Mark Sadan began his creative career as a stage actor and director, but moved quickly into independent film production. He was one of the first film makers for the television show,Sesame Street, and has won several awards for his documentaries.

But while continuing to produce and direct films, Mark has also followed his passion for still photography and his major work is currently in that medium. He has been featured in most of the leading photo magazines around the world. His work can also be found in many books as well as in museums and private collections.

Raffle tickets will soon be available for purchase at Umami Café, 325 South Riverside Avenue and at Grouchy Gabe’s Deli. During the week-long show they will be available at the Unitarian Fellowship. Tickets cost $2.00 each or six for $10.00. The money will go toward exhibit expenses. The winning raffle tickets will be drawn at the close of the show on April 5.

In addition to the opening reception on March 28, viewing hours are

March 29-April 2, 6-8:00 p.m. and April 3-4, 2:00-5:00 p.m.

Our pledge drive is not merely about raising money to pay the bills. Ultimately, I believe it is our most important program for measuring how seriously we live our beliefs as embodied in our principles. In that light we ask that you give out of your abundance, great or small, “as much as ye are able.”In these days of economic recession, it is difficult for many people to relate to economic abundance. But Dwayne Dyer once said: Abundance is not something we acquire. It is something we tune into. Fortunately we are blessed with an amazing abundance of talent, service, gifts and creative thinking within our active membership! We have a lot to tune into! I marvel everyday that we have so many hard-working, giving, spirited individuals like you who give generously of your time and have helped to create a vital spiritual community. As your minister, I deeply treasure your offerings and your service.

Because of the resulting growth, our needs for more staff time, fair salaries, and improved physical space have grown proportionately. But we also have a challenging opportunity to attract many others who would join us, tune into the abundance and make our community even more vital, more abundant. Out of our abundance, we create more abundance through worship, music, art, religious education, community service and committee actions.

So as each of you decides your financial pledge, remember that you are not merely giving to a building or place. Our Fellowship is a point of contact with the Ultimate Reality, however we name it, and with those proximate people with whom we make our spiritual journey. Our Fellowship is an extension of who we are. It reflects our basic ethical values and our vision of how we want to live out the meanings of our lives. How much is that worth to us?

Ultimately I think our financial pledge is a spiritual exercise, even a spiritual discipline. We give in many ways to the Fellowship: by our time, our energy, our words and by our money. Our monetary resources are also an extension of ourselves. They are an investment in the human race. They are a statement of faith in the future, a physical embodiment of a spiritual life and a moral commitment. They endeavor to make real in the world what is imagined in the heart. As Winston Churchill said, “We make a living by what we get; we make a life by what we give.” So be it. Abundantly. Tune into it!
See you at the Fellowship!   Jim Covington

Developing a fellowship-wide covenant will not be easy; it raises knotty issues, such as how do we enforce the covenant? How do we respond when a member dismisses the obligation of personal service, or demeans our potential to help heal a broken world and show hope where there is none in sight? I don’t know the answer, but if we can all discuss these issues together, that would be a terrific start. In short, we need everyone’s participation to make this as meaningful a process as it can and should be. The process of developing a covenant will begin with our meeting with Francis Sink on March 21; please come-especially if you are not actively participating on a standing committee, i.e., we need everyone’s ACTIVE engagement. At the March 21 meeting, it is the Board’s hope that a task force will emerge to shape and manage development of our covenant by organizing small and large group discussions of what a covenant might, or should, include. Ideally, this task force will collect the thoughts of our membership and work through the mechanics of drafting a proposed covenant to present to the whole membership for consideration at the annual meeting. Rev. Jim will ask the community circles to spend some time on discussing a Fellowship-wide covenant and if we really pull together, we should have a draft document that everyone has seen, discussed, debated, and thought about for consideration at the annual meeting. Anne Pearl and Gerry Peet will be the Board representatives on the covenant task force; are you interested in serving, participating or helping? If so, please let them know and please come to the special meeting on Mach 21 at 12:30 p.m. All the other news from the Board room is much more mundane. Committee budgets must be in to the Treasurer by no later than April 1 (no joke). If all committees can get a proposed budget in by April 1, the Board will convene a special meeting to discuss a draft budget on May 2 at 12:30 p.m. in the sanctuary-well in advance of the annual meeting when members will be asked to vote a budget up or down.

On March 14 the annual pledge drive will begin. We have ambitious goals that will require generous pledging. For example, the Board wants to increase the time commitment we pay our employees more fairly to more accurately reflect to time they give and their value to our community. We need to keep improving this facility to make the limited space we have as functional as possible. And we need to improve our administrative and management systems-we’re growing and as we grow we must add to our infrastructure: we need a safe to secure petty cash, we need better internet and telephone access and we need to pay for our new roof and bat eviction! In 2009, the Board established a suggested minimum pledge of $750; many are not yet at this level of commitment; if you are not at this level please think about the personal value of our Fellowship to you in you life and . . . the POTENTIAL of the UUBCO, Inc.!

Lastly, the annual meeting has been scheduled for June 6 at 10:30 a.m. There will be a regular service at 9:00 a.m. and at 10:30 a.m., we will convene the annual meeting. Three trustees are up for election; if you are interested in serving on the Board, please contact any member of the Nomination Committee.
Please try to attend - it’s your Fellowship.

Rick Turner, President
Board of Trustees

A few minutes later, I introduced myself to another visitor and entered into an equally engaging conversation….during which this individual asked if he could be a member here if he believed in God…..not an anthropomorphic God, but as a presence in the world and in his life.

I share these stories to highlight the differences of attitudes, needs and expectations by those who visit us, looking for religious community. In general, according to a recent survey, people in our nation are more skeptical about religion than other previous time, particularly amongst the millennial generation-those young adults under the age of 30. In a recent poll taken by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, it is found that compared with their elders today, young people are much less likely to affiliate with any religious tradition.  The millennial generation is quite skeptical of religious dogma, creeds, and beliefs. Yet more than three-quarters of young adults (76%) agree that there are absolute standards of right and wrong, a level nearly identical to that among older age groups (77%). More than half of young adults (55%) say that houses of worship should speak out on social and political matters  And 45% of young adults say that the government should do more to protect morality in society, compared with 39% of people ages 30 and older.  And in spite of their negative attitudes toward religion, most young adults still believe in God, prayer, life after death, similar to older adults.  [1] 

In fact Harvey Cox has written a powerful volume entitled The Future of Faith in which he claims that there is a growing religious movement in the world today away from beliefs and dogma and moving more toward social justice and spiritual experience. I find all of this very interesting and I will speak to it again later in the sermon. [2]

For now, I want to simply define for those of you who are new and are checking us out, as well as to those of you who have been long time members, the religious beliefs we hold.  This is a bit of an irony for me, because on one level, I don’t think beliefs are that important. We tend to think of religion as a set of beliefs as defined in a creed. That is a huge mistake. Religion is much more about what we love and do than about what we think. Yet, in light of the long traditional association of religion with beliefs, I think we still have to be ready to say what our beliefs are to give people an idea of our religious view and our faith.  But even our faith is understood differently: not a belief in creeds, but our “confidence” in the values by which we attempt to live our lives.    

Interestingly over the years many people have said to me, “I’ve been a Unitarian Universalist and didn’t know it.”  Certainly that was true of me.  When I first attended a UU congregation, I knew I was in the right place.  I joined that congregation, because it represented and defined the values which I had come to embrace for myself through my own thoughts and experiences.       

Unfortunately, people will often leave a conversation about our faith with the conclusion that we can believe whatever we want…which is absolutely not true….Yes, we do hold diverse theological beliefs, but our belief system has more to do with deeds rather than creeds or theological beliefs.  So, no, you can’t believe whatever you want.  We believe in those values that when followed will make us better citizens, parents, partners. If your beliefs don’t do that, we don’t go with them. 

There is an old story in the Jewish tradition of the man who asked Rabbi Shamai to teach him Judaism while standing on one foot. Shamai, notoriously impatient, chased the man away. Then he went to Rabbi Hillel and made the same request.  While standing on one foot, Rabbi Hillel responded: “Don’t do to others what you wouldn’t have them do to you.  That is all the Torah; all the rest is commentary.  Now go and learn it.” 

While I am not delivering this sermon while standing on one foot, I will attempt to answer some frequent questions about our faith.

What is your view of religion?

To be human is to be religious. Being alive and knowing we shall die, we can’t help but ask questions about the meaning of life.  I call this the religious impulse, our response to the dual reality of being alive and knowing that we shall also die. To be religious is to make connections. Religion means to bind together the frayed strands of our being - to bind together a broken humanity. It is a core of ultimate meanings and values and convictions to which we commit our lives. To lead a meaningful life among the many competing forces of the twenty-first century, each of us needs support in making meaningful re-connections to the best in our global heritage, the best in others, and the best in ourselves. Ultimately, religion has more to do with love and justice than to creed.

What does Unitarian mean?

Theologically, a Unitarian believes God is one; historically this is denial of the trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Unitarian also refers to a cosmic reality held together by natural law in distinction from the supernatural. Everything is naturally divine and partakes of the power of being. We are all one.  We are born of the same source and share the same destiny.

Then, what is the meaning of Jesus?

Jesus was a first century Jewish prophet - a moral and spiritual teacher who went about doing good. He sought to reform the Judaism of his day by placing emphasis on its moral and spiritual dimensions rather than on its ceremonies. While his message was designed for a first century agrarian society, the spirit of his teachings, which had to do more with love and justice has inspired people across the ages, and moves us today. Because he was a threat to the religious and political establishment of his day, he was crucified.

Is there life after death?

We do not and cannot know. Many of us doubt such an existence, but do not close our minds to serious attempts at understanding the death process. Others do feel strongly that there is life after death and have had powerful experiences that have convinced them.  We do affirm the immortality of influence: those who have lived well live on in the lives of those they touch. At other times I feel that we are too busy with this life to worry about a future one. The more important question is - is there life after birth?

What about heaven and hell?

Heaven and hell are mythic creations of ancient peoples. We need no thought of heavenly reward or hellish punishment to motivate us to be and do good. Our heavens and hells are here on earth and are of our own making. They are states of the soul. Heaven is participation in the Beloved Community; Hell is indifference to our neighbors.

What does Universalism mean?

Historically Universalism refers to universal salvation - the final harmony of all souls with God. It was a reaction to Calvinist theology in which some were predestined for heaven and others for hell. Universalists believed in a God of love who would ultimately restore all people to a state of grace. Today, theologically, we believe that cosmic and eternal source of conscience and meaning that is greater than all yet present in each, is refracted through many different windows. In the Cathedral of the World there are many windows through which the Light of Truth is refracted.[4]  This “light” illuminates human minds and human hearts in different ways, but ultimately leads us to live compassionately and justly. Those religions from either the right or the left that proclaim that the Light of Truth shines only through their window pane, enshrine a very tiny egotistical god on their altar.   Ethically, Universalism refers to our responsibility for the human family of which we are all members.

Do you believe in salvation? If so, what is it?

Salvation means health or wholeness of being. We do not accept salvation as the gracious act of an omnipotent God who redeems us from sin. Salvation comes through the work of our own hands and the compassion of our own hearts. It is the struggle toward wholeness as a human being - generosity of spirit, depth of meaning, responsibility of action. It is the work of justice.  Salvation is accomplished by deeds not creeds. 

What about human nature? Do you believe in original sin?

Human nature is neither tainted at birth with original sin to be expunged, nor are we born noble savages corrupted by an evil society. We are born in finite freedom. On the one hand we are selfish creatures who think we are the center of creation. On the other, we can transcend that self-centeredness and expand our interests to include our neighbors. We are intriguing and sometimes tragic contradictions - the “glory, jest and riddle of the world.”  We are our own most perplexing problem and our own final hope. We are neither sinners in the hands of an angry God nor saints in the arms of a loving one. We are both saints and sinners, but more importantly, we are seekers.

Do you believe in God?

I believe in a creating, sustaining and transforming power - a cosmic creativity which is the power behind the natural world of planets and flowers, pine cones and photons. It sustains our very existence, but it does not play favorites; it is indifferent to us as creatures - the rain falls on the just and the unjust. Some among us personalize this power in prayer; others do not; Some Unitarian Universalists employ God language; some do not.  It really doesn’t matter.  Forrest Church has said, “God is not God’s name.  God is our name for that which is greater than all and yet present in each.” [3]  Call it what you will: spirit of life, ground of being, life itself; it remains what it always has-in Rudolph Otto’s definition of the Holy-a mysterium tremens et fascinans, an awe-inspiring mind-bending mystery.

Do you believe in spirituality?   To me, spirituality describes a way of being-an openness to truth-the truth of one’s own soul and the truth of the unfolding cosmos as we understand it.  It is living from the depths of being.  Spiritual experience springs from two primary sources, awe and humility in the face of the miracle of life, the miracle of consciousness, the miracle of hope. Spirituality is not really something you discover, but something you live.  

What about the Bible as a source of truth?

The Bible with its Jewish and Christian scriptures is a vast and valuable compendium of human wisdom and folly collected over a period of centuries. The lovely legends of creation, the poetry of the psalmist, the insight of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, the zeal of the prophets, the moral imagination of Jesus, and the eloquence of Paul are a rich resource. It is a human book, however, shot through with the best and the worst of human nature. It is not the word of God to humanity, but the word of humanity about its understanding of humanity and divinity and where they meet in human life. There are other religious scriptures to which we would also turn. The ethical demands of the Koran, the beauty of the Tao Te Ching, the simple ethic of the Analects of Confucius, the mystical insights of the Bhagavad Ghita, the existential wisdom of the Sutras of Buddhism - and the rich abundance of the whole human literary, artistic tradition - all these contribute to our human store of goodness and beauty and wisdom.

We celebrate a loose-leaf bible which affirms that revelation is not sealed. Truth has not been embalmed in any one age or tradition; it is an unfolding process. The truths of yesterday are often the superstitions of today. We need the freedom to remove from our loose-leaf bible ancient ideas that no longer stand the test of time, keep those that do, and add our own insights to its pages.

In closing I want to return to a comment I made earlier that true religion is less about beliefs and more about love and justice…In light of all that I have just shared with you about our beliefs, this is what I mean by that statement: [5]

True religion for our time must draw upon many religious traditions while transcending them all. I need not reject the precious gifts of community, compassion and passion for justice from my conservative Baptist Christian upbringing. Yet I must transcend the narrow theology that would have me think of everyone else is condemned to hell.

True religion must be about wholeness, integrity, and engagement.  It must promote the spiritual practices that give us depth and insight: worship (as we are experiencing this very moment), meditation, prayer, listening, small groups, and music. It must touch our hearts as well as our heads.

True religion must promote deep reflection, but it must never, never, become an escape from life or descend into navel gazing narcissism.  True religion must be prophetic. It must speak truth to power. It must raise a powerful voice against violence, injustice, racism, economic exploitation, and the destruction of life on our planet.  True religion is not afraid of power. It uses power. A religion for our time must strive to transform the world.

Beyond this, true religion must have a vision of the future. It must invite people to come together in love to help create new world-a world of peace, justice, equity, compassion and stewardship of the environment. It must draw upon ancient and undying human longing for harmony, for beloved community, for bringing the reign of love and justice to earth.

Just imagine such a religion! Imagine a religion that believes in the inherent worth and dignity of all people; that seeks justice, equity and compassion; that draws upon the wisdom and insight of many faith traditions; that is open to new learning; that invites and welcomes scientific discovery; that respects and celebrates human diversity; that promotes peace; that demands good stewardship of our planet.  Can you imagine that?  Do you know of such a religious view?  Do you know of a religious community anywhere that believes all of that? 

