A Place to Share Love

Rev. Jane Page
November 10, 2019

What are we here for? – Here at this place – the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Statesboro. So far in this sermon series, we’ve examined the following purposes for our presence:

This is:

A Place for Community

A Place to respond to the injustices of the world

A place to share our time, talents, and treasure

A place to celebrate who we are – with a special focus on gender and sexuality.

A place to honor life and death.

And today we are exploring how this is a Place to simply Love One Another. 

(Sing) “Love is a many splendored thing!”  Yes, it’s splendid, and magnificent and complex, and often painful – but oh, so necessary.”  Why do we need to love?  Why do we need this place to love one another?  And how can we do that when we are so different in many ways.  Those are the three questions I want to touch on today in this message.

So – Why do we need to love?

We as human animals have evolved the capacity and need to love.  We can go all the way back to at least our early mammal ancestors in looking at this.  Israeli Professor of Human Evolution Ada Lampert wrote a book called The Evolution of Love which helped me to understand this.   She states:

The placenta and milk are expensive investments that mothers make for the sake of their kids, but they are worth nothing unless they are part of a caring, devoted, alert mother. To watch the child eat is a joy; to watch it sleep is to dissolve in pleasure. To think of any threat to the little one’s well-being gives rise to deep fear; to know that the threat is over brings forth deep relief. This is the new emotional world of concerned, caring, loving mothers. In the same way that evolution selected milk glands, the womb, the birth canal, and so forth, it selected the urge, the concern, the joy and the satisfaction that motivate mothers.

The mammalian mothers were the first in evolution to feel concern about others, and they set the cradle for the evolution of love, the dependence of every individual on proximity, belonging, being cuddled.

Throughout evolution, love, first as touch and then as a rich cluster of loving behaviors, has become a need, and even a prerequisite, for physiological and psychological well-being.

I’ve witnessed all those feelings again firsthand as I prepared this sermon AND cared for my little great granddaughter Alayna who was with me for a couple of weeks. 

So – we’ve evolved these feelings that help our offspring survive – then that carries over to helping other family members survive – even our offspring caring for us as we age – if we are lucky.  So, it began as a survival technique for the family and continued to expand to the extended family and to the tribe.  We take care of our own.  And, as the song we sang recently said – “We need each other to survive.”



But the world has changed.  We no longer stay put with our families of origin – or with our tribes, our lands of origin.  Many of us find ourselves among strangers.  Yet we still have these same aspects of our evolution to connect and belong and love.  We talked about some of that in the first sermon in this series when we talked of coming together for community.  We find our new tribe in new places.  And for some of us, Unitarian Universalism is a place where we can call home.  And a place for us to find and give love. 

So =Why do many of us need THIS place as a place to share love?  We are attracted to Unitarian Universalism for different reasons.  Some come because they want the freedom to seek their own spiritual or religious paths.  Some come because there are like-minded (or open minded) folks here.  And others come to be part of our efforts to improve ourselves and the world.  But we are all quite a bit different – kind of like a family made up of children from different cultures and backgrounds – all adopted by the same parents – as teenagers.  It makes for some interesting – and sometimes difficult situations.  So that leads me to that third question.

How can we possibly love one another when we are so different in many ways?

I have a true story that I want to share that I read about in UU world in an article by Rev. Victoria Stafford.  Now I could tell you similar stories about some of you – but I don’t think that would be a good thing to do in this situation.  Sometimes it’s better to look at others and see how it may relate to us.

Rev. Victoria writes:

In the first weeks of my first ministry in an old New England congregation, a woman came to see me. Nearly 90 years old, she was a lifelong member of that church; her parents had joined in the late nineteenth century. She didn’t like change, she said. She wasn’t sure that she liked me, or what she called my “point of view.”

“Just remember,” she said. “I have outlived all of your predecessors, and I will probably outlive you.”

This woman was a dedicated political conservative in what had become a progressive community; she was a liberal Christian in a congregation that had known gracious eras of theological diversity and also some fits of intolerance; she’d worked for the U.S. State Depart­ment through three wars and for the American Unitarian Association through the merger with the Universalist Church of America. In this church of her childhood, which she’d never left, most votes at most annual meetings had not gone her way for the past forty years. She was no stranger to discord.

