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Sermons by Reverend Don Beaudreault

The Virtues of Community/The Virtues of Solitude (Part Two)
Rev. Don Beaudreault
Unitarian Universalist Church of Sarasota, FL
April 24, 2005

OPENING WORDS: "Spirit of Community" (adapted)

Spirit of Community, in which we share and find strength and common purpose, we turn our minds and hearts toward one another seeking to bring into our circle of concern all who need our love and support: those who are ill, those who are in pain, either in body or in spirit, those who are lonely, those who have been wronged.

We are part of a web of life that makes us one with all humanity, one with all the universe.

We are grateful for the miracle of consciousness that we share, the consciousness that give us the power to remember, to love, to care.

Frederic E. Gillis

MEDITATION READING: "We Need One Another" (responsive)

We need one another when we mourn and would be comforted.

We need one another when we are in trouble and afraid.

We need one another when we are in despair, in temptation, and need to be recalled to our best selves again,

We need one another when we would accomplish some great purpose, and cannot do it alone.

We need one another in the hour of success, when we look for someone to share our triumphs.

We need one another in the hour of defeat, when with encouragement we might endure, and stand again.

We need one another, when we come to die, and would have gentle hands prepare us for the journey.

All our lives we are in need, and others are in need of us.

George E. Odell

SERMON: "The Virtues of Community"

I very much like what George E. Odell tells us in our meditation reading about when we need one another:

when were are in trouble, afraid, in despair, need to be recalled to our best selves again, would accomplish some great purpose, want to share being successful or defeated, and when we come to die "and would have gentle hands prepare us for the journey."

And then he says:

All our lives we are in need, and others are in need of us.

Odell is talking about community - blessed community that calls us to receive and to give gifts of the human spirit. In effect, through community, we more clearly understand and appreciate our individual self.

Recognizing that not everything about community or solitude is a virtue, let us this morning speak mainly of such positive attributes of community, the way we did of solitude in the sermon two weeks ago.

To begin that process let us turn to a story from Middle Eastern tradition:

Once the Mullah (holy man) went to a large town, to visit the marketplace and make his household purchases. He was, however, appalled at the crowds that filled the bazaar, and alarmed also at the rows of beds that he found in the dormitory where he proposed to stay. As he sat on his bed, holding his head in his hands, one of those nearby asked him, "You look troubled, my friend. What is the matter?"

"Alas, said the Mullah, "I have never in my life been among so many people. I cannot sleep, for if I were to awake, how would I find myself?"

"That has an easy remedy," said the other. "Simply tie a string to your toe. In the morning, look around and find the toe with the string on it. That will be you."

"A brilliant strategy!" exclaimed the Mullah. "I am in your debt, and will take your advice at once!" So saying, he broke off a piece of string from around one of his bundles and tied it around his toe. Secure in the knowledge of who it was who was in his bed, he lay down to sleep and was soon snoring among the multitude. No sooner was he soundly asleep, however, than the wag who had suggested the device carefully removed the string and tied it on the toe of a man sleeping in the next bed.

When he awoke, the Mullah looked down and was aghast to find that there was no string on the toe where he expected it to be. Frantically, he looked around him, and at last spied the string on the toe of the man next to him. Reaching over, he shook the man awake and asked, "It is clear from the string on your toe that you are me. Who, then, am I?" (Retold by Paul Jordan-Smith, from Parabola Magazine, p. 61, Spring, 1992)

One of the conclusions we can reach from this story is that if the strange man with the string now on his toe is really the Mullah, then the Mullah, himself, is really the strange man. Or, said in another word, that both men are really one and the same.

Well, not really one and the same, since each is a solitary being; but one and the same in the larger sense, the way you and I are one and the same - all part of the human community, of nature, of the interdependent web, of stardust. One and the same; although separate!

Indeed, the Mullah's question is haunting: "Who, then, am I?" which brings me to the FIRST VIRTUE OF COMMUNITY:

UNDERSTANDING OF SELF

Despite all the sweet things that George Odell tells us about when we need each other, being in community, can sometimes be a challenging experience. It is what we take from that connection with others and how we use those experiences that can either enrich our lives or diminish them.

Contemplate the various "communities" with which you have been associated. Certainly the socializing process starts at the beginning, and not all such groups we connect with are chosen groups.

Religious affiliations, for example - hereditary ones. The question I always ask of those meeting with me to consider becoming a member of this congregation is:

Did you have a formal religious upbringing?

