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From Cedar Lane to Dicsöszentmárton and Back
A Sermon Given
by Kenneth Torquil MacLean
on September 2, 2001
at Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church
Bethesda, Maryland
An anniversary celebration is a feast of memory and hope, and our service this morning may be thought of as an hors d'oeuvre before the feast of the 50th Anniversary of the Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church a few weeks hence. For me, this building holds a multitude of memories, and most of them involve specific people, for that is what Cedar Lane is all about. When I think back to our 40th Anniversary, the lasting image in my mind is of Elizabeth Stark standing right here in this pulpit, just being herself. I cannot remember clearly what she said, only that she amused and delighted us, made us proud to be a part of this place, and represented the pioneers who started this church with dignity and style.
After being with you in May, and after our General Assembly in Cleveland, I went to London and, after a few days, on to Budapest to meet the small group from Cedar Lane who would visit our partner church in Dicsöszentmárton. That was a privilege for which I am grateful, and our fellow Unitarians treated us with great hospitality and kindness. In the past few years I have had a number of experiences of preaching with an interpreter to Unitarians of a totally different culture and language, in the Khasi Hills of India; in Prague, in Koloszvar, in Chennai, India. I am always wondering at the beginning whether what I have to say will have any meaning for them, and what it really signifies that we share the name Unitarian. I usually came away feeling that the words do not matter so much as the spirit of those gatherings, and I have no doubt from those encounters that we share that spirit. My most vivid memory from our time in Dicsöszentmárton was of time spent with a family, members of the church, consisting of father, mother and sons aged 14 and 21. The father is an engineer and the mother a practicing physician. The older son is in medical school and the younger one would like to be a computer programmer. When we sat on a porch of their very nice new home, the discussions would range far and wide, talking of life and death and religion and their lives and ours. The parents struggled to express themselves in English, but the two sons were amazingly fluent. Andrei, the father, would jump into any topic, speaking with passion and frequently having to turn to his sons for interpretation. When some opinions were expressed, the mother would mutter a skeptical English word beginning with B. I wanted more time for those conversations, and I came away wondering how those two bright young men would fare in their church if they grew up to be skeptical of tradition and impatient with formal rituals.
I knew that the Unitarian churches of Transylvania had provided great support and shelter in the fifty-year nightmare that the Hungarians of Transylvania have been through, so there must be strong bonds of community, and I wished that they could have more of the kind of support that a church like Cedar Lane provides to its members. We were often out in the van on weekdays, seeing Transylvania with our marvelous guide and driver, Csaba, but I did not get the feeling that there was much going on in the church itself on the days between their formal services, and that reinforced my gratitude for the vibrant life of Cedar Lane which goes on seven days a week all through the year.
Let me give a few examples of the activity which is so much a part of this institution that it is taken for granted, but is to be found in few of the other churches I have known. I think first of the choir under Dick's and Mary's superb leadership, which has given us music for two worship services each Sunday and has risen to heights the choir members thought they could not reach with such works as the Puccini Mass, the Brahms Requiem, Carmina Burana, and, of course, my favorite section of Leonard Bernstein's Chichester Psalms. That reminds me of the two ladies who were waiting for the concert to begin with their favorite conductor, and one said to the other, "You know, I have heard that Leonard Bernstein is a homosexual," and the other responded, "Is there anything that man can't do?!!"
I think of the prudent Cedar Lane custom of the Night Watch, when men of the church take a week to come in after eleven o'clock and walk through the church to check doors and windows and thermostats. That is an amazing organizational effort that really works and saves the church many problems and enables its use by many groups. I can't forget the pleasure we always got when Jane and Dick and Maury performed. I discovered them! I think of the mailing crew presided over by Eileen Campagna for decades and the Building and Grounds committee led for many years by Captain John Skinner. John Skinner would usually accompany me when I would scatter ashes of family members of Cedar Laners. We would go out late at night and scatter ashes widely over the grounds and I would say a brief prayer there in the woods. Then came the night when I had the duty of scattering John's ashes just as we had always done together.
Support groups have been a part of the life of Cedar Lane for a long time, and I think of one dramatic instance. It came to our attention that the families of young women suffering from anorexia nervosa were having a rough time, and two of our members volunteered to act as facilitators for a support group for those families. This eating disorder affects mostly young women. The disease was not well known or well understood, and these parents were scared to death that someone would find out that their daughter was starving herself to death. That group met regularly and the parents were able to share and compare experiences with other families and get the best information on treatment. I remember what a liberating experience they found it to be.
There have been many other support groups at Cedar Lane, for people responsible for an elderly parent, for people struggling with an alcohol problem, and bereavement groups for persons living through the loss of a mate.
