Sermons

All Things Green - Honoring the Spirit of Beltane

5/9/2024

All Things Green - Honoring the Spirit of Beltane
A Sermon
By Rev. Daniel Gregoire

Unitarian Universalist Society of Grafton and Upton
Sunday, May 5, 2024

Reading:

There Was A Child Went Forth Every Day
By Walt Whitman
(19th century American poet)

There was a child went forth every day,
And the first object he looked upon and received with wonder or pity or love or dread,
that object he became,
And that object became part of him for the day or a certain part of the day . . . . or for many years or stretching cycles of years.

The early lilacs became part of this child,
And grass, and white and red morning glories,
and white and red clover,
and the song of the phœbe-bird,
And the March-born lambs,
and the sow's pink-faint litter,
and the mare's foal, and the cow's calf,
and the noisy brood of the barn-yard or by the mire of the pond-side . . and the fish suspending themselves so curiously below there . . . and the beautiful curious liquid . . and the water-plants with their graceful flat heads . . all became part of him.

And the field-sprouts of April and May became part of him . . . . winter grain sprouts, and those of the light-yellow corn, and of the esculent roots of the garden,
And the apple trees covered with blossoms, and the fruit afterward . . . . and woodberries . . and the commonest weeds by the road…

Sermon:

What is Beltane?

It is a holiday that originated in the British Isles, and it is also a constellation of ancient and modern customs and traditions from farming and pastoral communities marking the start of the summer season.

It is the “Bringing in of the May”, decorating doorposts and altar tables with flowering branches,

Beltane is May Poles, celebrating fertility and rejuvenation. It is the twin bonfires, spring fairs, festivals and competitions, even High Schools field days, proms and graduations are festive transitions that mark what is a gentler part of the year.

And, for our children and grandchildren, these May festivals signal the start of their growing into adulthood, fertility, creativity, wholeness and endless possibilities.

For me, Beltane is an opportunity, shared with us by Neo Pagan and Wiccan communities, to notice and celebrate the relentless greening of the world.

This greening of the world occurs whether I am ready for it or not. This greening of the world happens in wartime and in peace times; it occurs for villains and for victims, for the heroes and the helpless, and it is entirely beyond anyone’s ability to control or resist.

Right now there seems to be a march of green and other vibrant colors, yellows, buttercreams, pinks, reds and violets afoot, it is spilling out of the river banks and streams, and flooding our senses with a more hopeful and healing vibration if we are attuned to it.

We are all witness to the restoration of the world, with nature, reenacting the wonderful drama of blooming into wholeness.

In honoring the spirit of Beltane we are all given another chance to pay attention to what is happening just beyond the narrow confines of our day to day lives, our struggles and our disappointments.

This is a paying attention to and reverence for the larger life that all of our lives participate in, a life that is green and immortal.

We do this by entering into cycles and rhythms of this season, however reluctantly. Each season of life has something to teach us, if we remember that we are inextricably woven into the fabric of the world.

If we can in fact, love the world!

We can all connect with the May as the true start of something new and different in our lives by connecting with the pagan heart of May Day Celebrations.

You see, May is so much more than a month. It is an experience that we are summoned into.

One of the Beltane customs that has taken root in my heart and become a family tradition is a May Day walk in a place where we can connect with the silent power of the land.

(Which is not to say, our house, on busy Worcester Road in North Grafton. At Agoueh Place we are likely to connect with the power of police sirens, ambulances, semis, delivery trucks and loud motorcycles. So you can see why escapes into wilderness are so important to us)

This year May Day was marked by cold and damp. It was not necessarily a pleasant start to summer, but it was the kind of day where everything is fully saturated with color and life energy. It was a day where you can almost feel the trees and turf grasses growing around you.

Everything is strangely alive and possible on those days, where we are somehow on the cusp of rain forever.

So my family decided to walk in the Tufts farm field pasture off of route 30. Actually we were in search of an ancient tree that I had befriended when I first moved to the area, on one of of many solitary walks in the fields there.

On May Day Kate, baby and I walked through the grasses that was in some places about a foot high. And, as we made our way over hill and dale it felt like we were being cleansed by the chorus of Red winged blackbirds flying overhead and perched in the trees, just out of sight.

Those black birds with the red and yellow shoulder pads that love to live in open and marshy places, have become a totem animal for me, in my menagerie of spiritual animals and mythical beasts.

The haunting trill of blackbirds is somehow ever present in the field. I'm sure their calls were as much a warning to trespassers as they were an invitation to commune in the green saturated landscape.

Kate, Baby and I took an unexpected path and were greeted by a cascade of white apple blossoms on a ridge. It was, in a word, magical. I felt very fortunate to have a magical hour just before a meeting with Church leaders to discuss the hard and important work of being a congregation in the 21st century!

The May Day walk on Beltane was another chance to encounter the world so that I could love it once more.

For me, loving the world, becomes the invitation that we hear in the Buddhist, eco-feminist writings of activist Joanna Macy. It is something that we cannot do from any great distance. We can't do it from our armchairs or on television screens, or by liking social media videos of far away places.

To love the world we must place ourselves in the power of wild and natural spaces.

We must willingly place ourselves under the spell of the sensual world, a place of extraordinary color, vibration and intensity!

We never did find that tree that I was looking for. It was an old tree and it probably came down during the pandemic and has been lost to the unending cycle of decay and renewal.

But we are very glad for the search.

We entered the field to see something green and in the end we became what we saw.

In our reading this morning the great 19th century American poet, a native of Brooklyn, New York, like me, Walt Whitman, invites us to see and to become what we see.

There was a child went forth every day,

And the first object he looked upon and received with wonder or pity or love or dread,
that object he became,
And that object became part of him for the day or a certain part of the day . . . . or for many years or stretching cycles of years.

