Mindful of the Dreams
Eleanor Rice
Sunday, February 8, 2004
Hush, this is a holy place, a sacred place, where the
visions dwell, where the dreaming ... begins.
Someone's God has stepped here, slept here, knelt
here, dwelt here, spoken here of life, of death, of
holy things. When you come, come softly, walk softly,
talk softly, be mindful of the dreams.
Hush, this community here, this Church, is a holy place, a sacred place, where visions dwell, where dreaming begins. Everyone who comes through the doors of this church, comes with dreams – dreams of a community that welcomes them, dreams of deeper religious understanding, dreams of freedom of belief, dreams of working to create a more humane society. The dreams of this community are very old, over 125 years old. The community I serve, River Falls, is only 15 years old and the contrast is amazing. You have generations of history; we have only a few years. You have a historic building in your past tended for generations; we have only a renovated music shop. You have roots that go beyond anyone here today. You have people who grew up in this church as well as many who are new; we have only people who are new. Your history began in 1877 when a small group of people, just 15 men and 9 women, formed the Unitarian Society of Duluth, whose purpose was “to form an association where people, without regard to theological differences, may unite for mutual helpfulness, intellectual, moral and religious culture and humane work by meetings, and other educational, social and charitable movements as shall be agreed upon.” Think on that. Mutual helpfulness regardless of theological differences. Intellectual, moral and religious culture. Humane work, work that you agree upon. A vision that still lures people through your doors.
Your community has gone through a great deal of change in the last 10 years. After years of steady growth, you made the difficult decision to leave your beloved historic building and become a wandering community. You wandered for years as you talked and looked and planned. You bought land and dreamed. You raised money and faced a terribly difficult decision. Now you have this space, slowly becoming yours, and the only religious home for your newest members.
I have in my date book the lines of Richard Gilbert that I first saw posted in the entry of your old building:
May we not close our doors
On those we do not know
Or would not know.
May our doors be open to all,
Because someday through them
Might walk a friend.
Like all communities, you are an ever-changing community. As new people come and babies are born, as others leave, you change. As you have gone through all the changes and decisions of the last few years, you have changed. And now you are changing again as you learn to make this place your home and wonder what form your community must now take to continue to welcome all who might be your friends. When you come to this Society or Church, it is important to come softly, walk softly, talk softly, and be mindful of the dreams, all the dreams of all the years.
Change comes upon us in different forms. Some change is sudden and shocking, totally disrupting our world, like the loss of a job or the death of our life partner or a serious health crisis. Then we go into survival mode. We grieve intensely and scramble to recreate life. Other change, most change, is part of the ongoing shifting and altering of our lives. It often comes after several “calls” to make a change. It asks of us to make a choice about how we are to live and be. It leaves room for us to refuse and resist. It is challenging, frightening, frustrating, and confusing. It is exciting, thrilling, and joyous. And it always has unexpected consequences that we must deal with. It is hardest if we get set on things working out a certain way. Then, in Pema Chodron’s words, we don’t see the other way things could be and we resist the flow of change. It is easiest if we can stay open and truly try to see what is what, to see what life is calling us to do and be.
Moses is my favorite character in the Torah. He was not Charlton Heston, He was a man who struggled with timidity even as he was burning with a passion for justice. The burning bush was not his first call to act, but it was a the call to change that he finally heard. He had grown up knowing his heritage. His mother had carefully engineered his rescue as an infant by Pharaoh’s daughter, and had even managed to be the nurse who raised him. He grew up knowing his story and his identity as a Hebrew, even though he was part of Pharaoh’s household. As a young man, he witnesses the beating of a Hebrew slave and acts in rage, killing the Egyptian overseer. He flees for his life, not ready yet to take up the challenge of fighting for justice for the Hebrews.
When he arrives in Midian, he comes to a public well where the shepherds are refusing to let some women water their sheep. He stands up to the shepherds and helps the women water their flock. He knows justice, but he really doesn’t want to pursue it further. He settles into a comfortable life, marrying one of the women, having children, raising sheep. Just another ordinary person, until the day he sees the burning bush. What does he see? A mystery, a bush that is afire but is not being consumed. A bush that is burning but remains a bush. What does he do? He stops and watches and wonders. Then God reminds him that this is holy ground and he must remove his sandals. When we come upon mystery, or dreams, or deep loyalties, we come upon a holy place, a sacred place. We need to remove our shoes, come barefoot as we are, and be prepared to hear and to choose.
Moses doesn’t choose quickly or willingly. He resists and objects. He protests that he is nobody. He says he doesn’t know the name of this god calling him to free the Hebrew slaves. He fears that no one will believe him. He grumbles that he is slow of speech and cannot really talk. But he was willing to sit patiently and watch that bush burn. He was willing to notice it. And he does listen to God’s answers to his protests. And he finally does make the choice to follow this call, to change the direction of his life. And then Marc Gellman is right, he did need tremendous patience. Creating a community of free people committed to God out of a motley group of Hebrew slaves took a long time, and was not at all easy. Change always takes patience. Change requires that we notice and listen.
