on themselves and develop their own talents; promoting women’s financial independence; inventing investigative journalism, foreign correspondence bureaus, and in-person war reportage; advancing the cause of democracy and human rights on an international scale – Margaret Fuller is the most exciting, most innovative, UU ancestor you never heard of. That she accomplished all this in a time when women were denied the most basic of rights, and while she herself coped with lifelong depression and poor physical health gives us even more inspiration.

Let us be strengthened and energized by Margaret Fuller’s story to make use of our talents to the best of our abilities, no matter what challenges we face. We end with her words:

I never lived, that I remember, what you call a common natural day. All my days are touched by the supernatural, for I feel the pressure of hidden causes, and the presence, sometimes the communion, of unseen powers.

May all our days be thus. AMEN – ASHE – SHALOM – SALAAM – NAMASTE – BLESSED BE!

“I Am Maja Capek”

2010-05-11T10:14:00.000-07:00

Adapted from a Sermon by the Rev. Ann Schranz Given on July 19, 2009
at the Monte Vista Unitarian Universalist Congregation
Retold by the Rev. Melanie Morel-Ensminger
First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans
Sunday, May 9, 2010

The Flower Celebration is a beloved ritual in many, if not most, Unitarian Universalist congregations. It was first created by the Reverend Norbert Capek in 1923, in Prague, Czechoslovakia, and was introduced to Unitarian congregations on the East Coast of the United States in 1940 by Maja Capek. This year, in honor of Mother’s Day, our focus is on Maja, seeing the world through her eyes and her experience. I will tell Maja’s story as a first-person narrative, drawing on a sermon written by my colleague Ann Schranz of the Monte Vista UU Congregation in California. Ann researched this narrative using a biography of Norbert Capek written by Richard Henry, and the Reverend Daniel R. Harper of the UU congregation in New Bedford, Massachusetts, where Maja Capek served as minister nearly 70 years ago, as well as materials available on the UUA website. (See references below.)

Let us invoke the spirit of Maja Capek and invite her speak to us . . .

I am Marie Veruna Oktavec Capek. My friends and family call me Maja. I was born in 1888 and grew up in the city of Chomutov, then in Western Bohemia, now in the Czech Republic. As a young woman, I rejected Catholicism, and became quite liberal in my religious outlook, but I did not join a church.

In 1907, when I was 19 years old, my parents, my sister, and I emigrated to the United States. It was not easy learning English. I envied the small immigrant children that I knew – they seemed to learn the new language so easily! I worked hard to learn English because I wanted to go to college.

Some people called me ambitious, and it was no compliment. I felt pressure to get married and start a family, but I longed for something else. I never felt so alive as when I was learning something new. I wanted a life of the mind, as well as a home life. I wanted to be able to support myself, and not be dependent on a husband.

I was admitted to the School of Library Science at Columbia University, and graduated. You cannot imagine how good that felt! I began working in a branch of the New York Public Library. There I met another Czech émigré, Norbert Capek, a Baptist minister. He spent a lot of time in the library studying for his Ph.D. and because he could read newspapers from Bohemia there. He was 47, and I was 29 when we met. The 18-year age difference between us bothered some people, especially because he had been married twice, and he already had 8 children. But Norbert was so bright, so fun to be with, so handsome, and so kind. I fell in love with him and he with me.

I will tell you of his life before he met me. Norbert had become a Baptist after being raised a Catholic by his devout mother. (His father was a religious agnostic.) At age 10 he became an acolyte at St. Martin's Catholic Church, but he was soon disillusioned by the priest's cynical attitudes and behavior toward his parishioners. At age 18, Norbert resigned from the Roman Catholic Church and was baptized a Baptist. Soon he became a Bible distributor and Baptist evangelist in the regions of Saxony and Moravia. In his energy and dedication, he founded almost a dozen churches from Ukraine to Budapest, and edited various religious journals.

In those years, he married and had several children. Sadly, his first wife died. Within a year, overwhelmed with caring alone for his family, he remarried, and they had 3 new children within 4 years.

As the editor of various journals, Norbert was quite outspoken in his anti-clerical views, which caused much criticism and threats of reprisals from the government. Under pressure, he left Bohemia in 1914, and accepted a call to serve a Baptist church in New York City. That same year, Baptist church leaders accused him of heresy because of his outspoken liberal religious views. At his heresy trial, he was asked about this passage from the church’s newsletter:

We are neither a club nor a church in the common meaning of that word. We are a spiritual family, brothers and sisters, and we have One Father, One God and only one leader, our oldest and most perfect brother, Jesus Christ.

That sounded suspiciously as though he thought that Jesus was not God. In another pamphlet from the church, Norbert wrote that the Kingdom of God will only come about with the elimination of injustice and when the gulf between rich and poor is not so huge. That sounded heretical to Baptist church leaders because they said that the Kingdom of God will only come about when everyone in the world accepts Jesus Christ as God and as their personal savior. Despite this testimony, Norbert was found not guilty of heresy, but still it was a very stressful time for him. Adding to his stress and sadness, his second wife had a stroke and died. He had 8 children, can you imagine?

A year after the trial, Norbert moved to a larger congregation in Newark, New Jersey. It was during this time that he met me, and we were married in 1917. It was soon clear to both of us that Norbert was too liberal to be a Baptist minister. In 1919, after 25 years, he resigned from the Baptist ministry, with my full support. Our plan was to go back to Czechoslovakia to start some kind of liberal church. Many people were leaving the Catholic Church, and we thought they would be interested in liberal religion. But we could not leave right away, for we had trouble selling our house in Newark, so we rented an apartment in East Orange, New Jersey, and bided our time until our return to Czechoslovakia.

Norbert and I did not want to go to any church, but we did want the children to learn about religions. So every Sunday we sent them off to a different church and had them report to us when they got home. One day in 1920, the children attended the Unitarian Church in East Orange. When they came home and told us what they learned at the Unitarian Church, we were astounded. We said, “My goodness! This is different – this is how we think about religion. We must investigate this church for ourselves.”

