“Wider Grows the Vision”
by Reverend Charles Blustein Ortman
for New Member and Canvass Sunday
March 4, 2007
Introductory Remarks for New Member Induction Ceremony:
New member installation is a special and rewarding time in the life of the congregation. It’s good for the new members to be recognized and welcomed, and good for the older members to have the opportunity to receive you into this community that together, we are becoming. While there is much commonality in what brings many of us to this faith community, our newcomers each arrive with a unique history and with a wealth of individual gifts. Today, as these individuals make their membership public, I would remind us all that joining a Unitarian Universalist congregation may seem easy because all you have to do is sign the book. But, be assured, it is a most demanding step.
Joining the congregation is a covenant really. We covenant with one another to be our best selves and to hold each other in high expectation, to engage in life fully and lovingly – loving ourselves, one another and the world. When you sign the membership book of a covenanted free religious society, you are not signing any list of propositions, such as make up a creed. It is to sign a promise that may sound simple—it should sound simple—but which, if you “keep covenant,” brings you into intimate companionship with others who have promised to live with all the integrity you and they can together muster, in all the years of your lives.” Unitarian Universalist minister and scholar, Alice Blair Wesley writes, “The free church is an organization we establish and join so that we may help each other to find, over and over again, in a thousand varying time frames and settings, what are our own worthiest loves, and therefore, what these loves now require of us, if we would be loyal in the most meaningful sense, in what we do, in our actions, in the way we live.”
And so we ask, as you sign this book, to covenant with us and to submit to the most rigorous authority in religious and spiritual matters—the authority of your own mind, heart, and conscience.
We ask that you sacrifice the security of unchallenged points of view, and that you be open to change and growth. We ask that you be restless in the pursuit of human rights, social justice, and world peace. We ask you to remember that this is a community of aspiration, not a congregation that has it all figured out. Part of being human is the experience of failure, and part of being in religious community is being there—to pick each other up when we have stumbled. And we ask that you commit yourself to the service of this congregation by your participation in it - with your love, and with your resources: your talents, time and energies, your opinions, criticisms, and your hopes. And more, we ask you to financially support this bold religious venture. Together, we can continue to build a free religious community in Montclair and in northern Essex County.
We know that you were attracted to this congregation because you were already supportive of many of the things that it stands for. And we know that you are volunteering to join with us because these impulses and goals fit well with who you are already. We are happy to welcome you into the rich heritage of this congregation which is now in its 109th year; into the rich heritage of our denominational organizations which date back some 180 years; into the tradition of heresy (a word that comes from a Greek root meaning to choose), a tradition that goes back some two thousand years; and into the heritage of a set of religious values that goes all the way back to the earliest days of human awareness. May your membership here be filled with meaning.
I would ask those of you who are becoming members to please come forward as your name is read and to sign your name into our membership book. You’ll then be welcomed with the traditional right hand of fellowship as it is presented by our President, Sabine von Aulock, by our Board of Trustees member, Lauren Carlton, and by myself. Please accept the gifts of a book on Unitarian Universalism and a flower from Lauren and we hope that its beauty will symbolize your membership here with us.
SERMON
I want to begin my message this morning with a moment of personal privilege. I wish to thank you all for the countless thoughts, words, e-mails, notes and cards that have been extended to me and my family by this congregation over the past couple of weeks, since my mother’s death. I have been held up by your love and your kindhearted care. I thank you and extend the hope that in this community, which seeks to honor and serve the Spirit of Life and Love, that anyone struggling with loss or hardship would experience a similar reception of support.
There is one more hurdle on the horizon that my family will be facing in the near future. Some of you already know about this, but many of you do not. I’d hoped not to have to mention this from the pulpit, but the lack of knowledge among some of you has begun to create a bit of awkwardness that I’d like to put to rest. Recently, our son, Will, was diagnosed with the condition acromegaly. It’s the result of a tumor (typically benign) on the pituitary gland. A week from tomorrow, my wife Judy and I will be with Will in Charlottesville, VA, where he’ll have surgery to remove the tumor.
The prognosis for the surgery and Will’s recovery is very good. Still, it is brain surgery and quite serious. We very much look forward to having this all behind us. You can bet that Will does, too. As a result, I’ll be away for the next two Sundays and so the scheduling of some events has been shifted around a bit. I was already scheduled to be out of the pulpit next week, when our Youth Group will be the worship leaders. The following week, as a result of asking what the congregation might do to be supportive, your president, Sabine von Aulock, and your immediate past president, Janice Maffei, have graciously agreed to lead the worship. I trust their efforts will be as much a gift to you as they are already for me.