You can tell a lot about a person when you ask that question. Sometimes their eyes get real big. Sometimes they look down. Sometimes they shift their seating position.

Makes sense, though, don't you think, when some 90% of all Unitarian Universalists were not raised as Unitarian Universalists? And not all of us were happy about that upbringing!

We all come with baggage - sometimes-nice luggage, to be sure, but sometimes not. The inherited religious community we received at birth has informed our decision on wanting to be a Unitarian Universalist. And that decision is a good thing. We have taken the unfortunate things about our earlier religious life (or lack of such a life), as well as the good things, and blended them into the composite person we are at the present. The person who seeks to connect with this liberating religious community.

Not everybody does that. Those who rail at their religious upbringing and swear off all "religion" are examples of what I mean.

Unitarian Universalists have the opportunity as individuals within a community to discover who we are; to be aware of the intricacies of our being.

Indeed, as Laurence G. Bold affirms in his book The Tao of Abundance (p.236):

As people begin to view their own individual quests in relation to a broader social context, their personal search takes on new meaning. They begin to feel that in confronting and solving their own problems, they are participating in something bigger than themselves.

The SECOND VIRUTE OF COMMUNITY is:

SURVIVAL

Oh, yes, we do need each other as human beings - for survival, unless one is truly anti-social. But even then such a person communes with something. Take Emily Dickinson who opined:

The Soul selects her own Society -
Then - shuts the Door

Yet, the persona in the poem still connects - by observing what is passing outside her room and commenting on it.

Most of us, however, require active association with other human beings in order to survive on various levels - the physical and mental.

Still, "community," does not have to mean a group beyond two people. The intent is that we need someone else to help us affirm our existence.

I do not know about you, but sometimes, usually at night before going to bed, I fidget! Like last Thursday night. Couldn't sit still; ate and drank everything bad in the house; got online and wrote to people I have not connected with for 20 years; read books I would not normally read; watched television shows I would not normally watch.

Even if there was somebody human in the house in addition to me - and somebody feline as well - I needed lots of stimulation. I could have danced all night or preached - good thing none of you knocked on my door at 3:00 a.m. or you would have heard one energized clergyman denouncing all kinds of social inequities!

Frankly, attempting to sit and meditate at that point would have been a penance rather than a boon to this human spirit.

So some of us need lots of people sometimes. They confirm the fact that we are alive. And if it is another human being who can communicate back to us (or our cat or a neighbor's cat), and not just a television show or a non-interactive website, then we can go on about our lives knowing that we are worthy and somehow unique, and not merely anonymous, forgettable creatures. Yes, survival!

The THIRD VIRTUE OF COMMUNITY recasts some of the earlier things I said in this sermon. It is the classic Greek virtue whose key principle is:

RECIPROCITY

In Greek, the concept is called "xenia," often translated as "hospitality. It applies to both hosts and guests. The sacred imperative, overseen by Zeus, himself, calls us to offer the basics of survival to others: food, drink, clothing, and shelter.

But even that is not enough. We need each other for psychological support - to give and to receive.

And yet, the reality is that our post-modern era has usurped the communities we once had as a species, and with it the intimacy that can come when we share our deeper selves with each other. With standardization - from the infringements of centralized government and corporate business has come the declining of community, and with it that sense of reciprocity - of hospitality.

In his book Prejudices Robert Nisbet states:

Once the states, the cities and towns, and the neighborhoods in America provided, along with schools and churches, all the community that the citizen desired. Locality has always been the chief base of community, with village and town its characteristic manifestation. But the ever-greater centralization and nationalization of America has inevitably weakened, often displaced, the localities and regions which formed the substance of community. (p.53)

And that is where small associations of human beings serve a wonderful purpose. "Community" does not just come to us, the way it did decades ago, when people knew their neighbors, where there was a sense of trust and security.

Today we have to seek out such communities - the word "community" coming from the Lain root meaning "common."

What is that "common" ground that we seek? And how might we discover or create a group that would allow us to share in the concept of reciprocity?

Certainly there are many possibilities, this church being one of them, as well as a plethora of common-interest and support groups and organizations.

