|
| |
Something We Somehow Haven't To Deserve
A Sermon Given
by The Reverend Clare L. Petersberger
on July 28, 2002
at Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church
Bethesda, Maryland
Readings:
"Then and Now" -- The Reverend Jane Rzepka
"Death of the Hired Man" -- Robert Frost
Something We Somehow Haven't To Deserve
Each year, a highlight at the conclusion of Ministry Days at the Unitarian Universalist Association General Assembly is the Berry Street essay. In keeping with a tradition begun in 1820, when the Reverend William Ellery Channing presided at the first meeting of the Berry Street Conference, a colleague is invited by peers to deliver an essay to promote "the best method of advancing religion and ministerial usefulness." This year, for the first time in its 182-year history, the colleague honored by fellow colleagues to deliver the Berry Street essay was a minister of religious education. Many of you know her: The Reverend Roberta Nelson, Minister of Religious Education of Cedar Lane for 14 years, until her retirement.
In listening to Bobbie speak about her vocation of religious education over the past 44 years, I learned that in the 1970s she was the author of one of my favorite curricula: The Haunting House. In "The Haunting House," first and second grade students build a "home" together-a special, secure, trusting place-in which to talk about the first "home"of the womb all the way to the final "home" of the tomb.
Listening to Bobbie speak about the philosophy of religious education, which led her to create this curriculum, I was reminded of the first time I realized that our way of religious education is different from the traditional understanding of religious instruction. I was in junior high school and went to baby sit for a Catholic family one afternoon. The wife, who had been my babysitter when I was a young child, asked me what I was learning in my Unitarian Universalist Sunday School. I told her I was taking "Pottery Making" in Spring B, an eight-week period that my church set aside, each spring for intergenerational classes of adults, youth, and children working and learning together. She gave me a puzzled look. So I explained that I was learning how to create objects out of clay and to use a kiln. She asked, sarcastically, "Haven't you studied the Hebrew Bible? You shouldn't be making graven images. You should be learning about God and Jesus. Don't you study the Bible in Sunday School?"
Somewhat perplexed, I told her that I had studied the Bible with my peers, the previous year. Furthermore, I was not making "graven images" or idols, but was, in fact, working on a clay pig. And, I was delighted with my progress. Much to the surprise of my teacher and classmates, my pig had come out of the kiln with its delicate, curly tail still attached!
I did not add, as I would, today, that from this non-traditional class, I was learning skills and values, from extraordinary adults. These adults exemplified that, in the words of Patrick Walsh, a high school English teacher in Alexandria, "risk and spontaneity are at the heart of learning...and that words such as delight, humor, surprise, and feelings ought to be part of an educators vocabulary..."
My first vivid memories of religious education classes at Cedar Lane are of just such a teacher: Ilse Fleischman teaching about holidays and religious traditions around the world. Mrs. Fleischman seemed to live at the church. She was always in the doorway of the classroom when I arrived, greeting students with her sparkling eyes and warm, personal hello. Upon entering the classroom, I would discover table after table covered with neatly arranged art supplies. And Mrs. Fleischman would stay as long as it took for those of us struggling with our creativity to reach a stopping point in our project. I served as the tail of the dragon which we all helped to piece together in celebration of the Chinese New Year. I struggled to get my candles to sit straight in my Santa Lucia Crown, only to be stopped by a frantic adult on the staircase leading up to the worship service. One of the lighted candles was precariously close to singeing my bangs. A few years later, my brother reported the class had gone on to use battery operated, not wax candles. I think I know why-and now so do you!
From the curriculum Mrs. Fleischman created and her example, as a teacher, I learned that Unitarian Universalists practice an openness to and respect for the truths in other religious traditions. This practice was reinforced several years later, when my junior high class went on field trips to visit other houses of worship-from a Catholic mass to the Islamic Mosque in Washington, D.C. After each excursion, we would talk about how worship in other faith traditions was different from and similar to worship at Cedar Lane.
Years later, I came to understand that such openness is sadly still not common practice in our society. I was invited to speak to the Youth Group of a mainline Protestant church in Midland, Texas about Unitarian Universalism. I was told that I would be on a panel with a representative from the Hindu community and from the Church of Religious Science. It was not clear to me what we three had in common until I attended a local meeting of the clergy. I overheard one colleague tell another, "Our associate invited the infidels to come speak to our Youth Group this week." I was taken aback at being labeled an infidel. Then I learned that seven members of his church had threatened to resign if representatives of other faith traditions were allowed to speak to their youth.
I contrasted such religious intolerance in the buckle-of-the-Bible-belt, with how at Cedar Lane students had been encouraged to think for themselves in religious matters. For example, on the first day of the sixth grade Bible class, the teacher, Dr. David Komitz, began by asking us to think about why there were two very different accounts of creation in The Book Of Genesis. Which one was "true?" At that moment, another adult parishioner burst into the classroom. She announced to Dr. Komitz that she had been listening to the radio while driving to church and had just heard that he had won the enormous jackpot in the state lottery. Dr. Komitz reacted with amazement, excused himself while he went to check on the veracity of her claim, and asked us, in his absence, to write a newspaper account of what had just happened. When he returned, we were informed that this exciting event had been a teaching exercise.