Some of you may wonder what you too might do to be supportive, and I have an answer for you. You have already given me and my family so much more love and support in the past couple of weeks than you can imagine. This is a tense time for us but we’re okay. Patience is a virtue we’re working on just now, but you really can’t help with that. So, if you would like to show your support for us, here is what I’d have you do. Over the next couple of weeks, please make it your business to identify someone whom you might otherwise not, and who could use some loving support, and if you would, share yours with them. That would be enormously gratifying to me.
Some of the things that got moved around a bit in the schedule, as a result of all this, are the onset of our Canvass and a celebrative recognition of where we are on our Capital Campaign. As you heard a few minutes ago, the Canvass, the Budget Drive Deli, will be open for business next Sunday. Capital Campaign celebrating will wait for a few more weeks down the line.
This morning though, within the context of welcoming new members into the congregation, within the context of what it means for all of us to be in a covenanted, community of faith, I’d still like to focus on the second verse of our Capital Campaign theme song, “Forward through the Ages.” The second verse begins, “Wider grows the vision, realm of love and light; for it we must labor, till our faith is sight.” Now there is a lofty and worthwhile sentiment. As Unitarian Universalists moving forward through the ages, the song does not call on us to be comfortable, but to widen our vision, to grow ourselves and our faith community, to be the change that we want to see in the world.
The vision expressed by this congregation as the underlying motivation for our Capital Campaign was, first, to be good stewards of these wonderful facilities that were left to us from the generations that have gone before us. And second, to provide an invitation and to develop the capacity to welcome those who would find us now and in the years to come. This second ambition, at its core, is about growth. As we welcome new members into our congregation today, as a whole, we are recreated, and a new congregation emerges. We cannot grow by staying just the way we are – however sweet, however comfortable that might be. Growth comes with some growing pains. Becoming something new is both a taking in and a letting go.
There are three conversations going on in the congregation right now, challenging conversations that are about growth, about expanding the vision of who we are. One of these conversations I am responsible for and the other two are your conversations. For the past month, we have been focusing on the theme of “Peace in Our Lives and in the World.” At no point did any of us talk about avoiding conflict or difficult conversations as a road toward peace. Instead, we talked about facing our fears and moving toward faith; about strengthening our faith and moving toward conviction and action.
As your minister and primary spiritual leader of this congregation, I feel that I owe you the benefit of my thinking and feelings in each of these conversations. When you called me here 13 years ago this month, you asked me to speak my truth to you with love. So, here is my truth and my love.
Next week following the worship service, there will be a conversation, for those who want to participate in it, about the painting design for the Sanctuary. I’ve heard quite a number of strong feelings for and against the designs. I have to admit that I’ve been feeling a little skeptical about them, myself. I love this room – just as it is. It is comfortable, very comfortable, and I’ve been feeling, “Why should we change that for such a bold and different new design? Could I still feel as comfortable, if we changed it?”
So, I’ve been reluctant to say much of anything until I read the piece that the committee wrote for the current issue of the Gazette. And then I understood things quite differently. We have asked some of the most talented artists that I know, members of our congregation, who have proven their devotion to it time and again, to lead us forward through the ages, through the aesthetic presentation of our facilities. They could have chosen something comfortable, but they could visually hear, they had a vision of these walls speaking the truth of our faith tradition. They didn’t just make things up; they talked with anyone who would engage in conversation with them. Working with the designer, John Pierce, they created and re-created a design that they feel will aesthetically actually preach the values of Unitarian Universalism.
Maybe our décor can offer more than just comfort; maybe it can be inspirational of itself. So, at this point, I’m feeling quite open to the changes and very hopeful of what they might offer as a positive influence on our sacred space. I’m going to trust the leaders that we have chosen to guide us through the process. And I’ll tell you what – if in the end I find that I don’t really like the new design – that will be okay with me, too. I suspect that I have preached some sermons that you might have thought less well of than I might have hoped, over the years. And while they might not have had the helpful effect that I’d hoped for, I trust that they did not hurt anyone.
When we stop trying to express our love of life and our quest for faith, that’s when we hurt ourselves and stop being helpful to others. I say, “Walls that preach the saving message of Unitarian Universalism? This I’ve got to see!”
The second conversation is regarding, “What’s in a Name.” This initiative, begun two years ago by members of the congregation, from among its leadership and beyond, will come as a question of whether or not to change the name of our congregation in a couple of months. I spoke about this issue before the Annual Meeting a year ago. I may be quite wrong about this, but after much thought, again I think the core question here is one about growing our identity – stretching our comfort level – to better embrace those who have yet to find their way here, as we move into our future and forward through the ages.