Well, after our first visit, it did not take long for us to see that this was our church home. In January 1921, we signed the membership book of the Unitarian Church in East Orange and became Unitarians. That year, we were able to return to our country, and we started a Unitarian church in Prague. The American Unitarian Association provided us with lots of encouragement and a little money. We first rented space wherever we could, and once again Norbert was a popular preacher. Within a year, we were ready to officially open the church; 1,200 people showed up to celebrate! Over 20 years, the congregation grew to over 3,000 members!

The congregation ordained me into the ministry in 1926. My ordination was important to the congregation, and it was important to me. I had never seen myself as just the minister’s wife, and my ordination made it official that what I was doing was indeed ministry. It is not bragging to say that we were always co-ministers, but now it was real.

My Norbert was a wonderful man and a wonderful minister. He was so talented, so charismatic. He composed over 90 hymns, for example; he was always writing poems and essays. Those years were tiring and yet exhilarating. We did such good ministry together. Among other things, the Prague church sponsored a counseling program conducted jointly by Norbert and a medical doctor. The program provided classes for expectant parents, marriage counseling, and conflict resolution courses, and counseling for those suffering the loss of a loved one. This was very innovative for that time, although it is common now.

It is hard for me to talk about what happened next in our lives. Nazi Germany invaded and occupied Czechoslovakia in 1938. In early 1939, Norbert and I decided that I should go to the United States to speak to Unitarian churches across the country about the situation, and raise funds for relief work in Czechoslovakia. American Unitarians told him he could have a job in Boston if he wanted it, to escape the Nazis. He thought about it, and we talked about it, but in the end, Norbert decided that he had to stay. We knew there were no guarantees that we would see each other again. It was such an emotional time, so difficult for all of us.

After two decades of sharing daily life and building a church together, we were true partners and loved each other so much. But our call to ministry required of us love in a different form, a larger form. It required a sacrifice of us, and so I went on my lecture tour in the United States. It soon became clear that I would not be able to return to Czechoslovakia. The loneliness was nearly unbearable, and I missed Norbert so much, and I worried about his safety.

During my 1940 speaking tour in the United States, I introduced the “Flower Celebration” ritual to the Unitarian churches in Cambridge, Massachusetts and New Bedford, Massachusetts. The Flower Celebration – we did not call it a “communion” as many of your churches do today, because we felt that was a Catholic term – was something that Norbert and I first introduced at the Prague Unitarian church in 1923. This is what we did: People were asked to bring a flower of their choice, either from their own gardens or from the field or roadside. When they arrived at church a large beautiful porcelain vase stood waiting in the vestibule, attended by two young members of the Church Sunday School. Each person was asked to place their own flower in the vase. This signified that it was by their own free will they joined with the others. The vase that contained all the flowers was a symbol of the united church fellowship. The young people helped with the arrangement of the bouquet. Later they carried the vase proudly up to the front of the auditorium and placed it on a table. This service became so popular that eventually we hold to hold it in the Prague Opera House in order to hold all the people who came!

After the children brought the vase forward, Norbert would say this prayer, which he had written. I will change the words he used to fit the way people pray in your day:

In the name of Providence, which implants in the seed the future
of the tree and in the hearts of men [and women] the longing for living united in [human] love; in the name of the highest, in whom we move and who makes the mother [and father], the brother and sister what they are; in the name of sages and great religious leaders, who sacrificed their lives to hasten the coming of [peace and justice] – let us renew our resolution – sincerely to be real brothers and sisters regardless of any kind of bar which estranges [one from another]. In
this holy resolution may we be strengthened, knowing that we are God's family, that one spirit, the spirit of love, unites us, and [may we] endeavor for a more perfect and more joyful life. Amen.

After this prayer, Norbert would go over and consecrate the flowers while the congregation stood. The two children then took the vase back out into the vestibule. After the service, as people left, they went to the vase and each took a flower from the vase other than the one that they had brought. The significance of the Flower Celebration was that just as no two flowers are alike, so no two people are alike, yet each has a contribution to make. Together the different flowers form a beautiful bouquet. Our common bouquet would not be the same without the unique addition of each individual flower, and thus it is with our church community – it would not be the same without each and every one of us. By exchanging flowers, we show our willingness to walk together in our search for truth, disregarding all that might divide us. Each person takes home a flower brought by someone else – thus symbolizing our shared celebration in community. It was a beautiful ritual, and it satisfied the need of many of our members, former Roman Catholics, who needed and wanted a religious ceremony to express how thought felt about being Unitarians.

After my lecture tour, I settled in the north end of New Bedford, Massachusetts, where there was a large population of Czechs, Bohemians, and other people who had come from central Europe. I became a part of North Unitarian Church. A visiting minister had begun trying to reestablish worship services there, because for the previous 14 years, the church had a Sunday school but no worship. A student minister led services for a year, and then I was invited to serve as minister. I served North Unitarian Church from late 1940 through most of 1943. I helped to revitalize the church and its ministry. My work at North Unitarian Church helped me focus on something positive during the agonizing time of Norbert’s imprisonment.

Back in Czechoslovakia, in March 1941, Norbert and his adult daughter, Zora, were arrested by the Gestapo and taken to prison. Zora was accused of listening to foreign radio broadcasts and distributing the content of BBC transmissions. Norbert was accused of listening to foreign radio broadcasts and of "high treason." Several of his sermons were cited as "evidence" of his treason. Listening to foreign broadcasts was a capital offense under the Nazis.