The early lilacs became part of this child,
And grass, and white and red morning glories,
and white and red clover,
and the song of the phœbe-bird…

For Whitman and for me, we are that child who goes forth everyday seeing and becoming. Taking the world into ourselves, with its color and vitality, or its doom and gloom and becoming that thing!

Everyday, and every moment gives us a choice as to what we can become!

As we move towards embodying the spirit of Beltane, we become more and more aware that we can choose to bring into our homes and into ourselves the green color of the world, with budding and blossoming branches and in so doing we become once more verdant, vital, and whole.

Walt Whitman again summons us to the gathering place of the spirit, under the great big sky, the chapel of the open fields, bordered by woodland green, and mountains in the distance, to encounter the grasses and the dandelion and clover, the meadowlarks, the newborn lamb and the calf, and the random apple tree covered in an cascade of blossoms

We do this when we take on the vision of a child.

It was remarkable to see Grace in the field, we carried her the whole time, her eyes were three times their normal size taking the green world in wide eyed wonder.

We let her smell the blossoms, and touch the wet grass.

I hope that these imprints of the green and the beautiful world, might be held deep in the recesses of her subconscious mind and be used for some good purpose at some future and needful time.

To encounter the greening of the world, as something other than background noise, is to access an ancient and primordial energy source, fuel for the survival of the spirit.

(The spirit of the world seems to be in great distress at the moment, but it still might be the case that that is because something new and vital is being born into the world at this desperate hour.)

I invite us to practice breathing in the color green, connecting with our hearts, dwelling in the infinite possible.

This is an encounter that is necessary for us to live into our 7th Unitarian Universalist principle. Respect for the interdependent web of existence of which we are a part.

So let us engage in all the rituals acts large and small, in groups or solitary practice, with colors, smells and bells that excite our imaginations, and cast a spell of the sensual, so that we might connect more fully with our earth home.

All things green are a summons to return to health, healing, and vitality.

To return again to the sources of power and energy, to save the world and to love the world, breathe in the healing power of all things green.

Blessed Be and Amen

Happy Beltane!

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The Emergence of Differing Abilities - A Social Justice Sermon and Appeal for the Lift Up Campaign

5/2/2024

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The Emergence of Differing Abilities - A Social Justice Sermon
By Rev. Daniel Gregoire

Unitarian Universalist Society of Grafton and Upton
Sunday, April 28, 2024

A Reading:

The Beatitudes an early 2nd century text, excerpted
From the Gospel According to Matthew, Christian New Testament
5:3-9

‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
‘Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
‘Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
‘Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.
‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
‘Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Homily:

On Social Justice Sunday we celebrate all the ways that faith moves us to make positive changes in our lives and in the world around us.

Our Social Justice Sunday is deeply allied with our spiritual theme of Emergence and this idea of bringing about surprisingly hopeful realities into a chaotic world.

One of the ways that we could do this, reenacting, this Emergence, by making our sacred spaces more beautiful, more welcoming, and ultimately more accessible.

One of the things that has really inspired me over the past few years, is the work of our congregation, the work that we have been undertaking as a congregation ( under the advice and the direction of the Accessibility Task Force); work that now flourishes with the leadership of our new Lift Up Committee.

These groups, now combined, have been working to make our 150 year old Meetinghouse more accessible to all people with limited mobility.

The first part of their work was to build a unique sidewalk that serves as a ramp to the first floor via a powered motorized door. This work has made it easier for someone who uses a wheelchair or walker to come to the first floor, and join us in the parlor or Fellowship Hall for worship.

Now the Lift Up Committee has embarked on a very ambitious Phase Two plan to get people with disabilities to our second floor sanctuary, where we usually hold our worship services and other important gatherings.

So who are these people that we are hoping to worship with on Sundays and at other times?

Who are these people that we're hoping to welcome for weddings, memorials, funerals, vigils, lectures, concerts and other public enrichment opportunities?

They are people that we know, they are our friends, our family members - ourselves, perhaps at a future date.

They are us!

They are people who use canes, crutches, walkers, wheelchairs or scooters.

These are people with leg injuries, or who are missing parts of their anatomy. They are army veterans.

They are people who are short of breath or have low stamina and anyone who simply needs to use an elevator.

Having an elevator from the first to the second floors of our building has been a long held dream going back at least 20 years with actual architectural drawings, and possibly longer than that.

It has always been our dream to worship together, celebrate life together, without the stairs being an impediment.

Over the years I have seen old people and young people struggle to get up the granite steps and the double staircase with a low railing, to get into the sanctuary.

I have seen a youth with a sports injury, a sprained ankle and using crutches struggle to get up the stairs.

I have seen a matriarch of the church, recently deceased, but at the time desperate to be a part of a Christmas Eve service, carried upstairs by her grandchildren. (The grandchildren did not come prepared to carry her up the stairs) That was her last Christmas Eve service with us.

Every Sunday at least one but often two or three people slowly make their way up the stairs, allowing others to pass them, knowing that they need more time to navigate the stairs.

And over the years there are those I've seen who stop coming all together.

I have spoken to these people and they tell me that they only have so much energy in a given day, and they just can't spend it on going up the stairs. and so they tune into the Sunday broadcast on Facebook live at home.

For a number of people, people that I've known, people that you’ve known, people who have since passed on or simple moved on, as they become less and less mobile, the church becomes less and less welcoming, until finally they have no choice but to stop coming to what has defaulted into a hostile environment for them.

To me the great tragedy in all of this, and it is a tragedy, a tragedy in three parts, is this:

The first part is a loss of community at the time when it is perhaps needed the most.

The second part is the spectacular failure of living up to our highest ideals, welcoming being chief among them .

And the third part of the tragedy is the way that the world shrinks us into isolation as we come closer and closer to our own mortality.

So often in our community the loss of mobility coincides with chance illness or sudden injury, the death of a beloved spouse, the move to new and strange housing and sometimes all of these things happening simultaneously.

