Sermons by Rev. Don W. Vaughn -Foerster
Making the Most of What We Have
Rev. Don W. Vaughn -Foerster
Unitarian Universalist Church of Sarasota, FL
September 10, 2006
As the story goes, one Saturday morning, a young boy and his mother were strolling down the dusty main street of a small country town. She was window-shopping and he was dawdling when they came upon a well-dressed man who seemed to be wandering around a bit confused. When the man saw the two he went straight toward the boy who did not seem occupied and asked, "Say, young fellow, where is the post office?" The boy gave him, a doubtful look and said, "Why, it's just around the next corner to the right." The man thanked him and walked quickly away. The next day was Sunday and the boy's mother hauled him off somewhat unwillingly to sit next to her during the church service. To their surprise, the man who got up to deliver the sermon was the same man who asked directions to the post office. He was the new minister come to town and this was his first service there. He announced his sermon title as "Sending Letters of the Spirit to God" and proceeded to say that this kind of mail could only be sent in the privacy of one's own heart. At which point, the young boy turned to his mother and said, "I guess he couldn't find the post office after all."
As far as the boy was concerned, if the man had just listened to the directions he gave, those "letters to God" could have been sent the day before --and sent more efficiently. Some of you may have a reaction to me such as the boy had to his new minister. I suspect I have been asking (and will continue to ask) questions that fall into the "Where is the post office?" category - especially since you have already had another Interim Minister for a short period before my arrival. That minister was the Rev. Janet Newman and I'm sure she has already helped you deal with some of the issues about which I'll be asking. Also, I am sure she told you her conception of what is an interim minister and what one of them does that is different from the run of the mill minister walking down a sandy or sunny Sarasota street looking for a post office. But I am new here and you don't know where I'm coming from so I probably should speak to this right away.
My own conception is that an interim minister is supposed to help a congregation move positively and creatively through the transition between the loss of one settled minister and the calling of another. In general terms, however, in the five congregations I served as an interim minister before coming here, I found that the interim (transitional) period often is filled with significant opportunities. It is a time when a congregation can examine its own nature, predispositions, and desires in consultation with an experienced minister whose mere presence tends to provoke questions and promote self-examination. I'll have a bit more to say about what this entails a bit later in my remarks. An interim/transitional period is a time for reality checks, a time perhaps for regrouping, a time for shedding old, unsuspected baggage and for preparing to greet and accept a new settled minister enthusiastically and optimistically. The interim ministry can be declared a success after a new settled minister has been called and it is clear that the choice made by the congregation was a good choice. These basic goals will guide much of what the Board of Trustees, the Transition Committee, and I will be doing this year. However, this morning I really want to talk about something more basic than goals. I want to say something about transitions themselves.
Transitions can be unsettling and there is a widespread misconception of what a transition is. Mostly people seem to think that moving from an old situation to a new situation is merely a matter of stopping what you have been doing and starting to do something different. People say, "Don't cry over spilt milk" or "What's done is done," or "Let bygones be bygones" or "Just get with it!" But this doesn't help us get used to whatever has changed or to internalize lessons from change that require us really to know what an ending is.
In his poem, Little Gidding, one of the poems in his Four Quartets, T. S. Eliot says, "What we call the beginning is often the end / And to make an end is to make a beginning." Then he concludes, "The end is where we start from .." We usually take his words to imply that "endings" have to "come to an end" before "beginnings" can be begun. When an "ending" fully finishes, we say, is when a "beginning" can fully begin.
But in life, there are usually, if not always, little endings and little beginnings that quite often refuse to come in chronological sequence but will overlap. Actually, many endings can only fully occur after some beginnings are attempted. So there may be a lot of "pulling and hauling" going on in our hearts and minds before we settle down to some of the inevitable changes in our lives. Certain things simply have to happen before there can occur a natural and complete ending that frees us to move on to a healthy beginning. That is, we have to be realistic about the true character of the old situation and this may entail determining, along with its positives, what some of its real negatives were.
People who are supposed to know about these things (sociologists and other experts in change) tell us that endings may require us to take off a pedestal some things that have been important to us. Or, in modern parlance, we may have to do some "diss-ing". By the way, "dis" is a prefix that comes to us from Latin by way of Middle English. Its basic meaning is "to do the opposite", as in disestablish. Modern slang has turned it into a verb meaning "to treat with disrespect or contempt." With a capital "D" it is also a noun, which is the name of the Roman god of the underworld whom the Greeks called Pluto. [You know, that means that the astronomers just recently not only plucked Pluto from the planets, they "dissed" Dis. But I digress. Or, with some etymological justification, I could say I disgress.
But, back to my point about the need to take some things off their pedestals: there are four "disses" that comprise this process. They are: disengage, disidentify, disenchant, and disorient. These words stand for actions involved in bringing an old situation to a complete enough end that we are free to move on to a new beginning. They are not meant to cancel out the "good" of the old we want to keep. They are meant to encourage a realistic and critical look at that of which we have been a part.