Two separate trials were held, the first at the prison soon after their arrest; the second, an appeal of the original decision, was held in Dresden in April 1942. I imagine that Norbert might have caught a glimpse of the night sky and used it as inspiration for these words he wrote during that time:

View the starry realm of heaven, shining distant empires sing.
Sky-song of celestial children turns each winter into spring,
turns each winter into spring.
Great you are, beyond conception, God of gods and God of stars.
My soul soars with your perception, I escape from prison bars,
I escape from prison bars.
You, the One within all forming in my heart and mind and breath, you,
my guide through hate’s fierce storming,
courage in both life and death.
Life is yours, in you I grow tall, seed will come to fruit I know.
Trust that after winter’s snowfall walls will melt and Truth will flow,
walls will melt and Truth will flow.

The appeals court found Norbert innocent of the treason charge, recommending that, given his age (he was nearly 70 at this time), the year between his arrest and the appeals trial be counted toward his jail time. The Gestapo completely ignored the court's recommendation, and sent Norbert to Dachau and Zora to forced labor in Germany. It was not until after the war ended that I learned he had been killed, and it is not clear to this day how he died. My dear husband was 72 years old. My grief was beyond words . . . So many people lost their lives at the hands of the Nazis. It is an evil beyond telling.

In 1944, I started working at the headquarters of the American Unitarian Association in Boston, working for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency, including work for a number of years as a Displaced Persons Specialist in Egypt and Palestine. I felt that I honored Norbert’s memory and my own call to ministry by that work, which I did until 1950.

After I retired, I continued to preach at Unitarian churches and to give lectures to gatherings in Europe and North America in support of the Prague church, so dear to my heart. I leave you with these words, which Norbert wrote while in Dresden prison:

When a holy enthusiasm seizes the heart
Your face lights up. You feel like a star singing.
Your very soul, hearing your song, is radiant.
It was, and it will be again.
With the sun on our brows,
Enthusiasm will bloom once more.
With paradise in our hearts
Clouds will disappear,
And the sun’s rays bring the earth back to life.
The sun of your hope will shine again
Along the dangerous narrows of your life,
Bringing warmth and light
And the air of freedom, peace and happiness.
It was, and it will be again.

See http://www25.uua.org/uuhs/duub/articles/norbertcapek.html, an article by Richard Henry on the Dictionary of
Unitarian and Universalist Biography website; http://www.essexuu.org/capek.html, an article on the website of the
First Unitarian Universalist Church of Essex County in Orange, New Jersey;
http://archive.uua.org/aboutuu/flowercommunion.html, an article by Reginald Zottoli on the UUA website,
http://danielharper.org/archive/?p=268, a sermon by the Rev. Dan Harper entitled “Maja Capek and an Immgrants’
Church; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flower_Communion, the Wikipedia article on the Flower Communion;
http://clf.uua.org/quest/2002-06.html#becelaere, a sermon by the Rev. Joan Van Becelaere entitled “Fragile and
Rooted” in the UUA Church of the Larger Fellowship’s “Quest” newsletter; and
http://www.eliotchapel.org/sermonDocs/Flower-Communion-2006.php, a sermon by the Rev. Dr. Daniel O’Connell
entitled “Flower Communtion.”

“Wake Up! Roosters, Springtime, & Us” A Homily for Easter

2010-04-06T12:22:00.000-07:00

By the Reverend Melanie Morel-Ensminger
First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans
Easter Sunday, April 4, 2010

With eggs as one of the oldest and most enduring symbols of Easter, it is no surprise that a chicken stars as the hero of our story this morning about “Petook the Rooster.” Representing rebirth in spring, eggs predate both the Jewish celebration of Passover (where a boiled egg is prominent on the Seder plate) and the Christian festival of Easter (whose name is derived from the Pagan goddess Eostre). So it’s logical that a chicken would appear in an Easter story – but why a rooster?

You probably already know that there’s no such thing as a “chicken” in nature. The farmyard birds we know as chickens are thought to descend from a wild bird once native to Asia. Scientists speculate that this bird was first tamed and kept by people about 5,000 years ago. Through wars and trades, chickens then migrated from India and Asia to Persia (now Iran), from there to Greece and Rome, and from Rome to Europe. The oldest known picture of domesticated chickens, looking a lot like the rooster on the front of our Order of Service, is found on pottery dating from the 7th century Before the Common Era (BCE). So for about 5,000 years now, everyone living near a farm has been woken up at the crack of dawn by the LOUD crow of a rooster, so “cockcrow” has become another word for sunrise.

Because of this, Pagan religions use the rooster as a symbol for the sun god. And since each sunrise and new day is a new beginning, roosters also became symbols of creation, of starting anew. There are even pictures in some places of ancient gods having a rooster’s head.

Just as over time many other Pagan symbols were adopted into Christianity, so did the rooster. With Jesus being thought the Son (s-o-n) God, it was natural for the rooster to be associated with him as the rooster had been earlier with Sun (s-u-n) Gods. In Medieval art, Christian images of the cock abound. In addition to the Holy Week story of Peter’s 3-time denial “before the cock crowed”, other stories grew up about roosters’ crowing being the first to announce both Jesus’s birth and his resurrection.

The connection between Jesus and roosters was so strong in the Middle Ages that the earliest morning church services were called in Latin gallicanti, literally, "cock singing." (Galli in Greek and gallus in Latin are the scientific names for the genus of chickens, derived from the word for the castrated priests of an old Pagan goddess – which may refer to the fact that most barnyard roosters are castrated so that we might have chicken eggs for breakfast.)

Those early morning services often had special hymns that equated the Risen Christ with the voice of a rooster, as in this Medieval song:

The bird, the messenger of dawn,
Sings out the light is near,
And Christ, the rouser of our minds,
Now calls us back to life.

He shouts: “Take up your beds,
You sick, you sleepy, lazy ones;
And chastely, rightly, soberly,
Keep watch, for I am near.”

