When I was in seminary, one of our
requirements was to read Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Divinity School Address.
In it, he was addressing the Harvard
graduates –
the soon to be ministers who would
fill our Unitarian pulpits.
And he had some harsh words to
describe
what he was experiencing in the
pulpits at that time.
Most of the ministers had been taught
to lead worship
and preach the word in a formal
manner –
providing rituals, exposition and
explanation as an expertly trained theologian,
but not as a human being. Here is an excerpt from Emerson’s address:
“Whenever
the pulpit is usurped by a formalist,
then is
the worshiper defrauded and disconsolate.
We
shrink as soon as the prayers begin,
which do
not uplift, but smite and offend us.
We are
fain to wrap our cloaks about us, and secure,
as best
we can, a solitude that hears not.
I once heard a preacher who sorely tempted me
to say,
I would go to church no more….
A snow
storm was falling around us.
The snow
storm was real; the preacher merely spectral;
and the eye felt the sad contrast in looking
at him,
and then
out of the window behind him, into the beautiful meteor of the snow.
He had lived in vain.
He had
no one word intimating that he had laughed or wept,
was married or in love, had been commended, or
cheated, or chagrined.
If he
had ever lived and acted, we were none the wiser for it.
The
capital secret of his profession, namely, to convert life into truth,
he had not learned.
Not one
fact in all his experience, had he yet imported into his doctrine.
This man had ploughed, and planted, and
talked, and bought, and sold;
he had
read books; he had eaten and drunken; his head aches; his heart throbs;
he
smiles and suffers; yet was there not a surmise, a hint, in all the discourse,
that he
had ever lived at all. Not a line did he draw out of real history.
The true
preacher can be known by this, that he deals out to the people his life, — life
passed through the fire of thought.”
Well, I took that lesson Emerson tried to teach
to heart – and I have shared from my own experiences and my own truth – not too
much I hope though. Because the other
extreme of this preacher that Emerson observed – is the one who is too
self-absorbed in her own drama – and pulls from nothing but personal
experience. That too – can be very
frustrating. So hopefully I’ve found a
balance when ministering to you folks.
But today, just today – since you are installing me as your minister, I
am going to share a bit more with you about my own background, the influences of
family in my life that have shaped me, as well as my evolutionary calling to
ministry and my efforts to minister with you and others on the Side of Love!
First – I must lift up my family –
especially my parents,
for they were a great influence.
My parents, JG and Christine Altman,
taught me to work.
They were both workaholics
and their strong work ethic was
preached daily in our household.
My dad was a car dealer and farmer
and my mother was a beautician.
Both were well known in the community
as good, hard-working folks.
They were examples of how folks could
“work their way up”
to having the “American” way of life,
including home ownership, a nice car,
and decent clothes for their children.
My dad used to say I could have
anything I wanted.
I just had to know how much to
want.
And indeed, I never did really want
to join the Country Club or wear fine jewelry, so our lifestyle was fine with
me.
In addition to a strong work ethic,
my mother provided a model of a woman
who could “be someone” in her own
right.
In addition to being a wife and mother,
she was the best beautician in
Statesboro.
She would start with the first
customer at 6:30 a.m. and work till 6 or 7 at night. That was in the days of “standing
appointments,”
and people waited till someone moved
or died
so that they could get a standing
appointment with my mom.
I was proud of her.
And since I spent a lot of time
working in the beauty shop, sweeping up the hair, handing rollers to mama,
mixing shampoo, folding the towels, answering the phone and making the
appointments, and keeping the books,
I learned from my mom a lot about how
to treat people.
My mother was almost always kind to
everyone, even when she was tired.
Mama was a compassionate woman.
She really cared about the people,
not just the money they paid her.
My mom also gave me a love for
books.
She would come home from work and do
cooking and cleaning
then she would read to me and she
would read her own books.
So I learned from my mom that books
were magical and wonderful.
And indeed, I am a very different person than
most of my friends
from elementary and high school
because I read.
My dad loved cars. Sometimes we thought he loved cars more than
us.
We didn’t dare get a scratch or dent
on a car.
(Note:
If I get a dent on my car now, I wear it as a badge of independence.)
My dad was concerned with what people
thought.
He and my brother had huge fights
over the length of my brother’s hair in the 60's. He would force my brother to cut his
hair. No dents there either.
My dad was a very conservative
man.
Of course, that’s not unusual for
this region.
Racism, sexism, homophobia, and
xenophobia were dominant
when I was growing up and my dad
fully adopted this way of life.
He had a hard time expressing his
love for me,
till he got Alzhiemers and didn’t even know
who I was.
Then he was loving everybody!