(It is analogous to to kicking someone when they are already down, down the the stairs)

It's painful for me to watch these events, and I'm sure it is far more devastating for those who are actually living life through these upheavals.

Not being able to come to church is not some kind of inevitable condition, or force of nature, but rather the result of the choices, some of them, very bad choices and shortsighted choices, we’ve made about how we want to be as a community, and how we want to use our sacred space.

In all of this, I am reminded of my own fate, if you will, our common destiny, we all share.

We are born and after a time we will die, and along the way we will travel through various forms of disability in our living .

It is important to remember that we are mortal, and more than that we are all temporarily able-bodied people.

Many of us are temporarily in good health, we are temporarily able to move from one building to the next.

We are temporarily able to move from one activity to the next without too much struggle otherwise we would not be here today.

I hope that the knowledge that we are all temporarily able physically, as well as mentally might help us to appreciate the gift of the present moment .

I hope that this reminder helps us to rejoice greatly and to be grateful, as well as humble for everything that we have.

I hope that this knowledge inspires our compassion for ourselves and greater empathy for those who are in fact disabled people now.

I hope this knowledge moves us to action and positive change right where we are! In this meetinghouse.

Ultimately, I hope that this knowledge allows us to appreciate how disability is an indelible part of the normal human experience, not the exception but the rule.

In our exploration of the rights of disabled people to equal dignity and access we are talking about our sacred shared humanity.

We are talking about seeing people with disabilities as whole people.

We're talking about a quality of experience and a recognition in the face of people with disabilities the very image of God.

(The very image of God. Imagine. If God shows up to UUSGU in a wheelchair do we send them to the parlor for worship?)

Our church is a place where we practice and refine the art of being human, yes we encounter the Holy in a distinctly human shape and color.

Our spiritual practice will ultimately get us nowhere, if we are actively sustaining an environment and a culture that is hostile to those of different abilities, especially our friends and family members with limited mobility .

That is why we must put the elevator in this meetinghouse.

In our reading this morning from the Christian classics that the beatitudes, or blessings we are transported to a startlingly hopeful world where there is a subversive reordering of society.

In this imagined place, the poor, the meek, those who are mourning and those who are persecuted are elevated. They are literally lifted up.

They're taken from the margins from the very edges of the societies where they live and brought to the center and they inherit the earth and they are blessed!

In this reading those with marginalized identities, those on the very edge of acceptance, people who for all intents and purposes have been rendered disabled by the societies in which they live have a tremendous opportunity, and the ultimate destiny of being seen as whole people, as the very image of the sublime.

What is more than that, in their different abilities, they are blessed, which is to say happy or satisfied.

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Our disabled siblings, in their proximity to the spirit of life, help us to recognize our own closeness to the sources of our living.

(If these ones are welcomed in the commonwealth of holy, might they be welcomed here too?)

And, in imagining and creating a built environment, an architecture of the spirit, where we can all be together with equal dignity, and access in our worship experience, we co-create a place where all souls can truly grow into harmony with the divine.

Our Unitarian universalist tradition invites us to play an active and vital part in the emergence of this new social order in the world, where everyone is seen, valued and included in worship.

Our sixth Unitarian universalist principle guides us towards the goal of a world community with peace, liberty and justice for all.

This must include our sisters, brothers and friends with visible and invisible disabilities.

So I ask you what part are we playing in bringing about this bright future into the present?

How are we making our shared social spaces accessible to all and a blessing to all people, especially those with limited mobility and who need special assistance?

Our call to action today is to bring the mountain low, to lift up the valleys, to make the rough places smooth.

So, let us eliminate the arcane barriers to entry and remove all the obstacles to full participation in the life of our beloved community, by building a beautiful elevator in our iconic meetinghouse.

Nota Bene:

We have an incredible opportunity to make our dreams of a more accessible meetinghouse and a more inclusive faith a reality. Many generous individuals and families, area businesses and local organizations have already contributed to this important project, and we are already past our half way mark in our fundraising goal.

You can support the work of the Lift Up Committee by making a multi-year pledge of financial support to the “Lift Up Campaign” or a one time financial gift. Follow this link to learn more https://www.uusgu.org/donate

You can also support the fundraising events and programs that will take place over the coming year to make the elevator a reality. No monetary gift is too large or too small in this efforts, and you can help us to spread the word in the local community about this important campaign by sharing this link https://www.uusgu.org/liftup-campaign and sign up for our newsletter to stay up-to-date on the latest happenings with Lift Up.

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Balance in An Age of Overproduction - A Sermon

2/28/2024

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Balance in An Age of Overproduction - A Sermon
For Social Justice Sunday
By Rev. Daniel Gregoire

Unitarian Universalist Society of Grafton and Upton
2/25/2024

Reading:

“Architecture of Time” - from The Sabbath by Abraham Joshua Heschel
20th century Polish American Rabbi and Scholar of Judaism, and leading American Civil Rights Leader.

Technical civilization is man's conquest of space.
It is a triumph frequently achieved by sacrificing an essential ingredient of existence, namely, time.
In technical civilization, we expend time to gain space.
To enhance our power in the world of space is our main objective.
Yet to have more does not mean to be more.
The power we attain in the world of space terminates abruptly at the borderline of time.
But time is the heart of existence.

To gain control of the world of space is certainly one of our tasks.
The danger begins when in gaining power in the realm of space we forfeit all aspirations in the realm of time.

There is a realm of time where the goal is not to have but to be, not to own but to give, not to control but to share, not to subdue but to be in accord.

Life goes wrong when the control of space, the acquisition of things of space, becomes our sole concern.

Sermon:

“Life goes wrong when the control of space, the acquisition of things of space, becomes our sole concern…”

I have a sense that things in life are going wrong, that we have lost sight of what really matters in our own lives.

We spend so much energy on things, producing things, and using things, at a tremendous cost on the environment.