Roosters and chicken eggs are part of spring, and part of Easter – and they are also part of Passover and the Pagan spring holy days. Easter, like Christmas, is an intersection of the oldest Pagan religions, Judaism, and Christianity, what one UU minister has called “the crosstalk between the rampant reason of my self and the fractured ghosts of ancient legendry.” That crosstalk, that inner discussion of the way we feel when the seasons change, when spring finally comes after a long cold winter; the ancient, unremembered Pagan myths and stories and symbols, and the cultural overlays of the Jewish and Christian traditions is fascinating, enlightening, and enriching – when we care to listen.

When the rooster lets loose and greets the rise of the sun with his cry, everything and everyone within earshot is awakened. The old stories of the rooster say that not only does he wake us up, but he brings hope and courage to the faint of heart. Living as we do in a time of figurative darkness, with wars and recession, people divided by belief and race and class and gender, and fears of both natural disaster and terrorist attack, we too need to hear the loud crow of the messenger of new beginnings, the bringer of hope and light.

It is springtime, and the rooster crows, “Wake up!” Deep inside, we hear that cry and we respond. We respond to the ancient pull of the sun, and we wake up. Let this Springtime reawaken our hearts, our compassion, our connection to others. Let the call of the rooster call us to right relationship. Let us wake up to the truth that we need each other, and that we need to be of service to each other. We know these things already – we only have to wake up and live it.

WORDS FOR UU COMMUNION
One way to explain a symbol is to say it is something that helps us to see something else in a fresh way; a symbols “wakes us up” to something we’ve looked at all the time, without really seeing. The symbol of a rooster helps us realize that waking up might be more than just not being asleep.

Communion is another symbol – we eat all the time, don’t we? Two or three meals, more or less, every day, like clockwork. Even for food-conscious New Orleanians, we don’t always see how food connects us to the earth and to each other, to the unseen people who worked hard to get the food to grow, to bring it to market, to get it to our table. We can forget that food connects us to each other, and forget that millions of people in the world do not get enough food to eat. When we share a communion ritual, we wake up to the sacred possibilities in food.

Jesus shared a special last meal with his closest friends before he died, and his words and actions at that table woke his disciples up, made them see themselves and Jesus in a new light. As they ate and drank, Jesus told them, “Every time you eat this bread and drink this cup, remember me.”

We will now share communion in the tradition of our Unitarian and Universalist ancestors. It is an “open table” communion, meaning everyone who wishes to participate can do so – there is no limit by age or belief or membership. In sharing this cup and this bread, we remember Jesus of Nazareth whose words and deeds woke people up and changed the world, and we remember all the brave women and men throughout history who have woken us up, called us to responsibility, and changed the world with their love and courage.

To share in our communion, please form a double line down the center aisle. Lydia and Steven and I will serve the first people in line, saying to them, “Wake up!” After those 2 people have gotten their bread and dipped it into the grape juice, we will go to the back of the line to wait our turn, and the 2 people we served will serve the next people in line, saying again, “Wake up!” And then they will serve the next ones, and so on. In this way, we will all serve each other, and remind each other to awaken and pay attention.

"It Would Have Been Sufficient"

2010-03-30T10:41:00.000-07:00

A Passover Sermon by the Rev. Melanie Morel-Ensminger
First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans
Sunday, March 28, 2010

Shalom! and welcome to our commemoration of Passover, jumping the gun by one day. Although eating and drinking are a big part of a Jewish observance of this important holiday, we will not be serving any food here today, but our Seder Service, led by Greater New Orleans UU Ministerial Intern Charlie Dieterich, will be held here on Thursday, April 1, with traditional Passover foods served, and an adapted Haggadah followed. We hope that you will join us for this revival of an old First Church tradition that lies within the even older context of the Jewish High Holy Days. For those of you whose Hebrew is rusty, Haggadah means “the book containing the prayers and responses” for a Passover supper, and seder is a Hebrew word meaning “order of service.”

The title of this morning’s sermon comes from a traditional part of the Seder. After recounting the 10 plagues visited on Egypt by God in the Exodus story, the song “Dayenu” is sung. “Dayenu” literally means “it would have been sufficient” or “it would have been enough.” It is a song of thanksgiving to God for all the saving gifts to the formerly-enslaved Hebrew people. The song retells, step by step, the Exodus story, repeating, “that alone would have been enough:” Enough just to escape from Egypt, but then to walk through the Red Sea. Enough to walk through the Red Sea, but then for the pursuing soldiers to be drowned. Sufficient to make it to the desert, but there to be tended by God and fed with manna! Sufficient to be fed, but then to be given the Sabbath -- for what could be more holy to former slaves than a day of rest? One of those things would have sufficed, but the blessing is, there was always more.

When Jews celebrate Passover in the ritual outlined in the Haggadah, a moment comes when the youngest child present asks the so-called “4 Questions.” (“So-called” because in reality, there are many more questions -- most Haggadah contain about a dozen.) The first question is “Why is this night different from all other nights?” and serves as the prelude to the Exodus story. When it is finished, the child then asks, “Why do we say ‘we’ were in Egypt and God set ‘us’ free?”

This is a very important moment; indeed, it might be said to be the crux of the Seder. The Haggadah do not say, “We remember this day how our ancestors over 3,000 years ago were freed from slavery.” They say instead, “We remember this day how we were freed from bondage in Egypt.” Not “they” but “we,” always keeping the story in the present tense, alive and personal. The Haggadah make it explicit that no generation after the escape from Egypt is ever to think of that time as “in the past;” they are to personalize it, make it part of themselves. We were once slaves, and with God's help, we got away. A Haggadah for children, published in 1973, puts it this way:

We are…wise children who make ourselves part of our people and include ourselves in our people's story….Therefore we say that Pharaoh promised to let us go, and that God set us free.

The song “Dayenu” also tells the story of Exodus right down to the present, gratefully acknowledging both the gift of prophetic human beings whose words and deeds confront and inspire, and the gift of human responsibility. One way of defining “responsibility” might be "capable of responding." Human responsibility can truly be termed a divine “gift,” since without it we would be reduced to mere automatons, robots, mechanized flesh puppets. It is indeed a gift simply to be alive -- it would be sufficient -- but it is the addition of human free choice that gives birth to morality and ethics, justice and freedom. Human responsibility is the greatest of all gifts -- and the most expensive.

