Creation begins in the imagination. The first act of creating is to intuit a way of being that doesn’t exist. Only once we can see a “what might be” different from “what is” can we begin to measure the distance and start the journey.
We have a lot of great hymns in our hymnal.
One of my favorites is the one we sang earlier, “Do you Hear?”
The words are by a Unitarian Universalist religious educator named Emily Thorn. From 1976 to 1985 she was the Director of Religious Education for the First Unitarian Church in Wilmington, Delaware. She died in 2004 at the age of 89.
The music for that hymn is from a collection called Southern Harmony that was first published in 1835. You’ll find several Southern Harmony tunes in our hymnal. They are notable for being simple and easy to sing, but also very beautiful.
One of the reasons I like “Do you Hear?” is that the hymn asks a question in the first line, but doesn’t answer it right away. The whole first verse is just the question, “Do you hear?”, spinning out further and further.
“Do you hear, oh my friend, in the place where you stand,
through the sky, through the land, do you hear, do you hear?
In the heights, on the plain, in the vale, on the main,
in the sun, in the rain, do you hear, do you hear?”
What?! Hear what? You might be asking by now. What am I supposed to be hearing?
But the second verse doesn’t answer either, just more of the question.
“Through the roar, through the rush, through the throng, through the crush,
do you hear in the hush of your soul, of your soul?”
And then at last, halfway through the second verse, Ms. Thorn, finally tells us what we’re supposed to be hearing.
“Hear the cry fear won’t still, hear the heart’s call to will,
hear a sigh’s startling trill in your soul, in your soul?”
Of course, the answer might still be no. No, Ms. Thorn, I don’t hear “A sigh’s startling trill”. But she implies that if we do listen, and listen carefully, we will hear.
She asks again, in the third verse.
“From the place where you stand to the outermost strand,
do you hear, oh my friend, do you hear, do you hear?”
And then she describes again the distant music we can hear if we quiet our own noise and listen closely enough. If we listen past the roar and the rush, to the quiet hush of our calm center where we connect outward to all that exists, we will hear. I love this line.
“All the dreams, all the dares, all the sighs, all the prayers —
they are yours, mine, and theirs — do you hear, do you hear?”
I love the way that line speaks an essential truth about religious community: the truth that religious community stretches across space and time. The truth that once we have signed on to membership in a faith community, like Unitarian Universalism, we earn the benefit of connection to people and places and times far beyond ourselves.
“From the place where you stand to the outermost strand.”
We are connected to Unitarian Universalists in Wilmington, Delaware, and Anchorage, Alaska, and the Unitarian Universalist Church of Tarpon Springs, Florida, and everywhere in between.
One of the compensations for learning to worship online during the COVID pandemic, is that we were able to find and enjoy all these UU choirs singing our favorite hymns from around the country, like the choir from the UU church in Baltimore that we sang along with this morning, and have used many times before.
And we’re connected with people like Emily Thorn, died in 2004 and born in 1915. And the authors of our Call to Worship reading this morning: John A. Buehrens and Rebecca Ann Parker. He, a former president of the UUA and she, a former President of the Starr King School for the Ministry. Not to mention connected to men like Thomas Starr King, the Universalist preacher from New England, called to be the minister of the Unitarian church in San Francisco, who helped to ensure California would enter the United States as a free state, and who loved nature, and has a mountain named for him beside Half Dome in Yosemite.
“All their dreams, all their dares, all their sighs, all their prayers —
they are yours, mine, and theirs…”
As members of this far-reaching, long-lasting, wide-spreading, deep-burrowing, faith, we are the collective owners of all that any one of us hopes, or dreams, or patiently waits for, or diligently works for.
It is the thrilling gift of faith community, that we are forever supported, included, gathered up, pushed forward, and brought along, by this faith that will not let us go.
“In the heights, on the plain, in the vale, on the main,
in the sun, in the rain…”
we hear the voices of our sisters and brothers. And when we speak with our own timid or courageous voice, we know that we will be heard by them.
This is the meaning of the Unitarian faith, that each one of us is important, has something to say, has something uniquely ours to add to the ongoing creation of the world.
This is the meaning of the Universalist faith, that all of us together, share one creation, share one fate, pull together, build together, arrive together, celebrate together.
We have had a year together. Almost a year. I preached for you the first time on September 12, last year.
