Sermons

Preacher: Rev. Charles J. Stephens

OPENING WORDS:  by John Schaar
“The future is not a result of choices among alternative paths offered by the present, but a place that is created–created first in the mind and will, created next in activity. The future is not some place we are going to, but one we are creating. The paths are not to be found, but made, and the activity of making them, changes both the maker and the destination.”
MEDITATION: based on a verse from John O’Donohue’s The Traveler

Let us pause a moment to contemplate together
the journey that today we set out upon.

May we understand that a journey can become a sacred thing:

Because we want to make sure our journey of transition is a sacred time

We pause, before we set off on our journey
We pause and take the time
To bless our going forth,

We pause before we set off on our journey
To free your heart of ballast
Those memories and emotions that we cling to
Or those that seem to cling to us.

We pause before we set off on our journey
In order that the vision and the mission
Of this congregation
Might direct us toward
The territories of spirit
Where we will discover
More of this congregation’s hidden possibilities

We pause before we set off on our journey
Because there are urgent needs
by individuals within our communities
and by the larger world
That call out for the ministry
Of a congregation as vibrant and as
Powerful as this congregation can become.

An excerpt from George Carlin’s conversation on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno back on 11-15-05 Carlin shared the following:
“I’m a modern man, digital and smoke-free; a man for the millennium. A diversified, multi-cultural, post-modern deconstructionist; politically, anatomically and ecologically incorrect. I’ve been uplinked and downloaded, I’ve been inputted and outsourced. I know the upside of downsizing, I know the downside of upgrading. I’m a high-tech low-life. A cutting-edge, state-of-the-art, bi-coastal multi-tasker, and I can give you a gigabyte in a nanosecond. I interface with my database; my database is in cyberspace; so I’m interactive, I’m hyperactive, and from time to time I’m radioactive.”
The world we live in and know just keeps on changing and the pace of change is often mind boggling.

Just moments ago children from our congregation were with us before they left for their religious education class.  Can you remember much from that time in your life – when you were their age? If I really focus and look at some old pictures, I can remember a few things from that age, but not too much. Last weekend I traveled out to Bakersfield, CA for the funeral of my aunt Millie who died just days before turning 92. My cousin, Millie’s son, was looking through some of his mother’s old pictures and gave me several that dealt with our family.  It helped jog some memories I had of when he and were both young children.

My memory gets a bit clearer of when I was high school days. For most of us that was a time of major transition. I looked up what was going on around the world in 1966, the year I graduated from high school. That was the year John Lennon said, “We (The Beatles) are more popular than Jesus.”  It was also the year that the unmanned Soviet Luna 9 spacecraft made the first controlled rocket-assisted moon landing. Then a few months later the US Surveyor 1 landed on the moon, the first American spacecraft to soft land on another world. Later that year Lunar Orbiter 1 took the first photograph of earth from its orbit around the moon. Those events were big transitions.

It was 1966 when Indira Gandhi was elected Prime Minister of India. It was also the same year that John Kerry, now our Secretary of State, officially left active duty in Vietnam.  I must confess that with all the transitions in my life I had no recollection that those events happened the year I graduated from high school. Nor did I remember that it was in 1966 when the Supreme Court ruled in Miranda v. Arizona that the police must inform suspects of their rights before questioning them.

I do remember another group called “The Supremes.” I remember 1966 was the year James Meredith., civil rights activist, was shot while trying to march across the state of Mississippi.

It is amazing how fast things are transitioning and it all gets to be a blur; when something important happens we think that we will never forget it. Still, take it from someone who knows, we should write down things that we think are important when they happen, because looking back in ten or twenty years much will have slipped away. Those of us who have adult children know this – facts about our children soon become a blur. Most of us, just cannot remember many of the significant things that happen during our lives.

What then about the future? Today you are at a threshold for the UU Church in Castine. The longtime ministry of the Rev. Mark Worth ended just a month ago. You may feel a sense of loss and grief.  One of the roles of a Transitional Minister is to help congregants deal with their feelings of loss around their former minister’s absence.

You just hired me as your TRANSITIONAL Minister. And we have the unusual situation that I was your settled minister back in the 1980’s. In some ways I was a transitional minister then, or at least I was your minister at a very transitional time. The first year I was your minister the UU Congregation of Castine was part of the Interfaith Parish, so I preached at both the Trinitarian Church and her at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation. Then UUCC transitioned out of the Interfaith Parish and the transitions continued as together we chartered a new and more specifically UU course.

This year when the opportunity arose for me to put my name in for your Interim Ministry position, I didn’t hesitate coming out of my retirement. I love this congregation and am thrilled to be able to serve you again – 24 years later in the role of your Transitional Minister.

The UUA used to call what I am doing an Interim Ministry but they realized that interim often signifies just a space holder. By expanding Interim Ministry to Transitional Ministry the hope is that we will focus more consciously on the next two years not as a stagnant interim period, but as an important time of transition when you can vision your future and make choices that will set your new course.

John Schaar, was a renowned political theorist who wrote that, “The future is not a result of choices among alternative paths offered by the present, but a place that is created–created first in the mind and will, created next in activity. The future is not some place we are going to, but one we are creating. The paths are not to be found, but made, and the activity of making them, changes both the maker and the destination.”

When we think this way, the future becomes something we are involved in helping to create. True the phases and stages of life are things that we pass through.  In these stages we do discover some paths just waiting for us. But there is also the potential for us to look at the possible paths and then decide to create some new paths. Think about some of the real path blazers in recent years. Jack Kilby who invented the hand-held calculator the year in 1966. I remember, because that was the year as a freshman engineering student I bought a slide-ruler for over $50, soon they were obsolete. Then there was Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak who created the personal computer in 1976 and we know how rapidly the pace of change has increased since then.