Our shared reading for many voices by Alla Bozarth is a modern twist on the Passover story and is also told in an urgent present tense" "take nothing...eat standing up." And "God Takes Sides," the excerpt from Robert McAfee Brown, makes it powerfully clear that what is remembered and celebrated during Passover is a message of hope for the oppressed and challenge for the privileged. Brown emphasizes how that message is political and social as well as theological. God was and is on the side of the underdog -- no matter how bad things look or how long history goes against an oppressed people. (After all, the Hebrews were slaves in Egypt for generations.) As religious liberals, we should remember how God was on the side of an oppressed minority, and keep that in the present tense. It would also do us good to keep in mind that work for justice and freedom can take many years to accomplish.

Now, I realize that the term “God” can be a problem for some religious liberals. But it would be difficult -- if not impossible -- to do a service about Passover without mentioning God. And anyway, one does not have to believe in the Hebrew God, or any God for that matter, to thrill to the elements of the Exodus story -- the inexperienced, stuttering young hero, the high drama of Pharaoh's many refusals, the mounting urgency of the plagues, the heart-rending loss of the first-borns on Passover night, the daring last-minute escape into the desert wilderness, the dramatic parting of the Red Sea. If it wasn't so familiar, and hadn't already been done a million times, it would have made a terrific Spielberg movie.

But it is not simply as a heroic spectacle with great special effects that we should keep alive the Exodus story, but because its message is vital to us today. The slaves in Egypt were not, as we know all too well, history's last victims. There is on-going violence against oppressed people all over the world, as well as in our own free country. Today, wherever we look, there are people deprived of basic human rights, people tortured for political or religious beliefs, people penalized because of their color, their heritage, their gender, or the gender of the person they love.

Here in our own city, a "tribe" of people are oppressed and victimized, their labor stolen from them without pay, thus turning them into modern-day slaves. The Latino construction workers who flocked to the city after Katrina have been invaluable to the city's recovery, bringing their skills and talents in the building trades as well as their work ethic. But many contractors and homeowners have withheld pay after work is completed, reasoning that no one will care if they refuse to pay illegal or undocumented workers. Even when Latino workers have had the courage to call the police, the responding officers often side with the offending homeowner or contractor, demanding to know if the complaining worker is in the country legally. (Is it really OK to victimize an illegal alien?) The Congress of Day Laborers has successfully lobbied the City Council to draft an ordinance criminalizing wage theft (currently it is only a civil matter), which come before the council for a vote very soon. It is not only Latino day laborers who affected -- housekeepers and restaurant workers face many of the same challenges. This is an instance of modern-day "slavery in Egypt" right here in New Orleans, and it would not be sufficient to simply say that we want justice for them. We must contact our council members and demand that the ordinance be passed and strictly enforced.

Just as there are still in our world people whose rights are denied, people for whom the necessities of life are expensive luxuries, people whose lives are passed in the depths of despair and degradation -- there is still in our world a force for justice. Some may call that force God, but it might also be called “human responsibility.” And the force of human responsibility is not limited to individuals, but to groups. Last week, we remembered the words of Martin Luther King Jr. calling the entire country to stand for justice in Alabama, saying, “No American is without responsibility." Working for justice for oppressed people is OUR responsibility.

The enslaved people of the Passover narrative were not saved one by one, as single individuals, but collectively, as a loose tribe, as a newly-formed community. The story of freedom contained in the powerful, dramatic verses of Exodus is a story of corporate liberation and community responsibility. At one point, Pharaoh offers to Moses the possibility that he and the other menfolk can go, leaving the rest of the Israelites behind. It is significant that Moses refuses. “We will all go, young and old, with our wives and our sons and daughters, our flocks and herds…” All must go free, or none. It is one of the earliest truly universalist notes in the Hebrew Scriptures. All of us or none of us. It is also the brave statement of our Universalist ancestors.

And here is why we religious liberals, Unitarian Universalists in the 21st century, should celebrate and honor this ancient ceremonial story: Because we know we cannot avoid responsibility for the evils of our world. Because we know it is not sufficient if only we ourselves or our immediate families are comfortable. Because we know that individual action, however noble, is not enough. Because we know we never have enough community. Because we know we are part of the inter-dependent web of all existence, and we are responsible for all we don't do as well as what we do.

A Unitarian Universalist Haggadah written by my colleague Dave Weisbard in Rockford, Illinois, contains a rendering of the song “Dayenu,” celebrating what is enough and more than enough, but it also includes a litany for religious liberals of what is not enough:

As we have sung of the blessings we have experienced, we must also recognize that there are insufficiencies in the world for which we must accept…responsibility.

…If we were to end a single genocide, but not stop all wars…it would not be sufficient.

If we were to stop all wars, but not disarm the nations, it would not be sufficient.

If we were to disarm the nations, but not prevent people from starving…it would not be sufficient.

If we were to make sure that no one starved, but not free…poets from…jails, it would not be sufficient.

If we were to free…poets from…jails, but not train our minds to understand the poets, it would not be sufficient.

If we were to educate all people…but did not teach…[all] to share in the human family as one, it would not be sufficient.

The freedom we seek is a freedom from bloodshed as well as freedom from tyrants.…[We should] not only…remember in tears the evildoing of the tyrants and the [lives] of the prophets and martyrs, but to end [forever] the letting of…humanity's blood.

So might this be! AMEN – ASHE – SHALOM – SALAAM – NAMASTE – BLESSED BE.