In her wonderful book To the lighthouse and back, my friend
Mary Doll said,
“We spend half our lives trying to understand
ourselves
by getting over the influence of our
parents. But that is not the point.
The point is to understand how we are
like our parents,
despite our difference with
them.
We come from ancestors so there is no
use pretending we have birthed ourselves.”
Indeed, I am like my parents.
I’m hard working, compassionate, and
I try to fix all the dents in my life
(except the one on my car).
I married when I was 17, right out of
high school.
I married Fred Page, another very conservative
man.
(Hey, I was in South Georgia!)
And then I hurried. I was efficient! I finished college in three years,
got a teaching position at the local
elementary school,
had my two babies in my early twenties,
and had my doctorate and a faculty
position
at the local university before I
turned 29.
My husband Fred and I went through
school together.
He was a poor student. Then I came along and fixed that dent.
He has a doctorate in education
also.
We were active in First Baptist
Church of Statesboro.
My husband became a deacon at age
28. I was proud of him.
He was a good man, but like most of
us – had his weaknesses.
He said I was the strong one. So I was the martyr.
I took care of his sick parents and our
children’s problems.
He took care of a female graduate student
he was teaching down here in Brunswick,
Ga.
I forgave him and protected him. (Mustn’t let anyone find out he was
flawed!) Later he fell in love with
another young woman and wallowed in his misery.
His depression was unbearable for us all.
Like the Buddha, I finally woke up
and filed for divorce in early 1998
after almost 30 years of
marriage. Glory Hallelujah for us
all!
Now - My ex-husband is a very special
friend. I had married a good man.
Not perfect, but a good man all the same.
He’s still basically the same man I
married. He didn’t change.
I did (and I’m glad). We have two sons, now middle-aged.
They are very different from each other. One is a conservative, country boy.
The other is rather liberal like his mom.
They have had their share of
difficulties in life –
and I’ve learned a whole lot about
addictions, mental health and more
as we’ve grown together. I love them both and we are very close.
They teach me daily.
And of course, now I’ve added Greg Brock and
his children – plus two grandsons and a great-granddaughter to my brood. So I am very blessed.
And -- What a wonderful gift Greg
Brock has been ---
and one of the best things about Greg
is – he’s a Unitarian Universalist!
My call to Unitarian Universalist
Ministry was a slow process of evolution.
Just as humans have slowly evolved
from other primates, mammals, and vertebrates – indeed from the origins of life
itself,
so has my call to ministry
evolved.
When I was very young,
I was often reminded that I had
survived a terrible head injury at age 3 and 1/2.
According to my parents, I was
supposed to have died,
but “the doctors and the good Lord”
saved me.
I felt special and I thought that God must really love me.
Perhaps the messages directly and
indirectly given to me
about my special circumstances
provided me
with the same spiritual sense of
calling that Samuel had.
Samuel had been given to the prophet
Eli to be raised
as a special man of God when he was
very young.
With the reinforcement of his special
circumstances by his loving mother
and the prophet Eli, Samuel answered
his calling:
1 Samuel 1:10
states: Now the LORD came and stood
there, c
alling as
before, ‘Samuel! Samuel!’ And Samuel said, ‘Speak, for your servant is
listening.’
Although I did not hear the audible voice
of God as a child,
I did talk to God every night. Then I would look out of my bedroom window,
which framed the steeple of my church.
That picture was my response from God.
The steeple pointing high into the
night sky symbolized that God was with me.
So the initial theological context for my calling
was traditional monotheism featuring
a loving God.
In my later childhood my knowledge
and understanding of Jesus’ love for me became the primary motivator for my
desire to serve.
I asked Jesus to come into my heart when I was
nine years old.
I listened to the stories of Jesus’ love for
others
and his encouragement that we live
that love.
Reading his teachings from the New
Testament motivated me to serve others.
From Matthew 25:
35For
I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to
drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, 36I
was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was
in prison and you visited me….40Truly
I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of
my family,* you did it to me.”
I did not understand the concept of
the Trinity. It did not make sense to
me.
But I accepted it anyway.
My theological context shifted to one
in which the life and teachings of Jesus
became my primary focus.
I tried to follow Jesus’ teachings by actions
such as befriending the poorest girl in my class at school and giving my
beloved dolls away.
I also sought opportunities to teach others during our “Youth Week”
activities. Preaching was out of the
question for girls.
And I didn’t question that practice.
However, that “non-questioning”
changed when I reached adolescence.
This awareness came through my school
studies.
More specifically, in the eighth
grade, I was introduced to Norse Mythology.
We did a complete unit on this
mythology and
learned many of the associated
stories.
Because I had already been studying
the stories presented in the Bible,
I came to the realization that much
of what I was reading at school was similar.