I am sure there are many such communities.  But you know where I’m going, don’t you?  Surely, I believe one such religious community is us! All the rest is commentary.  Now go and live it and spread the word.

But, wait, you ask, just what do you mean when you say “Environmental Justice?” 

Manna Jo Greene, Environmental Director for Clearwater, will help us to understand the concept of Environmental Justice as an ethical question for humankind. And she will share with us some specifics of the project in Peekskill that she is overseeing. This service will focus on our seventh principle: “Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.”

Manna Jo Greene has been a lifelong environmental professional and community activist who supports collaborative land use planning and problem solving. Working to promote sustainable agriculture and green building and landscaping practices, she teaches communities how to integrate environmental preservation, economic prosperity and social equity using effective communication. Environmental Director for Hudson River Sloop Clearwater and founder of the Hudson Valley Sustainable Communities Network (HVSCN),Manna has an long history of leadership in areas ranging from civil rights, activities in support of world peace, and community development of green practices.

Manna is committed to the beliefs that humans can live in harmony with each other and the Earth, and that if your cause is just and you are persistent, you will eventually triumph. Her presentation on February 28 will help us to understand the concept of Environmental Justice, a cause in which she is taken a leadership role in our region. She will provide some examples of how we can participate in local environmental justice projects.

Please join us in welcoming our guest speaker, Manna Jo Greene.

Fellowship Youths and Host Families can apply for this year’s upcoming Foreign Youth Exchange Program by clicking on Youth Exchange Application.

Sometimes things get so bad, that you really don’t know what to say or do.  So I ponder. Read. Or turn off the TV and not read, especially newspapers for a few days.  And I pray.  That’s all I feel I can do sometimes.  I pray for insight, goodwill, moral wisdom and courage for our leaders and for myself and for all of you to act for the common good.  Richard Gilbert, minister emeritus at Rochester UU congregation, and a classic social activist has written the Ten Commandments for Social Action, one of which is stated: Thou shalt carry a newspaper in one hand and a bible (or its Unitarian Universalist equivalent) in the other. Social action grows out of a value system, be it religious or secular, be it the Koran or the Constitution, be it the Hebrew prophets or Martin Luther King, Jr.  What is our value system and why isn’t it working better? 

I believe our nation is in deep trouble. And it appears most Americans also feel that way, with a large majority being very unhappy with the direction of their country. It feels that we are indeed in decline. Yes, I know, we have been here before.  The pendulum swings from good times to bad.  We’ve been unhappy before with our nation’s leadership and were beset by dire circumstances.  We survived.  We came out stronger.  Yes, I know the mantra. 

So here we are. This past week, Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana announced his resignation.  Interestingly his reasons were similar to those William Cohen, a Unitarian Universalist, a Republican and former U.S. Senator from Maine, when he announced early in 1996 he would not run again. He explained that what bothered him most was the worsening partisan atmosphere of the Congress, an “increase in personal hostilities” and a “rhetorical finger-pointing” which replaced civility.   Sound familiar? 

Other long-time senators are leaving public office, naming the dysfunction of a system where politics has replaced getting anything done, and where constant campaigning has replaced any commitment to find solutions to our most pressing problems. Everything in Washington now is about winning or losing the next election, not about working together to serve the people who elected you or how best to govern by the values of the American Constitution.  Veteran members of Congress are saying that while their legislative bodies have always been far from perfect, the atmosphere on Capitol Hill is now more vitriolic and toxic than anyone can remember, with every disagreement becoming an attack on an opponent’s character or patriotism. 

Health insurance is still a critical need for the tens of millions of Americans who don’t have it; but the politicians in Washington can’t get health-care reform done. Comprehensive immigration reform is a crying issue of social justice for millions of our most poor and vulnerable families; but it may not even come up in Congress this session, for fear of unleashing a demagoguery that would make the battle over health care look tame. 

The most pressing issue on Main Street America is jobs, but the focus on Wall Street is billions of dollars in bonuses being paid to top bank executives. The risky and greedy behavior of a handful of huge Wall Street banks brought on the financial crisis that led to this deep recession. Then they used taxpayer bailout money to make themselves rich again, and are now passing out the shameful rewards to their top executives while one of every two workers in Detroit is looking for a job. And it looks like the big banks are going to get away with it; they will pay enough money in campaign contributions to members of Congress to prevent themselves from being regulated for the common good. 

There is something morally sick at the heart of our economy - an erosion of fellow-feeling; little sense of the common good; scant attention to what the Constitution calls the “general welfare;” repression of what we Unitarian Universalists call the Beloved Community. 

 While it behooves religious people to be conversant with the complexities of economic theory and practice, we should not forget to raise the moral issues so blatantly swept aside in current conversations. Here are questions I would love to put to the Wall Street Journal crowd:  (1) How much do we deserve morally? (2) What should we do with the losers in a competitive society? (3) How much is enough? (4) What are the responsibilities of the “haves” in a class society? (5) How can we morally justify the chasms between rich and poor in this nation and around the world? These are the questions that empty the room.

In response to all these deep and deepening troubles, I find it very difficult to really know what to say or do, except to continue to struggle against all the bad things that are happening. I think of the cartoon of two figures who met for discussion of our political predicament: One said to the other, “Oh, it’s better to light one little candle, but I find it a lot more emotionally fulfilling to curse the darkness.” Cursing the darkness is not an acceptable response.

How do we clarify the issues? How do we offer an alternative vision? How do we change the direction of our country, which is leading us to more confusion, pain, and suffering? How do we get political leaders (and even religious leaders) on opposite sides of the partisan aisle to really talk to one another?  .   Human beings are subject to a nasty pitfall in our character.  Rather than remain faithful to the higher principle-love your neighbor as you love yourself–we too often fall victim to our tribal nature, i.e., to demonize each other, to assume that my view of the truth is the only truth and to act contemptuously if not murderously toward those who disagree.    

How do we find a more civil and moral tone for our national discourse? What is our value system for justice? In seeking answers to those and other more personal questions, I will continue to pray that our country will find a way to work and stand for justice-economic justice, racial justice, social justice….  Interestingly, I like to believe that out of my prayerful mode, I was led to the readings Martin Luther King which helped me to think about our present crisis-how we got here and how we must transcend it.

In our reading this morning, we heard how Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., said “The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”  Barack Obama has used this phrase in talking about issues like the struggle of African Americans for civil rights-a process that is far from complete. Over a year ago, speaking on the anniversary of Dr. King’s assassination, President Obama declared:  “Dr. King once said that the arc of the universe is long but it bends toward justice.  It bends toward justice, but here is the thing:  it does not bend on its own.  It bends because each of us in our own ways put our hand on that arc and we bend it in the direction of justice…”

But what neither King nor Obama has done is acknowledge the source of this idea.  It comes from a sermon delivered by the Unitarian Minister, Theodore Parker.  The sermon was passed on to Lincoln by his law partner,Thomas Herndon, and then used by the President Lincoln himself.

In the sermon passed on by Herndon, Parker wrote:  “I do not pretend to understand the moral universe, that arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways.”  But “I can calculated the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience.” And he went on:  “from what I see, I am sure it bends toward justice.”  The justice toward which Parker believed the moral arc of the universe was bending, was the justice that should be available to everyone. Not just those who could claim it because of their position in society. 

Parker said justice was among the rights established in the Declaration of Independence, which both he and Lincoln regarded as the founding document of our nation.  But while Lincoln joined Parker and the Founders in seeing the rights they wrote about as basic in a democratic society, Parker also saw them as rights basic to his Unitarian faith. In a sermon he gave at his installation as the minister of the church he served in Boston, Parker said that his task as a minister was to help the members of his church cultivate their hearts and minds so they could become instruments for “reforming the world.”  A tall order!  He went on:  “It seems to me that any church…which aspires to be a true church must set itself about the business of changing the world.” 

Though Parker said this over 150 years ago, it is still what churches need to do, whether its considering the food we eat, or the right of everyone in this country to a decent job and adequate health care.  Though Lincoln was a deeply religious man, he was as deeply critical of churches as was Parker.  Lincoln believed our country was in a struggle for its soul.  Along with Parker, Lincoln believed that just as the words of Jesus “gave spirit” to the Bible, the words of the Declaration “gave spirit” to our Constitution.  As Parker put it, the words of the Declaration “fostered aspirations that if risen to, would establish the reign of righteousness, the kingdom of justice, which all noble hearts long for and labor to produce.”  Lincoln believed, as when he spoke about the moral arc of the universe, that if we would just remain true to the principles of the Declaration we would be responding, as Parker put it, to the “better angels’ of our human natures and therefore transcend our tribal, partisan, contemptuous natures.[1] 

Parker also wrote:  The great political idea of America, the idea of the Declaration of Independence, is a composite of three simple ones:

1. Each is endowed with certain inalienable rights.
2. In respect to these rights all are equal.
3. A government is to protect each in the entire and actual enjoyment of all the inalienable rights. 

In his reflection on the Declaration of Independence, Forrest Church, our contemporary spokesperson for our faith who died just a few months ago, wrote that its ideals should underlie both our life together as Unitarian Universalists and as Americans.  As the Declaration says, we should: hold these Truths to be self-evident: that all people (all of us, women, men and children of all races, gender identities and preferences, and of all places of birth-all of us) “are created equal” and “are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights (and), that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”  Church believed these words “ring forth the good news that all people are entitled to equal justice and invested with equal dignity.”  And as such they deserve “an equal chance to find happiness.”  This was a radical statement at the time in which it was written; it was radical when Parker and Lincoln harkened back to it; and it continues to be so radical today there are people who can’t accept it.  There are people who don’t believe others should have a chance at life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  There are people around us, and they are very vocal about it-who don’t want anything taken out of their pockets to provide the freedom, justice and happiness that might go with everyone being able to find a decent job and be provided with adequate health care. [2] 

But no matter what they say, or how loudly they proclaim that we shouldn’t have to care about others, there is nothing life-affirming, freeing or just about being poor or having to beg for help in an overcrowded emergency room.  There is nothing life-affirming, freeing or just about telling people they have to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, even though not everyone has bootstraps on which they can pull. 

Thinking back to the Declaration of Independence, as did Parker, Lincoln and King-Franklin Roosevelt talked abut the freedoms to which he believed all Americans were entitled.  He said our nation’s Founders were concerned about “the supremacy of human rights everywhere,” not just for a few.  He said “equality of opportunity” requires “jobs for those who can work; security for those who need it; the ending of special privilege for the few; the preservation of civil liberties for all; and the enjoyment of the fruits of scientific progress in a wider and constantly rising standard of living.”  Said Roosevelt:  “the inner and abiding strength of our economic and political system is dependent upon the degree to which we fulfill these expectations.”  [3] 

In spite of the trouble our country was then in, suffering from the great depression, Roosevelt was an optimist because he believed in the “better angels” in our natures.  But unless we are able to show a bit more of our “better angels” today it’s going to be a long time before things get better for a lot of people, including some of us. 

There are people all around us who are being overwhelmed by medical expenses through no fault of their own, or who have been out of work for months even though they are highly skilled.  And things are not only a lot worse for many of our neighbors; they are worse by orders of magnitude for people in other parts of the world.  Roosevelt believed that the Americans of his time would be able to overcome the situations in which they found themselves not because they’d pull themselves up by the bootstraps but because they would realize they were in it together… 

To live up to this ideal doesn’t require being a member of one or another political party-or of any particular religion.  It requires understanding that we are all God’s-or certainly all this Earth’s-children, and as such we are obligated to do all we can to ensure that the blessings we have are blessings available to others-and this includes the blessing of having meaningful work and adequate health care.

I think of a story about Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker movement which has done and is doing so much to minister to the poor. The activist writer Parker Palmer once asked Dorothy Day how she could keep doing work that seemed to show no results: “The thing you don’t understand, Parker, is that just because something is impossible doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it! I have never asked myself if I was being effective, but only if I was being faithful.”  Even in failure, if we speak truth to power, we will at least have that sense of integrity which the world can neither give nor take away.

I don’t know how one can be a good American without believing this-or even less so, how one could be a good Unitarian Universalist.  To be true to our faith, and to our country’s ideals, I believe we must understand, as our President put it “Each of us in our own ways” must put our hand on the moral arc of the universe so we can “bend it in the direction of justice.”  This is not a matter of partisan or bipartisan politics.  It is a matter of transcending politics and doing the right thing for the common good of all.   In all the ways we can, may we do just that!

Our future is fragile and uncertain. Every day we are presented with countless chances to be anxious and fearful, or to walk in the ways of love. On this Sunday we’ll spend some time considering the power of love in the midst of anxious times.

Reverent Robin Tanner currently serves as a Resident Chaplain at Presbyterian Hospital in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Originally from Upstate New York, Robin is a graduate of Harvard Divinity School.

Please join us in welcoming Reverent Robin Tanner to our pulpit.

That wise observation was stated in an email from someone in response to a “thank you” note I had sent for the caring ministry this person and others had extended to our members who needed support.

Wise indeed. And this little comment reminded me anew how important our Fellowship is and the work we do together. It goes without saying that if we truly believe in the interdependent web of all existence, our faith must begin with how we relate and care for one another within our own community. In fact, I believe a caring community will be a transforming community, i.e., our lives will change for the better. Otherwise, why be in a faith community?

All of our work as a Fellowship should be transforming work. In some way, dramatically or quietly, your affiliation with UUBCO should change your life. As your minister, my goal is to help make that possible. In other words, if you choose to become a member, and choose to
support this community in every way you can through service, leadership and financial commitment, you should expect that your life will change in a deep and profound way. Is that expecting too much? I hope not.

This change, however, doesn’t happen by the mere act of becoming a member, but rather happens as a result of the energy and effort you will put into changing your world. Unitarian Universalists at our best do not believe in cheap “salvation”-saving ourselves and our world from meaninglessness. Wholeness and meaning only come from doing the deep and difficult soul work of transformation.

So let me remind you of the actions you can take at the Fellowship that will help us change our world and change ourselves:

• Worship with us regularly-worship helps us to center ourselves, to challenge our assumptions, to realize that we can make a difference, and to connect us to something larger than ourselves.

• Do something to change the world-join our Social Action Committee and take part in our social outreach ministries or social action endeavors. Or help create new outreach
ministries. I’m not the only minister. We are all ministers.

• Do something for someone else-there are many opportunities for pastoral outreach in our shared ministry. Again, we are all ministers.

• Do something for someone else who is not connected to our Fellowship-people are hurting in our world and our community. Kindness and generosity are gifts that are always needed.

• Do something for yourself-take part in one or more of our spiritual or intellectual activities here in our Fellowship. Join a Community Circle group or a book group, adult RE and other activities that offer wonderful opportunities to do something for yourself.

The bottom line is this: by living your faith (your values, the UU principles), you will discover that you have become changed in the process. By changing your world, you will become changed for the better. Authenticity, integrity, generosity and kindness are the gifts that you will receive in living out of the fullness of your character and your faith. That’s how transformation happens and wisdom is learned and the interdependent web of existence is nurtured. See you at the Fellowship.

Jim Covington

What does all this mean? How will a change in governance begin? Well, the process has begun. Many in the congregation have read The Almost Church, Revisited by Michael Durall and found his analysis inspiring. The Adult Religious Education (ARE) class is digging into the text in a group-effort to digest all its implications-join in! In addition, a group of congregants is now engaged in studying the principles of “healthy congregations” that will help us (both members and leaders) make better choices in the future. And as President, I want you to know that your Board is deeply committed to implementing a structure that will facilitate, nurture and promote dialogue, spiritual growth and positive social action. So what should a concerned, committed member do? GET INVOLVED. Don’t sit on the sidelines and expect the conversation to come to you. Participation is easy: engage your fellow congregants and Board members in dialogue; seek out the groups that are discussing Durall’s book; reach out to members studying the attributes of healthy congregations and ask questions. In short, the responsibility to participate in congregational life is a choice.