"Selma Remembered"

2010-03-23T11:05:00.000-07:00

The 45th Anniversary of the Events in Selma, Alabama, 1965
A Service by The Rev. Melanie Morel-Ensminger
at the First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans
Sunday, March 21, 2010

Our 1st Reading is taken from the website of the National Park Service, describing the Selma-to-Montgomery Historic Road:

The Selma-to-Montgomery March for voting rights ended 3 weeks -- and 3 events -- that represented the political and emotional peak of the modern civil rights movement.
On "Bloody Sunday," March 7, 1965, some 600 civil rights marchers headed east out of Selma on U.S. Route 80. They got only as far as the Edmund Pettus Bridge six blocks away, where state and local lawmen attacked them with billy clubs and tear gas and drove them back into Selma.

Two days later on March 9, Martin Luther King, Jr., led a "symbolic" march to the bridge. Then civil rights leaders sought court protection for a third, full-scale march from Selma to the state capitol in Montgomery. Federal District Court Judge Frank M. Johnson, Jr., weighed the right of mobility against the right to march and ruled in favor of the demonstrators. “The law is clear that the right to petition one's government for the redress of grievances may be exercised in large groups...,” said Judge Johnson, "and these rights may be exercised by marching, even along public highways."

On Sunday, March 21, about 3,200 marchers set out for Montgomery, walking 12 miles a day and sleeping in fields. By the time they reached the capitol on Thursday, March 25, they were 25,000 strong. Less than 5 months after the last of the 3 marches, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Our 2nd Reading is taken from Selma 1965: A History, by Charles E. Fager:

It was the grandest hour of the civil rights movement, a time when blacks in Alabama, discovering what Martin Luther King, Jr., called “a marvelous new militancy,” took on white officialdom and demanded the right to vote. In the process, they so stabbed the national conscience that the federal government intervened with the celebrated Voting Rights Act of 1965. For those who participated, the Selma campaign became the central event of their lives, a time of self-liberation when they stood and marched to glory with Martin Luther King, Jr.

Before coming to Selma, King and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) had refined their protest techniques in civil rights battlefields across the segregated South. They would select some notoriously segregated city, mobilize the local blacks, and lead them on protest marches conspicuous for their non-violent spirit and moral purpose. Then they would escalate the marches, increase their demands, and even fill up the jails until they brought about a moment of “creative tension,” when white authorities would either agree to negotiate or resort to violence. If they did the latter, King would thus expose the brutality inherent in segregation and so arouse the nation that federal authorities would feel obligated to intercede with corrective measures.

The technique worked with brilliance in Selma in the winter and spring of 1965, when King and his spirited young lieutenants assumed leadership of a local voting rights drive and launched a campaign that they hoped would force Congress to enfranchise blacks across Dixie. The violence King exposed in Selma -- the beating of black marchers by state troopers and deputized posses, the killing of a young Negro deacon, a white Unitarian minister, a white Episcopal seminarian, and a white Detroit housewife -- horrified the entire country.

When King called for support, thousands of ministers, rabbis, priests, nuns, students, lay leaders, and ordinary people -- white and black alike -- rushed to Selma from all over the nation and stood with King in the name of human liberty. Never in the history of the movement had so many people of all faith and classes and colors come to the southern battleground itself. The Selma campaign culminated in a mass march to Montgomery, the state capital, where an interracial throng of over 25,000 -- the largest civil rights demonstration the south had yet witnessed -- gathered to sing “We Shall Overcome.”

Aroused by events in Alabama, the federal government brought forth the 1965 Voting Rights Act, one of the most powerful civil rights measures in American history. The measure outlawed impediments to Negro voting and empowered the attorney general to supervise federal elections in 7 southern states where whites had kept Negroes off the registration rolls. Once federal examiners were supervising voter registration in troublesome southern areas, Negroes were able to get on the rolls and vote by the hundreds of thousands, permanently altering the pattern of southern and national politics.

So end our Readings this morning.

Sermon:

A few hours after the news of Bloody Sunday had been broadcast around the world -- ironically interrupting on one TV channel the Sunday night movie "Judgment at Nuremburg" -- Martin Luther King, Jr., sent a telegram addressed to Northern clergy of all faiths. It read, in part:

In the vicious maltreatment of defenseless citizens of Selma, where old women and young children were gassed and clubbed at random, we have witnessed an eruption of the disease of racism which seeks to destroy all America. No American is without responsibility…The people of Selma will struggle on for the soul of the nation, but it is fitting that all Americans help to bear the burden. I call therefore on clergy of all faiths…to join me in Selma for a ministers march to Montgomery on Tuesday morning, March 9th…In this way all America will testify that the struggle in Selma is for the survival of democracy in our land.

The Selma struggle for the soul of the nation -- for that was indeed what it was -- was no walk in the park. Bloody Sunday showed the world just how far the white establishment in Alabama was willing to go in order to deny rights and simple humanity to its black citizens. Only 2.1% of the voting age black residents of Selma were registered to vote in 1965; of them, very few had ever actually voted. And it was not just that you could be hurt in the work: the movement for freedom in Selma had already claimed one life, that of 25-year-old Jimmy Lee Jackson, the youngest deacon in the history of St. James Baptist Church just outside of Selma, shot pointblank while attempting to protect his mother with his own body during an attack by state troopers inside a crowded Negro cafe following a voting-rights demonstration.

The sense of imminent danger was so pervasive that Sheyann Webb, a little Selma girl who participated in the marches, wrote her own obituary:

Sheyann Webb, 8 years, was killed today in Selma. She was one of Dr. King Freedom Fighters. She was a student at Clark School, Selma. Sheyann want all people to be free and happy.

Fortunately, the obituary was not needed in her case.

Martin Luther King’s call to the conscience of the nation was answered. People from all over the country -- New England, the industrial Midwest, and the West Coast; Catholic, Jewish, Episcopalian, Quaker, Methodist, and Unitarian Universalist; clergy and lay -- felt compelled to drop their regular concerns, their congregations, their families, their lives, and flock to Selma. Airports and train stations from Birmingham to Atlanta were jammed. A Methodist bishop told a reporter, "We heard the voice of God from Selma and we came."