Kenneth J. Gergen speaks of such with these words:

The small, face-to-face community, where coherence and consistency are staples of everyday life, galvanizes its members against extraneous and corrosive influences. (The Saturated Self, p. 211)

The FOURTH VIRTUE OF COMMUNITY is one that speaks of caring for self and others. It is

MODERATION

Here again is a classic Hellenic virtue. "Moderation" from the Greek "sophrosune" is to be highly praised. Aristotle holds this up as a supreme ideal, believing that every virtue can be seen in terms of the mean between two extremes.

Community in this sense provides a corrective to the potential excess of individual behavior. That is why we have laws - both formal ones within a judicial system, and generally agreed-upon codes of behavior. It is the balancing act between individual inclination and communal regulation.

For Aristotle, the principles of self-restraint and rational thought are crucial in determining moderation. We must apply these if we are to have a community - at least a democratic one or one that attempts to serve all its members equally.

This call to moderation is one enunciated by Apollo's oracle at Delphi. The two best-known sayings that were written above the temple entrance were:

Nothing Too Much

and

Know Thyself.

"Nothing Too Much" is an obvious statement about moderation. Don't overdo, judge what you want and how you will proceed in getting it by applying the dictums of self-restraint and rational thought; remember the community good.

"Know Thyself" - rather than being a call to self-absorption - has the opposite intent. It is a humbling statement, invoking our need as human beings to know that we are only human. Here again is the concept that we must acknowledge that we are part of the human community and should honor others.

Other Delphic maxims also speak of the individual within a community context and guide us toward moderation. These serve as a code of ethics that we, today, might cultivate (or at least discuss as good Unitarian Universalists who hold "discussion" up as one of our own Delphic maxims). The original list from Delphi, however, includes the following attributes:

aid friends, control anger, shun unjust acts, acknowledge sacred things, hold on to learning, praise virtue, avoid enemies, cultivate kinsmen, pity supplicants, accomplish your limit, when you err - repent, consider the time, worship the divine, accept old age.

The FIFTH VIRTUE OF COMMUNITY calls us to what I will call:

AWARENESS OF SPIRITUAL CONNECTION

and is the same term I used in my sermon on "The Virtues of Solitude."

Let us consider how the sense of "place" can call us into community. The Native American tradition is so very aware of this as illustrated in this reading written by Joseph Rael (from Being and Vibration):

Living and walking in the village each day was like walking into myself, as a loving plane of existence. I used to jog, run, or walk through the village every morning just so I could get my loving pats from the village sites. There were the weathered pathways which wound their way among the adobe style structures, the open space in the center of the village, and the mountains in the distance. On early morning walks I used to enjoy breathing the familiar air. The fresh air, like a resonating intelligence hanging as a cover on the surfaces of the village, was delightful to drink into my lungs. Yet, each day the experiences were interestingly different and spatially new. It was not uncommon for me to walk into alternate realties unexpectedly.. The energy was always shifting, was always different. The resonating vibrations in the scared sites were always changing so that the people in the village were always alive with energy. These sacred spaces, generating life-sustaining powers, maintained our integrity as a group, orienting each individual toward the community's highest ideals.

We, who are gathered in this sanctuary today, also have such "sacred space" in this very room and on those grounds - here lives a history of like-minded human beings who have gathered together over the years. Here children have been dedicated, couples have been married, and memorials to our loved ones have been celebrated. Here people have met and fallen in love - or out of it. Here sermons and debates have taken place on a panoply of ethical, philosophical, artistic, and social justice issues. Here people have turned inward, seeking oneness with the mystery of it all. Here poetry has been spoken, music has been played and sung, and dance (too infrequently) has been expressed.

There are "vibrations" here - can't you feel them? Vibrations here in our own sacred village.

Look at the window to our memorial garden. Those whose human remains are buried there speak to us today, as well. They say:

We have lived, we have loved, remember us! Live your lives to the fullest while you may, knowing that you, too, are but part of the larger human community and of the even wider community of all sentient nature that has already completed its lifetime and has become part of that all-in-all that pervades our existence - that is timeless, that is mysterious, that is wondrous.

And so this morning we have considered the FIVE VIRTUES OF COMMUNITY:

1. UNDERSTANDING OF SELF
2. SURVIVAL
3. RECIPROCITY
4. MODERATION
5. AWARENESS OF SPIRITUAL CONNECTION

May we honor these virtues and the ones of solitude, knowing that we humans are ever in the process of becoming, and that perhaps that process itself holds the key to our nobility.

CLOSING WORDS: "Love is the spirit of this church."

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

James Vila Blake