“We Dream of Golden Mornings”
by Reverend Charles Blustein Ortman
April 15, 2007
READINGS: ANCIENT AND MODERN
Our first reading is a translation from the Book of Matthew:
You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt has become tasteless, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled under foot by people. You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden; nor does anyone light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on the lamp-stand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. Let your light shine before people in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify [the creator and creation].
Our second reading is from the book, Arctic Dreams, by writer, author and story teller Barry Lopez:
How is one to live a moral and compassionate existence when one is fully aware of the blood, the horror inherent in life, when one finds darkness not only in one's culture but within oneself? If there is a stage at which an individual life becomes truly adult, it must be when one grasps the irony in its unfolding and accepts responsibility for a life lived in the midst of such paradox. One must live in the middle of contradiction, because if all contradiction were eliminated at once life would collapse. There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light.
SERMON: “We Dream of Golden Mornings”
It’s often a curious process that gives birth to a sermon. Those of you who pay particularly close attention to materials coming out of the church office may remember that the title of this morning’s theme, “We Sing of Golden Mornings,” was first published in the March Gazette for the services to be held on March 18th. My thought was, when I chose that title a full month earlier in mid-February, that that date would place us on the threshold of spring, and we’d all be ready to anticipate with enthusiasm the arrival of the vernal season and the returning warmth of the golden sun.
Turned out, that sermon didn’t happen that day. That was the weekend following my son’s surgery and I was away on family leave. You may remember that that was the morning when our president, Sabine Von Aulock and past president, Janice Maffei, provided the worship service. From what I’ve heard, it was an excellent experience, for those who were here, with the theme of gratitude.
About that same time, the deadline for my April Gazette materials was coming around. I thought, “Well it’s still not very spring-like. By this time next month in April, surely spring will be at hand.” So I rescheduled the theme for this morning. And although it’s still not so wonderfully spring-like, at least, so far the nor’easter storm bearing down outside seems to have spared us several inches of snowfall. And still, we only dream of golden mornings.
Even still, at the beginning of this past week, I thought that the direction this sermon might go would be a poetic venture engaging the ideas expressed in the hymns that we are singing this morning and in the beautiful pieces sung by our soloist, Jessica Gould. I thought it might go towards relishing the morning, spring mornings! A time for new beginnings and rebirths. A time for stepping out of the winter door and into the sunlight, the salubrious, embracing sunlight, warming our skin and our spirits. A time for stepping out into a world of intoxicating scents emanating from beautifully bourgeoning blossoms.
After the winter I’ve had, after the winter we’ve all had, I thought, “Hey, this seems like a good way to spend an hour on a Sunday morning.” It could be like dreaming of a golden morning, of visiting the golden city on the hill from the book of Matthew – a moment in time, being in a place where everything is just right.
And then the week began to unfold. Not once have I walked out of the house and into the warmth of a spring-fed drunken stupor, not even close. And then there was the Don Imus thing. Most of you know that the big name, former radio talk show host unleashed his abrasive wit in a way that was outrageously demeaning of our very talented Rutgers women’s basketball team, as well as all women and all people of color. My signature will appear in the paper this week with those of several other of the clergy from town in a letter decrying not only Imus’ vulgar racist and sexist comments, but the larger abusiveness of a culture accepting those kinds of comments as entertainment in any genre. The whole episode made the idea of a golden morning seem pretty distant.
And then I was part of a conversation this week with Mayor Ed Remsen about the vanishing availability of affordable housing in Montclair. Blending that reality with the metaphor of the golden city on a hill was quite interesting. As the price of housing and property taxes in town have soared, we really have become something of a golden city on a hill. You might almost think the hill was made of gold. But all is not well in a golden city where entire classes of people, large ethnic and racial groups, and people of certain ages are disappearing from our midst. There’s no letter to sign about this one, but there is plenty of work to be done if Montclair is to save its diversity – save its very spirit. Again, it didn’t feel so much like golden mornings.