And, in the frenzy, our frenzy of always doing, we are missing something important, the point of it all.

The other day I was walking in Coes Pond Park in Worcester, where I found myself admiring the shoreline boardwalk (I love boardwalks) it was a cold, silver gelatine print kind of day, with a brisk north easterly wind. The kind of iconic day out that is only pleasant if one is walking at a moderate pace, and I was.

Of course I enjoyed the view, the hills, the ice on some parts of the water, and there were a good number of people walking on a Monday afternoon, parents and their kids were in the playground by the Old Stearns Tavern.

I walked the length of the boardwalk, from one end to the other. And, on my way back rather than looking out at the water, or at the sky, I looked down at the shoreline in front of me, where in the shallow waters and pools were revealed so many empty plastic water bottles, so many plastic straws, chip wrappers, all sorts of wrappers, lighters, the plastic tips of cigarillos, nips, and bits of foam Dunkin coffee cups.

It was all there, all the signs of our frenzied modern life, in an urban center, bits and pieces of trash that will last many lifetimes. I can’t help but see these things in the landscape and despair.

These things were but small reminders of all the ways we have “enhanced our power” in the realm of space, and with that: speed, efficiency, comfort, convenience, fantasy and escape all have a terribly high price.

My daughter Grace had a first birthday two weeks ago, and of course, she got many lovely and thoughtful gifts, that certainly delighted:

Silken clothes made with polyester, nylon and elastane components, (all polyurethanes, plastics fibers),

Cute stuffed animals bristling with luxuriant polyester fibers, and filled with plastic pellets, designed to simulate the softest fur, and the heft of something worth holding onto.

And of course Grace received all sorts of BPA free plastics in all kinds of bright colors, shapes and sizes, all for Grace to rattle, squeeze, spin and chew on.

Of course, my family is grateful for all of the wonderful thoughts behind these charming presents, but we are also overwhelmed, and Grace, will not always be a baby, she will outgrow these things, but these plastic playthings are forever.

I’m sure that many parents feel the same way we do, (overwhelmed by the generosity of others) and I am sure many people look at our consumer based, hyper productive society and feel a sense of over stimulation, and exhaustion. If we are honest about it, we can see this (THIS) is more than we can handle.

I feel an overwhelming sense that something is deeply wrong with how we are doing things as a society, and by extension, as a global civilization, and at the same time I feel like there is nothing we can do about it; nothing we can do differently. The plastics are just so perverse and pervasive, and the culture of consumerism and consumption is just so strong, and so few of us have the will to resist it.

But maybe something can be done…

Back in December some of you recall my sermon on the Flow of Plastics, where I read part of a modern day fable about the Problem of Plastic by Katherine Ellsworth-Krebs and Becky Tipper.

It was a story about the magic that has gone terribly, terribly wrong, a world that was drowning in the magic of plastics.

At first the magic was benign, and then it was everywhere, in everything.

I had the sense that we could all feel how a good and useful thing could get out of control very quickly and overwhelm our lives, our bodies, and disrupt life on the planet, in ways that will be very hard to reverse.

So, as we live into our Social Justice Theme of Environmental Justice at UUSGU, I hope that we will continue to look at our relationships to the web of life and our present day reliance on Plastics, and impacts of plastics on the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

More than that, I hope we might see how the issue of plastics is really a deeper symbol of the overwhelming business (busyness), ease and convenience, the overproduction and over-consumption that is plaguing our society and ultimately - our souls.

The issue of plastics might become a symbol of the spoiling of natural landscapes, our own bodies through the over persistence of microplastics, and even fueling the wars, both hot and cold, that are being fought in our name for petroleum (the key component of plastic), or on behalf of the United States all around the world.

So into this world of overwhelm, a distinct and gentle presence somehow makes itself known, and that “presence” is the practice of Sabbath, a day of rest from activity.

This idea of sabbath, or rest from activity, is the kind of pause that gives us, not just room to breathe, but room to think about our actions, and most of all time to simply Be.

Most of us will have some degree of familiarity with Sabbaths or Shabbat from Jewish traditions, and indeed Judaism offers one of the best articulated conceptions of the holy day, as we will hear from Rabbi Heschel, but the tradition of special days with a focus on rest and reverence exists in all cultures and a faith practices. Fridays for Islam, Saturday for Judaism, and Sundays for Christians.

To understand the idea, really, the command to rest and abstain from work on the seventh day, one has to understand the power of the one creation myth behind the Abrahamic faiths.

This is the beautiful story of the creation of the world in seven days, but with the seventh day being devoted to resting, and contemplating the creative act.

Sabbath is something that I am working on in my own life, with varying degrees of success.

I make a point of abstaining from work on Fridays, because that is the day that works best for me, but for others, Sundays make more sense, or Mondays, especially for those retail and hospitality sectors whose busiest days are Friday, Saturday and Sundays.

Whatever day of the week we choose, or whatever interval we choose, I say interval here, because for some it will not be possible or necessary to think in terms of weekly sabbaths.

Our, Neo-Pagan, Earth Honoring and Wiccan siblings, for instance, have a practice of Quarterly Sabbats corresponding to the changing of the seasons, these are festivals of Samhain, Imbolc, Beltane and Lammas. These are holidays that we turn our attention to as well during our program year at UUSGU.

What matters for us as Unitarian Universalists is the meaning behind the day, the why of the sabbath that we take.

Sabbath moves us closer to balance in life, Sabbath becomes a hedge for when our often mindless way of living becomes out of balance.

Let’s consider our reading this morning from the acclaimed 20th century scholar and theologian, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel…

“Architecture of Time” - from The Sabbath by Abraham Joshua Heschel
20th century Polish American Rabbi and Scholar of Judaism, and leading American Civil Rights Leader.