When I came to Cedar Lane in 1972, I remember that one of the things I understood--there were a lot of things I did not understand--was that the senior minister could not be the solution to every problem or the person to whom everyone would confide. What was needed was leadership in building on an already strong institution an atmosphere in which everyone would have someone to talk to. The support groups, first started under the leadership of Betty Anastos, and nurtured by all our ministers and staff members ever since, have been crucial in answering that need. The dream groups, first initiated by Sydney Wilde, about which I was skeptical at first, also spoke to that need. I remember on person who told me, "Why, I tell things to my dream group that I would never tell to my family!"
That leads me to say something about ministry at Cedar Lane; it is intensely challenging and rewarding, and some of it is very public, like preaching, and some of it is very private and not known by the community which supports it. I think of the young man who was very bright and creative and quite disturbed. We talked many times, and I found him a couple of places to live. He was unemployed and spent a lot of time doing wood carving. One day a log with a head carved in it just appeared out in front of the church. Soon after that he came to church on a Sunday and wanted to talk, so I took him home for lunch. He seemed suicidal, and I tried to get him to promise not to take any step without talking with me, but he would not commit himself. I took him to a bus and urged him to keep in touch. On Monday night I had a phone call, but there was no one there when I answered. On Tuesday his parents arrived from Europe, where they were living, and he had already ended his life. Without taking responsibility for his death, I could still wish that I had tried harder on Monday evening to find him. And I made sure that we kept that carved head out in front of the church, where it still sits, a cryptic reminder of the creativity of life and the reality of death.
Being Senior Minister of Cedar Lane means that you stand in this sacred place and open part of your life and thought so that you become part of many peoples' lives, and you don't know all their names. They know you better than you know them, and at any moment you may be called on to enter into their families and their lives in a time of crisis, like a death, or joy, like a wedding, or just a time of hurt or confusion or necessary decision. You must be with them as fully and wisely and compassionately as it is in you to be, and you must then keep your mouth shut. It is good to be able to share with you my gratification that Roger Fritts is fulfilling that role with you, sharing his life and available to be present in yours. He has made it possible for me, as Minister Emeritus, to feel that I am still part of Cedar Lane, and that does not happen everywhere in our denomination. The night the Search Committee made its decision, one of its members wrote me a note and said, "Dear Ken, We just chose another minister with a crooked smile."
And being Senior Minister meant I had the pleasure of working with many wonderful colleagues: Betty Anastos, Ellen Johnson-Fay, Bobbie Nelson, Sidney Wilde, Kathleen Hepler, Alida DeCoster.
I am reminded of the Catholic boy and the Jewish boy who were talking, and the Catholic boy said, "I bet my parish priest knows more that your rabbi does." The Jewish boy responded, "Of course he does. You tell him everything!"
Casey collapsed in the street and was taken to the hospital. They called his wife and she rushed to the hospital. As she was standing at his bedside, a doctor came in and took his pulse. He said, "Mrs. Casey, I am very sorry to tell you that your husband just died." Casey opened his eyes and said, "I am not dead!" His wife said, "Shut your mouth. You know better than the doctor?!!"
There are other examples of the rare quality of this church which my time allows me only to glide over quickly, like the amazing long-term staff, beginning with Aileen Burchard Hughes, Florence Rimel Isackson, Chink Johnson, Roslyn Meltzer, Mary Zimmerman, Glenis Bellais, Bruce Bowman, Mary Janda Wood and Bob Campbell, as well as many others, before and since. It would be hard to imagine Cedar Lane as it is without taking into account the years of their lives and the tremendous devotion with which they built a dependable institution which could be counted upon to deliver a high level of service to its members and the community. Before my first Christmas at Cedar Lane, I picked up some stationery for a Christmas letter to the congregation; there was not much to choose from. It was Florence Rimel and Marion Worthing who looked at the stationery and shook their heads. "No, no. It will not do. You can't send that out from Cedar Lane." After we had gotten some different stationery, they said to me, "You can do anything at Cedar Lane as long as you do it in good taste!' Marion added, "We saved your neck."
What it all adds up to, what you will be celebrating this month is the rare and wonderful presence of an oasis in Montgomery County, built with difficulty and sacrifice by a group of people who believed in Wilbur's three principles: freedom of religious thought; the unrestricted use of reason; and tolerance of differing views and practices. These basic ideas unite us pretty firmly with those who call themselves Unitarians in many parts of the world today: from Tierra del Fuego, to Dumaguete, to Shillong, to Glasgow, to Prague, to North Hatley, to Rancho Mirage. What is unique to Cedar Lane is the imagination that made sure the church was beautiful, that it had to have lovely music, and it had to be responsive to the genuine needs of its members and its larger community. And that is worth one hell of a celebration. Is that in good taste?
Office@CedarLane.org
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