Disengage, for instance, is what a newly married couple does when they move away from old family and friendship ties to create a new life for themselves. They are "letting go." Dis-identify is what we do toward the past when we separate ourselves from old practices and commitments enough to open our minds and hearts, our attitudes and behavior to allow in newer, healthier modes of belief and behavior. Disenchantment is what happens to us if, or when, we become aware that something or someone was not as perfect as we had thought - when we find out for sure that there is no Santa Claus, that parents and friends, too, sometimes lie, that what looked unshakable under our feet does indeed shake. Disorientation - that's what happens to us when the swirl of changes going on around us causes us to lose our sense of direction - which can happen in almost indiscernible ways after that which is familiar is gone.
The point is not that these aspects of change are always present inevitable because they may not be. The point is that they do happen and, when they do, it is no sign of courage or optimism to deny their existence. To ignore these underground dynamics of endings is to adopt an avoidance optimism that allows the dark side of relationships and behaviors later to pop up again and sabotage projects and goals that otherwise would succeed. The point is to deal with everything that is part of transition in such a way that the negative does not outweigh the positive. We have to do this in order to be ready for a real beginning. There is much more that can be said about these "dissing" phenomena and, if it becomes appropriate, I will come back to them. But, for now, we need only note their existence.
We certainly do want our new beginnings to spring from the positive bases of our experience both as a congregation and as individuals. This congregation already has a strong and noble history in this community and a positive heritage to pass on to the future. Furthermore, each one of us has brought into this room this morning a religious bundle of aspirations, commitments, and goodwill that has been part of both our lives and the life of this congregation. We do affirm and promote the worth and dignity of every person. We do strive, individually and collectively, for justice, equity, and compassion in human relations. We profoundly intend the acceptance of one another and the encouragement of spiritual growth. We insist on the freedom to seek truth and meaning on terms that mean something to us. You can finish the seven UU Principles in your own mind and add your own affirmations to the list. There clearly is a great future stretching before this congregation and its members upon the successful ending of the old and the healthy beginning of the new in this period of transition.
There is, however, one last, and major, point I must make. It has to do with why I am really here. Perhaps the best way to speak to this is through an analogy from the physical sciences that I picked up from John Weston, the head of Settlement for the Department of Ministry. Envision all the patterns, norms, and habits of a congregation to be like a supersaturated solution of some chemical compound in a beaker. Now, drop into this solution a crystalline solid of the same compound and ching! The contents of the entire beaker crystallize around this seed crystal. Actually, the same chemical compound may crystallize in several different ways because the compound in the beaker takes on the shape of the seed crystal. Such, it can be said, is the response in a congregation to a new minister when the match is good. Over time, the crystalline shape of the minister -- primarily the shape of the minister's relational style -- has a profound influence on the shape and style of the whole congregation.
Once the crystalline structure in the beaker is fully formed, you can take a surgical saw and pliers to remove a seed crystal; but, then, what happens to the crystalline structure? Nothing! It has a hole in it, but otherwise, it is what it was. Drop a new seed crystal onto the crystalline structure, a crystal of the same compound but differently configured, and what happens? Nothing! Boink! It bounces right off. Over the years that's what has happened to hundreds of UU ministers when they tried to succeed other well established or long term ministers.
Now imagine a second beaker containing a solvent. Pour this solvent onto the crystallized solid in the beaker, apply warmth, agitate gently, and watch the solid dissolve once again into a supersaturated solution. Now you can take a new, but differently configured crystal of the same chemical compound that bounced off the larger solid earlier, and add it to the newly dissolved supersaturated solution. What happens this time? Aha! A new crystalline structure forms, differently configured, having taken its shape from the new seed crystal.
What is that solvent? What enables the fully formed crystalline structure to become fluid once more, yet allows it, as well, to re-form around a new seed crystal? In crystallized religious societies it is an interim ministry. The interim minister's mission, purpose, and function in a congregation's life is to assist it and its lay leadership to become fluid once more, no longer crystallized around the former minister's way of doing things -- not in order to re-crystallize around the interim minister but to become capable of forming a new, beautiful, and as yet unimagined configuration with an as yet unknown seed crystal -- which will be the next settled minister to come into a long term relationship with the congregation.
This is why you and I are spending this year together. Not to solve problems but to see that liberal religion continues to thrive and to "dissolve" (there's another "dis" word) whatever intractable crystallizations there may be and the "disses" they may represent so that you can get on with your lives in new and even more rewarding circumstances. The point is to get down to that firm but fluid foundation on which we can make the most of what we have and that gives this congregation a base on which most realistically and hopefully to build an evolving community with new ministerial leadership.
To bring this to a close, let's change our metaphor from science to farming. The picture on the order of service cover shows a field being harvested. I chose it because, in spite of all the harvesters it shows, the field is not yet finished. The end is not yet. That's where we are as a congregation and interim minister. Except our harvesting is overlapping with the intensely personal need that many of us have to come to terms with this congregation's transition and the other personal transitions in which we may be involved. I chose the picture also because it reminds us that harvesting is the ending that allows for a new beginning. My hope is that, when the next planting season comes for this congregation, the soil will be well prepared for a new and even more fruitful seed than has been planted before.