And then I’ve spoken with several couples over the course of just this past week. I’ve spoken with gay and lesbian couples who are struggling to try and figure out the meaning of subscribing to the idea of a relationship defined as a Civil Union. It’s already clear that the difference between that usage and the word marriage is rife with continued discrimination and the denial of rights. But still there are benefits, increased benefits, that come from going though a Civil Union ceremony. There are buds on these limbs promising potentially future blossoms and fruit. And there is more work to be done. At this point on this front too though, the harshest part of winter may be past, but some of the bitter winter chill continues to hang on.
And this week our immoral war continued. I don’t know how many U.S. troops died this week, although we know that the numbers are increasing. I don’t know how many Iraqis died, although we know this was a particularly high week for that, too. The Parliament building in Baghdad was attacked this week by a suicide bomber and there were many casualties and fatalities. Our President’s response was to tell the American people that those responsible for the attack have the same plans to attack Americans here at home. He continues to tell the same lies that got us into this war, fanning the flames of fear that supposedly only he and his administration are capable of quelling. The reality is that our security is at greater peril and the promise of a season of rebirth and renewal is put on hold indefinitely. And there have been so many other difficult issues in our world this week, the genocide in Darfur, the continuing rise of global warming, and others…
I was hoping that somewhere along the way during this past week, this week following Easter, that there might be some indication that we might be moving, even slightly, in the direction of spring, of golden mornings, in the direction of that golden city on the hill. And then somewhere along the way it occurred to me that I’d been mistaken in my understanding of the golden morning, the golden city. What I’d been hoping for was something else. I’d been hoping for Eden, for Paradise. And as the story goes, Eden was lost a long time ago. If we’re going to have golden mornings or a golden city, it’s going to come about, not through grand ideas of perfection, but by accepting what is true about our existence and then by each of us shining a light to lead us toward what yet might be.
There’s another experience that I’ve had here this past week that’s been something of a difficult experience. That has been learning, from the Council on Ministry and through other avenues, about the widespread opposition and anger in response to trying new ways of organizing the Remembrance portion our worship services. For those who may not be familiar with this conversation, a few weeks ago I implemented a different method of sharing our remembrances in an effort to make them more audible, as well as more limited to significant lifetime milestones of joy and concern. I want you to know that in the grander scheme of the things I’ve been talking about this morning, this is really about a very small, but still elemental, issue.
Through my study of church growth, I had come to recognize that the way which we had previously shared remembrances was likely to be a hindrance to church growth. I announced the upcoming changes as best I could, in the Gazette and in a sermon ahead of time. Then we launched what I anticipated would be a several month attempt at this new model to see how we might adapt to it. Sometime during the summer, we’ll assess the effectiveness of the changes and see if that’s working, or not, or if we need to try still some other means of organizing.
My difficulty with it this past week has been on two levels. First, I hear the pain that many of you are feeling at the prospect of possibly losing this personal aspect of our community gatherings. I am truly and deeply sorry – in a compassionate way, not in apology – truly and deeply sorry at your experience of loss. I hope that your experience of it might be mitigated by a growing experience that what was truly valuable in the former way we did this portion of the service, will in no way be diminished. I hope that we’ll find value having remembrances shared in a more audible way that can be better appreciated by everyone. I know that it’s awkward in these early weeks. While I hear your pain and, please believe me, I carry it and you in my heart, I have faith that we are capable of change, of trying things out, of doing things differently, perhaps doing them better for the sake of growing our faith.
And that leads in to my second level of difficulty with this experience. Every congregational study that we have done during my twelve years with you has come up with the same conclusion. It was reiterated once again with our current Capitol Campaign. The outcome has consistently been – we want to provide ourselves an environment that will nurture our spiritual growth and sensitivities, and we want to reach out into the world, inviting others in and welcoming them to our growing church.
