Because our Unitarian Universalist faith is “reality-based” and reality is constantly changing, there will always be something new, and something more requested of us. Our work of religious education is not merely to prepare our children for adulthood, but to equip all of us, at every age, to take the next step on a continually unfolding journey.
We are talking about Mission and Vision for these spring months here in the church.
The question of Mission is, “What should we do?” It’s the spiritual question of Purpose that all individuals ask of themselves. What should I do with my life?
We ask it every morning, “What should I do today?” We ask it throughout the day, “What should I do now? What should I do next?” And we ask it of the largest questions of life. Should I go to university? Should I take that job? Should I marry Bill? Should I forgive my mother? Should I move to the nursing home? What should I do?
As Mary Oliver asks in her poem titled, “The Summer Day”:
“Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
Our church needs to ask that question, too. Any organization does. What should we do with this wild and precious church? What are we here to do?
To start this series I pointed out, using the example of Martin Luther King, that Mission arises at the intersection where a person’s or an organization’s unique set of interests and skills, meets the needs of the larger world.
We start with knowing who we are. This is us. This is what we care about, are passionate about, wanting to work on. This is what we can do, what we’re skilled at, and particularly, here are some areas of work we are uniquely suited to do, more so than other persons and organizations.
But we can’t just follow our bliss. We can’t all be pop stars and basketball players. Merely wanting to be an actor or a poet, or a fashion designer, isn’t enough. Discovering our mission also requires that we ask, “What does the world need?” Where do my passions for doing intersect with a doing the world needs done? That’s mission.
But there’s one more complication in finding your mission.
The world and its needs are constantly changing.
There aren’t a lot of jobs for blacksmiths any more.
If you grew up wanting to be a court jester, or a soothsayer, or even a typist, you’re probably too late. Some of you are probably old enough to remember when a computer was a person who was employed to make computations. Sure they had copiers in the middle ages, but not copier machines: a copier was a monk whose mission was to sit down at a desk and write out new copies of old manuscripts.
So it’s best if we don’t define our mission too narrowly around one specific task. That’s a guarantee to be out of date quickly. Instead, we look at the perennial needs of the world. The general persistent needs that will always be with us.
The world doesn’t depend on horses for transportation any more so there’s not a need for a lot of horseshoes, but people do still need transportation. And if providing transportation solutions for people is your thing, you’ve got a mission for life.
The most basic of perennial human needs is community. Human beings are social creatures. We seek for ways and places to come together, to be with each other. Once we’re gathered, we’ll find something to do, but the basic need is just to gather.
That’s the core and primary mission of a church. That’s our focus every day. Work to build and sustain our community. Community is something we’re passionate about doing, uniquely good at doing, and the world desperately needs done.
And then from our core and primary mission of community, we distinguish ourselves from other community organizations by a handful of areas of work that are particular to a church.
Why would you come to a church, instead a social club? Why would you come to a church, instead of volunteering at a non-profit organization devoted to a single cause you care about? We’re not a political organization. We’re not a school, or a glee club, or a gym, or a support group, although we do some of all of the things those organizations do. We’re a church. And we, like other churches, do church-y things. A handful of them. That’s our niche.
We offer our members a handful of mission-related work, all of them growing out of and supported by our core and primary mission of community, work that churches do well, and that the world persistently needs.
We’ll talk through all of them over the next several weeks.
We started with worship last week: the persistent need of people for regular connection with the transcendent.
Today we’ll look at religious education: the need for lifelong learning, and, our particular niche, education about the spiritual questions which aren’t regularly addressed in places of secular learning.
Our mission statement is a good one. It starts with community, as it should, and then adds a few focus areas that grow from our community:
“Ours is an inclusive religious community that inspires personal and spiritual growth. We care for one another. We strive for social justice, a healthy environment, and a peaceful world.”
Our hymnal is full of Mission Statements.
We read one together as our Call to Worship this morning.
Here’s how Kenneth L. Patton, the mid-twentieth century Unitarian and Universalist minister in Madison, Wisconsin and at the Charles Street Meeting House in Boston, describes the mission of a UU church:
“This house is for the ingathering of nature and human nature.”
He says, “It is a house of friendships, a haven in trouble, an open room for the encouragement of our struggle.” So he starts, too, with the primary and core mission of a church: “ingathering” “friendships” “a haven” “an open room.”
And then he goes on to outline some of the specific works of a church community, specifically a liberal religious community.
“It is a house of freedom, guarding the dignity and worth of every person,” he says. “It offers a platform for the free voice, for declaring, both in times of security and danger, the full and undivided conflict of opinion.”
He says, “It is a house of art.” He says, “It is a house of prophecy.” And touching on my theme for today, he says, “It is a house of truth-seeking, where scientists can encourage devotion to their quest, where mystics can abide in a community of searchers.”
We are a community of searchers. And people everywhere are motivated in life by searching for the next and the new. That’s a need of the world, a need that some person or organization could make it their mission to satisfy.
As the poet, Don Marquis, phrases it in the words of our Opening Hymn, “A fierce unrest seethes at the core of all existing things.”
He says, “it was the eager wish to soar that gave the gods their wings.” That is, because we looked at the birds and wished that we, too, could fly, we then imagined that the gods could fly, a perfected version of ourselves. And then, from that dream of flight, we built wings for ourselves, and now flying is a part of our world.
“From deed to dream, from dream to deed, from daring hope to hope. The restless wish, the instant need, still drove us up the slope.”
Everything that we are and will become comes from this fierce unrest, from this wanting. From this seeing and desiring, searching and imagining.