Technical civilization is man's conquest of space.
It is a triumph frequently achieved by sacrificing an essential ingredient of existence, namely, time.
In technical civilization, we expend time to gain space.
To enhance our power in the world of space is our main objective.
Yet to have more does not mean to be more.
The power we attain in the world of space terminates abruptly at the borderline of time.
But time is the heart of existence.

To gain control of the world of space is certainly one of our tasks.
The danger begins when in gaining power in the realm of space we forfeit all aspirations in the realm of time.

There is a realm of time where the goal is not to have but to be, not to own but to give, not to control but to share, not to subdue but to be in accord.

Life goes wrong when the control of space, the acquisition of things of space, becomes our sole concern.

Returning to Plastics, the over use of plastics is just one manifestation of how things have come out of balance for us as a civilization.

We have deployed this magical material in our crusade against space, and our misguided desire to master it.

Plastics have given us a false sense of control, and a means to exert that sense of control over the landscape, but in so doing we have managed to harm all sorts of creatures including ourselves.

Heschel, offers us another way, a way of being in the land and more importantly of being in time, and that is through Sabbath.

Sabbath is the pause that transforms us.

If you can imagine it, Sabbath is like a room in time, something Hershel describes at one point as a “Palace in Time”, (isn’t that an incredible image?) a palatial setting where we can find and connect with the values that really matter.

That is what sabbath is.

At the most basic level Sabbath is a joyous and needed resting place for us to reflect on our actions, and perhaps choose to do things differently.

The world is crying out for sabbath, and the natural world is crying out for humankind to take a sabbath. This concept is reflected in the United Nation Environmental Sabbath program, where our prayer this morning comes from.

Civilization needs a generative pause, and we need to make a practice of taking a generative pause, so that we might live in the future, and not be undone by the prolific waste we are generating in the present.

My vision for our future is one where each person makes a practice of embracing a sabbath for themselves, and finds ways to bring others into their practice of sabbath.

And, on those sabbatical days, we will go slowly, go locally, choose exquisite quality over easy quantity, choose simplicity, choose vintage, choose nature over extravagance, and choose things that are lasting over everything convenient.

As Unitarian Universalists, as a people of faith, who see ourselves as active parts of the web of life, let us make a ritual practice of Refusing, Reducing, Reusing, Repurposing, and Recycling, as we extend our sabbath practice of “being present in time” into the realm of the everyday.

But most of all choose the joy of being in time, and the celebratory spaciousness that “being” provides. To choose being over doing is to lift up the value of presence over presents (or material things) in all cases.

In this age of overwhelming production, and overwhelming consumption, we must live into the pause of sabbath, to give ourselves time to consider how our consumerism is the beginning of our undoing, and the great unraveling of our society.

Let us find new ways of being in time, and living with each other through the practice of sabbath.

What day of rest can you commit to?

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A Bird By Any Other Name

2/14/2024

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A Bird By Any Other Name
A Homily for Darwin Sunday - a Spirited Multigenerational Service
By Rev. Daniel Gregoire

On this Spirited Multigenerational Service join us as we celebrate the spirit of Charles Darwin and the guidance of reason and experimentation in understanding our natural world. This service is dedicated to the birds that inspired what became the theory of evolution by natural selection, and the efforts underway to find new names for our fine, feathered friends.

“Darwin’s Finches” from On the Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin 1856

Homily:

There is a grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been and are being evolved.

Charles Darwin in The Origin of Species

These are the closing lines of Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species, and probably the most powerful sentences in the history of Western science and philosophy.

Authors Charlotte and William Irvine wrote a biographical sketch of Charles Darwin that describe his theory of evolution by chance variation and natural selection, as radically altering every single field of thought; zoology, botany, anthropology, ethics, religion, philosophy, all forever changed by this one person's new understanding.

Altering-every-field-of-thought.

I am just imagining the fear and trembling, the worry Darwin had about altering every single field of study, by bringing this fantastic new idea, (one based on the foundations of other great thinkers, who were his predecessors and contemporaries,) to the forefront.

Evolution by natural selection.

Can you imagine doing such a brave new thing, stepping all the way out of your comfort zone and into a brave space?

A liberating space that frees others as well as yourself?

What makes such a move possible?

One of the things that I like most about the character of Charles Darwin, was his endless curiosity, which is a strong desire to learn more about something.

And, the way that we learn about something, is to courageously ask beautiful questions about ourselves and the world around us.

We can all ask beautiful questions.

Questions that help us; questions that open us up to endless possibilities.

Questions that show our curiosity about the people around us, the wonderful world that is our home, a wonderful world that is filled with creatures big and small, especially our fine feathered friends, the birds.

We can ask questions about birds. Beautiful ones, like:

How did the birds come to be the way that they are?
How do birds fly?
How is it that their beaks come in so many different shapes and sizes?
How do we share the land with birds? How do we make a home together in this Earth for bird kind and human kind?

How do we choose what to call the many different birds that live in North America, and why does a name matter?

(The American Ornithological Society AOS is asking itself this question right now, and it is endeavoring to change the English names of many birds in the Americas in the coming years to promote greater inclusion in the field of Ornithology, the study of birds.

The OAS efforts with community input will mean the renaming of birds with new names that focus attention on the unique features and beauty of the birds themselves, rather than the names of historic individuals. Bye bye Audubon's Oriole, Hammond's Flycatcher and Harris’ Sparrow, even Darwin’s finches, hello new more imaginative, and inclusive, and just plain better names)

https://americanornithology.org/about/english-bird-names-project/

https://birdnamesforbirds.wordpress.com/?fbclid=IwAR3p-BSraShbWoxj_eNDugAxcI9eReEZhGy816I-dVQogC3Sy7NN87OQ9BM

We will come to many different answers to these and other questions.

The thing about beautiful questions is that they allow for life sustaining answers that help us to grow.

But the thing to do is to question, and to let those beautiful questions take us on a journey.