Did I say the process of change has begun? On January 24, 2010, the Board convened our second “mid-year” corporate meeting to solicit member opinions on various issues. The group discussed many issues including whether to publish our Handbook/ Directory on line next year (at considerable savings) and if so, how to best protect personal information, such as home addresses and telephone numbers. An ad hoc committee (Des Fitzpatrick, Bethany Swanson and Patrick Varekamp) will study the security issues and present the Board with a report listing the alternatives and proposing a recommendation. We also discussed whether the Fellowship is ready to vote on changing the name of our congregation. You may recall that an ad hoc committee to consider a name change was formed in 2008 and recommended that our name be changed to the “Unitarian Fellowship at Croton-on-Hudson.” The motion to change the name was tabled at the 2009 annual meeting to give members more time to think about the name and discuss its merits. The congregation voted to continue this discussion on March 7, 2010 at 12:30 p.m. If you are interested in this issue, please attend and participate in the discussion. And, although the congregation deferred action on changing the name of RE, our RE Director, Peggy Clarke, will address members on March 7 and discuss the rationale for changing the name of the RE Committee to the Committee on “Lifespan Faith Development.” Some “official” corporate business was also conducted at our mid-year meeting; the congregation voted overwhelmingly to reduce the size of the board to seven. A seven member board will, in theory, promote more focused discussion on the big issues-a small, but significant change in our evolution and governance.

I would also like to announce the formation of the 2010 Nomination Committee. I have appointed Patrick Varekamp, Eddie Fried and Bethany Swanson to serve as the Nominating committing in anticipation of our annual elections in June. If you are interested in serving on the Board, please talk to them and make your interest known.

Rick Turner, President
Board of Trustees

Gregg Kullberg at the 9:00 a.m. service; Fellowship Choir at the 11:00 a.m. service.

Keith Harris at the 9:00 a.m. service.

Spirits in Harmony at the 11:00 a.m. service.

But where to begin the story of our relationship?  I suppose it has to begin over 50 years ago when at the age of 17, I was ordained as a Baptist minister. Much has happened since then of course. As many of you know, I eventually became disenchanted with Southern Baptist fundamentalism. Primarily for two reasons:  the first one being that I could no longer abide by the belief that only those who were born again believers in Jesus Christ would be saved and go to heaven.  Such a god seemed very contrary, rigid, paternalistic and small…The second reason I left was because of the Southern Baptist stance against the civil rights movement.  After seminary and while I was serving as associate minister of a Baptist congregation at Gaithersburg, Md.,  outside Washington D.C. in 1967, I began to spend most of my time visiting Tent City otherwise known as Resurrection City in our Capitol, where thousands of African Americans had camped out on the mall under MLK’s leadership to focus the nation’s attention on the rights of its black citizens and particularly to pressure Congress to pass legislation to address the employment and housing issues among the poor. 

My Baptist congregation did not welcome my sermons on the subject, nor would any join me in visiting with and supporting the campers of Resurrection City.  After Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were both assasinated in the following year, Resurrection City closed down and I left the ministry altogether to work as a counselor in the anti-poverty Job Corps program in Jersey City.  I counseled and worked with high school dropouts, mostly nonwhites, from the poor inner cities and rural regions of the country. I did that for about ten years. During that time, my wife and I divorced and I attained custody of our two children and moved to New York City.  I entered psychotherapy and remained in therapy for about 12 years. During this time I went back to school and pursued post-graduate training in psychology, which I had loved studying in seminary. I eventually received certifications in psychotherapy and marriage and family therapy.  Eventually I started a private psychotherapy/marriage counseling practice which I hold to this day.  I directed the New York Society for Bioenergetic Analysis for a few years and also founded and directed the New York Center for Men.  During this time, while a single father,  I also became an active member of the Judson Memorial Church in the village, a liberal Christian congregation which strongly supported women’s rights, gay rights and the civil rights movement and offered a magnificent ministry for the arts, especially music and dance.  Judson church represented the Christian faith at its best.  I served on the Board for a while and I learned a lot from Judson’s minister, Howard Moody, about ministry while I attended that congregation and have used that model for my own ministry. 

Eventually, I became interested in Unitarian Universalism after I read an interview essay in the New York Magazine with Forrest Church, minister of All Souls.  I decided to visit the congregation and immediately decided to join it.  While I was happy with my affiliation with Judson Memorial, I realized in my heart I held beliefs more akin to the principles of UU. 

Interestingly, as soon as I became a UU, the “calling” I had experienced at the age of 16 to preach, returned…It was a kind of mid-life crisis time for me.  I loved my work as a therapist, but I also loved to speak about the larger questions of life within a theological/spiritual frame. And I loved striking the depths of those questions within a community of faith….So I met with Forrest Church and John Buhrens, the ministers at All Souls, in 1989 to discuss the possibility of becoming a UU minister.  John Buhrens told me, urged me in fact, that if anything else interested me, I should do that instead of ministry. Well, building on that positive support, aside from my work as a therapist, nothing else interested me…I chose to heed the calling.  Eventually, John gave me the name of our District consultant at that time who I called and met for lunch, after which he notified Peter Rinaldo, president of the UU BCO, which was looking for a one Sunday a month preacher.  Peter invited me to speak.  I preached on the subject “do the right thing” in November of 1989.  (I preached on the same subject two Sundays ago, 20 years later) The Fellowship then invited me to be their minister. 

Then in January 1990, Peter Rinaldo met me at the train station and introduced me to the congregation as its new minister. The rest is history. I was eventually asked to preach twice a month, then every 5^th Sunday was added to my contract……I also played the piano, led the singing, and would occasionally sing a solo (yikes) in addition to preaching.  The congregation has grown from about 50 members and friends to now about 150 members and friends. 

We were a family congregation.  Everybody knew everybody.  The members were extraordinary human beings, just like you!  They were characters and I will never forget them.  Doris Menonne recently mailed a copy of one of her journal pages that she kept back then about one of the Sunday services that year on Mother’s Day….We are up early before eight o’clock. This is the day we start the vacation we call “the trip to the American West.”  After breakfast, we pick up Lee and arrived at church atound 10 a.m.  Rev. Jim Covington is to give us a sermon on “Why Religion?  Who needs It?”  The church is almost full.  There are new faces and I sit next to an African American woman, who tells me she knows Rev. Covington and has come to hear him preach. 

For Mother’s Day, Lanny Eliot has witten a skit-a telephone conversation between her and her mother.  I play her mother and we have brought telephones along as props.  We are well received.  The point is that there doesn’t really need to be a Mothers’s Day between loving mothers and loving children. 

Jim’s sermon is well-thought out and he says all existence is life, love and death.  Can anyone argue with that?  Stephanie wants us to end with a “rousing hymn”.  Bea starts off with “He’s got the whole world in his hands.”  But I decide not to sing that one.   Then there is a salad luncheon and we leave immediately thereafter saying “goodbye” to all… 

And so it goes. 

 In 1990, we had one student in RE-Lauren Croft, daugher of Bearnie and Bob, who is now married, pregnant and studying psychology!  Eventually Bill Sperling and then Elizabeth Gillespie became our DRE and RE grew from 1 to about 65 children, maybe more..RE has always and remains a top priority for our ministry and I am pleased to say that for most of these 20 years, we have experienced, limited as we are with staff, training and space, a thriving RE.  With Peggy Clarke’s professional leadership, I am more positive about our RE program than ever… 

In fact, I will boldly pronounce, that since I have been your minister we have really turned things around.  Originally, there was a high platform at the other end of this room, and atop that, a  pulpit, from which the minister would deliver his sermon.  I did not like preaching so high up, so I moved the pulpit to the side on floor level, next to the piano. A few years later,  Dave Morkal and company brought their tools and tore down the platform and moved the pulpit to the other end of the room where I am now standing. We needed the space and the renovation allowed more seating for our growing congregation. So we turned things around. Later, Dave also built this pulpit I stand behind now and designed the chalice symbol.  Interestingly when we turned things around, a few people noted for the first time that we have a cross in one of our stained glass windows and objected.  We had a huge debate about whether to remove it.  We voted not to.  It’s a work of art and should so be honored and preserved. 

There are so many high points I could share, but here’s two or three that stand out in my mind:  Peter Callaway led us to becoming a Welcoming Congregation-for which we studied, processed and identified ourselves as a Congregation that is inclusive and expressive of the concerns of bisexual, gay, lesbian and/or transgender persons in all aspects of our ministry. 

In 2003 we started offering two services on Sunday morning. Major change. 

About 12 years ago, Spirits in Harmony came into being…after I had invited a women’s choral group, Olympia’s Daughters to sing one Sunday.  I was approached by Laurie, Betsy, Kathy and Bearnie afterwards who simply announced “we can do that!”  Wow!  The rest is beautiful history. About the same time it was decided that people couldn’t tolerate my piano playing anymore, so we hired a new one-someone who could really play Bach and Beethoven and everything else-Erika Schenker, who brought along her partner, Roberta Kosse, of course. The rest is history.   I am enormously proud of our music ministry and last year we hired our first music director, Keith Harris, who has enriched the ministry even more by directing our 20 member Fellowship Choir. 

There are countless memories and stories I can tell, but don’t have the time.  Here are some reflections on ministry:

Ministry is about lots of things-but it’s mainly, fundamentally about relationship-listening, connecting, supporting, forgiving one another and together working for the common good.  I once walked into the hospital room to visit someone and she sat up in her bed and blurted out “Oh, my God, it’s worse than I thought!”  This is the most important thing I do, to be with you when you are hurting and lost.  When you lose a loved one.  When you are ill.  When hope is almost gone…How can I preach, but out of that knowing?  Out of that relationship?

I love preaching.  I love being with you in this special way, when our community is all gathered together.  Before I preach, I look out into the congregation and I see you, and I think of your stories.  I even see you in my mind while I am writing a sermon.  And then I speak.  But  you know the sermon is not on this printed page.  It is not in the words I speak, it’s not in this script.  The sermon happens somewhere between us, somewhere in the middle out there. I think of God as being “in-between.” While I am preaching, if my heart is in the right place, I become a vessel of the Spirit-not because every sermon is great, no, but because my love for you is great, and I am here for you, receiving you.  And if you bring a soul that is longing to hear, you will hear what you need to hear, far beyond what my poor words would suggest.  And each of you will hear a different sermon.  That’s the magic that happens here on Sunday mornings.  

To me, Sunday worship is the most important hour in a minister’s week.  I am minister then to everyone.  I can cut myself into tiny pieces during the week but I will still fail to meet the majority of your spiritual needs.  But I can meet or try to meet these needs on a Sunday morning, with a thoughtful sermon that people may mull over for days.  Then, I strike the depths with you, even as I am now,  and we ground ourselves anew in the mystery of being. 

What is the hardest thing about being a minister?  Well, all human beings have unconscious longings and wishes, and day in and day out we cast these idealized pictures onto leaders of all kinds, everything from politicians to sport stars to religious figures. In church these feelings can gather particular force and energy.  It is here where people feel particularly vulnerable, because it is here that we bring the deepest concerns of our hearts.  We ministers become Mother, Father, God, and Boss.  We become every authority figure people have ever been unhappy with,.  Or we carry the congregants’ goodness as they project that upon us.  (It’s not my goodness, it’s yours.) 

When the minister becomes a larger-than life-Holy Person, a kind of walking Sunday, woe unto him, then, if he ever shows some human characteristic-above all, anger.  Woe unto him if he speaks sharply or looks past someone, or says something dumb that totally misses the mark. 

The other piece of ministry that is particulary hard comes out of the very privilege of being a minster.  I grow to love you-not just as a congregation, but as particular human beings, foibles and all.  It’s like being the parent of large extended family.  Then from time to time, I lose some of you. Sometimes you leave without saying goodby.  And sometimes Death comes calling.  I’m not just a professional person, who can remove myself from my feelings when a congregant I love falls sick or dies.  I grieve too.  I hold those feelings back while I’m preparing the memorial and conducting the service.  But I remember all the ones who have gone:  Harry Schactner, George Kelly, John Thomas, Helen Ewing; Cynthia Morehouse, Angie Mennone, Thea Cavanaugh, Charlotte Tuckerman, Kerry Hocutt, Tom Stoner, Dirk Barrett, Hollie Stand… These and so many more have touched my life so deeply, and I have had to let them go. It’s like that, isn’t it?  It’s the price you pay for loving. 

Here’s another point:  I have learned that I must first and foremost minister to the health of the congregation, not to its sickness.  At times being a minister is a bit like being a playground superintendent: calling for time out, and helping people play nicely.  After a while it becomes a habit.  Most people enjoy when they play nicely.  Some don’t.   Criticizing, ostracizing or demonizing people only entrenches them into deeper opposition.  Forrest Church once advised me:  “Jim, the best thing you can do with someone who is getting your goat, is to give it to them.  You don’t need your goat, you really don’t.  And the best way to accomplish this is to pray for them.  Fix them in your mind’s eye.  Pray that they will find the peace and satisfaction that is missing for them.  Remember that they too were, against all odds, mysteriously born and one day will die.” 

What have I needed from you-to keep loving, and leading?  I have needed your joyful participation in the life of the Fellowship-I need to see you here on Sunday morning, singing Spirit of Life, and feeling the great and joyful energy of this church.  I need to see you working for racial justice, gay rights and earth’s rights,  marching for a cause you believe in and caring for one another when someone falls ill. 

And what do I need from you personally?  I need your trust-your trust that I would never betray you.  Not that I’m perfect-far from it.  But I need you to trust in my goodness towards you. And, though I try hard not to, I will fail you at times, and I need your forgiveness. 

This is a great, vital, creative congregation.  We are blessed with an abundance of talent.  We have formidable challenges ahead of us as we adjust our leadership roles and policies to facilitate our mission and vision. Our facility is a major challenge in terms of upkeep and how to better accommodate our present and future growth.  I believe our energy and growth will come through our Sunday morning experiences in worship, through music and arts, through a dynamic RE program and social justice outreach and welcoming all who enter these doors.   How are we going to keep that going?  Obviously more staff time is needed on all fronts-worship ministry, RE, music and outreach…But it’s mostly going to be kept going by you! 

My vision is of a reglious community in which every person is of infitnie worth and dignity, yet in which there is a common transforming faith which gives the community a unifying power to do the work of transforming the world.  I hope that vision defines my ministry. It is why I have been here for twenty years. 

And lastly, only you can transform yourself from being part of an audience watching a preacher perfom-to a congregation, a community of faith, holding each other, nurturing each other, inspiring each other, empowering each other, enjoying the wonder of it all…together. 

I thank you for the remarkable gift you have given me:  this twenty year ministry to you and with you and from you.  I am grateful, eternally grateful, for the privilege of serving you.  You have charged and recharged my spirit.  You have opened my heart.  You have invested my life with purpose and given meaning to my days.  I love you…God bless us all.