In fact, many of these Old Testament stories
were also myths—
stories that were used to explain how
the world came to be
and why things happened as they did.
I no longer could believe that the Bible was
literally true.
Then in the tenth grade, I fell in
love with biology.
I was especially intrigued with what I learned
about chromosomes and genes. And the
story of evolution was one that I could believe.
I felt much more confident about my scientific
understanding
than my theological
understanding.
While my theological identity may have
been in flux,
my commitment to organized religion
never faltered.
I continued to be active in my church and continued
to pursue my calling.
I even had the opportunity to preach during my college years.
The Baptist Student Union sent a team
out to the prison labor camp each Sunday.
During the summer, my husband and I would be the only team members s
ince most of the other students went
back to their hometowns.
I was supposed to play the piano while he
preached.
But he didn’t really like to get up
in front of folks, so I did both.
And we didn’t tell anyone!
Since I had the wrong body parts for considering
preaching as a calling
as a Southern Baptist, I did the next best
thing and became a teacher.
My theology for the next 20 years
continued to evolve,
becoming more liberal—even as my church and
denomination
were becoming more conservative.
I closeted my beliefs (and non-beliefs) and
continued to serve in ways
that I felt were authentic for me
As my own
denomination moved to the right,
I began reading Christian literature that was
more liberal
to attempt to find a way to maintain my views and
still be a Christian.
After exploring various concepts,
I finally went back to what I was taught as a
child: God is love.
I could not believe in a supernatural,
intentional being for some reason.
But I could believe in the power of
love.
So I began to
translate “God” as the power of love
and I
accepted Jesus as a prime example.
After my divorce in 1998,
I felt the desire to explore my spirituality
and theology more intensely.
I had already left the Baptist church and had moved my membership
to a more liberal Methodist church. But that was still too confining.
I felt that the only religion that would allow
free exploration
was Unitarian Universalism. I began attending soon after my divorce.
By 2001, I knew that I wanted to answer
the call
that I had been receiving most of my
life.
I applied to Meadville Lombard and began my ministerial studies.
I completed my work and was ordained ten years
ago
by the Unitarian Universalist
Fellowship of Statesboro
and they also installed me as their
minister serving half-time.
When I was in seminary, folks would
share with me their lack of understanding about why I would return and minister
in a place like southeast Georgia.
But this ministry – in this place –
is also part of my calling.
I strongly feel that it’s important to share
our liberal religious values
here in this region –
and perhaps it’s even good for that
to be shared with a Southern accent.
So here I am.
Now answering YOUR call to serve this
congregation and this area as well.
I have chosen “Ministry on the Side
of Love” as the theme for my installation – because I believe that our
“Standing on the Side of Love” ministry has been so important for Unitarian
Universalism in the last several years.
We’ve used that glorious symbolism of
love and compassion
as we have championed LGBTQ rights
and immigrant rights –
and as we have worked for a more just
criminal justice system.
And we’ve reached out in LOVE with our
financial contributions and volunteer efforts in our community activities,
including agencies in Brunswick like: the local chapter of the NAACP, the Glynn
Environmental Coalition, the STAR Foundation, Habitat for Humanity, the Golden
Isles Arts and Huamnities, FaithWorks and its Sparrows Nest ministry as well as
it’s daytime homeless shelter “The Well”, Safe Harbor, the Coastal Coalition
for Children, United Way, the Abbott Institute and its activities including the
upcoming Fall Forum called, “The Big Conversation” which aims to improve communication
among diverse populations in the area, the Early Childhood Literacy Program,
the UU Service Committee’s Guest at Your Table Program, our local PFLAG chapter
founded by our own Mary Freeman, and the Glynn Environmental Program.
All of these are worthy organizations
and activities – and we appreciate the encouragement we receive by Diane Knight
and others
to share generously of our time,
talents, and treasure.
There’s another activity which I want
to lift up that some may not view a
s a social justice matter – but it
really is.
And that is the Jazz Nights that we
have here in our Sanctuary. O
ther than sporting events, our
community can seem to still be rather segregated. But these Jazz nights bring us together to
enjoy wonderful music.
And there is some magic happening when folks
are enjoying music together. Something
shifts within us in how we connect with those around us.
And the love that is shared on those occasions
reverberates into the community. So I
encourage you to be here for these.
The next one is Friday, September 23.
Think of it as part of our ministry
in this community to show up, be supportive, and participate – ministering
together on the Side of Love!
I hope that you’ll come to the
installation this afternoon.
You will hear a great message by my
friend Francys Johnson.
And we will celebrate our Shared
Ministry on the Side of Love!
May it be so today and for years to
come!