In the end she did outlive me there: she died shortly after I accepted a new call in another state, and I was saddened by the news.

Over ten years we cultivated a fierce, respectful love for one another, and what I loved in her most was her commitment to that church, no matter what; her fidelity to it; the ferocity with which she paid her pledge each year, no matter how wayward the budget or insufferable (in her humble opinion) the sermons. She kept her covenant with that people, with their proud history and the bright promise of their future, and with the free faith tradition they embodied. I was a young minister then, and her way of being in relation, her integrity, taught me more about Unitarian Universalism than anything I’d learned in seminary.

^{Why did this member stick around – even when so many things didn’t go her way.  Because this was her tribe, her people.  And she was living out the promises she had made to herself and to them. We say that we are bound not be creed – but by covenant.  By the promises we make to one another about how we will be together.} 

^{When we come into the membership of a Unitarian Universalist congregation – it’s kind of like coming into a marriage.  We are making a family – or coming into a family.  And since we are very different, we usually find that we can walk together in our differences if we covenant together.}

^{In 2007, after five years of living with Greg Brock, I agreed to marry him.  And when two folks marry – they also make a covenant together – usually called their marriage vows.} 

Now a covenant is not really like a contract.  When you “break” a contract, the contract is null and void.    With a covenant, you might mess up – but the bond is too important, and you just keep recommitting to it as long as you both agree to it.

Unlike some couples who write separate sets of promises, Greg and I decided that we would make the same promises to each other on our wedding day – and these really were to be just a restatement of what we had been LIVING for the previous five years together.  But since we wanted to say the same thing, we had to find words we agreed on.  Needless, to say, our wedding vows were very short. 

I, Jane Altman Page, take you, Gregory John Brock, to be my husband –

to have and to hold from this day forward,

in times of joy and times of sorrow,

and to grow with you throughout the seasons of life.

May our home be forever filled with peace, joy, and love.

Nuff said.  That’s a covenant.  The Greg and Jane covenant.

^{Covenanting with one another is a very old practice among Unitarian Universalists – going all the way back to our Puritan spiritual ancestry.  The leader of the Puritans aboard the Arabella, John Winthrop, saw the need for this as they were still on the high seas.  You may recognize his name from history as the first governor of Massachusetts.  Here are his words.} 

Now the only way to avoid . . . shipwreck, and to provide for our poster­ity, is to follow the counsel of Micah, to do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God. . . . [W]e must be willing to abridge our­selves of our superfluities, for the supply of others’ necessities. We must up­hold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience, and liberality. We must delight in each other, make others’ conditions our own, rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, our community as members of the same body. So, shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.

What Winthrop was presenting was a Declaration of Interdependence.  In her UU World article on covenants, Rev. Stafford stated:

Those who heard John Winthrop speak would surely have grasped the metaphor of danger: they would have been afraid not only of foundering, literally, on New England’s rocky shore, but of failing in their errand to establish this commonwealth, their “city on a hill.” The only way to avoid shipwreck, spiritual or otherwise, was to “keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace”—to make and keep a sacred covenant together.

Similarly, the early churches of the standing order in New England made covenants among themselves as congregations and in association with each other.  We, as Unitarian Universalists have continued this tradition.

When I was in seminary in the early 2000’s, the value of the covenanting process was re-emphasized at our seminary and within UUA.  More small groups, large groups, and congregations began to use a more formal covenanting process as they struggled to “love one another” with various challenges and differences.  Some congregations moved to having more specific covenants that addressed how they would be with one another, often called a relational covenant. 

Ten years ago, I encouraged this congregation to adopt a relational covenant when I shared my sermon, “Can You Say Covenant.”  We surveyed the congregation, had a small group to work to draft something, get feedback, and present to the congregation.  Then in November 2009, we voted on it and many who were there signed it. 

Last year we made the decision to recommit to our covenant at this every year on the day we had our Annual Meeting and offer the opportunity for others to sign as well. 

I’ve printed these and you or your neighbor should have one.  I’m going to ask you to stand as you are able and Let us read this covenant together.