We need to ask, does our name, the Unitarian Church, as it is, have more to do with who this congregation once was, rather than who we are becoming? Are we not Universalists, too? And that we continue to call ourselves a church I believe is a vestige of an age when the congregation was more closely tied to its Christian Protestant roots. The word church is a clear signal to those of a Christian background that this is a religious community. It is unfortunately also a signal for many from other backgrounds that this may not be a religious community where they can feel at home, or will necessarily be accepted. We know they’ll be accepted here. But from our name, how can they know that? The number of seekers who have not or would not show up at our doorstep as a result of who we say we are, can never be determined. I know from my conversations out in the community though, that the numbers are substantial.
How do we reach those who would be well served by our Unitarian Universalism? I suspect it is by growing our identity to include the comfort of others. I think we might more successfully do that by calling ourselves by a name that is inclusive of all spiritual seekers, and not by one that is partial to a disposition of our past. It is one thing to say, “This is who we say we are.” It’s quite another and perhaps more hopeful, more transformative to say, “This… this is who we are becoming.”
The third conversation that I wanted to address is one that I have put before you. It is about the way in which we are attempting to trim down the way we do our Remembrance Candles during worship. Just so you know, I see the underlying dynamics of this conversation to be quite similar to the previous two. It’s about growth.
Everything that I’ve read or know about congregations growing into large congregations, which is the threshold we have been poised upon through most of my tenure with you, everything says that the public sharing of joys and concerns during worship is counter productive to that transition. Nothing says that joys and concerns have no place in congregational life. To the contrary, they have so very much to do with it.
And so that they would have a good place for expression, we’ve created the covenant and discussion groups, and we’ve tried to promote any number of small group situations and experiences where folks can develop the kinds of personal relationships where these kinds of connections have an opportunity to grow deeply. This is why the aesthetics committee is going to be creating a community "Remembrance Board," and why we will try to enhance our ability from the church office to relate, "Among Ourselves," information more thoroughly. And I'm quite open to any other possible ways or venues where we can promote communication and connection.
Worship for me, and I trust for those seekers who are coming through our doors, carries with it the onus of connecting the transient issues of our lives with the permanent flow of the stream of life. It is the sharing of words and music in ways that invite those present to consider the events of their days, so as to relate them to their religious sensibilities, in order to provide opportunities for personal and community transformation. Whether or not that transformation occurs, is not something I can control, but I am responsible for doing the best I can to get the invitation out as supportively, engagingly and as clearly as I can.
I am the one called and charged by this congregation – within our tradition of freedom of the pulpit, to lead the congregation spiritually and worshipfully. I don't take that responsibility lightly and I don't pursue it without a great deal of input from the congregation. I know that a number of you are experiencing a sense of loss in these changes, and I am sorry for that loss. I'm hoping, too, that we might be willing to live through a bit of discomfort in an attempt to grow our congregation, to make space for those who have not yet found their way here, to give this new approach some time. I hope we will be able to adjust, and that those members' pieces that need to be shared within the worship service can be, without anyone feeling like they got beat out by anyone else. I ask you to trust in my leadership, and together we’ll see what happens.
In conclusion, I would hold up two thoughts expressed during our New Member Welcoming a few minutes ago. To sign our membership book is a promise that may sound simple—it should sound simple—but which, if we “keep covenant,” brings us into intimate companionship with others who have promised to live with all the integrity that together we might muster, in all the years of your lives. And, we ask ourselves to remember that this is a community of aspiration, not a congregation that has it all figured out. Part of being human is the experience of failure, and part of being in religious community is being there—to pick each other up when we have stumbled.
Integrity calls on us to be here not only for our own well being, but to recognize that our wellbeing is intricately and ultimately tied to the well being of our community and our world. Integrity calls on us to do whatever we can to share our faith tradition with those who might respond well to its life-saving, earth-saving message. Integrity calls on us to grow this faith community.
Thinking that we have it all figured out would surely be folly. Some of our efforts to grow our wider vision will fail, and some of them will be successful. If we’re really trying though, we won’t, we can’t always know the difference ahead of time. So we give it our best thought, and then we act by giving it our best and most loving effort.
One of our saving graces is that for us revelation is not sealed; it’s ongoing. If something does not work, later on we can try something else. In growing our faith, the sin would be in trying nothing at all. “Wider grows the vision, realm of love and light; for it we must labor, till our faith is sight.” There is a world in here, and a world out there, for which it matters greatly.
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