            First, some notable accomplishments by our committees stand out and merit recognition.  For example, the Fund-Raising Committee, chaired and nurtured by the indefatigable Ginny Stillman, organized and managed a terrific Crafts Fair in December that brought in ±$1,400.00 (!).  This was the first year we have hosted a craft fair and look for it again next year as all who attended this event agreed it has the potential to become an annual tradition.  This past Summer and Fall the B&G Committee tackled some big jobs that everyone can appreciate: gravel was added to the lower parking lot (eliminating the mud bog), our electrical system was upgraded and improved (with the help and advice of the Green Sanctuary Committee), exterior lighting was added to illuminate the upper parking lot and a new room in the basement has been refurbished and made suitable for use. The Membership Committee also had an inspirational Fall: many visitors have been welcomed and numerous visitors have been moved by our mission, minister, and Fellowship to take the next step and join as members!  (If you attended our Christmas Eve service you know how our numbers have grown!)  The Music Committee has become established, enriching both the participants and Fellowship with song.  Sharing and Caring continues to provide support to our members in need and the Religious Education Committee, together with our RE Director, Peggy Clarke, is administering a model program with attendance reaching an all time high! 

            If I neglected an accomplishment (and I am sure that I did), I apologize, but this brief recitation is only a small fraction of what we (yes, including you reading this) have accomplished.  We can do more (!) and we will do more (!!), as our standing committees re-organize and recommit themselves to serving our Fellowship-while simultaneously  sharing in the fellowship of service.  Look for the 2010/11 Committee Sign-Up sheets in the Morehouse Fellowship Hall throughout the month of January.

            In addition to the committee re-organization, a number of significant events will be held in January.  On January 9, there will be a “leadership conference;” an attempt to discern where we want to go and how we can best achieve our goals.  As I have said many times, we are all leaders, so we are anticipating a healthy attendance!  The Saturday seminar/workshop begins at 9:00 a.m. and runs to 3:30 p.m.-lunch will be provided. 

The following day, Sunday, January 10, immediately following the coffee hour, the congregation will re-convene at 12:30 p.m. to hear Doug Zelinski, a representative from the UUA Metro District, discuss with the general membership the rewards and challenges faced by a growing congregation (that’s us) and how we can make the transition to a larger format successful.  Please note:  We will not celebrate Jim’s 20-year anniversary on January 10 (the actual anniversary date) as previously announced.  Instead, this historic event will be celebrated, commemorated and acknowledged on January 24 when Jim’s sermon will be a reflection on his years here with us-I’m sure it will be a very special service.  I apologize for any confusion this change may cause.

            On January 24, immediately following the celebration of Jim’s 20 years with our Fellowship, the Board will convene a special “mid-year” corporate meeting to discuss various issues of concern, including whether (i) we are ready to change the name of this  Fellowship; (ii) whether the Directory, and all the home addresses and private phone numbers, should be posted on the web, or published in hard copy; (iii) whether holding the June annual meeting during the worship hour is appropriate, and so on.  I’m really looking forward to the month of January and I hope you are too! 

Rick Turner, President, Board of Trustees

Much has happened over these 20 years, of course.  What is closest to my heart is our growth in the Spirit.  That is what has made everything possible.  We have gone along during these years, you helping me, me helping you along the road.  You have called me to excellence. And I hope that you accept your excellence-and your responsibility-as an institution. 

Ministry is about lots of things-it’s about administration and fundraising and planning and counseling and preaching and witnessing-but it’s mainly, it’s always, fundamentally about relationship.  I often define our work together as a labor of love.  We do what we do, as best we can, with our limited resources, because we love what this religious community represents: our faith in high ideals for the common good as stated so poignantly in our principles. These ideals guide us in our relationships with each other and in our work in the world.  We have our differences and conflicts sometimes, but usually we work through them because our commitment to our faith supercedes our human errors and differences.

Yes, we come together for lots of reasons, but the driving force is always love. The countless hours you give to the ministry and programming of the Fellowship is a labor of love.  Thank you for that.  The reward for such tireless work and commitment is the enrichment of our spiritual nature and depth of connections we shape and form along the way.  We are together, and we move, through the power of the Spirit, to purposes larger than our own.  We may be small in numbers, but we still move to save the only life we can save, in the only world we have been given.  What an enriching journey it has been for me! And hopefully for you!

Over these 20 years, with part-time staffing, we have tripled our membership and our attendance on Sunday mornings.  I am now preaching about three Sundays a month, versus one Sunday twenty years ago. We now have two services. Over the years we have evolved from a family congregation to a pastoral one.  Now we are on the verge of moving toward what is called in the professional circles as a “program” congregation.  In anticipation of this change the Board of Trustees is planning a Leadership Workshop on January 9 and 10.  Surely you have read all the emails about this workshop and hopefully are planning to attend.  I see this workshop as a pivotal moment in the life of our Fellowship.

On January 17, on the eve of MLK day, we will welcome Rev. David Billings, an anti-racist trainer and organizer for The People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond to our pulpit. Check for more information below.

On January 31, we will welcome Rev. Dawn Sangrey, minister of the Fourth Unitarian Society of Westchester at Mohegan Lake to our pulpit.  Actually, she and I will be exchanging pulpits that day as I will be preaching at her congregation in Mohegan Lake.

These are exciting days.  And we have lots of challenges before us.  I wish I could promise you that I will be with you another 20 years… But, alas, I don’t think these legs will carry me that far.  But for the time being, I look forward to nurturing our labor of love as best I can and making this religious community more dynamic, vital, and outreaching than ever…   See you at the Fellowship.  May the Spirit of Life and Love continue to bless us and flow through all we do.  I love you.   Jim Covington

Answering those very questions twenty years ago, this is what I said then:  I am here because there is a force in my life that compels me to be here, not only here as your minister, but as a human being.  And who knows how long it will last.  This is really a kind of a trial run for me, as it is for all of you-to see how I do.  This could be a very brief sojourn.  But I do know that I am here today because I have chosen to be here.  I have chosen to be here because I need to be here.  What do I need?  Why do I need it?  Why do I need to be here?  How can this feel so important to me and yet not so important to many of my close friends?

Then I admitted: It is at this point that I’ve had one hell of a time writing this sermon… but I want to share with you, without being defensive or dogmatic, why I am here this morning.

First of all, I am here because I need community.  I love the community experience I have when I attend church, especially if it is with people whose religious outlook is similar to mine.  I like the support and identity I feel when I am with a bunch of folks like you.  But here’s the point: we are social animals.  We cannot live in isolation and expect to feel worthwhile and connected. The most unhappy, anxious, lost people in my psychotherapy practice are invariably those without community. 

Now there are many communities one can belong to, all of which are important:   the family, the club, a professional group, a personal growth group.  For example I belong to a leaderless men’s support group.  I like to think of this group as a community–a family.  I often call it my family of men.  We have been meeting for 11 years (31 now) and it is definitely one of the longest most meaningful “communities” to which I belong.

Nevertheless, I still have a need to go to a church community.  There is something that happens there on Sunday morning that is special to me, that I do not experience anywhere else.

So I ask myself,  ‘What kind of experience am I looking for?’ Now the word ‘experience’ is important here-for indeed I do hope to have an experience while I am here-not just an intellectual insight, although that is important as well.  What kind of experience is it?

I am looking for a place where I can celebrate life.  I can do this on my own.  I can climb a mountain or watch a sunset, or sail out to sea and experience the wonder of life.  All the above can be wonderful experiences.  But it remains just as important for me at least,  if not more so, to celebrate life with my brothers and sisters-to praise God, or praise the universe, praise life itself-with my fellow humans.  Somehow, being here affirms my existence and reminds me that I am not alone.  Being here helps me to rejoice in life-to perceive it as it truly is-a gift for which I can be grateful.  The life force, the energy of life is so much greater than me, yet I am a part of it.  Life flows through me and I rejoice in it when I am alone beholding a beautiful flower or a magnificent sunset. But that is not enough for me.  I rejoice in life when I can experience it with and through other people.

Second I am looking for a consciousness-raising experience.  This does not always happen.  I may not be in a consciousness raising mood.  But I usually expect something to happen that will make me more aware of something about my behavior, my attitude, and my responsibility to others.  Religion is the human response to the dual reality of being alive and having to die.  Knowing I am going to die immediately places a limit on my life and gives a special intensity and poignancy to the time I am given to live and love.  Awareness of this reality immediately raises profound questions for me.  Where do we come from?  Who am I?  What is my purpose? Why is there something instead of nothing?  Where am I going?  How should I live with others? What is the meaning of this?  Or as Joseph Campbell put it: ‘It is not meaning in life we are seeking, but how to feel alive.’

I like to attend a liberal Unitarian Universalist community because I believe these larger questions about life are raised there and through tradition and revelation my consciousness is raised as to the meaning of my life, for it is in meaning that I do feel alive.  D.H. Lawrence said that for him, ‘religion has little to do with a body of belief and practices.  It represents a gradual process of awakening to the depth and possibility of life itself.’

Lawrence saw religious conversion as an awakening-opening our eyes, becoming more fully ourselves.  And that is what I am talking about.  The consciousness raising experience I look for here come be sparked by  a word, a song, a deed, a look, a silence, a feeling that will help me be more of my self.

Now here’s the other thing:  being here can help me attain  a deeper understanding of my personal life, but it also challenges me to assuming a deeper more active responsibility  to my neighbor.  Martin Luther King, whose birthday is this coming Friday, is the supreme example of what I mean.  King, also a Baptist minister, was able to arouse the consciousness of his people and Americans everywhere to awareness of racial injustice and effect a change in our social structure not seen since the civil war.  From the authority of pastoral commitment and using the platform of the church where his people congregated, people found a common bond and ultimate courage to stand against injustice of racism and pronounce their inalienable rights for justice, equity and compassion.  Even so, King also often critically assailed the church for its resistance to change and adherence to the status quo and its lack of courage,–especially the white middle class segment, to join the struggle for equality and justice.  He was often bewildered by this since to him justice and equity were the bed rock of the Judaic Christian tradition.  His letter from the Birmingham jail struck a deep chord in my life when I first read it and eventually lead me to leave the Baptist ministry and work with inner city children in the Job Corps, anti poverty programs in the 1970’s…  

What I have just recited is what I preached 20 years ago.  I still hold to everything I said then about why I am here:  I am here to nurture spiritual needs and connections with others who are interested in striking the depths of meaning in human existence;  I am here for consciousness-raising, where in the context of worship, religious education(for both adults and children)  and social action, my consciousness will be honed to the moral actions needed by my faith community in the greater society.  I am here to join others in addressing those needs and societal challenges as they become apparent to us through the living of our principles and our growing conscious awareness.

And so this is the way it is for me:  I need a religious community that will help me address, fulfill, experience and act on all those needs I have just defined.  I know many people have difficulty with religion and trusting that any religious faith will allow one to be authentic and free and true to one’s own experience and knowledge.  Sadly, some religions don’t allow that kind of freedom in spiritual growth. 

Nevertheless, this is what I believe. I believe that there is such a thing as an authentic religious calling which at its best, beckons us guides our lives. And I believe that this call has absolutely nothing to do with whether you are a theist, an agnostic or an atheist. I believe that whether you or I answer this call will make all the difference in our lives. If we follow that authentic religious call, our lives will be filled with love, joy, meaning, and purpose, although not without conflict or anxiety. But if we ignore this call our lives will degenerate into banality, disconnection, and emptiness.

I don’t believe that there is anything supernatural about what calls us. What calls us is hope that is grounded in memory and love.

I recall a cartoon I saw a few years ago. It showed a man on his death bed in a huge, opulent room. Seated next to the bed was a woman. The man was speaking. The caption read, “I wish I had bought more stuff.” Actually he did not say “stuff”-but the word on the cartoon is not the sort of word one is supposed to say in church.)

What makes the cartoon painfully funny, of course, is that nobody at the end of life wishes he or she had bought more useless junk.

Think of your fondest memories. Think of times in your life that are most precious. What do you think of? I think of times that I felt deeply loved. I think of moments when I felt fully alive, fully in harmony, fully happy. I think of celebrations and rites of passage with people I care for. I think of memorial services where I deeply mourned and celebrated the life of one I loved.  I think of times I felt like I had done something good and useful. I remember times I worked hand in hand with others.

What are your precious memories? Feel them again for just a moment.

Those precious memories are the foundation for authentic religion. These memories are our religious bedrock-they are as important as any scripture. Why? Because when we remember these precious memories we touch life’s possibilities.

And once we remember what life can be, when that memory lives within and among us, we want life to be that way again and again. Hope that endures is founded upon precious memories. A religious community, a religious movement, is a community of memory, love and hope-memory, love and hope that are bound together.

And hope, a real enduring hope that can shape our lives, is not just some warm feeling. A hope grounded in a deep conviction of what life can be calls us to action. Hope creates unrest. When we remind ourselves of what is good and tender and loving in life, we can never again reconcile ourselves to hatred, to conflict, to superficiality, to oppression, to the destruction of life, to loneliness. A truly hopeful person is never fully satisfied with things as they are.

When this profoundly religious hope lives within us and among us, we look around at our lives and at our world and we know things can be better. We don’t have to tolerate violence, racism, starving children and genocide. In a sense, we have all been to the promised land. And once we have been there, no matter how briefly, we want go there again. Memory and hope create a sense of urgency and a deep, gnawing longing in our souls.

What calls us today? Memory, love and hope call us.

What are we called to be? What is this beloved congregation called to be and to do? What are we called to be as a religious faith?

I believe we are called to create a place for laughter, friendship, caring and service. We are called to take everything we know about what is precious in life and to make it real, to share it with one another, and to join hands to heal this crazy, broken, frightened world.

Actually, look again at this congregation’s mission statement. It speaks of nurturing our spiritual community, searching for truth, and serving the world.  It works for me. Nurture, share, serve.

Today, I believe we are at another pivotal point in our history.  It is a commonly-quoted growth formula that the culture in a congregation changes every 20 years or so with each new generation of leaders.  I see this in the interests of the members in their 60s and 70s which are different from the interests of those in their 40s and 50s which are different from those in their 30s with young children.  One of the reasons we have asked Doug Zelenski to lead us this weekend in a workshop on leadership is to help us determine how we can now continue our growth, renew our vision, create new leadership, and serve the larger community.

Happily, I believe love thrives here most of the time. Sometimes, I believe a stone would feel it. We have done much to nurture this spiritual community-all the way from being a village raising our children to filling this sanctuary with music to caring for the sick to becoming a welcoming congregation. 

But we are still called. We want to create a community that does more to weave together the generations. We want to become a truly inclusive multicultural and economically diverse community that reflects the growing diversity around us. We need more depth in our spiritual lives, for we live in a world of superficial distractions. We can do all of this. 

And what about us as a religious movement?   We are called to be a religious home for the hundreds of thousands who are seeking a liberal, open, free religious community.  Shame on us for hiding our light under a basket!  We are called to open our hearts and doors. We are called to revitalize this faith and to make it an even stronger force for compassion and acceptance. We are called to bring forth a new generation of leaders that take us into a multicultural future.

Memory and hope demand it. We must not settle for being a tiny, elite enclave trapped by tradition on either the local level or within our Association.  Our heroes and heroines have always been restless people-people who embraced the future and who saw possibilities. Hope, you see, called to them. And it calls to us today. The possibilities for us are breathtaking.

Our people all across this country and beyond want to recapture this spirit of hope. I am excited and scared to death.  It makes me anxious!  There is so much to do!  Can we do it?  Will I be overwhelmed?  I don’t consider myself “a joiner!” Will I lose myself if I join this faith?  How much is this community going to cost me?  Cost me my self-identity?  Cost me time?  Cost me money?  Can I risk being myself and open to others without fear?  