Brown Chapel in Selma was packed with newcomers and locals trying to organize places to stay and rides for everyone. The growing numbers of well-dressed, determined white outsiders, committed to join with them in whatever lay ahead, had a galvanizing effect on the nearly demoralized black folks of Selma. Despite the expectation of danger, there was still a sense of confidence in the gathering throng.

Among those who felt summoned by King’s call were Unitarian Universalist ministers Clark Olsen (who has volunteered many times in New Orleans post-Katrina), Orloff Miller, James Reeb, Homer Jack, Clifton Hoffman, James Hobart (whose father served as minister to First Church right before Reverend Albert D’Orlando’s ministry), and Gordon Gibson, and UU laymen Henry Hampton and Robert Hoehler, among many others, for a total of about 100 UUs. Jim Reeb had been associate minister at All Souls Unitarian Church in Washington, D.C., from 1959 to 1964, when he left to become director of an inner-city ministry program in Boston. Reeb was a man deeply driven by concerns of racial justice and equality. For those who knew him well, it was no surprise that he had come to Selma.

Jim and his wife Marie rarely watched television on Sunday nights, but they knew of the planned march from Selma to Montgomery, and they had heard Martin Luther King’s warnings about violence. And so they tuned in Sunday night and were aghast with the rest of the nation at what they saw depicted. The next day, when Jim received word of King’s call to white ministers, there was little doubt that he would go.

Also watching TV that fateful night were Viola Gregg Liuzza and her husband Jim in Detroit, Michigan. Tears rolled down her face as she saw the peace-ful marchers being clubbed and run down by stampeding horses. Viola brooded for days afterwards, and sought advice from her professors at Wayne State University in Detroit where she was taking classes. The next Sunday, at the Unitarian church she attended, she tried to see what she was called to do.

Jim Reeb’s plane left Boston at 11 pm on March 8, leaving behind Marie and their 3 children, aged 3 to 7. On the same plane was Jonathan Daniels, a 26-year-old Episcopal seminarian who had also seen the broadcast and heeded King’s call. They arrived in Alabama in the early morning of Tuesday, March 9. As the newcomers got to Selma, they were brought to Brown Chapel, where they under-went the compulsory nonviolence training taught by a member of SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. About lunchtime, the assembled crowd got word that an injunction had been issued; there was much soul-searching about whether to proceed with what would be an illegal demonstration.

About 2 pm, Martin Luther King appeared before them and said, with obvious emotion:

I have made a painful and difficult decision. I have made my choice: I have got to march. I do not know what lies ahead of us. There may be beatings, jailings, tear gas. But I would rather die on the highways of Alabama than make a butchery of my conscience. There is nothing more tragic in all this world than to know right and not do it. I cannot stand in the midst of all these glaring evils and not take a stand. There is no alternative in conscience or in the name of morality.

The march began at 3 pm. They made it, as before, to the Edmund Pettus bridge over the Alabama River, but this time the massed troopers did not attack; they seemed to be waiting for the marchers to provoke them. Instead, King led the group in prayer, and then brought them back to Brown Chapel. Many in the crowd, Jim Reeb included, felt let down. Had they come all this way just for an anticlimax?

It was announced that the march to Montgomery would be held in 2 days, on Thursday. Jim Reeb felt torn -- should he stay, or should he go? His suitcase was already in the trunk of Clif Hoffman’s car, who was returning to Atlanta that night; from there, Reeb could catch a flight back to Boston. At the last moment, as Hoffman was leaving, Reeb retrieved his suitcase. He had decided to stay.

After the assembly broke up, Reeb met a black woman, Mrs. Webb, mother of the little girl who wrote her own death notice, who invited him to come to her house for coffee. Reeb replied that he would be glad to come after dinner.

Reeb and Orloff Miller, director of college centers for the UUA, and Clark Olsen, minister of the Berkeley, California, UU Fellowship, inquired of the folks at Brown Chapel as to where to go for dinner. "Would you prefer a place of your own?" they were asked delicately, meaning did they want a white restaurant. Miller said no, so they were directed to a black cafe just around the corner. The place was crowded and it was some time before they were seated. Reeb used the pay phone to call Marie and tell her he was staying another day.

It was 7:30 and dark when they left. Reeb was near the curb; Miller in the middle; Olsen on the inside as they strode toward the corner. Four white men moved in front of them from out of a doorway, calling, "Hey niggers, hey you niggers!" Olsen looked over just in time to see one of the men swing a 3-foot club, hitting Jim Reeb in the head, just above the left ear. At that moment Olsen and Miller were set upon; Miller went down into the tight fetal position that had been taught to the demonstrators. Olsen was felled by blows to the head and chest, his glasses flying. He recalls hearing one of his attackers say, "Here’s how it feels to be a nigger down here." After a few last kicks, the attackers vanished.

Reeb was conscious, but just barely -- his eyes were glazed and his speech incoherent. The others managed to get Reeb to a black insurance office that was a kind of headquarters for the movement. An ambulance from the Selma black hospital came, and Reeb was treated briefly at the infirmary there, but the situation was dire. The hospital in Birmingham was called, but said Reeb could not be treated without a $150 entrance fee, and nobody had that much money. (That was a LOT of money in 1965.) There was delay as a check was procured, and another delay in obtaining transportation. Reeb did not arrive in Birmingham until after 11 pm.

Martin Luther King arrived at the hospital at 12:30 am and led the waiting group in prayer. Reeb was diagnosed with a massive skull fracture, and was pronounced dead at 6:55 pm on Thursday, March 11th. He was 38 years old.

That evening, 4 white Selma men were arrested on charges of assault with intent to murder, later upgraded to murder. The Selma city attorney secured their release on modest bail. At the grand jury hearing, the judge gave a 45 minute speech, 43 of which were devoted to a tirade against the federal government and civil rights groups.