Charles Darwin’s questions led him on a journey, where in 1831 (when our first meetinghouse was being built here in Grafton) he took a boat, a sailing ship called the HMS Beagle on a five year voyage around the world to better understand the plants and animals that lived on the coastal areas and islands of South America, among other places.

His encounter with so many different kinds of life and so many different landscapes helped him to begin to understand that there are some basic rules about how nature works and those simple patterns in nature lead to the surprising and unpredictable diversity of life that we see today.

From Darwin's questions and observations on that trip, from the things that he saw, felt, heard, tasted, and his intuition, all the things he wrote and drew in notebooks, he was able to learn that all living things are part of a process, a step by step plan, that includes accidents, that is as old as time itself, and never ending.

That all life is one life, and all life is evolving.

We evolved!

In this church year we are seeing the Patterns of Nature for ourselves, and we are taking on the job of Naturalist as our collective spiritual practice, like Darwin did while aboard the Beagle.

We even have a nature journal, that everyone can contribute to.

As Unitarian Universalists, we can celebrate Darwin’s theory of Evolution by Natural Selection, and the later insights born out of that foundational understanding because we believe that all things are changing, that all things can change, that we ourselves are changing, and we encourage one another in this never ending process of spiritual growth.

This is our third Unitarian Universalist principle of acceptance.

There is [indeed] a grandeur in this view of life…

By following the example of Charles Darwin’s character trait of endless curiosity about the world, by following his love of learning, and his special way of asking beautiful questions we might live more courageously!

So, Let us be guided by reason and inspired by faith, so that we might create a more just and noble world for the birds who still have so much more to teach us.

Amen.

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A Eulogy for 2023

1/29/2024

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A Eulogy for 2023
By Rev. Daniel Gregoire
Unitarian Universalist Society of Grafton and Upton
Sunday, January 28, 2024

Eulogy:

The past few years have acquainted us with our mortality in more ways than one. The pandemic, the dislocations in our society, for some, migration across international borders has brought us into contact with the shocking finitude of life.

You see before now, most of us have been unaccustomed to death, we were strangers to this inevitable part of the continuum of life.

Death is shocking to us mostly because of accidents of age, class, access to advanced medical technologies and treatments that have prolonged life in ways that would seem miraculous to those generations before us, who lived harsher and shorter lives. And, because we are fortunate enough to live in a society where the rule of law is effective, and where we are a military and economic superpower, the age of Pax Americana still has more hours before its imperial sunset, sometimes it seems that we should have vanquished death too.

We can now outrun the inevitable for longer and longer distances of time, and no matter what we have achieved, in life: in the arts or sciences, or in our careers, we cannot change what it means to be mortal.

We are powerful, but we cannot change, change.

I can remember learning about a strange practice in seminary in New York, in my Christian New Testament classes, where we explored the sacred literature with an Empire Critical lens of biblical interpretation.

In that class we heard about the ancient Roman practice of having victorious generals, at the very peak of their military careers, having just subdued vast new areas for the empire, then on parade through streets of Rome, with an enslaved person, as their charioteer.

These ancient generals were the Douglas MacArthurs, Dwight D Eisenhowers, Norman Schwarzkopfs and David Petraeus’ of their day. Generals at the pinnacle of their careers.

What a strange sight it must have been to have these two together, before the adoring crowds on either side, one person dressed in splendor, the other in rags as they went their way to the senate house. It was the job of the slave to whisper in the general’s ear, the whole time, remember, (that you have) to die, or Memento Mori during this triumphal victory march.

This was an important reminder to be in the present moment, because the past is gone, and the future is not promised.

Remember to die is a call to action to “Be here now.”

To come down to earth, and live a meaningful and mortal life.

Remember to die is a sobering call to action, reminding us to go forward, with humility, gratitude and hope.

This whisper that we all hear, from our own constant, though often unacknowledged, companion, our friend, death, is remembering to us what we do have control over.

What we do have control over is how we live our lives, and how we use the time, whatever time that we have been given.

And in this funeral for the passing year, 2023 I hope we might consider how we heard those whispers, in the parade of the dying year, most importantly did we remember our own mortality and live more fully, more gratefully?

2023 will always stand out for me, because it was the year that my daughter Grace was born. Grace who is now walking, sharing her cheerios, and playing with Emma, the cat.

It was also the year where in a manner of speaking, the person I was before Grace had died, rather suddenly.

It was the year when I declared to myself, and now to you, that henceforth, whether my life is long or short, it is devoted to this baby and the person she is becoming.

Meeting Grace for the first time was a bewildering encounter with the awesome power, presence and ultimate fragility of life, and a summons to do everything in my power to protect this being, and to do this together with her mother, Kate.

Everyday together with my family is a reminder that everything is fleeting, and yet everything is holy and nothing should be taken for granted.

Of course, 2023 was a year of wars, famines, disease, political upheavals, mass migrations, a refugee crisis of truly biblical proportions, widespread economic uncertainty, ideological battles, personal calamities, quiet desperations, but it was also a year of wonder, beauty, rites of passage, the changing seasons and celebrations and a year of new life.

We were all transformed by 2023, through it all, she brought us closer to our collective destiny, she brought us to this point of presence and understanding.

She taught us that in remembering to die, we can live again in the present moment more beautifully, more powerfully.

The life of 2023 best exemplifies this quote from the 19th century Transcendentalist writer Henry David Thorou, in the introduction to his book Walden:

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms...”

The funeral service, however, euphemistically, or playfully described, is always an unwelcome visit to a strange and foreign land.

But, I’m afraid that we must pass through this bizarre and surreal landscape at some point or another, so we might as well do it together.

But we do it best, this transit, when we must remember that we are companioned on this journey and we have been given all the supplies we need on this journey.

These strange places, where we are confronted by unrelenting change, where we encounter the death of a cherished and complex loved one,

These are the places where we grow into the fullness of life, the fullness of our souls.