This is the anxiety in every growing, changing, demanding community of faith…It’s why some people won’t join-they can’t get past the anxiety.  It’s why some congregations never revisit their calling, revamp their leadership, or ask for deeper commitment from one another:  there’s a scary side to being here.   But if we do things right, I believe, the reward of working within a faith community that embraces the principles of love, compassion, justice, open-mindedness, reason, and service can only nurture the longing of the soul-which I believe is our ultimate need… and what is the longing of the soul:  love, connection, meaning and purpose.

But we meet those needs not by gazing at our navels or hiding our name, or being passive about our faith, but by passionate service to this religious community and by evangelistic outreach to the larger community-letting people know about us and  addressing the injustices and the needs of society and making a positive difference in people’s lives.

Here’s the thing: This vision of making a positive difference brings energy and motivation and connection and therefore deepens our love. 

This is ultimately why we as a UU Fellowship are here.  We are here to learn how to love each other.  It is that simple and as all of us know from bitter experience, that hard.  Loving each other is very difficult. Difficult, yes, but I don’t think there is anything else worth doing; for all that is of ultimate value comes from love.  Learning to love isn’t something you can figure out only in your mind.  It is something you learn by doing.

I will close now by quoting the closing words from my sermon Twenty years ago: I consider myself to be a religious person.  All humans are potentially religious. We are the religious animal.  Some are aware of this and some not.  Some fulfill their religious needs privately, or in different ways.  I’m not sure why my religious consciousness is as great as it is.  I have always been aware of it, even when I was 5 years old  and decided that when we die we would come back at plants or animals or other beings…l ong before I ever heard of reincarnation.  I have always had an interest in personal meaning, i.e., how I can BEST express my individuality in the world, as an autonomous person.  But I also have a need to transcend the boundaries of the self and to be part of a more embracing whole.  After all I have said in trying to answer my opening questions, I believe it comes down to this: I am here to be part of an embracing whole.  There are many ways I can serve my community.  I do not have to belong to a church.  But something innate in me longs for the experience of the whole, that will take me out of my self, beyond my self. 

 The root word for religion is “religio” from Latin, meaning “to bond, to bind back.”  Religious faith, at its best, calls forth the uniqueness, assertiveness, and potential of the Self,  while at the same time, also calls that self back to the greater whole, the universal community.  Some of us  call it God.  It is here where I experience that I am part of the Life force that encompasses and runs through all of us.  That Life Force calls forth all the best that is in me-to give back to life, to serve life by loving and serving others.   

After the service, refreshments will be served in the Fellowship Hall. Sign up sheets for refreshments, appetizers, setup/cleanup and parking will be available after each Sunday service this month.

Please contact Karen Witting at 914-293-0844 or wittingka@optonline.net to signup for Greeting, which is a very important and needed function. Thank you.

Fellowship Choir at the 9:00 a.m. service and Spirits in Harmony at the 11:00 a.m. service.

Refreshments will be served after both services.

He goes on to suggest that the evolution of Christmas is reflected to a degree in its music.  As the holiday has become more secular, so have its songs, with religious and spiritual compositions largely supplanted by the banalities of Rudolf, sleigh bells, and Santa.  Many Christians feel that the true essence of Christmas has been lost.   

I found the essay rather interesting and informative in a way, and also calling for some serious reflection…as Feinstein himself shared at the end of the essay:   It doesn’t take Freud to figure out that the sugarplums, holly and mistletoe all tap into a sense of comfort, longing, security and peace that so many fervently desire; that we all wish the clichés  were true.  As Jews, Christians, Muslims, Mormons,  Buddhists and everything in between, we are all more alike than we are different.  That’s something to celebrate.  Indeed.

And how do Unitarian Universalists fit into this magical story? We say we don’t believe that Christ was born as Savior, of the virgin Mary.  Then why are we here singing these old familiar carols?  We do it every year.  There are atheists, agnostics, Jews and Buddhists in our midst.  Aren’t we being hypocrites singing Christmas carols and making a big deal of Christmas? 

No I don’t think so.  That’s because, in my opinion, we focus not on the details of virgin birth, a literal manger, or angels in the sky.  We reference the far-fetched aspects of the Christmas story not as literally true, but as metaphors, poetry, conveyors of truth and meaning which go far beyond the literal story- to a story that reaches for the depths of the human heart.  In fact, we may actually do Christmas right. 

One of my seminary Bible professors actually said that we don’t know enough about Jesus to write a decent obituary, much less an accurate birth story. According to the Jesus Seminar, a symposium of historians and Biblical scholars that met in 1985, Jesus was not born of a virgin, not born of David’s lineage, not born in Bethlehem, no stable, no shepherds, no star, no Magi, no massacre of the infants, and no flight into Egypt. The birth narratives are pure fiction - the stuff of myth and legend - written to impress upon the readers his cosmic importance as Savior, Son of God, Messiah.

And so what?  Despite the fictitious nature of the story, it has captivated people down through the ages. Why?

The birth stories of Jesus are mythology. Mythology in our literalistic time is denigrated because it is not reducible to scientific fact. Mythology is more poetry than prose, and we live in a prosaic period. In this instance, the Nativity stories stand as a sublime portrait of the cosmic birth of a prophet of the human spirit.

The lovely legends surrounding the birth of Jesus break through the matter-of-factness of our time and remind us there is more to life than fact. It isn’t all that easy to celebrate Christmas with integrity. If we are not orthodox believers, what are we celebrating? Can an agnostic celebrate Christmas? A Jew? A Muslim? Our Christian religious heritage presents many of us with a dilemma. On the one hand, there is much there to value and to pass on. On the other hand, many of us struggle with accepting a story about a virgin birth, a bizarre story of a Roman decree that asks every male to go to his ancestral home, choirs of angels, shepherds willing to leave their sheep in order to worship some poor newborn. How can anyone who knows anything about astronomy celebrate a star, guiding wise men? 

So, on the one hand, we face a religious Christmas story that many of us, myself included, cannot accept as literally true. On the other hand, our commercial culture drowns us in saccharine sentimentality and lures us with billions of dollars worth of clever ads to go out and spend our money.

Can we celebrate Christmas with integrity today? Can you and I steer between a naive fiction on the one hand and superficial self indulgence on the other? Is there another way to celebrate Christmas? Is there a way that is faithful to what we believe and to what we hold sacred in life?

I believe there is.

Here’s why: the Christmas story is not really about what happened two thousand years ago to someone else.

The real Christmas story is about us. The true Christmas story is about the future, not the past.

The Christmas you and I should celebrate is not really about Jesus. The story is about us. The story is about what touches our hearts. The story is about the world we long to see. The story is about what makes life worth living. The Christmas story is your story, it is my story, and, most importantly, it is our story. It is a cosmic story!

From the first telling, the Christmas stories were really about the future and our human hopes for the future. The telling of a birth story was a way of getting the listener’s attention. It was a way of saying to the listener that this Jesus was amazing, was miraculous, was the bearer of a sacred message about how to live with one another as human beings.

The message was about hope for the future. Jesus’ message over and over was a message of compassion, of generosity. His message was a message that each one of us is precious. He taught that we should love one another and care for one another. We are all, he said, precious children of God.

Over the centuries the two stories in the scriptures became united into one story. Every Christmas pageant has the shepherds and the wise men together at the stable, blending the two stories.

And more stories get added all the time. Even the story of Ebenezer Scrooge has become an inseparable part of Christmas in English speaking countries. The tale of Las Posadas, of Mary and Joseph, is retold in Spanish speaking countries. Handel’s Messiah and Bach’s Christmas Oratorio are sung by thousands and heard by millions. Carols fill the air. We can fill a small library with Christmas stories that touch the heart.

Christmas has become this enormous container that holds our hopes, our dreams, our sense of what is most precious in life. Christmas is really about us.  It is really about the future. And in light of the shadow side of human nature: war, poverty, oppression, nations threatening one another, do we ever need a story about a future filled with light!

At Christmas we celebrate peace. We celebrate peace because every day we see images of violence and war. We celebrate peace because we cannot take peace for granted. Any story of a savior has to be a story of a prince of peace.

At Christmas we celebrate by giving gifts. We give gifts because, at our best, we want to express our love and our gratitude. We want to be generous-generous to family, to friends, even to people we do not know.

At Christmas we celebrate by sharing. We share because suffering touches us. At our best, we want to help heal the world’s wounds, to alleviate suffering.

At Christmas we celebrate by gathering. We gather with family, with friends, and we gather in community. We gather because, deep down in our hearts we long for community. We would be one with all people.

At Christmas we celebrate by singing. Familiar carols revive treasured memories. The songs express the hopes and longings of the human spirit as only music can. Singing together makes us one.

At Christmas we celebrate by focusing special attention on children. What could be more about the future than our children and grandchildren? Children carry humanity’s message of hope into the future.

Christmas is not about repeating a tired orthodoxy. At its most profound level, Christmas transcends Christianity. All of humanity can celebrate peace, hope and generosity. As Feinstein put it: We are all more alike that we are different. That’s something to celebrate……

To celebrate Christmas, to truly celebrate Christmas, is to affirm everything that we hold sacred, to affirm everything we long to become, to affirm our hopes for a world we are striving to create. Even old Ebenezer Scrooge figured that out.

May you and I celebrate Christmas with all the enthusiasm our spirits can muster. Let us celebrate by sharing hope, by exchanging gifts with those we love. Let us celebrate with acts of compassion. Let us celebrate by working for lasting peace. Let us celebrate Christmas by nurturing the flame of hope in our souls. Let us celebrate Christmas by creating wonderful memories our children will carry with them their entire lives.  

Christmas is about you and me and those we love. Christmas is about our hopes for our future-to heal the broken, to feed the hungry, to bring peace among the brothers and sisters, to make music in the heart. Whose Christmas is it? It is for all who hope for and willing to work for a future of peace and goodwill among all people.  And there you are.  We’ve come full circle, have we not?   Angels we have heard on high–angels calling us to our better nature of love, peace and goodwill.  Glory to God in the Highest-the highest expression of human conscience, human mind and human heart!

Yet, I admit I do sometimes treasure the darkness.  I love its solitude.  I love the sleep the darkness invites me to fall into.  And ironically and poetically, in my darkest moments I have learned the most profound lessons. The darkness represents the fallow period when the light is hidden away. It is the promise, like the coming of the babe at Christmas, that light will come again, will come out of the very darkness-but this is the tricky part. It is the darkness that gives way to light, and then light, to darkness. It is the way of the world, the rhythm of nature. We must learn to praise the darkness as well as the light. For there is a kind of experience that the darkness brings that I treasure. Darkness invites introspection. Darkness leads to the depths of the self sometimes.  Through the darkness we find the light.    

When I was in my late twenties I became very despairing about my vocation as a minister.  I had become deeply disenchanted about a number of things, but especially my ministry.  It was one of the darkest periods of my life.  I felt so anguished in my soul.  I talked about it with my closest friends.  I kept a journal by my bedside where I would write copiously about my doubts and feelings, especially my fear and anger.  I pursued psychotherapy and there I talked nonstop about my confusion, my distaste for Southern Baptist fundamentalism and what other vocation I could choose.  In time, however, the darkness lifted.  I finally made a decision to leave the Baptist ministry and I felt liberated.  I was transformed, actually–transformed by the light of consciousness.  Out of the darkness, came light.  Or perhaps, it was the darkness that led me to the light.  

But the darkness can also represent the demonic in human nature.  Certainly there is much darkness in the world today-terror everywhere, genocide; war and poverty and hunger abound in addition to economic uncertainty, loss and grief. There are days when I feel so overwhelmed and depressed by the darkness!   Human history is filled with days and centuries of darkness.  Alas, I wish it did not have to be.  Yet, out of the darkness always comes new creation. We have to believe that, don’t we?   As A. Powell Davies once said, “with all our fears and failing, humankind has yet somehow managed to put the brightest of our festivals in the darkest part of the year.”  

Sometimes we can remain in darkness too long.  Perhaps one feels safer in the darkness.    Often times, because of medical or clinical reasons, we have no choice. In those cases, one definitely needs medical help.   But often we do have choice.  Our instinct is to move toward the light-our language, our common expressions, move us there. We say, “Ah, she is the light of my life.” We say, “The light of the Spirit.” We say, “It was like seeing the light of day.” And on and on.

It is significant that various religious traditions have rituals of light this time of year. Of course decorative lights abound everywhere-trees and windows, rooftops and tall buildings.  I love the lights, especially on a clear night in the city. Then, there is the Christian tradition and the light of the star; those of the Jewish faith light the menorah; the celebration of light in the Hindu religion is called Divali; Kwanzaa is a celebration of African culture and community in which the seven candles of Kinara are lit. The Winter Solstice is celebrated by many who are more earth-centered in their religious life, and that is the time of the turning of the darkness toward the light.

But when I am honest, I know that the light and the darkness are one, absolutely and irrevocably entwined. I stated earlier that in my darkest moments I have learned the most profound lessons.  How have I learned the most profound lessons? Usually through pain of loss and longing for connection and purpose. From what source does my truest compassion flow? Ironically, sometimes from despair and loss, when all I can do is “blow upon the coal of the heart.”

I am reminded of when Suzanne and I sat with our friend, Rob, at his hospital bed.  Rob was dying from lung cancer. He was in constant pain. I had had the honor of officiating his wedding.  He had two small children now, one only three months old.  Suzanne and I reached out to him, touched his shoulder, and held his hand and found ourselves weeping, simply loving this sweet human being who was dying. I was angry.  I wanted to shake my fists at God and heaven and demand to know the reason for life’s unfairness.  I wanted to make it right. But we were only able to be with him, in tears. Maybe, I thought, that was the best thing I could offer. Not advice, not even prayers, but just our tears and our love…”blowing on the coal of the heart.”   

We Unitarian Universalists are not easily led into the shadow side of our personalities. No, we try to talk ourselves out of these unreasonable feelings. If anything, we are a reasonable people. You know the old joke. A Unitarian Universalist dies and rises up toward the Pearly Gates. He comes to a sign pointing in two different directions: one says, “This Way to Heaven,” and the other says, “This Way to a Discussion About Heaven.” He, of course, follows the second path.

Well, if that were me nowadays, I think I would choose the first sign.  I have had enough discussion about the questions.  Just let me sit in heaven for a while. Or just let me sit in the darkness and listen to the silence.

I remember the time when I was called to the home of a woman who told me that she needed spiritual guidance. She was highly intelligent, a very well-educated professional. After a few introductory pleasantries, she began to seek my advice about her search for deeper meaning. She had a stack of books about two feet high, as I remember, and she began asking me about various titles. “What do you think of this one?” “What about this author? Do you know his work?” I grew quiet. My answer surprised her, I think. I said, “The answers are not in these books. You have all the answers already. Put the books away and listen to the voice within.” We must become listeners in the darkness, sometimes-listeners who have nothing to say.  All we can do is “blow on the coal of the heart.”

Parker Palmer, a Quaker educator, writes of the death of his father: “A few years ago, my father died. He was more than a good man, and the months following his death were a long, hard winter for me. But in the midst of that ice and loss, I came into a certain clarity that I lacked when he was alive. I saw something that had been concealed when the luxuriance of his love surrounded me-saw how I had relied on him to help me cushion life’s harder blows. When he could no longer do that, my first thought was, “Now I must do it for myself.” But as time went on, I saw a deeper truth: it never was my father absorbing those blows but a larger and deeper grace that he taught me to rely on.”  The darkness of death took Palmer to the illumination of truth, lent him grace.

Writer Mary Gordon had a very different sort of father.  She lost him when she was just seven years old.  When her mother spoke the words, “Your father’s had a heart attack,” and later when the hospital called and said that he was dead, she new that everything she had known would come to an end.  She adored her father, she idolized him, and since she did not know him, she made him into the father she wanted him to be.