My sermon was titled, “Hello, Again” because I made then the point I want to make this morning, too. That, though that was the first Sunday we were meeting that we already knew each other in a way, because we already shared the Unitarian Universalist faith. We were already brothers and sisters in the faith. Already family. Already part of one community.
You didn’t know me. But you already knew a lot about me. That I valued the same principles you valued. That I shared the same questioning and curious approach to religious beliefs that you do. That I was looking for a community where I could learn and grow, as well as teach. That I would minister to you as a partner, and fellow-explorer, not as a prophet, or guru. That I would be eager to share my gifts, but also eager to know your gifts.
We had quite a year together. Back in September we met only on Zoom. I preached for you from my dining room table in downtown Los Angeles with nothing but a venetian blind behind me.
We kept hoping, week after week, that this would be the week when we could gather in person, and then, wave after wave of Greek letters, kept us apart once more.
In January, at last, we got as far as me preaching from here in Huber Chapel, with no one in the room but our trusty tech team experimenting with microphones and laptops and cables and cameras. That was the month I got COVID myself, so I’m just as glad the rest of you weren’t here with me.
And then at last, in March, we cracked open the chapel doors just a little for a “soft opening.”
And then, in April we had our Grand Opening. It felt like a new beginning. After two years apart, two years wandering in the online wilderness, two years in which we suffered and struggled, but also developed vaccines, and learned new ways of doing church that would enable us to be more inclusive in the future then we could ever be before, technology that speaks to that truth that our faith connects us to folks far beyond the few that gather physically in a single time and place, we stepped out of that experience and into this new one.
That day, April 3, I asked us all to do a little dreaming of what our new future might be in this more-or-less post-Covid worls. As we worked together to re-create a church that felt open to new possibilities, I asked you to make an intention for yourself, of what you wanted in your life, and in the life of your community. You wrote sentences on cards, and then I asked you to winnow your dream down to a single word, and write that down, too.
Here are the cards.
Here is what you wrote:
Balance
Community
Growth
Grateful
Abundance
Lovingkindness
Health
Connection
Home
Hope
One
Outside
Peace
Love
Light
Respect
Belonging
Service
Centeredness
Saving
Freedom
Understanding
Friendship
Giving
Strength
Excitement
Still
“All the dreams, all the dares, all the sighs, all the prayers —
they are yours, mine, and theirs — do you hear, do you hear?”
To dream, is to imagine a world different from this one, a future, different from the present.
Dreaming something different takes courage. It’s audacious. Who are we to think that we could be so powerful to bring a new thing into being?
And we may be wrong. What if our dreams are wrong? What if the thing we build doesn’t work as we expect it to? What if we’re held responsible for trying and failing? Lord knows, we’ve made mistakes in our lives, before.
Better to let it alone, right? Go along. Let someone else take the initiative and the risk and suffer the consequences. Or let nature take its course.
But there is that song out there that won’t stop singing. There is that melody that keeps playing in our ears. We can cover it up with busy-ness, and anxiety, but it won’t go away. We can ignore and hope the next generation of leaders will do what we won’t dare to do. We can cover our heads with a blanket and pretend that all will be well, that the world doesn’t need our gift, but despite our turning away the longing, plaintive song, continues. Calling. Calling. We are being called.
Do you hear?
“Hear the cry fear won’t still, hear the heart’s call to will?”
John Buehrens and Rebecca Partner heard the song and described it like this:
“It longs for good to be affirmed, for justice and love to prevail, for suffering to be alleviated, and for life to flourish in peace.”
They heard the singing and tell us:
“It remembers the dreams of those who have gone before and reaches for connection with them across the boundary of death.”
They say it is a song that calls us to act: “to bless, to protest, and to repair.”
Though I will not be with you in person after today (although I do hope and expect that you will invite me up to preach for you sometime, or that we will find other ways to be together again) in the way of Unitarian Universalist community, I will not be apart from you because I am a part of you.
I will be serving our faith in Studio City, as you serve here. We will move this one faith forward, working on separate fronts. I will be following the news of what you’re doing, and wishing you well. I’m available for help or consultation if you need it. I will feel your good thoughts and prayers sent in my direction, and will rely on them, and send them refreshed and amplified back to you.
As we’ve learned in the last two years of COVID and Zoom, there are many ways of being together, even when we’re not together.
So I’ll keep singing my song. And I’ll keep listening for your song.
“All the dreams, all the dares, all the sighs, all the prayers —
they are yours, mine, and theirs — do you hear, do you hear?”
Yes, friends, I do hear.
I hear.