Congregational Affirmation and Relational Covenant

Love is the spirit of this fellowship, and service is its prayer.  This is our great covenant:  to dwell together in peace, to seek the truth in love, and to help one another.

To this end, we, the people of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Statesboro, affirm the following relational covenant:

·        We warmly welcome all who gather in our community.

·        We honor and support one another as we explore our spiritual paths.

·        We embrace our diversity and grow from sharing our different perspectives.

·        We address our disagreements respectfully, communicating directly with the person or group involved, and see conflict through to a genuine resolution.

·        We serve our Fellowship community with generosity and good humor, and we acknowledge and express gratitude for the service of others.

·        We respect our individual boundaries and the boundaries of others.

·        We support one another in love through times of joy, need and struggle.

(You may be seated.)

Now  - Will we always be successful in staying in Covenant?   Probably not, we may still say things that hurt someone’s feelings or not have careful boundaries, etc.  But hopefully we will catch ourselves or one of our other loving members will gently share with us that we are out of covenant, and we can make amends and begin again in Love. 

So, in summary:

Why do we need to love another another?

We have evolved the feelings of love to help one another survive.

Why do we come HERE to the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Statesboro to love one another?  We are attracted here to each other and to this place for many different reasons.  Here we have found our tribe!  Our people – and we give and receive much needed support and love.

And HOW do we love one another when we are very different in many ways and have disagreements?  Through covenanting with one another, and coming back into covenant to begin again in love when we falter. 

This place is a Sanctuary.  We have proclaimed it to be a sacred space – indeed a holy place.  And we can bring our whole selves – our heads, hearts, and hands – and even sometimes our dancing feet – to this place and love one another. 

For as the song says, “When our heart is in – a holy place.  When our heart is in a holy place.  We are blessed with love and amazing grace.  When our heart is in a holy place. “

May it be so!

A Place to Respond to the Injustices of the World

Rev. Jane Page

This is the second in my Fall 2019 sermon series addressing the question, "What are we here for."  (Here at UU.)  One reason folks come here is to work with others in responding to injustices in our community and the world.  

 Now admittedly, we may view “injustice” differently depending on our backgrounds and worldviews.  For example, a large group of senior citizens in Bulloch County recently proposed and pushed for an exemption from paying school taxes for anyone over 65.  They saw this tax as an injustice for senior citizens because they had no children in the schools – or because they had “already done their part.”  Some did speak of financial hardships, but they wanted the exemption for ALL people over 65, whether or not they faced financial hardships.  

 Well, there were others of us who saw this in a different light.  We saw this as an injustice for the children in our schools needing good financial support for their education, as well as an injustice for younger folks in our community who would have to assume the burden for this exemption through the raising of their own taxes, and an injustice for folks who rent rather than own property, because their rents would be raised as school taxes were raised for their landlords to make up for the lost revenue.  So, we organized ourselves through a Facebook group and showed up to speak up on the day these seniors were presenting to the board.  And it was pretty clear before the meeting was over that age-based exemption was off the table.   

What is the difference in these two views?  One view is from a personal perspective – the view that this tax is a burden for me.  The other is a view from a larger perspective – the view that the age-based exemption would hurt a lot more people than it really helped – and in fact, many of those folks needed no help.  When most of us sitting here think of justice, we are thinking from that broader perspective of advocating for others and providing a better life for all, especially those who have been oppressed by our patriarchal, white supremacist system.

I do sometimes think that older folks – like myself – are so influenced by this system – so unaware of our own privileges, etc. – that we can’t SEE some of the problems and injustices in the world as well as younger folks – and especially as well as folks who have lived with many of the injustices of the world can see them.  It’s like that picture you look at and you see the woman – but there are actually two women (a young one and an older one), and it takes a while for some of us to see both.