When Mary Gordon became older, became a writer of some repute, she decide to find out just who her father was.  For her, he was the shadow man, never revealing his true identity.  She had, as she said, a hunger for the living man.  But what she learned was profoundly disturbing.  He was a Jew who was anti-Semitic.  He was a writer, but when she found the crumbling magazines he had written for, she found that he was a pornographer.  If only he had not been a writer, not leaving a trail.  But she found him, and now what?  Torn apart by the words he had written, she felt she should witness against him.  At the same time, she wanted to run into his arms the way she had done as a child, her tearful face resting on his chest, feeling that place of safety.  She wanted to abandon his words, to misplace them, she writes.  But his words are part of who he was-they are a way of remembering.  She made a resting place for him, in her own words.  Both Parker Palmer and Mary Gordon lost their fathers-one a good man, the other not so good-but the both had to get past the loss, had to get past the image, to a resting place of truth. 

In the darkness that envelopes us now, in the midst of a winter that chills us to the bone, our hearts may turn wintry, and we may think the wind and the cold will never stop. But the season will balance out, and spring will come again, and grace will return.

Our yearning is the very force that draws us to the Holy. Our yearning makes the Holy necessary. Did I say “Holy?”  When I speak of Holy I mean the essence of love that flows through all things and dispels the indifference of the universe and pierces the darkness with divine light and “blows on the coal of the heart.”

Did I say “divine?”  To my poetic mind, “divine” represents that which is whole and pure-the wholeness of truth and the purity of thought that will pierce the conscience like light from the sun.   

Do we want love at the very center of our lives? We say we do. Well then, we must treasure our longing. Perhaps, we must fall in love with love itself. We must find beauty in our yearning. But how can we bear it? In our reaching is our receiving. In our receiving is the love, the peace, we seek. But, we must reach first!

In his play called “J.B.”, one of my favorites of all time, Archibald MacLeish helps us to find the light in the darkness.

“J.B.” is a modern takeoff of Job.  It’s about a contemporary man who loses everything he has, and he struggles to find meaning in the midst of such hopelessness.  Perhaps one could call it a mid-life crisis.  At the end of the play J.B.’s wife, Sarah, returns, to give him a breath of hope.

“It’s too dark to see,” he says.

Sarah replies, “Then blow on the coal of the heart, my darling.”

J.B. asks, “The coal of the heart?”

And Sarah speaks out: “It’s all the light now.  Blow on the coal of the heart.  The candles in church are out.  The lights have gone out in the sky.  Blow on the coal of the heart and… we’ll see where we are…”

Like Sarah, I ask you this morning to blow on the coal of your heart:

In the midst of the darkness of commercialization, blow the mysterious spirit of Hanukkah and Christmas back into flame, just like the children did earlier in the service this morning.

In the midst of grief and sadness and the darkness of despair, blow the enduring spirit of hope back into flame. 

In the midst of hate and fear and uncertainty, blow the sustaining spirit of love back into flame.

Carry that burning coal of love wherever you go.  Let it always be glowing in the darkness.  Let it always show you the way.  Feed it.  Nourish it.  Let it burn bright and warm within you.

Blow on the coal of the heart, my dear, dear companions along the way, and you will see that light out of darkness will come.

             Great Mystery, we don’t understand why we are visited with troubles, with longing, and we want so much to be released.  Help us to have the faith that we need for ordinary days.  Truly, there is a “time to weep, a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance.”  By your love, may we find the good in all the seasons of our lives…Amen.

I like that phrase: “a connoisseur of gratitude.” I also like the idea  of large souled. It seems to me that  Thanksgiving, which we have just celebrated, is the symbolic beginning of the December holidays-a season of gratitude and giving, of being “large souled.” 

Yet, for many, this period of time can turn into an emotional roller coaster ride.  High expectations, mixed cultural messages, memories of past Christmases, both good and bad, financial worries, and family conflicts can turn the holiday season into something that must be merely endured rather than fully enjoyed.  More and more people tell me that they have a good mind to place a personal moratorium on the December holidays.

The question is, however, not whether to celebrate but rather how to celebrate.  And I believe that Sam Keen’s phrase-”a connoisseur of gratitude” is the key.  Rather than expecting the holidays to “give us” something, we might begin with the premise that we can expect to get from the December holidays only what we are willing to give to them. 

Do we ignore the shadows of war, terrorism, poverty and strife that darken this season?   Of course not.  If anything, we turn up the lights. This is the season of peace, so we work harder for peace.  It is the season of giving, so we give whatever we can afford and then for good measure, a little more.  It is the season of love.  And so we love to a fare-thee-well.  This is the season we can cherish what we have, love all we are given to love and return thanks for the gift-undeserved, too often unacknowledged-the gift of life itself.  Be a connoisseur of gratitude. We started at Thanksgiving.  Let it be the December leitmotif for all the holiday celebrations-for Hanukkah and Kwanzaa and winter solstice and Christmas and New Year’s itself. 

As Sam Keen writes:  Make a ritual of pausing frequently to appreciate and be thankful.  Bless the food that nourishes you.  Bless whoever loves you in any way.  Bless your gifts and talents.  Bless old friends, little children, ancient parents.  Bless the musicians who cause your body and spirit to move in rhythm. Bless sleep and waking.  Notice the more you become a connoisseur of gratitude, the less you are the victim of resentment and despair. I love you all… See you at the Fellowship.   Jim Covington

December?!?  Already?  Yes, the leaves have been raked and bagged, and very soon we’ll be celebrating Christmas and marking the mid-year point of the 2009/10 Fellowship year!  Time marches on, and I’d like to take this opportunity to let you know of some very important events coming soon.

            On January 9 and 10, your Board will be convening a special weekend dedicated to understanding the challenges (and opportunities) our growth is bringing.  This weekend workshop is dedicated to preparing for our future.  On Saturday, January 9, Doug Zelinski, the UUA Program Consultant for Leadership Development for our Metro District, will be leading workshops on leadership and growth.  We’ll be discussing the challenges we face (and feel) as we transition from a “Pastoral” size congregation (50 to 100±) members to a “Program” size of 150 ±  members (!!).  The change is very real and I’m sure you have seen it and/or felt it; no longer can we rely on one or two stalwart members to perform essential functions-we need to create and nurture an organizational structure that ensures the doors are locked at night, the windows are closed and new committee chairs inherit the momentum of a vital, effective, and cohesive group dynamic.  The many mundane details that ensure our religious home functions are multiplying, and we need to understand, plan and prepare for our future.  We’ll discuss the roles of our component parts; the role of the Board of Trustees, our standing committees and the congregation and how each relates to one another.  We’ll also get into the “nitty gritty” of “organizational competencies” that are needed to support and sustain our growth to a program-size congregation.

            Who can come?  Who should come?  Of course all committee chairs should make a  special effort to attend, but these workshops are open to all members interested in seeing our Fellowship grow and thrive; in short, everyone who feels a call to serve the Fellowship is encouraged to attend these sessions.  Remember: in a very real sense we’re all leaders, and so I hope everyone interested in church management and organization will attend.  Following our Saturday workshops on Sunday, January 10^, there will be a special meeting with the entire Fellowship at 12:30 p.m. at which time Doug will speak to the entire Fellowship about growth; specifically, what we can expect to change as we grow and . . . what we can look forward to in our future as a larger Fellowship.

            And, there’s more!  On January 24, the Board will convene a “corporate” meeting of the entire Fellowship at 12:30 p.m., immediately following the second service.  This will be the second such mid-year meeting and is an open invitation for members to raise topics of concern, or ask the Board questions on any matter of Fellowship life.  This is a special effort by the Board to reach out to members and discuss important issues, and plan for the year-end meeting in June.  Will we change the name of our Fellowship?  Will the year-end meeting be held on a Sunday or on an evening?  Do our bylaws need refinement, clarification or greater specificity?  Here’s an invitation to work on these issues together.

            So, let the holiday season begin and let us plan for an exciting new year!

Rick Turner, President

Board of Trustees

These days, we are not running short on issues of justice that require urgent moral discourse and action. Last week, I watched a rerun on MSNBC of the sex trafficking of young girls in Cambodia…but it goes beyond that to the issue of poverty and oppression of women and girls all over the world.   Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn state in their own recent book, that far more women and girls are shipped into brothels each year than African slaves were shipped to plantations each year.  They estimate that at least 3 million women and girls worldwide are enslaved in the sex trade; some put the number as high as 12 million.  That’s an international moral issue of injustice.  At home we continue to squabble over the need for Health Care reform…while millions remain without it. Next week leaders from around the world will meet in Copenhagen to debate the issues of global warming and how best to divert it, or in the minds of some, to refute that it even exists.  Then this week, our own state legislature decided to vote down a resolution recognizing same sex marriages…  And while our economy appears to be rebounding a bit, the aftermath of greed amongst our financial corporations continues to wreak havoc, homelessness and despair.   And as national debt grows to exceed two trillion dollars, President Obama has decided to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan. 

The Chinese ideogram for crisis has two figures-one for danger and the other for opportunity.

We live uneasily on the cusp between these two worlds-one defined by hope born of a better vision and the other a not very brave new world of economic crisis, corporate corruption, and a deeper engagement in war.  Our greatest danger is to depend too much on one talented 47 year old president with an engaging smile and good jump shot.  Now for the hard part.  Instead of looking to Barack Obama to save us, every morning we need to look in the mirror, and move from experiencing the Obama charisma to experiencing personal responsibility to save our community, our nation, our world, our planet.  There is no one but us.  That’s the way it is in a democracy. 

What is our response?  What is the role of the UU faith in the face of this perfect storm we have created? How should this congregation be involved in building the Beloved Community that Martin Luther King, Jr often mentioned during his battle for civil rights. 

We were up to our steeples in politics last year, but the hum drum work of democracy goes on every day as we rightly refuse to separate our religion from our politics.  And, lest we forget, democracy, the capacity of people to participate in those decisions that affect them, is one of our religious values.  “We affirm and promote the right of conscience the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large.” 

Social action is not the central function of the religious community.  It is one vital function that flows from a religious community which also serves the functions of worship, mutual ministry, and religious education– all supported by a stewardship of time, treasure and talent.  The church teaches not only by what it says, but also by what it does.  And what it does is create a beloved community within the congregation which reaches out to infuse the world with the same values of love and justice.  How well are we living the values of love and justice amongst ourselves?  How vigorous are we in implementing those values in the larger community?  I like to think of the liberal church as a “spiritual center with a civic circumference.”

In such confusing and contradictory times we are easily discouraged.  Unitarian Universalists, a tiny slice of progressive religious faith, wonder about our role in the great scheme of things.  The social landscape is daunting.  How do we get a handle on what has to be done to build a Beloved Community of peace, justice and sustainability?  I suggest one of our primary missions and perhaps our unique mission as a religion, is to be a gadfly on the body politic and religious. We need to have what poet Robert Frost called a “lover’s quarrel” with our world. 

Bill Moyers, Baptist minister, media guru and social prophet, coined a phrase that gives us our marching orders.  He suggests the role of the media is to be a “public nuisance.”  For example he says, “A few weeks ago my colleague Charlie Rose put a question to the new president of CNN, Jonathan Klein.  He asked:  ‘Could there ever be a successful progressive version of Fox News Channel?’  Klein didn’t think so.  He said Fox appeals to ‘mostly angry white men, while liberals-‘you know, they don’t get too worked up about anything.’” 

I believe that Unitarian Universalists need to get “worked up” about the brokenness of this world.  In fact I believe the liberal church should become a “public nuisance,” questioning the conventional wisdom, challenging the status quo, and trying to live out the spirit of the prophets of old.  I see its political role as prophetic-dropping Amos’s plumb line of righteousness over the nation; with Isaiah loosing the bonds of injustice, with Micah doing justice, with Jesus blessing the poor and the imprisoned.  Each of these prophets was a trouble maker in his time.  

One of the most important of these trouble makers of old was Jeremiah, a 6^th century BCE Hebrew prophet who spoke truth to the powers of his age.  He upset his villagers and family with dire warnings as he indicted government policy.  For his diatribes against wealth and on behalf of the poor-the root of the term “jeremiads”-he was in constant trouble and even jailed for a time.  Quite a public nuisance. 

Any objective survey of Unitarian Unviersalist history will reveal that we can boast of a whole host of “public nuisances.”

The British Unitarian scientist and Minister Joseph Priestly really upset the political and religious establishment when he not only supported the French and American revolutions, but also rejected the trinity and eternal damnation. 

Charles Darwin, raised a Unitarian, reluctantly but powerfully challenged the Church of England establishment with his 18598 bombshell book on The Origin of Species. 

The Unitarian preacher Theodore Parker openly violated the Fugitive Slave Law and would have been jailed but for his enthusiastic and overpowering courtroom defense which led the judge to dismiss the trial. 

The Universalist minister Adin Ballou ruffed many feathers with his book on Christian non-resistance, which inspired Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.  Thomas Starr King, Unitarian and Universalist minister, agitated slaveholders with his rhetoric and save California for the Union. 

Susan B. Anthony, long time member of the First Unitarian Church of Rochester, NY agitated people near and far with her laser-like focus on women’s suffrage.  She lived as a heretic, but died as a heroine. 

James Reeb unsettled many a conservative soul when he went to Selma, Alabama, to work with Martin Luther King, Jr. on a voting rights drive.  He paid with his life on the hate-filled streets of Selma.  

Yes, we have a proud history of active prophetic voices.  We celebrate their faith and courage.  But we must ask ourselves, who will celebrate our prophetic voices tomorrow?  Who are the righteous among the nations today?  Who will take risks on behalf of unknown others now?   Who will take the risk of bearing witness to the inhumanity of this era? 

My point is that in bearing witness, we run risks.  To speak truth to power in this turbulent world is to make a “costing commitment,” to be a public nuisance.  For most of us that cost is measured in time and energy.  For some it is a matter of life and death. 

We are not lobbyists, which by self definition indicates self-interest.  WE are religious advocates for a just community on behalf of those who cannot advocate for themselves.  

It is we who must ask the hard questions, like how much do we deserve-economically-morally, while 37 million people live in poverty, 47 million have no health insurance? A How much is enough?  And in a competitive society, what do we do with the losers? 

Are we hopelessly addicted to a wasteful and profligate life style? Are we the victims of our own prosperity?  Economists are now torn between urging the American people to spend in order to stimulate a lagging economy, and bemoaning our history of spending without saving.  But has anyone radically challenged a profligate style that is wasteful of natural resources, pollutes the planet and corrupts our moral and spiritual lives at the same time? 

Will an admirable but ancient scripture dictate how we live our lives in the 21^st century?  Are we to be trapped by a narrow biblical literalism on matter of human sexuality, or are we liberated by a broader vision of what it is to be human?  I have in mind here marriage equality for same sex couples and reproductive freedom for women. 

Is government really the problem, or is it part of the solution?  Does the market have an ethic, or is the late economist John Maynard Keynes right when he said capitalism “is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work for the benefit of us all.”  Is it true that our Masters of the Universe-those all-wise wizards-have managed to privatize gain, but socialize risk? 

I ask you, are we willing to be part of a democratic community by contributing our fair share?  We sometimes forget that if you take all the taxes paid by Americans-income, sales, property, FICA and the rest, the richest fifth of the population pays about 18% of the income, just 1% more than the poorest fifth pay.  Who will declare that this is unjust, that “good fortune obligates,” that those of us fortunate enough to do well ought to put more into the public coffers? Who will remind us that taxes are our down payment on the common good, the price we pay for civilization?  Are we ready to ay our fair share?