Of course, our restlessness comes at a price: the unintended consequences of progress. We gained something when we gave up horse travel. But internal combustion engines cause a different set of problems.
Couldn’t we just sit and be still? Couldn’t we be satisfied with what there already is? Instead of a fierce unrest maybe we could all just take a nap.
Some choose a spiritual practice of quiet and calm, silent meditation, stilling the mind and body, just letting the body breathe.
But while we sit, the world spins. Challenges and opportunities come while we’re sitting cross-legged with half-closed eyes. Our bodies need more than just breath. Meditation is an appropriate response to the stress of the world. But even the enlightened must eventually rise and face the world.
Children need naps, but would you say no to a child when they’re awake and eager to learn and grow? Would you say no, to the adult who wants to know more, to be more? Would you say “Stop” to the scientist making a new discovery, the inventor, the artist? Have we arrived at the place where the world is perfectly fine as it is, and there’s no more need to dream or do?
Human life is about change and growth at every age. And the world constantly changes around us, too. We are swept up in it, like it or not. And though a measured response, rather than a frantic or fierce response might be best, to stand perfectly still, unchanging within and without, is an option only for the dead.
And must we be saddled forever with today’s problems, leaving the gaping holes of environmental destruction and human injustice unfilled? Or is, in our looking, and our wanting, and our dreaming and doing, the analysis of where we went wrong, and the proposals of what we might do differently? We can’t go back. The problems, unaddressed will only worsen. The only way out is forward.
So forward we must go. It is our “stinging discontent” as Don Marquis says, that lets us leap from star to star.
And so, when we gather, one of the missions of the church, is to meet that fierce unrest of human persons with programs of education and exploration that urge us to learn and grow in the best possible direction. To be “a house of truth-seeking, where scientists can encourage devotion to their quest, where mystics can abide in a community of searchers.”
A program of religious education for children is an essential part of our mission.
We offer our children an education in morals and values beyond the reading, writing, and “rithmatic” of school education.
How to be kind. What does “justice” mean? The wonders of the world, not merely the facts. The beauty of the world. The preciousness of life. The worth and dignity of every person.
We cherish our young ones as members of our community. And we show them how to live in plural community.
Old folks who aren’t your grandparents but care for your anyway. Children that don’t live in your neighborhood. Adults with different jobs than your parents and different ideas about how to dress and talk. Teenagers to look up to. Young adults to model the person you might want to grow to be. Adults who sing and play instruments, and who laugh together because joy and silliness isn’t just for seven year olds. People who talk together, and listen together, and decide together.
Our children are watching how we care for each other, how we solve problems together, how we share and make community together. And hopefully, one lesson they learn, beside the seven principles, and the meaning of Imbolc, is that people need communities, and a Unitarian Universalist church is a good place to find one.
But, of course, our religious education mission isn’t just for our children. All of us are truth-seekers driven by the same fierce unrest. We are a community of searchers: young, and old, and older. “The quest for truth is our sacrament,” so we say every Sunday.
Lifelong education doesn’t follow just from the truth that there’s always more to know, but also from the truth that the world is constantly changing and we must be forever fitting ourselves to a new reality.
It’s not that there’s a finite amount of knowledge, though very large, and we might, if we studied long enough eventually know it all. The reality is that the amount of knowledge available to know is constantly expanding. Each day is a new day. Something new is always coming in to being. We’re called to lifelong learning because you can’t possibly know now what you might need to know in a future world that hasn’t been created yet.
And, I would say, for many of the lessons the church has to teach, we’re not simply filling ourselves up with facts we need to know, we’re laying out lessons we need to practice.
I know I should be kind. Lifelong learning means practicing kindness again and again in ever new circumstances. To be just requires context. Justice for who, how? What’s the wrong we’re trying to right? What are the complications because justice is rarely simple? Tell me more..
The church is the place where we’re reminded to be kind and just. Where we are asked to return to kindness when our inclination is otherwise. Held accountable for our failings. And then urged to re-commit.
All of us, whatever our age, are traveling on a life-long journey. A mission of the church, is to give to each of us, the tools we need to take the next step on our journey.
Lifelong religious education is giving each of us a backpack to carry with us on our way and filling that backpack with useful tools as we encounter the experiences of our unfolding life.
How do I make a friend?
How do express my true self?
How do I challenge my limits but keep myself safe?
Where will I find the courage?
Who can I trust?
What if I lose? What if I win?
How do I go on? How do I start again?
Who can I help? And who will help me?
How do I find love?
How can I bear the loss of love?
And so we open our backpack and shuffle through the contents. Here is what other people have done in a situation like this. Here is wisdom from scripture. Here is what the minister had to say on the subject. Here is that lesson from Sunday school. Here is what I learned singing in choir, and sitting through congregational meetings, and watching who stayed after to clean the kitchen and noticing the spirit they had as they did the job.
Here is the notebook in my life’s journey backpack titled, “What my faith has taught me.” With blank pages at the back still to be filled.
The full backpack, heavy on our shoulders, give us comfort and confidence. I’m prepared. I’m ready. I can do this.
I can grow from kid to teen to youth to young adult to older adult to senior. I can negotiate a life of jobs and relationships and gorgeous beauty and heartbreaking tragedy. I can handle bad news with resilience, and success with grace. Because I received and continue to receive a solid religious education, I am secure in my faith that I am good enough, strong enough, and smart enough, to make a life of health and joy for myself, and for others, and for the world we share.
My faith travels with me. My community travels with me. Each on our own journey, still, we walk together.
Though the future is unknown, and the path empty until we take a step into space, the church has done its job, and we’ve done ours, and so we go, knowing what we know, to find what we will find.