I’ll give a personal example rather than point fingers at someone else.  A few years ago, I was at General Assembly at a worship service.  Now that’s somewhere we certainly try to lift-up injustice and become motivated to do the right thing.  And I was trying to pay attention to the songs and the speakers.  But something kept getting in the way.  It was the Service of the Living Tradition when newly fellowshipped ministers as well as those receiving full fellowship or retiring are all sitting up on the stage.  And one of the ministers was in a wheelchair.  Of course, we UUs have ramps and stuff – so we were providing for her needs, right?  So while I’m trying to enjoy that worship service and listen to those good speakers and singers – she is continually lifting up this OUCH sign – every time a word like “stand” or “walk” is used in some metaphorical sense – like singing “Standing on the Side of Love.”  It was very disruptive – and I thought – surely there is a better way for her to make her point than ruining this worship service for the rest of us.  But as it continued to go up and down ALL during the sermon, I realized – dang – this is what she deals with all the time, and many others as well – and here I sit in my able body form and feeling frustrated with HER rather than frustrated with US.  Thankfully, my view shifted while I was sitting there to one which could BOTH take in the service and it’s good meaning – while at the same time – noting how frequently we used able body language to make our points.  

And, indeed, her actions of protest made a difference.  It opened many of our eyes and helped us to begin a process of rethinking some of our language.  And that’s a good thing.  SO, we who are in privileged positions – and most of us are privileged in some ways if not in others – need to LISTEN and really LISTEN and become more aware of problems that may be difficult for us to understand and may SEEM petty or minor to us.  The folks dealing with these continuous microaggressions can assure us they are not minor – they build up and up over time.  We have much work to do within our congregations and our association.  

BUT – we can also come here to work together and respond to many of the injustices throughout the world – not just in our own home.  What are these?

I could have asked you before I prepared this sermon – but alas, I have been busy tending to a 3-year-old and a 3-month-old while their mom recovered from gall bladder surgery – and just didn’t have time.  So, I looked online to see what others said.  I was glad to find a list of what millennials had to say about problems in the world – for reasons I stated earlier. The results come from the World Economic Forum annual survey which was given to more than 31,000 18-to-35-year-olds across 186 countries.  I could preach whole sermons or series of sermons on each of these – but today, I’m just going to list them for you and perhaps make a couple of comments about them as I share them. 

 Here are their top ten:

10. Lack of economic opportunity and employment

9. Safety / security / wellbeing

8. Lack of education

7. Food and water security

6. Government accountability and transparency / corruption

5. Religious conflicts

4. Poverty

3. Inequality (income, discrimination)

2. Large scale conflict / wars

1. Climate change / destruction of nature 

Now THIS sermon is not just about being aware of the injustices of the world – but the premise is that THIS is a place for us to come to RESPOND to the injustices of the world.  Why is that?

Well, first – we Unitarian Universalists have a strong history of responding to injustice.

In terms of the abolition of slavery – the Universalists had a statement against slaveholding in their Articles of Faith and Plan of Church Government composed and adopted on May 25, 1790.  Then Universalists were silent on slavery for the next half century before they began to pass anti-slavery proclamations at the state and national level.   

The Unitarians were not as vocal as a denomination as they were individually. 

(From Pat McClain Paper) Mark Morrison-Reed recounts the story of Theodore Parker late at night with both a gun and a sword nearby while he wrote sermons, so that he could protect the runaway slaves he was hiding. In fact, Earl Morse Wilbur attributes the slow growth of Unitarianism after 1840 at least in part to the fact that so many “active spirits” were promoting such reforms as antislavery. In 1845, one hundred seventy Unitarian ministers published an antislavery declaration in The Liberator, lamenting both the fact that the gospel could not “be fully preached in the slave-holding states” and the “long silence of Northern Christians and churches.”

And our spiritual ancestors were involved in the anti-slavery movement in other ways as well.  Some of these are listed by Rev. Eric Walker Wickstrom:

• The belfry of our congregation in Olmsted, Ohio was a station on the Underground Railroad.
• Our congregation in West Roxbury, Massachusetts gave sanctuary in their building to several escaped slaves and Freedmen.  Their Pastor was the Rev. Theodore Parker.
• Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was an African American woman who drew huge crowds of New Englanders to her lectures on the anti-slavery circuit.  Some say she was the most popular of all the abolitionist speakers of her day.  She was also a Unitarian.
• The Rev. Samuel Joseph May, who served our congregation in Syracuse, New York, was known to take up collections during the Sunday service explicitly for the purpose of aiding fugitive slaves.  (He also encouraged the Free Blacks in his congregation to sit up front rather than in the segregated back.)
• In Pennsylvania, our congregations in Meadville and Philadelphia, along with a seminary the Unitarians established in Meadville, were all known stations on the Underground Railroad, as were the Universalist congregations in Indiana County and Girard.