The Hebrews were surprisingly slow to trust this God who had managed to inflict all those amazing plagues on Egypt, and who had parted the Red Sea to save them from Pharaoh’s army. Pretty fantastic stuff, but they go on complaining and fussing. Moses turns bitter water to sweet, and they still don’t trust. Manna falls from the sky, enough to feed them, and they try to hoard it. God gives them commandments and tells them how to run their community, and they make a golden calf to reassure themselves. Grumbling, groaning, resisting, and multiple second chances and lots of learning before the Hebrews can enter the promised land. Change always takes trust and learning and courage. We must trust that our efforts will bear fruit. We must trust that the promptings of our hearts are true. We must learn what our deepest loyalties are and hold them front and center at all times. We must have the courage to keep walking through this change, no matter how scary and disturbing.
Each of us has our preferred way of dealing with change. Some of us leap in excitedly, barely looking from right to left. These are the people who are apt to run off the end of a dock and leap into the water. They experience exhilaration at the prospect of change, and they quickly find themselves swimming. Some of us go more slowly. These people look around and notice the sky and the trees and the play of the light on the water. They wade their way into the water, slowly, progressively, grimacing as that cold stuff finally hits the belly button. At some point, they, too, finally make the plunge, and are swimming too. Both styles end up swimming. Both can make mistakes. The jumpers can suddenly find themselves in water that is too cold or too deep, or with a smashed toe from a hidden rock. The waders can be tempted to give up and walk back out of the water without ever swimming. The jumpers know the excitement of change but will miss the nuances. The waders will notice the nuances, but need a little prodding now and then. In truth, all of us use both styles to some degree. Waders can jump in. Jumpers can wade in. But we each have a preference, and the bigger the change, the stronger it is.
Put that all together in a community of people, and you can see why the Hebrews had to wander 40 years in the desert. The community does not change until everyone changes. If you want to hold a community together through a change, you must encourage the excitement of the jumpers and also rein it in, and you must honor the wisdom of all that the waders notice and pull them along. Constantly, you must call everyone back to the dream, and the loyalties. We are a community. We are committed to love and truth and justice. That is what is truly important. Pay attention. Listen. Be patient. Have courage. Remember the deeper commitments and the dreams.
The First Church and Parish in Dedham, Massachusetts was another exodus community when it was founded in the 1630s. Alice Blair Wesley has spoken and written about the founding of this community and what it tells us about being a Unitarian Universalist community. The people who founded the First Parish of Dedham were all strangers to each other and part of a mass exodus from England of people seeking to form free churches. It is interesting how they went about it. They didn’t start with writing the by-laws or electing officers or even putting up a building. They began with conversations among themselves in each other’s homes every week for a year. Every week they would decide on a question for the next week. Every week they would take turns in sharing their considered thoughts on the question. They would express doubts and raise other questions. They agreed not to dispute each other but simply to speak and to listen, with affection in a spirit of love. They agreed to keep discussing until they had reached agreement and understanding. The conversations lasted a year because that is how long it took until they were satisfied that they understood what they were doing and why. If the Hebrews under Moses had followed this wise course, it might not have taken them 40 years to enter the land of their dreams.
What is also interesting about the Dedham conversations is that the questions they discussed were not about the Bible, or doctrine, or their Christian beliefs. The questions they discussed were about what made for a civil society and what it meant to be a free church and how a free church was to be bound together. The agreement that they came to is that a free church is a group of people in covenant with each other and with the spirit of love. A free church is not a building or even a committee structure. It is a group of people bound together by their commitment to truth and the spirit of love. A free church is a spirit-filled church, not in the sense of Pentecostals where the spirit inspires ecstasy, but in the sense that people committed to each other and to the spirit of love will be best guided in creating a community living out a gospel of love and mutual affection. There must be commitment. There must be reasoning and seeking of the truth. There must be accord with natural law. But most of all, everything the free church does is done in the consciousness of the spirit of mutual love. Our behavior toward each other, our actions in the world, our organization, everything we do must be based in commitment to the ways of God understood as the spirit of love. Everything must be grounded in a spirit of love because what we do in our communities also forms the foundation of the civil society we live in. The free church is not a sanctuary or a refuge from the world, but a foundation stone, a beginning for creating a just and peaceable society.
It is helpful to remember this and to consider it as our own communities face change or simply wrestle with the day to day details of Sunday programs and Children’s Religious Education and building maintenance. It’s not just about serving our own needs and desires. It’s about creating and sustaining a liberal religious community committed to love and truth. It’s about realizing the dream of religious freedom, not just our personal freedom, but our freedom to discover truth together as a community. It’s about creating a just civil society, one equally grounded in a spirit of mutual love. It means that when we get bogged down in the details, someone reminds us to stop and pay attention and see if the bush is burning. It means that when we disagree, we stop and have conversation, considering the questions, expressing our thoughts and reasons, and listening carefully until we come to understanding. It means that we help each other in defining and following our deeper loyalties, our own way of living in accord with the spirit of love. It means that we all work together so everyone gets in the water, everyone goes swimming, and everyone appreciates the world around us.
That is not easy. It requires patience and persistence. It requires openness and learning. And it requires deep, heartfelt commitment to the demands of love that transcend every one of us.
Hush, this is a holy place, a sacred place, where the
visions dwell, where the dreaming ... begins.
Someone's God has stepped here, slept here, knelt
here, dwelt here, spoken here of life, of death, of
holy things. When you come, come softly, walk softly,
talk softly, be mindful of the dreams.
Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Duluth
Promoting the inherent worth and dignity of every person