While disappointed by this revised news, we compared our stories. There were discrepancies in almost every detail of our narratives: the color of the clothing of the two adults, the amount of the jackpot, the winning lottery ticket number, and the precise exchange of dialogue. In addition, our narratives reflected our individual values and concerns. This was revealed to us when Dr. Komitz asked us to classify in which section of the newspaper our stories would appear. Had we focused more on the amount of the lottery jackpot or on the dialogue between the two adults? Did our accounts belong in the business section or in the metro section?
We learned that alone, our vision was too narrow to see all that must be seen. In dialoguing with others, we arrived at an enlarged, "truer" picture of what "really" happened. If this were true for our class, when confronted with a concrete situation, wouldn't it be true, also, for the religious communities in the Bible wrestling with ultimate questions arising out of their situations-questions as to the origin of the universe and the origin of humankind? Through this experience, we learned not only about the Biblical content of our religious heritage, but about the importance of our relationships to others in our liberal religious home.
At its most basic and best, a loving home provides shelter, safety, nourishment, and a place to learn that the world is dependable and trustworthy in some significant measure. I remember learning that the world is dependable and trustworthy not only in religious education classes at Cedar Lane, but also in several memorable children's chapels. In one, the film, The Powers Of Ten, was shown, and a camera moved by magnitudes of ten out into the universe and then reversed direction inward to the tiniest part of matter. The Chapel that morning concluded with a discussion about how, like the figure on the beach from which both journeys began, we too lived and moved, and had our being between the infinitesimal and the infinite.
The educator, Vartan Gregorian writes, "You always remember the teacher who said, 'You are a unique moment in history. You are a unique being. The universe is grateful to see somebody like you. What are you going to do to deserve that uniqueness?'" These are the kinds of challenging questions I remember students at Cedar Lane being asked. We were encouraged to risk sharing our time and developing talents "knowing that their would be arms to catch us if we fell."
When I was twelve, The Reverend Betty Anastos invited me to read from the Gospel of Luke in the family Christmas Eve service. I rehearsed, "And it came to pass in those days" for weeks. During the past thirteen Decembers, I have often wondered (as I hand the reading from Luke to one of the pre-teens in my church to deliver to the congregation on Christmas Eve) which one of the teens will remember the experience as richly as I do.
Minot Savage, a nineteenth century Unitarian minister, reflected on qualities important for teachers of religious education. He wrote:
Remember that I do not want anybody for a teacher in my Sunday School who thinks he or she is very wise. And I certainly do not want anybody who is possessed with the idea that he or she is very good. And I really do not want anybody who has nothing else to do. I want just human people, who appreciate that here is something worth their doing, and are willing to do the best they can.
I do not care so much whether you teach theology, or how much religious history and biography you teach, or whether you are up concerning the missionary journeys of St. Paul. These are matters of interest and importance. But the principal thing, after all, is that you should bring the children with whom you come in contact close to a warm heart, that you surround them with an atmosphere of devotion.
I remember these qualities being exemplified by the teachers at Cedar Lane. I remember Helen Rosenthal's hail-fellow-well-met greeting to me, as her teaching assistant, when she arrived with boxes of pans and ingredients for the six year old class to learn how to cookbasics like toast and brownies. I remember Betty May Cleary's quiet but reassuring classroom presence as she trained me, when I was a high school student, to risk teaching a religious education class on my own.
As a result, my curiosity about theology was piqued by a teachers training workshop in which participants were invited to draw a time-line of their concept of God from their first childhood memories to the present. I was amazed, along with my colleagues, to discover how often our images of God had changed as we shared when, why, and how our faith had been grounded, challenged, and transformed. Today, we call such conversations "small group ministry"or "covenant groups," but back then, it was just Saturday morning training in Unitarian Universalist religious education!
At its most basic and best, a loving home provides people who teach us how things are: whom to trust, whom to avoid, what is safe and what is dangerous, what it means to be cared for and to care. In this religious home, such education occurs not only in worship and classes, but also in relationships with people of all ages through time. I came to count on seeing particular individuals week after week, year after year in this community of memory and hope.
Back when I was sixteen, Jane MacFarlane cast me in a Cedar Lane Stage summer sampler. Yesterday, I had the honor to officiate at the wedding of Jane's daughter, Jessica. In that production, I got to know Maury Merkin, who, over the past twenty-five years, has intentionally stayed in touch-a loyal and caring friend. And it will not surprise those of you who remember Becky and Julius Allen that they would invite me to tea during my college and seminary vacations in order to discuss books and current events, and to share the outreach work they were engaged in on behalf of the community. From such members I learned that liberal religious homes are places of hope-where "we gather to listen and laugh, to pray and sing, to celebrate and strategize, in order to go back out into the world and do what we can."
As is true in my experience of families, people did not always agree at Cedar Lane. They sometimes openly disagreed with what the minister says in a particular sermon, with a Board decision, with a social outreach position. But they did not allow disagreements to end their agreement to "walk together in the ways of truth known or to be made known;" or to accept and respect each other; console and encourage one another; and continue to do justice together.
From this model of a religious home for all ages I came to appreciate that home is not just "the place where, when you go there, they have to take you in." Rather, like life, itself it is "something you somehow haven't to deserve." In another poem, Robert Frost wrote, "Earth is the right place for love. I don't know where its likely to get better." To which, having grown up here, I can honestly say, "Cedar Lanes the right place for love, I don't know where its likely to get better."
In affirmation of this, please join in singing hymn number 207, Earth Was Given As A Garden.
Office@CedarLane.org
|