How do we become public nuisances? By sermons, through discussion groups of moral discourse here and in the community, through letters to the editor and op-ed pieces, through participation in political parties, through community forums, through conversation with friends and neighbors and fellow workers and other voters, through organizing advocacy groups, through supporting our Associations Standing on the Side of Love Campaign…..and of course, through actively participating in and supporting this congregation’s social action committee.  Justice is always unfinished business. 

This is a teachable moment.  This is a crisis that present both danger and opportunity.  This may be one of those hinges of history in which we ask the most basic questions, discover the most fundamental answers and effect the most transformative changes. 

The question is how we view our relationship to the stream of events that make oup our lives.  Are we mostly bystanders, capriciously rewarded or defeated by events over which we have little control?  Or do we have some active role to play?  Here’s the challenge: everything we do matters, without exception.  After all….all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. 

Unitarian Universalist folk singer Pete Seeger has been a public nuisance for a long time.  He has sung and strummed and spoken for peace and justice.  He once built a schooner called the Clearwater to take people on Hudson River excursions and enlist their support for cleaning up the river.  Although it was a small endeavor, Seeger likened it to a seesaw with one end anchored to the ground by a basket of rocks, while activists were at the other end using teaspoons to slowly fill a basket with sand.  Some day the balance will tip and the rocks will be sent flying into the air.  People will ask:  “How did that happen so quickly?”  It was because of “us and our damned little teaspoons.”  So, let’s get busy with our “damned little teaspoons”, giving life to the shape of justice. 

The Rev. Ron Sala has been Parish Minister of the Unitarian Universalist Society in Stamford (UUSIS) since 2001. Raised a Pennsylvania Dutch Mennonite, he seeks to combine the spirituality and concern for justice he was brought up with and a UU respect for diversity of belief and practice. Ron holds a Bachelor of Arts in English from Eastern Mennonite College and a Master of Divinity from New York Theological Seminary.

Please join the Fellowship on Sunday, November 29 in welcoming Rev. Ron Sala.

Neil Waldman’s “Searching for the Secret Kingdom” will be presented at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship during the 9 and 11 a.m. services. For directions to the Fellowship, visit www.uucroton.org.

Please join the Fellowship on Sunday, November 22 in welcoming Neil Waldman.

Rev. Dr. Len De Roche has served churches in Charleston, WV and most recently at the UU Church of Lehigh Valley in Bethlehem, PA, and at Kingston, MA; and as a Pastoral Counselor psychotherapist; and as a Chaplain at the University of Chicago Hospital.  His first career was as an USAF officer where he flew jets for about 12 years until he broke so many they sent him to maintenance to fix them. He ended his military career closing bases after the Berlin Wall crumbled. He lives with 300 pounds of frisky Labradors in Bethlehem while pursuing part-time ministry and works a “day job” for a fortune 300 investment firm.

Please join the Fellowship on Sunday, November 15 in welcoming Rev. Dr. Len De Roche.

Fellowship Choir at the 11:00 a.m. service.

Your Board met for its regular monthly meeting on October 21, 2009, to discuss a host of issues, including setting a date for the mid-year membership meeting. The mid-year meeting will be held on January 24, 2010, in the sanctuary at 12:30 p.m. Mark your calendars and please make an effort to attend. This meeting is an opportunity for members to interact with the Board and raise any aspect of Fellowship life that they want more information on, or simply want to discuss. One issue that I look forward to discussing is when to have the 2010 annual meeting; should it be held on a Sunday (in lieu of a service) or on a weeknight (as discussed at the 2009 annual meeting)? And what about changing the name of our Fellowship-that issue was tabled in June 2009 to allow time for reflection.
Have we reflected?

At the October 21, 2009 meeting, the Board voted to appoint Gerry Peet to fill the vacancy created by Michael Schwartz’s decision to resign from the Board. Michael will be missed for his many contributions, including always “sensitizing” Board discussions by focusing on the impacts that flow from policy decisions. Many, many thanks to Michael for all his work on behalf of the Fellowship. In addition to welcoming Gerry, the Board also had fruitful discussion with the new chair of the Stewardship Committee, Catherine Marsh. Catherine has some professional training and expertise in the non-profit area and we are looking forward to seeing that committee re-vitalized. Stewardship is an essential component of a healthy congregation; an active, vital stewardship program creates the capacity to fulfill long range plans. If you are interested in getting involved in this exciting endeavor, I encourage you to give Catherine a call and discuss it further; it’s a fascinating area and it’s vital to our future.

The Board is also in the process of developing a covenant outlining how we do business. We began this discussion at our September retreat and at the October meeting a draft was circulated for members to sign. But rather than sign, we chose to continue the discussion of what certain passages really meant and decided to defer adopting the covenant until we reached a higher comfort level. Adopting a covenant is a fascinating process that can prompt some profound discussion. B&G is in the process of adopting a covenant, and I encourage all other committees to devote (at least) one meeting to discussing how your committee will function and conduct its decision making. Consider adopting a covenant of reciprocal promises that govern how you go about your work. Will your committee have regular meetings? (I hope so). Will your committee “vote” on issues via e-mail? (I hope not!).  How does your committee connect to the mission of the Fellowship and the principles of UUism? Significant responsibilities are delegated to our standing committees and it’s then up to the committees to discuss and establish how decisions will be made. I believe that how committee duties are fulfilled is just as important as the result.

On a personal note, I have not been around on Sunday as of late. Since August, I have been spending the weekends in Elmira with my father; he passed away on October 16, 2009. I want to thank you all for your notes and expressions of support; it really, really helps.

Rick Turner, President
Board of Trustees

But politically and economically, we are all over the map. Most of us are politically more liberal, but many are also more conservative. This does not matter to me. I welcome the diversity as long as we can respectfully honor each other’s differences, listen and debate respectfully. In the best sense, conservative implies tradition, caution and protection from loss. Liberal implies freedom, open-mindedness, and reform. We adopt the values of each according to our respective needs, our world view, and the call of the times in which we live. There is truth in each perspective. Each can become extreme.

As a religious community, I would want us to respect each other’s differences of opinion, whether they are labeled conservative or liberal. In a recent conversation, someone said to me, “The better we understand those sitting in the pew next to us, the more likely we can deal with the profound differences in our country and our world. Let’s start by making everyone feel welcome in our congregation.” And I would heartily say amen to that.

Interestingly, I was recently reviewing some old notes of mine from our last Fellowship retreat, about 6 years ago. At that time we voted on what we considered our most important goals. The one that received the most votes was to retain intimacy. My notes indicated that the path of intimacy would run through our interchange and our work together. I certainly don’t read it to mean that we want to be a “private” congregation where we mostly pay attention to each other’s feelings and our search for personal truth without attending to the needs of society and to work for justice. God forbid!

Yet, we all do seek human connection, a deep connection, especially in a culture that fosters shallow consumerism and superficiality. And in a world that can sometimes feel very dangerous, we want to feel safe with one another. We also want to feel respected in spite of our differences of opinions about economics, politics and social issues, even theological contentions. These are high expectations, but they are worthy ones.

Our world remains troubling and in upheaval. Political rhetoric is more contentious than ever. In the midst of the ferment, I would challenge us all to work hard to foster the connections we still need with one another as we nurture our families, live our lives, and work for justice and the common good. The intimacy we seek must ultimately help us to live our principles, our core values, not only with one another but in the world around us. Otherwise, it will remain only a self-involved intimacy. Courage. I love you all. Jim Covington

That memorial service, by the way, occurred the same weekend of another powerful and moving memorial service for one of our own, Holly Stand, here in this room. In addition, I know that many of you have experienced and shared your own losses in the last year. 

I have led many memorial services in this room.  There are more than a few gracious ghosts sitting in the pews.  I have grieved the loss of family and best friends throughout my life.  I attended my first funeral when I was five.  I witnessed the moment of death holding my first pet dying in my arms when I was six and years later at the bedside of my best friend when I was thirty-three and another best friend a few years ago.  I witnessed the death of a young man lying on the street where I live only a year ago.  Whatever our theology, how and why we live and die are the ultimate religious questions, with which, for some reason I feel I have always dealt.  Sometime, it seems, I am a midwife to death and grief, ever seeking to deepen my own understanding of such fundamental human experiences as suffering, loss and pain. 

In this regard, for the last twenty years, those who have gathered in this room have been my finest teachers.  The pain and suffering you and others before you have shared with me weekly is humbling and profoundly moving.  Your courage,  your openness and the nobility of your struggles-even when you feel they are anything but noble, anything but good-inspire me with the resiliency and depth of the human spirit.  In any given week, people in this congregation are fighting for their lives, struggling with every kind of loss and grief and pain.  What I have learned from you is that none of us is alone.  Yes, we cover well.  And we coast sometimes even thrive.  But the path of life is strewn with trap doors.  They can swing open at any moment.  Between right now and the day of our death, none of us is so clever or agile that we will not fall, time and again, into some inner sanctum of the abyss.  What you have taught me is that such moments are as rife with opportunity as they are fraught with peril.  That’s why grief is a sacrament.   We are each fated to suffer, each made of the same clay, the same dust in the wind.  

So I want to talk to you today about loss and the sacrament of grief. We usually associate loss with the death of someone close, but actually we experience other kinds of losses more frequently than death. 

We know loss when we move to a different neighborhood or part of the country and lose friends, familiar surrounding, groups and institutions to which we have been attached. 

We know loss when we change jobs or worse still, when we lose a job and financial security.  Or the job loses its meaning for you.  Or you have lost the vision you had hoped to bring to it. 

We know losses as we grow older, the loss of energy, of memory , of our ability to do certain things we once did, of some of the hopes and dreams and expectations we once had. 

We know loss as our children change before our eyes, go off on their own; or as young adults we know loss when we leave home to go to college or take a job. 

We know loss when we lose a part of our body through surgery such as a mastectomy or colostomy or a limb or when we become paralyzed as a result of an accident. 

Many of us know the loss of a spouse through divorce and with that the loss of the friends we had as a couple, sometimes the loss of a house and other property, the loss of a life dream,  and perhaps the loss of time with children.  One reason divorce is so traumatic is that it involves multiple loses. 

Everyone experiences the pain of loss.  It’s part of the human condition.  Therefore it seems to me important how one handles loss.  Some choose to deny loss or the pain of it and live their lives as though it didn’t matter.  But sooner or later the denial comes crashing down around us and we realize that some part of our soul has been denied its expression.  Like the woman I counseled recently who came to me depressed and despairing of her life, her pain literally tying her stomach in knots.  She eventually let it be known to me that she had never dealt with her feelings about her father’s tragic accident (she has not yet even told me what the accident was) that left him in a coma for 19 years. 

Grief is so very difficult to handle because it is not one emotion, but many.  We experience sadness, depression, bewilderment, anger and guilt, but also joy, love and appreciation.  In my opinion, grief needs always to be shared.  We must connect with people and talk through our pain. “Give sorrow words,” wrote Shakespeare. 

I once led a group coping with loss and grief.  There were perhaps 15 of us, each there for his or her own personal reason.  When I invited each person to say why they were there, there was an outpouring of stories of loss and grief-there were hugs and tears.  By the end of the evening I felt as if a fresh spring rain has washed all of us clean and pure-not that our wounds had all been treated-but that we were bound into a healing community of the spirit. 

As the Irish writer Sean O’Casey said, “life is a lament in one ear, maybe, but always a song in the other.”  A minister hears both daily.  Many of us have a particularly hard time with the lament side of the equation.  

Understandably we are forever hoping for some light at the end of the tunnel-trying to live through some difficulty today in hopes of some delightful tomorrow.  It is hard for us to realize that sometimes there is no light at the end of the tunnel; we must enjoy what glimmers of light we can find in the shadows of the tunnel now.  However, I am convinced we can find meaning, deep meaning, in what I call the valley experience. 

I believe there are three basic kinds of emotional experience-peak, plateau and valley.  We are familiar with peak experiences, a term popularized by psychologist Abraham Maslow.  In the mountain top experience there is a rare convergence of a serendipitous world and a receptive spirit. 

I understand one of the biggest meteor shower events in our lifetime is to take place on Nov. 17.  If we comet seekers are so fortunate as to witness this galactic event through our cloud cover, we will undoubtedly be moved, perhaps to ecstasy. 

Then there are plateau experiences-at once more frequent and less thrilling.  Here we are on a more even keel as we learn to cherish the everyday moments of meaning, showering, driving, working, eating, conversing.  I rather suspect that being together in this house of worship may be a plateau experience for a number of us.  Sometimes I believe we reach heights of ecstasy, a kind of spiritual buoyancy.  Nevertheless, I hope we leave a bit better for having been here.  A steady stride on such plateaus helps some of us keep going when the going gets tough. 

Not surprisingly, valley experiences are most difficult for us, those deep plunges into the rivers of sorrow at the loss of a loved one-whether by divorce or death or a falling out with a family member or a dear friend, or facing our own mortality.  We recall the 23^rd Psalm’s familiar opening, “Yea, though I walk through the valley…” 

We humans do our utmost to avoid such valleys by trying to live on the plateau with an occasional visit to the mountain.  But we know inexorably we will find ourselves in the depths of the valley-whether we face our own finitude and engage in anticipatory grief,  or whether we try to companion one who must deal with their death. 

It is excruciatingly difficult to say something good about the valleys.  They are, to say the least, unpleasant to contemplate.  They seem to spiritually overwhelm both the plateaus and the mountains we have experienced-they tend to make both seem irrelevant and meaningless. It is uncommonly hard to try to be wise about such ultimate matters.  As Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote on the death of his young son, “Sorrow makes us all children again, destroys all differences of intellect.  The wisest know nothing.” 

And yet, as one whose “task is to shore up people before the unfairness of existence,” I struggle to say something that may help to heal broken spirits. 

My own experience as midwife for grief tells me that valleys are fully as meaningful human experiences as are the plateaus and mountains.  In fact, we avoid seeing their significance at our spiritual peril.  There is meaning in the valley. 

I see human beings at their best in such times-strange as that may seem.  When people are face to face with finitude I see them muster incredible courage to face their fate with equanimity.  Not without struggle, not without tears, not without occasional despair and depression. But in the struggle, I observe people take on new meanings for their lives. They find a new vision, a new purpose, a new courage.  And hard as it may be, we ought not deny ourselves or deny others the privilege of grieving. 

The privilege of grieving.  We are most human when we grieve, for it is loving and losing that makes us most human.  The poet Rilke speaks of his “nights of anguish.”  Why didn’t I kneel more deeply to accept you, inconsolable sisters, and surrendering, lose myself in your loosened hair?  How we squander our hours of pain.  How we gaze beyond them into the bitter duration to see if they have an end.” 

The idea of squandering our hours of pain is an uncomfortable one because we want to be rid of it.  We can numb our bodies against physical pain, but there is really no medicine that can protect our souls from spiritual pain.  The pain of grief must come and must be experienced.  

Often as I speak with grieving people, they apologize for their tears.  But tears are healing waters-they are clean and real and necessary for wholeness.  When my father and mother died, when my best friend died of cancer, when our  pet dog died–to be able to cry-to cry alone and to weep with my family, overtime,  was enormously healing. 

In these moments we are most fully human.  In these moments we reach a depth in ourselves seldom touched.  In these moments we are most completely alive.  In these moments the spirit within us is cleansed. 

I find that I go to school to the suffering ones.  Excruciating pain can help reveal the meaning of life.  The dying and the grieving become my teachers.  They travel in a land I do not know well and put up signposts along the way. 