May this place where we find ourselves now, the present moment, give us an occasion to remember what matters most, and to hear the whisper “Memento Mori, Remember to Die, which really means remember to live in the present moment.

May the memory of 2023 be a blessing forever.

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Encountering God

2/13/2021

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Encountering God
A Sermon
By Rev. Daniel Gregoire

Unitarian Universalist Society of Grafton and Upton

2/7/2021

Reading:

An Excerpt from “The Creative Encounter” By Howard Thurman

...The central fact in religious experience is the awareness of meeting God. The encounter; sometimes, a confrontation; and sometimes, a sense of Presence. What is insisted upon, however, without regard to the term used, is that in the experience defined as religious, the individual is seen as being exposed to direct knowledge of ultimate meaning, ne plus ultra being, in which all that the individual is, becomes clear as immediate and often distinct revelation.
...The mind apprends the whole --the experience is beyond or inclusive of the discursive. It is not other than the discursive, but somehow it is inclusive of the discursive.

Sermon:

In Judaism there are seven names for God.

Including:

Elohim - God (Council of Gods)
El Shaddai - The Almighty
And, my favorite Ehyeh - I Am

In Islam there are 99 names for the divine, called the 99 Beautiful Names of Allah.

The first one is Ar-Rahmaan the most merciful and the 99th is As-Saboor the patient one.

In Hinduism there are 33 million names and forms of God or Brahman. (The universal principle or unchanging ultimate reality)

This month our Spiritual theme invites us to name the name the holy in our own lives, and to hear and appreciate what others call the holy, the ultimate, the divine.

We are encouraged to feel the essential quality of community and the perceived power of places that some call God.

Today I also hope to celebrate the bonds of friendship and understanding that can exist between our community and others.

Ours is a rare faith community; we are home to humanists, naturalists, pantheists, theist, atheists, and agnostics. Whereas most communities of faith adhere to a more explicitly theistic frame of reference, which is quite alright.

With this difference in mind, one could wonder can Unitarian Universalists and Evangelical Christians be friends, for instance?

Can Unitarian Universalists and African-American Baptists be friends?

I wonder can an agnostic UU be friends with a deeply trinitarian African Methodist Episcopalian?

This being Black History Month, lends some urgency to the exploration of these questions.

The answer to these questions is, yes, of course!

Absolutely!

Mutual respect and appreciation of shared values, and commitment to work for the common good is what makes such friendships, and all cross-cultural friendships possible.

Our theme Spirit, is also a special challenge to Unitarian Universalists.

It is a challenge for us to get out of our heads; out of our comfort zone of the hyperrational. We will be pushed all the way into our feelings.

To feel something is a different thing to know facts and figures, it is beyond reasonable, beyond deduction.

Feelings call upon the faculties of body and more often of soul; and, many of us, regard these faculties with deep suspicion.

We are suspicious of these “feelings” in ourselves and in others. We are cautious around the enthusiastic expressions, the zealotry, the near fanaticism of feelings, worried perhaps that new feelings might infect us, or awake something in us, and perhaps take us over!

We still wonder if we can trust our feelings, our sense of intuition, our wonder.

Can we trust the embodied knowing that is oftentimes at odds with our devotion to logic, and our somewhat elementary understanding of science.

This so-called logic that we are expected to apply to every aspect of our lives, does not always serve life.

We even suppose that we can continue the very medieval conceit that we can apply logic, order and reason to our religious lives too as Unitarian Universalists.

And, when we do this we find ourselves masquerading as “free thinkers” when our dogma is actually “unfeelingness.”

I often get tripped up by the orthodoxy of logic, and the idea that there must be some structure and coherence, a theory of everything, a rational, red thread, at the very least, running through it all.

And, if I could but find the red thread, it will allow me a sense of understanding, and perhaps, more importantly to me, a sense of control.

We are all possessed with this intense will to predict and control. It might be a western thing, but we see it many cultures. This will to control extends to every area of our lives, our health, family. We want to control the lives of our children, our neighbors and friends.

We even want to control our system of government. Our democractic system of governance often suggests that we can control our government, but that is not always true.

We want to control our economic systems, and even will the continuance of a high performing stock market through the magic of our “overthinking” about it.

We allow ourselves to believe that if we gather enough information, if we take all of the correct actions, we can control the course and outcomes in every arena of our lives, and ultimately outwit the complex probabilities engine that is Life.

An example of this is way so many of us fritted over the recent election.

We agonized trying to divine; would it be more years of what we knew, or would the necessary regime change come to Washington?

What could we do to reduce the chance of the former, and increase the likelihood of the later?

More reading, more talking, more writing, more protesting, more convincing, more what? But, always more?

So many of us could never be persuaded that we were doing enough, even if we worked ourselves into exhaustion. But, the great mystery before us was what the next thing should be.

One of my colleagues related to me how they were filled with worry and anxiety about the outcome of the presidential election. This person like many UUs is white, educated, comfortably middle class and living in the farthest reaches of suburbia, in what one might call:

“... [a] fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war.” (John of Gaut speech, Richard II, William Shakespeare)

My friend, and colleague, a long time activist themself, was confessing their confusion about an African American pastor that they know, also a long-time fellow activist in an urban setting.

That pastor, seemed to my friend, unbothered, insufficiently worried, about the election outcome, one way or another.

Well, how could that be?

How could that be? When clearly he (the pastor) was a black man, and his community, so long disenfranchised. How could he be so oblivious when people he knew and loved have so much to lose or gain depending on the outcome of things.

How could he be so well anchored, when all those around him, especially in more comfortable positions were so adrift with dread and apprehension?

My colleague said, that he was simply able to “leave it up to God.” Those were his remarkable words.

The pastor was able to leave it up to God, and get on with his life.