I think we do a pretty decent job at creating a spiritual environment that fosters growth and caring. We could always do better, and we should always try. I think we should acknowledge though, that we do pretty well at this. We don’t do quite as well with growth. The truth is every time we get up around 500 members, we level off. Then we drop off a bit, and then again we begin to climb again. I’m not so sure we’re as committed to growth as we say we are.
I think we might like or want the feeling of growth, but I fear we might be more reluctant to becoming a large congregation than we’d want to admit to ourselves. We’re afraid it would be less personal, less comfortable. While personal and comfortable are good and valuable experiences, ones that we want to make sure are a part of everyone’s membership here, they are not what why we come to worship. We come to worship the Spirit of Life – All Life. We come to worship in order to find in our transient lives that which connects us to what is permanent through the stream of time. We come to find what binds our individual experiences and explorations with in a context that allows us to have faith in the inherent worth and dignity of all persons, and faith in the interdependent web of all beings; so that we can know more fully that what we do with our lives matters, that what we do together matters. So that we can know more fully that our spiritual well-being is integrally connected with the spiritual well-being of all that is. So that we can know that the spiritual path of integrity requires constant vigilance searching for truth and right and beauty, and then responding to what we find responsibly.
So here’s why it’s important for us to grow Unitarian Universalism in the world, why it’s important for us to take risks, to try new things, why its important for us to grow this congregation until we’re bursting at the seams. And in the grand scheme of the things I’ve been talking about, this is hugely important – the world is waiting for springtime, for golden mornings, for the golden city on the hill. And for my money and for my life’s energy, Unitarian Universalism is the best shot we have at getting there.
The world is full of bullies like Don Imus and others who promote misogyny, homophobia and racism. The world is filled with oppressors and the oppressed are women and children, people of color and disabilities and old age, members of the gay, lesbian and transgender communities and so many others. The world is filled with war and those who would wage it for financial benefit or for the love of power.
To a very large extent, and I believe this deeply, the reason why all these things are able to continue is because of religion and ideas of superhuman gods, personal gods, who communicate secretly with their followers, assuring them that they are loved and favored above all others. The reason why these things are able to continue is because of religion and its propensity for divisiveness and its lack of appreciation for the unity of all things.
This world desperately needs Unitarian Universalism. The world needs a religion that builds faith out of the knowledge that we are united with everyone and everything, and that nothing is saved unless all is saved.
The only way I know how to try to give the world what I think it needs is to grow this church. I am here to serve you and your spiritual needs. Please do not be mistaken about that. But, even more than that, I am here in an attempt to grow a religious message, our salvific (saving) religious message, in order to give the world a better loving chance. You have said that you are here both of those reasons, too. And I pray that we will be true to both of them.
If we’re going to do that, it means we can’t always do things the way we always have. If we want new results, if we want better results, if we want to move a step closer to the golden mornings, we’re going to have to try different things. At times that will be uncomfortable, even painful. One of the phrases I’ve heard several times regarding the remembrances is, “Charlie, you just don’t get it.” Believe me, I do get it. I know it’s painful; it is for me too.
But through it I see the possibility of redemption. I am not saying that there is only one right way to do anything. I don’t believe in a theology of perfection. I’m saying that, if we’re going to be serious about growing our faith, we need to be willing to try all kinds of different things until we find the best way that makes us most capable of inviting as many others as possible and welcoming them into our religious community. I do believe that this world desperately needs Unitarian Universalism.
We come here to be nourished, and so should we be. But there is a price for that nourishment that our membership pledges have nothing to do with. The price is putting ourselves on the line to promote a religious faith based in the unity of all things, within a world that is succumbing to a host of gods who regrettably divide it.
It’s a curious process that gives birth to nearly anything of value. Spring is a time to sing of golden mornings, to hold the image of wholeness up so that we can see it as clearly as possible, so that we can see what it is we are working towards. May we be emboldened by that vision, and may we be tireless in our efforts to invite and welcome others into it.
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