Five days after Jim Reeb’s death, and 2 days after the memorial service held for him in Washington, D.C., attended by thousands and broadcast live on national television, southern-born Viola Liuzza, 40, made her decision. "I’m taking off for Selma," she told her husband. It took her 3 days to drive from Detroit to Selma in the family Oldsmobile, leaving her husband and oldest daughter, then 18, to care for the other 4 children, who were 16, 14, 10, and 7.

On her arrival in Selma, Viola was immediately pressed into service as a shuttle driver and was housed in the apartment of the Jackson family in the Carver Homes project in Selma. Later, Mrs. Jackson was to say, "She was real sweet, no stranger. She came right in and picked up our ways right away." The organizer of the elaborate transportation system for the freedom workers was LeRoy Moton, a 19-year-old Selma native.

Viola spent 6 hectic days as chauffeur and staff member for the Selma movement, staffing the hospitality desk, running errands. A clergyman from Michigan met her in Brown Chapel on his first arrival, and appreciated her warmth, saying, "I never will forget the attention we received from her and her kindness."

Viola phoned home every night, talking to her husband and children, sometimes asking for money. On the last day of the march from Selma to Montgomery, March 25, she called to say she would soon be starting for home; Jim wired her $50, which she never received.

Father Edward Cassidy, a Catholic priest from Chicago, remembers Viola from that day:

People were exhausted from walking, and several were fainting. The priests permitted use of the basement of the church and school as a temporary first-aid station. Mrs. Liuzza was ministering, taking people in from that crowd, giving all the help she could, doing marvelous work. We were amazed at the amount of energy she had.

The next morning, March 25, Viola told one of the priests that she had a bad feeling about the day. "Something is going to happen today; I feel it. Somebody is going to get killed." After the victory celebration on the capital steps, Viola and LeRoy ferried volunteers around, and then began the trip back to Selma. During the drive, a car filled with whites came up behind her car and bumped it several times before speeding off. "Those white people don’t have any sense," Viola told her passengers.

After dropping off the Selma group, Viola and LeRoy separated for dinner and then rejoined for the trip back to Montgomery to pick up more marchers. Around 7:30 pm, as they crossed the Edmund Pettus bridge, they discovered they were being followed. For about 20 miles, Viola kept ahead of the pursuers, singing "We Shall Overcome" and other freedom songs to keep her spirits up.

In the trailing car were 4 Ku Klux Klansmen, among them a paid FBI informer. At about 8 pm, they drew alongside, and Viola turned and looked straight at them. Three of them fired into the car; Viola was dead instantly from 2 bullets to the head. LeRoy was covered in her blood, and played dead when the Klansmen returned to check their results, and thus escaped with his life. Viola was further victimized in death by the Southern press, which reported that she was an "immoral" woman -- for what kind of white woman would leave her husband and children to come work for civil rights for black people?

The trial of Viola’s murderers was held in May; it ended with a hung jury and a mistrial. The new trial occurred in October; despite the eyewitness testimony of the FBI informant, the defendants were found not guilty after deliberations of one hour and 45 minutes. At another kangaroo trial in December, all 4 of the men who attacked Jim Reeb, Miller, and Olsen were found not guilty to the sound of courtroom applause after a deliberation of only 90 minutes.

The 4th Selma martyr, Episcopal seminarian Jonathan Daniels, lived at the home of Rachel West, best friend of Sheyann Webb. Despite the murders of Jim Reeb and Viola Liuzza, he bravely stayed on, trying to work on the hearts and minds of white Episcopalians in Selma (with little success), teaching in the voter registration schools, and acting as a volunteer driver. He was killed by a shotgun blast from a white storekeeper on August 20, 1965. His murderer, who turned himself and readily admitted the shooting, claimed self-defense, spent 11 hours in jail, and was acquitted.

Forty-five years ago. A lifetime for some of us who were not yet born then; an eyeblink for some of us who lived through it. Many things have indeed changed -- but too many have not. Despite the election of President Obama, people of color are still disproportionately represented in the populations of prisons, the homeless, and the poor in our country. Even middle-class people of color are subject to harassment by law enforcement, receive lower pay and fewer promotions. Inner city schools filled with children of color lack proper facilities, up-to-date textbooks, and modern technology. Too many whites, and not just in the Old South, still feel comfortable waving the Confederate flag and using disparaging terms for those who are different. We have not yet overcome.

Sweet Honey in the Rock used to sing a song that was inspired by another civil-rights great, Ella Baker. The chorus of that song is: "We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes." Those of us who claim to be on the side of the angels, those of us who say we want justice, who say we believe in equality and freedom, cannot rest on our laurels. There is still too much work to be done if we are to redeem the lives of Jimmy Lee Jackson, James Reeb, Viola Liuzza, and Jonathan Daniels. Although they lived and died for justice, they themselves never received any. And they left to us the work that remains.

May we take up this burden, as compelled to work for freedom as they were, no matter our age or life conditions. May we hear the voice of God that comes from all our modern-day Selmas, and come forward to do what must be done. So might this be! AMEN -- ASHE -- SHALOM -- SALAAM -- NAMASTE -- BLESSED BE!

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Fager, Charles E. Selma 1965: The March That Changed The South. Boston: Beacon Press, 1985 (1974).

Howlett, Duncan. No Greater Love: The James Reeb Story. Boston: Skinner House Books, 1993.

Mendelsohn, Jack. The Martyrs: 16 Who Gave Their Lives For Racial Justice. New York: Harper & Row, 1966.

Niebuhr, Gustav. “A Civil Rights Martyr Remembered,” The New York Times. Saturday, April 8, 2000.

Ross, Sonya. “Clinton celebrates 35th anniversary of Selma march,” The New Orleans Times-Picayune. Monday, March 6, 2000.

Webb, Sheyann and Rachel West Nelson, with Frank Sikora. Selma, Lord, Selma: Girlhood Memories of the Civil-Rights Days. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1980.