Sermons

OPENING WORDS: This Is How We Are Called by Kimberly Beyer-Nelson
In the hours before the birds
stream airborne
with chiming voice,
a silent breath rests in the pines,
and upholds the surface of the lake
as if it were a fragile bubble
in the very hand of God.

And I think,
this is how we are called.

To cup our hands and hold
this peace,
even when the sirens begin,
even when sorrow cries out, old and gnarled,
even when words grow fangs and rend.

Cupped hands
gently open,
supporting peace
like the golden hollow of a singing bowl,
like the towering rim of mountains
cradling this slumbering and mist-draped valley.
READING: Invocation For Difficult Times by Elena Westbrook
When all around us voices are raised in anger,
hatred spilling into the streets and sparking more hatred,
sometimes the best we can do
is to sink our hands into the soil.

Let the fights over abstractions ebb away, flow like water into the earth. Fill your fingers with dirt that is itself the product of rocks worn to powder over millennia, leavened with particles of other lives—lives of leaves and vegetables and other animals, once as warm and active as you are now. Everything dies and returns to its source, breaks down into the ingredients of some new life: bits of humus, squirming bacteria, a tiny egg.

This is real: the sun warm on your back,
the soil cool under your bare feet,
a tiny new stem that will unfurl to grow a sweet red tomato,
and the hand of a friend gently helping you to rise.

Even on our most difficult days, we can touch the soil and be grateful for the earth and the love that sustain us.
SERMON: Appreciating What Is by Rev. Dr. Elaine Beth Peresluha

We are all in for a wild ride! The political climate of our presidential campaign, is about to go full blown with ever increasing divisive rhetoric exacerbated by the criminal trials of Donald Trump, two ongoing wars, famine death, and the catastrophic destruction in Gaza. “When all around us voices are raised in anger, hatred is spilling into the streets and sparking more hatred…..This is how we are called. To cup our hands and hold peace, even when the sirens begin, even when sorrow cries out, old and gnarled, even when words grow fangs and rend.”
In 2009 I completed my PhD in social Construction and specifically Appreciative Inquiry in managing systems changes in congregation. Appreciative Inquiry is an approach to organizational change that incorporates the relational concepts of Social Construction.

AI is a process that generates ideas and understanding through dialogue. AI is built upon the constructionist belief that no one person holds the Truth- in fact there is no Truth. What is most essential is created or discovered through conversations between people in relationships- Meaningful communications must transcend “you and me” and become “us.” Then, something new can be inspired, something bigger, and better than either individual who entered the conversation. Rather than focusing attention and effort on fixing what is not working or eliminating competing ideas, AI discovers and designs what is possible through relationships, conversation and care.

Appreciating what is requires beginning each difficult conversation with Do you want to be right? Or do you want to be in relationship? Then you get to decide—depending on the content of the conversations, the depth of the relationship and the intensity of your emotions, you can decide… do I want to be right or do I want to be in relationship.

Since 2009 AI has been foundational in my interim ministries and as a spiritual practice in my personal life… trying to become more and more deeply committed to right relationship with myself, others, the earth …..appreciating what is… and helping it be its very best… deciding do I want to be right or do I want to be in relationship?

There are certainly times when I really, really prefer to be right!.. and before starting a conversation that is a really, really, important acknowledgement. If wanting to be right is where I land I have found it helpful to go the bathroom, or find some other way to leave the room because my next comments are probably not going to be helpful, or relationally motivated…

Appreciate what is, and help it be its very best…. Do you want to be right? Or do you want to be in relationship?

Now before you step into a conversation about who to vote for with a neighbor or family member who is on the opposite side of the political spectrum from you, I suggest you start small.

For example, I am one of those people who is really bothered by the fact that everyone does not pick up after their dogs- especially when their pile of poop lands right in the middle of the sidewalk or the trail I am walking on- even more so when it is the size of pony’s! So I used to spend a lot of my energy ranting and raving to myself over the years about “those people” then I would begrudgingly use my bags to remove the excrement. .It took a PhD in AI for me to learn to appreciate that some people will not pick up after their dogs for a variety of reasons. Appreciating what is, I acknowledge they might not have a bag, the dog might have been out of sight or they were in a hurry. Now, I have learned- no, not learned… I have matured, to carry extra bags, and just pick up the extra piles. Yesterday, Gussie and I were making our way along the Eastern prom in Portland with 4 or 5 extra bags of poop- when we ran into a young woman coming towards us on the trail. She too carried several bags. One grocery sized bag! She noticed mine and smiled, “Out for our daily pick up the poop walk. I just pick it up along with any trash I see-.” Big smile, no judgment or resentment, making the world a little better… Appreciating what is and helping it be its very best..

Social Constructionism encourages the development of new understandings of reality that move, grow, and shift through deep conversations and right relationships. UU scholar and theologian Henry Wieman called relational experience of learning, and growing, the spark of creativity—that moment when two or more people are in conversation and a new idea or understanding happens between them, a discovery, a connection that neither one or the other could have, would have come upon without the conversation… We take in information on our own through our senses, then meaning is made out of that information and a new reality shaped when instead of processing that information on our own- we process it, share it in relationship- in dialogue with another. That is the foundation of social construction, a lens through which its practitioners view self, others and the world, in right relationship- in a dialogue that moves the boundaries of thought that limits an idea – a conversation that expands the possibility of human understanding and creativity through the exchange of words, ideas, and experiences.

Something about that naturally existing constructionist process has gone deeply awry… Maybe it was the isolation of the pandemic that pushed that deep conversation process over the edge. Since 2020 we have intensified our individualism into isolationism- existing in our own pockets of reality remaining in monologic groups where we repeat the same values, narratives, interpretations of reality over and over, and only to people who think like we do.

This year we have far more challenges to appreciate then dog poop… from gun violence, to reproductive freedom, authoritarianism to conspiracy theories… voter suppression, election denial. How do we as Barbara Kingsolver wrote “…see this damned-to-hell world you got born into, and you ask yourself … what life can I live that will let me breathe in and out, love somebody or something, and not run off screaming, into the woods?”

Dear ones- that is the task before us for the foreseeable future. We have no idea what November will bring us- or July for that matter. How do we appreciate what Rachel Maddow refers to as “ World 1 and World 2, without running off screaming into the woods? ”

Relational responsibility – appreciating what is… are value-based tools that we can use to navigate the deep divides amongst us. No reciprocal expectations of the other are required. I can appreciate some people will always leave their dog poop behind. Doing this, I reduce the energy I expend on judgments and frustration by doing what I can. I can appreciate that there are fellow citizens of this nation who do not appreciate me or my social political views and I can make room for their realities, thoughts and deeds while holding on to my own. I need only open a conversation, listen as someone describes their reality, become aware of this person, appreciate this is a person with rights and feelings just like me. I can share myself with them so they can become aware of me. We all need to practice holding our own while making room for the other to happen to us- no matter the other person’s response is to us. With practice we can all become skilled at listening without ranker, without needing to argue, be right or change the other’s perspective. Hugh Prather wrote, “If I truly communicate, I see in you a life that is not me and partake of it. And you see and partake of me. In a small way we then grow out of our old selves and become something new.” This is how we are called- this is how we touch our strength, our power, who we are in the world- This is how we participate in ongoing incarnation- bringing God to life in the world- A God whose name in history is love.