Which paths will you as a congregation go down in the next few years? That is what this transitional period is designed for.  It is a time for us to work together to explore what you want your future to look like. Of course there are givens about the present that we cannot or do not want to change. But when you look at the future, you will need to not only search among the known paths for the one you want to follow, you will want to seek out advice, see what direction the wind is blowing, and then ultimately you have to search your hearts and ask yourselves, what now?  What sort of future UU congregation do you want to create?
As Robert Frost wrote, “The Road Not Taken” 
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Over the next two years, your question is not which path you will follow into the future, but rather given the number of paths which path will you create? It definitely is more complex today in 2013 than it was in 1790 when the people of the Castine peninsula began raising funds to build this beautiful meeting house, the oldest one in Downeast Maine. But even then it soon became complex because the first minister, the Rev. William Mason, helped create a new and unexpected path by embracing a liberal Christian theology, one that led him and this congregation to a path known as Unitarianism.

Today there many more roads, side roads, roadblocks and detours, in Hancock county Maine than there were in 1790. The variety of paths that you could follow or create call on you to make important choices and to use increased creativity. You have already started on your transition, you have already begun creating the direction of your future.

As the poet wrote:

Every time you leave home,
Another road takes you
Into a world you were never in.

New strangers on other paths await.
New places that have never seen you
Will startle a little at your entry.
Old places that know you well
Will pretend nothing
Changed since your last visit.

This is a moment of change, a moment of endings and of beginnings. During the next two years and beyond, you will be called to be aware of the moments of change when a new direction or a new path is begun. You may even want to identify and mark such moments of change as special, and meaningful. Such moments ought to be noted and possibly even celebrated with a ceremony that joyfully recognizes the personal and spiritual changes that are taking place. When we do that, we experience that moment with greater purpose, meaning, and spiritual significance. Thus, it is that today we grasp the beauty and spiritual uniqueness of this moment of transition in the life of UUCC.

There is a fascinating story book for children about a tadpole who did not realize he was going to be a frog someday. In his life as a tadpole, he had known a caterpillar that followed the path that led him to become a beautiful butterfly. The tadpole wanted to follow the path his friend the caterpillar had followed. He too wanted to change from his lowly position as a tadpole into a beautiful butterfly like his friend had done. The story has some good advice for all of us. We need to avoid being like the tadpole who wanted to emulate someone else. We need to pay more attention to what we are becoming rather than trying to emulate others.

Of course, we are not always excited about change. Entering into transitions can be quite a frightening adventure before we find our way to the other side. Joseph Campbell wrote, “There is no security in following the call to adventure. Nothing is exciting if you know what the outcome is going to be. To refuse the call means stagnation. You enter the forest at the darkest point where there is no path. The very cave you are afraid to enter turns out to be (the) source of what you are looking for. The purpose of the journey is compassion. The return is seeing the radiance everywhere.”

In the midst of congregational change and transition, each one of us finds ourselves in our own transitions. You may at times feel like you are entering a dark section of the forest with no clear or obvious paths. These are the times that you need to remember the purpose and the meaning of our journey is compassion.

Again from my earlier reading:

When you travel, you find yourself
Alone in a different way,
More attentive now
To the self you bring along,
Your more subtle eye watching
You abroad; and how what meets you
Touches that part of the heart
That lies low at home: . . .

When you travel,
A new silence
Goes with you,
And if you listen,
You will hear
What your heart would
Love to say.

Remember, radiance and possibility and compassion are everywhere, even if we are tempted to believe that our world today is in the most trying and worst of times.  Howard Zinn wrote, “To be hopeful in bad times is not…foolishly romantic; it is based on the fact that human history is a history of not only cruelty, but of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future —- the future is an infinite succession of ‘presents,’ and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”

You were born for these times. Yes,

These times call for those who realize that the future is not a stagnant place you are going to. Rather, the future is a place you are creating. Some of the paths will be found, but many others and especially the most important paths are ones you will make. It is important to remember that the creative activity of making your paths will change you the makers and your destination.

READING:     “For the Traveler”

Every time you leave home,
Another road takes you
Into a world you were never in.

New strangers on other paths await.
New places that have never seen you
Will startle a little at your entry.
Old places that know you well
Will pretend nothing
Changed since your last visit.

When you travel, you find yourself
Alone in a different way,
More attentive now
To the self you bring along,
Your more subtle eye watching
You abroad; and how what meets you
Touches that part of the heart
That lies low at home:

How you unexpectedly attune
To the timbre in some voice,
Opening in conversation
You want to take in
To where your longing
Has pressed hard enough
Inward, on some unsaid dark,
To create a crystal of insight
You could not have known
You needed
To illuminate
Your way.

When you travel,
A new silence
Goes with you,
And if you listen,
You will hear
What your heart would
Love to say.

A journey can become a sacred thing:
Make sure, before you go,
To take the time
To bless your going forth,
To free your heart of ballast
So that the compass of your soul
Might direct you toward
The territories of spirit
Where you will discover
More of your hidden life,
And the urgencies
That deserve to claim you.

May you travel in an awakened way,
Gathered wisely into your inner ground;
That you may not waste the invitations
Which wait along the way to transform you.

May you travel safely, arrive refreshed,
And live your time away to its fullest;
Return home more enriched, and free
To balance the gift of days which call you.

~ John O’Donohue ~

CLOSING WORDS:            from Four Quartets, Section V. by T. S. Eliot,

What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from. . . .
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
We will arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.