Not every one of our forebears would make us proud, of course – the President who signed the Fugitive Slave Act into law, Millard Fillmore, was a Unitarian, for instance. 

Many Unitarians and Universalists were active in the women’s suffrage movement as well. Here are some:

 Judith Sargent Murray 

 Elizabeth Cady Stanton (sort of)

Susan B. Anthony (She was a Unitarian and a Quaker)  

Jane Addams  

Lucy Stone

Olympia Brown

Mary Rice Livermore

Julia Ward Howe

Actually, Unitarians, Universalists, and Unitarian Universalists have been both leaders and the rank and file volunteers in pretty much all the movements for justice in our history including those in our more recent history. We certainly answered Dr. King’s call in the 60’s to show up and lost one of our own ministers, Rev. James Reeb, as well as a UU layperson, Viola Liuzzo (Lee OOZ oh) in that struggle.  And today you’ll find Unitarian Universalists on the frontlines for the struggles for immigrant rights, LGBTQ rights, gun control, and racial and environmental justice.  Our association is not perfect in our efforts to address injustice – but it’s a good place to be trying – warts and all. Because we are in good company – historically and presently.

But let’s face it – many of us are more like VISITORS in these struggles because we don’t feel the effect of the injustices like others.  And AS visitors, we need to remember to listen and learn more.  Rev. Aisha Ansano is an African American UU minister that helped me to understand this in a reading she shared with the UUA worship web called “Visitors in the Struggle for Racial Justice.”  She writes:

Think about it in terms of this metaphor: You're visiting a foreign country where the customs are very different from what you are used to, and the language is different, and some of the things they do are not only different but make you feel deeply uncomfortable. As a guest in that country, it is not for you to say that the things that people who live there are doing are wrong. Instead, your role is to learn, to pay attention and try to understand how things work, and to adapt. But if you do something that goes against their norms, it's also your role as a guest to not insist that they let you do things however you want to do them. It is your role as a guest to pause and consider what you’re doing.

White people tend to be visitors to the struggle for racial justice, ones that aren’t forced to be there but can choose to come in and leave whenever they like. People of color reside in the struggle for racial justice by virtue of their race. As people who are constantly in the struggle, people of color have the right to make claims on what they find okay and not okay, what they see as helpful and not helpful.

And the same can be said of other kinds of struggles as well.  Before many of us can be effective in the struggle, we have to listen more and study more, try our best to see various perspectives and not be so FRAGILE when people point out that we may have a problem – like the woman with the OUCH sign was doing at that General Assembly I talked about earlier.  

Our congregation in Brunswick just finished an Adult RE class study of Robin D’Angelo’s book “White Fragility.”  How many of you have already read it?  I think instead of a Religious Education class, I’m going to encourage us to adopt this as a Common Read this fall – and we ALL can read it.  I’ll buy some copies to loan out and encourage those who can afford to – to buy their own.  Anyway – at the end of their study in Brunswick – many of them asked – okay we’ve read this – now what?  What’s next?  And that becomes part of our struggle – to figure out how to address the problems we have ourselves and to work with others in the community to address related issues.  But it’s WORK, it’s not easy, and sometimes we get hurt in the process.  Yet that’s who we are called to be in this faith!  It’s part of our religion.  And thankfully, we are in it together – because that’s how we can best work on these struggles.

I’m proud that our congregational members are both aware of the injustices of our community and world and work together with others to make a difference.  We don’t always say we are “sponsoring” some of the work – because that sometimes hurts our efforts.  But we are there – often leading the planning, providing the resources, doing the work.  Yet we recognize that we have more to do- more “out there” and “in here” and “in here” (point to own body).  

I encourage those of you who can – to remain after the service for more discussion.

And I’ll close with this quote from Frederick Douglass:

If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.
This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. 

May we be here for one another and support one another as we move into the struggle. 

Amen and Blessed Be.