I read of one dying woman who wrote her son “a series of birthday cards up to his 18^th birthday, as a way of trying to support him after she is gone.  Writing those cards charged her remaining months with significance.”  In this way she helped distinguish what is trivia from what is important. 

And so I say it is not true that in the midst of grief, before the onslaughts of an unfair existence, there is nothing to be done.  Medically, that may be true.  But spiritually there is always something to be done.  There is caring.  There is sharing the hard truths of human life and death.  There is grieving together and growing in the valleys.  And there is that inevitable acceptance of the truth that life and death are part and parcel of the same reality. 

Some of you here today have recently lost loved ones:  Mothers and fathers, spouses, lovers, friends and children.  We all die, and when we do those who love us are crippled with grief. 

All I can say is, and I believe it deeply, this too is a sacrament.  The measure of our loss is the measure of our love.  Our grief, though it is always clouded with regret for our own failings, testifies profoundly to the power of our love. 

I am sorry if you are suffering right now.  None of my words will make that better,…But I have learned , from you over time in my own life, that these rights of human passage are sacred rites.  In fact, you can look it up on the Bible: blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted. … Sorrow is better than laughter: for by the sadness of the countenance the heart is made better…the heart is made better. 

In the Jewish tradition there is a story that  “The rebbe is asked a question by a pupil referring to Deuteronomy 66:6: “And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be upon thy heart.” “Why is it said this way?” the pupil asks.  “Why are we told to put these words upon our heart?  Why are we not told to place them in our heart?”  To this, the rebbe answer is: “it is not within our power to place the divine teachings directly in our hearts.  All that we can do is place them on the surface of the heart so that when the heart breaks they will drop in.”  As an ancient Hebrew saying has it, “The only whole heart is a broken heart.” 

May we have the fortitude to face finitude knowing we cannot answer all questions.  May we have faith in life despite the consequences of living it.  May we have the courage of the whole and broken heart.

Second Collection: The Social Action Committee will be holding a Second Collection today to benefit the Coalition for the Homeless.  The Coalition for the Homeless is the nation’s oldest and most progressive advocacy and direct services organization.  For more than 25 years, the Coalition for the Homeless has developed and implemented humane, cost-effective strategies to end mass homelessness in New York City. They are dedicated to the principle that affordable housing, sufficient food, and the chance to work for a living wage are fundamental rights in a civilized society.  Since 1981, through litigation, legislation, and public education, the Coalition has sought a permanent end to the crisis of modern-day homelessness.  The Coalition’s many programs offer immediate assistance to over 3,500 people in need each day.  The Coalition directs 79 percent of funds raised to programs and direct services, consistently earning top rankings from the nation’s leading charity evaluators.  For more information, check out their web site at www.coalitionforthehomeless.org.

His eyes opened.  He looked around and sat up.  I still didn’t know if he was drunk or homeless.  He looked at me and said, “Yes, I’m fine.  Thank you for asking.  I fainted, I guess. I feel ok though.” He then sat up on the edge of the stoop.  I asked if I could get a cab for him to take him home, even accompany him.  “No, I’m fine. My car is down the street,” he said. ”What’s your name?” I asked.  “Joe,” he responded, “Joe Diamond.”  ”Where do you live, Joe.”  ”I live on West 47^th St.”  At which point he toppled over backwards and began having what seemed to be a convulsive seizure.  I yelled out loud for people to help me.  I asked someone passing by to call 911 immediately.  Joe had stopped breathing.  I tried to administer CPR.  The police eventually drove by and intervened.  People were starting to congregate.  An ambulance arrived and administered CPR and oxygen and eventually placed him in the ambulance and took him to Roosevelt Hospital.

That afternoon I looked his name up in the directory and called his home.  I left a message on the answering machine asking how he was and if anyone wanted to know, I had found him unconscious earlier that day and called the ambulance.  If they wouldn’t mind, would someone call and let me know how he is.  A day later, his sister-in-law called to announce that Joseph had died and expressed her deep gratitude that I had taken the time to be with him and comfort him and not leave him alone.  He had died of heart failure resulting from congenital heart defect that he had known about all of his life.  It turned out that Joseph Diamond was a fairly well-known jazz pianist and had recorded a number of CDs of his music. His sister-in-law later visited me at my office. At her request I took her to the spot on my neighborhood block where Joe had fainted. She described Joseph as a very gentle soul, loved by family and friends and invited me to attend his memorial service…She gave me his CDs, one of whom is entitled “Keep Your Dreams.” (See http://www.josephdiamond.com/ )  Needless to say, this incident stayed in my head for days, and still moves me even now.  

I share this story, as I have shared it with a few others, in part because it is one of those experiences that one needs to share because it was such a dramatic and sobering moment,  first filled with fear and hesitancy, followed by a connection with a stranger, followed by sudden alarm and urgency and ultimately death. It was a connection, brief as it was, that made a profound impact in numerous personal ways.  One of the issues I think about is the sad commentary that I was so hesitant to do what simply became a random act of kindness, to help someone in stress.  I think it was Blanche in Tennessee Williams’ Streetcar Named Desire who said that she lived in the “kindness of strangers.”

This incident also set me to thinking about how we treat those who are not strangers, but family members, co-workers, fellow worshippers, the people we meet and greet each day. Sometimes, we don’t treat them as well as strangers!  We have all experienced domestic scenes where tempers flare, work venues where nerves are frayed, situations in which we say and do things in the heat of the moment we come to regret. We have all been there - done that. We have all experienced the unraveling of human civility in our society, the crudeness of language, our growing impatience with others, our arrogant criticisms and name calling. And people - sometimes ourselves - get hurt. (1)

Often it seems we are more criticized than praised, more taken to task than taken to lunch, more scolded than celebrated, more knocked about than boosted up. And what is more, I am frequently guilty of these very sins, often committed mindlessly and sometimes, intentionally.

There is the wonderful meal my wife has cooked for me, but I don’t acknowledge it or express appreciation. Instead, because I’m watching my weight, I complain that it’s too much.  There is the Fellowship member who spends endless hours on a committee project and doesn’t receive a “thank you.” There is the politician who guards civil liberties tenaciously, but who digresses on one issue and I let him or her have it - of course, not having written to praise all their votes of which I have approved. There is the sensitive child who needs acknowledgment by her minister, but I am so busy in my after-church routines, I do not notice, and brush by without a greeting.

There is the waitress whom I chastise because my main course is cold. There is the person in the pew who has the temerity to criticize a sermon, whom I dismiss as a curmudgeon, failing to see what is behind the criticism - and, more important, not really knowing who is behind it. There is everyman and everywoman whom I judge without compassion, criticize without knowledge, condemn without pity.

I walk by the stranger who lies hurt and bleeding on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho, fashioning my own rationale for not helping.

How easy it is to love humanity and we UUs like to hold that banner high; how hard to love the neighbor next door( or in the next room or the next seat or in the pew behind you.) 

The late A. Powell Davies, minister of All Souls Unitarian Church in Washington D.C. put it poignantly:  Our days and night go hurrying on and there is scarcely time to do the little that we might.  Yet we find time for bitterness, for petty treason and evasion.  What can we do to stretch our hearts enough to lose their littleness? 

WE might clarify our thoughts about human relationships with a compelling metaphor of our predicament.  Imagine a group of porcupines huddling together for warmth against the bitter cold of a winter snowstorm.  If they huddle too close, their quills prick, and they must move apart.  Then they feel again the stab of the chilly air and are tempted to move closer.  The trick is to find just the right balance between too close and not close enough. 

Here, each Sunday we light the chalice together, celebrating the gift of life we all share.  We claim in our mission statement to “building a beloved community, committed to nurturing the connections that draw us together.” It is a covenant we share, a promise we make to one another.  We do it because we know our religious reach is beyond our behavioral grasp-because we acknowledge falling short of so lofty a human goal.  We do become prickly at times. What are the obstacles in our path-where are the prickly points in our life together? 

It seems that “drawing boundaries” is the preoccupation of minds incapable of building bridges.  Sometimes we do need boundaries. But have you noticed how often we emphasize the differences between people rather than what they hold in common? 

It is an all-too-human tendency to categorize others-and ourselves-to neatly divide humanity into little piles for evaluation and judgment.  It is quite simply easier that way.  How hard to realize that “we are all more human than otherwise.” 

Ultimately, we are not our roles.  We are not our professions.  We are not our social status.  We are not our titles.  We are human beings hungry for relationship.  We are people who desperately need companions. We are an “I” seeking a “thou” in a human body.

There is the parable of a man who fell into a pit and couldn’t get himself out. A subjective person came along and said, I feel for you down there. An objective person came along and said, It’s logical that someone would fall down there. A Pharisee said, Only bad people fall into a pit.  A mathematician calculated how he fell into the pit. A news reporter wanted an exclusive story on his pit. A fundamentalist said, You deserve your pit. An IRS man asked if he was paying taxes on the pit. A self-pitying person said, You haven’t seen anything until you’ve seen my pit. A charismatic said, Just confess that you’re not in a pit. An optimist said: Things could be worse. A pessimist said: Things will get worse.

And then, depending on your religious persuasion, Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, Albert Schweitzer, Martin Luther King or Susan B. Anthony, seeing the man, took him by the hand and lifted him out of the pit.”

It seems to me that, whatever our theology, religion is about the way we treat one another. The Golden Rule “do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” is asserted, howbeit in different words, in practically every religion.   Harry Golden once asked his father, “If you don’t believe in God, why do you go to synagogue so regularly?” His father answered, “Jews go to synagogue for all sorts of reasons. My friend Garfinkle, who is Orthodox, goes to talk to God. I go to talk to Garfinkle.” And whether we talk to God or not, we do talk to each other.

Another all too human tendency is to be impatient.  In an age of instant gratification we want it all and we want it now. The urgency in us for relationship becomes a kind of desperation. It can be ruinous for new couples seeking a partner in life or for any other new relationship. 

We have perhaps forgotten that friendship is a phenomenon of years, not days or weeks.  Friendships are not mere affinity or focus groups in which we find people of like interest.  They are relationships that exist over time, are strengthened by disagreement, nurtured in diversity, and made strong by pain.  They require investment of time and energy and a sense of being part of a community.  They cannot be imposed upon us; they grow organically and must be cultivated if they are to flourish. 

When we are at our best, we want to be magnanimous toward our fellow creature, but we have a most difficult time in forgiving and being forgiven.  We are potential victims of the old proverb, “the person who pursues revenge should dig two graves.” 

There is, however, a stubborn streak in us that makes taking the first step an enormous endeavor.  We want to transcend the anger that sometimes boils up in us at the actions of others.  But we become trapped in the anger itself and cannot seem to extricate ourselves from it.  Our anger imprisons us, and we become angrier and more bitter. 

Underneath our difficulty in relationships is what psychologists call too much love of self, which sometimes can be a cover for a fragile self that fears humiliation and rejection.  Other times, it is just that:  too much love of self.  Theologians simply call this the sin of pride-thinking of ourselves more highly than we ought to think.  All who do not understand the truth of our claim are at fault; we therefore have trouble with them.  From pride comes our tendency to be judgmental, often placing the worst possible reading on any given behavior. 

Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr said, “We have always been our own most vexing problem…each person thinks he or she is the end-product of evolution-what God was really trying to accomplish all this time.”

It is a troubling situation, this disturbing inability to get along together.  No one has an easy time of it.  If we could just imagine what is going on in another’s life, we might all be gentler with one another.  If we could only cultivate deep empathy we might give others the benefit of the doubt instead of instant judgment.  If, for a moment, we could take on the identity, the feelings, the experiences of another, we might all come to exchange kindness with one another. 

We might then “turn toward the other in which one’s self is present.”  We are present in the other because we both partake of humanity.  Spiritually we are of the same stuff. What is that stuff?  Forest Church in his book Life Lines, suggests that we will only be united when we recognize our own experience of the universal human sacraments-pain and suffering, grief and death-in the lives of others, even our chosen enemies.  Death has no respect for persons, races, religions, or ethnic groups. Nothing unites us more profoundly than our common suffering and pain.  Our mutual destiny, the dust of which all mingle, is the ultimate proof of our kinship. (3)  My encounter with Joseph Diamond brought that home to me in spades.

We all know people we tend not to like. What I have discovered, however, is that if I allow myself to get to know them at a deeper level, there is always - I mean always - something to like and to admire. The line between good and evil goes right down through the middle of friend and stranger, ally and adversary, liberal and conservative.

It has been said that judging people is like reading a book, only “if people are books, they’re mysteries.” We’re all multi-layered, psychologically tangled, emotionally intricate beings. Everyone is having a hard time. Give people a break. It’s not easy doing a life.

Years ago psychologist Gordon Allport suggested six criteria that mark the mature religious sentiment, as he called it. His first criterion is what I have in mind here - the mature religious sentiment is well-differentiated - that is, it is not given to absolutes, is open to ambiguity, it can tolerate the messiness of life and the complexity of human beings.

The way we treat others has implications, not only in our human relations in the wider society, but also in the context of a church community where we ought - one would think - be on our best behavior. But listen to this, my fellow congregants, and see if you see yourself. A Unitarian Universalist minister detected unwillingness on the part of “newcomers” and “old-timers” to greet each other at church, and decided to do something about it. He announced that, beginning the following Sunday, there would be a time in the service for everyone to turn to those seated near them and greet them with a friendly hello.

After the service, one member of the congregation turned to the person in the next row back and said cheerily, “Good morning!” The other stared back in shocked indignation, and snapped, “That doesn’t start until next Sunday!”

Well, it doesn’t start next Sunday. It started many Sundays ago and it will be true many Sundays hence-Rev. Jim’s rule, that is-always be a little kinder than necessary.

In the Tao Te Ching we read, “I am kind to others who are kind to me. I am also kind to those who are not kind to me. Thus there is an increase in kindness.”

After all, liberalism at its best means generosity of spirit. And - you never know - the person sitting next to you - sharing your home - working with you on the job - in the car up ahead - or lying unconscious in the street as you pass by, just may be - might be - the Messiah, i.e., a human connection at an unexpected moment that will teach you a lesson about what really matters.

Fellowship Choir - Be Not Afraid - at 9 a.m.

The Green Sanctuary Committee and the Program Committee urge you to participate in an International Day of Climate Change Awareness. 

October 25 will be the culmination of the Green Sanctuary Committee’s participation in the worldwide 350 campaign. On this day, thousands of organizations worldwide will highlight the grassroots sense of urgency in calling upon the UN Climate Change Conference to take more meaningful action at their final meeting in Copenhagen in December. The world’s leaders must arrive at that conference with the voices of their people ringing in their ears, calling them to lower atmospheric CO2 levels to 350 parts per million (ppm).. we are currently at 386 ppm and rising a few ppm each year!! 

Throughout this campaign we will be working to increase our own and each other’s knowledge about ways to lower our individual and collective carbon footprints. These efforts will be highlighted in our Sunday worship services at 9 a.m. and 11 a.m.  Peggy Clarke, our Director of Religious Education, will preach at both services. Her sermon will be “Hymn of the Universe.” 

Following the second service the responses to the congregational survey, in which individuals will have had a chance to commit to actions to reduce their carbon footprint, will be tallied and displayed through art prepared by our Religious Education students. Photographs of the Fellowship members with a poster/banner indicating the collective amount of carbon saved by our green pledges will be sent to the International 350.org coordinating committee. It will then be forwarded, with thousands of other pledges, to the United Nations, as a means of demonstrating support for commitment to a meaningful new agreement to lower atmospheric CO2 to 350 ppm.