When I heard this I recognized something that excited me. This was a chance to offer a different and important perspective, one that would be crucial for us at UUSGU as we flesh out our Social Justice agenda under the banner of Racial Allyship and Racial Amity.

In order to strengthen our cross-cultural friendships, perhaps even extending the hand of friendship to a historically black congregation, becoming sister churches.

We’ve dreamed of doing such things together, but we’ve have yet to turn the dreams into reality.

If we hope to do this well, we must appreciate the unique frame of reference expressed by the black pastor and activist.

I think what my UU friend and colleague struggled to understand, what some in our congregation might struggle to understand is that feeling of presence, a companioning presence that attends all religious experience.

That presence, some choose to call God.

Without knowing the pastor personally, I know that he is naming the creative, and ultimately liberating encounter with the divine, in the black idiom. And, in so doing he is allowing room for all sorts of unimagined possibilities and aid to emerge and become real.

When we let go of that illusionary sense of control, we can take on a much grander point of reference, where so much more is possible. This is not to say that we don’t have to show up, and be an active participant in our liberation, but rather the work of getting free is not ours to do alone.

In our reading we heard the words of Howard Thurman the 20th century Quaker Theologian, and mystic.

He was the first Black dean and chaplain of a historically white institution, Boston University. He was also the founder of one of the first intentionally interfaith and interracial churches in San Francisco in 1944.

This church, The Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples which still meets, has as its vision:

“...is an interfaith, interracial, intercultural community of seekers dedicated to personal empowerment and social transformation through an ever deepening relationship with the Spirit of God in All Life.”

This is pretty extraordinary.

This man wrote:

...The central fact in religious experience is the awareness of meeting God. The encounter; sometimes, a confrontation; and sometimes, a sense of Presence. What is insisted upon, however, without regard to the term used, is that in the experience defined as religious, the individual is seen as being exposed to direct knowledge of ultimate meaning, ne plus ultra being, in which all that the individual is, becomes clear as immediate and often distinct revelation.

In the Howard Thurman reading, what is really compelling about it is the way that Thurman captures the essence of feeling, coming from the encounter with God, which is imagined in the most electrifying terms.

It is a confrontation with presence!

It is being exposed to direct knowledge, ultimate meaning, that is in his words, immediate, distinct, revelatory.

Ne Plus Ultra, the ancient Latin phrase that refers to the quality of unsurpassed perfection. (There is nothing more!)

This experience can be described in words, but one needs so many of them, and in the end it includes concepts that are beyond, words, phrases, thought and logic, but are deeply felt all the same.

Thurman writes:

...The mind apprends the whole --the experience is beyond or inclusive of the discursive. It is not other than the discursive, but somehow it is inclusive of the discursive.

I really appreciate the word discursive because it describes a style of writing that is fluid and expansive.

Often it is used in the pejorative sense. It can also reveal a bit of contempt for the kinds of speech marked with digressions from subject to subject, with little sense of coherence or direction.

But, that’s just it, all of the words that we might use to describe the holy will fall short, it will land on the ear like a housefly trying to get our attention, petitioning for his release from captivity.

When the people in our lives, say “I am letting go and letting God.”

When they say “God Willing.”

When we hear “It is in God’s hands now.”

When we ourselves say “Only God knows how…”

This is not an abnegation, nor is it a rejection of real responsibility, or to deny a sense of personal agency. At least it doesn’t have to be.

It is not defeatism, resignation or simply giving up!

It is a courageous acknowledgement of the vast mystery and dizzying complexity of every aspect of life.

These turns of phrase, are a recognition of our limited humanity and these phrases lend that humanity the dignity and rest (sabbath) that we deserve.

These feelings come from life sustaining belief systems, systems that sustain life.

These, at times puzzling turns of phrase allow us to be present in the moment and to face life's many uncertainties with dignity and grace.

For the pastor/activist to say that the election and all else is in God’s hands, is an instance of life sustaining faith and feeling.

That energy, that power, that calm does not come from ambition, wealth or fame. It does not come from accounting for all of the outcomes, mitigating risks or trying to control them altogether.

Rather, it comes from the ongoing creative and liberating encounter with God.

But, where is God in Unitarian Universalism?

Where is God in the 7 principles?

There is indeed no mention of God or any deity in the seven principles.

And, therein lies the beauty of our living tradition and, the extraordinary elegance of the principles, in that they do not pretend to describe what is inclusive of the discursive, but is ultimately beyond discursive,

7 words,
99 words, 3
3 million words

These words would not be enough to describe the holy, and it is always silly when we try to circumscribe the essence of feeling.

But what our 7 principles together, do it to point us down the road where in the moment we will counter the holy.

The principles are a way of placing ourselves in the pathway of ...direct knowledge of ultimate meaning, ne plus ultra being, in which all that the individual is, becomes clear as immediate and often distinct revelation.

The principles are the means through which we encounter a God of our own understanding.

Our 3rd Principle: Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations, would be the one principle we might focus our attention on as a means of connecting with others whether here in our meetinghouse or elsewhere.

Remember that our community is a place where we grow spiritually, and expand our knowledge and also our feelings.

We seek to embrace all on this soul growing journey we call Life; knowing that we will and should have different names for the divine.

I want us to hear the turn of phrase, “I let go and Let God”, “It’s in God’s hands now” not with pity, contempt or ridicule, or even empathy, but rather, as one of the many markers of courageous spiritual growth.

I want us to hear these words as a commitment to ongoing liberation through a generative encounter with God.

Our spiritual growth lies in the true appreciation of difference, including different points of view, and celebrating the diversity of ways that we name and the many ways that we feel the presence of God.

...God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears,
Thou who hast brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who hast by Thy might,
Led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee,
Lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee;
Shadowed beneath Thy hand,
May we forever stand,
True to our God,
True to our native land. - From “Life Every Voice and Sing” by James Weldon Johnson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyZkRgQ4ZnQ

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