Welcome Autumn

Welcome Autumn

In the past few weeks, I have closed the windows in my apartment and gone searching for my long-sleeved shirts and jackets. I have seen the first tinges of autumn in the leaves. I enjoy autumn immensely (especially my pumpkin-spice lattes), and, but this season also brings with it some challenges for many families. One of the greatest enemies of the modern family is the incredibly full calendar. So many families rush from school and work to other sports and activities and barely even take a moment to pass in the halls. My own child, Ariana, just started preschool, and my husband and I are both working new jobs. Some days I don't get home until she is already in bed, and often we're so exhausted that our family meals are in front of the TV.

We all know how important it is to spend time with our families. Those important moments of connection, whether they are the bedtime rituals or family dinners, are the moments that bond us together with the people we love the most. I think my favorite moments are the times we can never plan: a sleepy-eyed Ariana stumbling out of bed in her pajamas wanting to snuggle, evenings when she falls asleep without a struggle and Rhye and I have just a few minutes to talk, or even times when we're navigating through traffic, discovering something new. These are moments worth treasuring.

And, as Ariana grows older, I also treasure sharing with her the religious rituals of my faith. We light a family chalice together and sing the chalice song she knows from Sunday School. We say bedtime prayers together. And, when she is ready, I look forward to sharing larger, communal worship experiences together. When I was a child, family devotions were an important part of our family life. My dad often said, "The family that prays together stays together." While my prayers now may look or sound different from the prayers I said with my parents as a child, they instilled in me a love for worship. My spiritual connection was intimately connected to my family.
The etymology of the word "worship" derives from "worth" or "value." What are the things we value? How will we shape the moments in our lives to recognize their worth? In addition to the beautiful spontaneous moments (which I encourage you to savor), this year we hope to bring many opportunities for you to share worshipful moments with your family at First Unitarian. The new format for Time for Community is intended to allow families to light candles together, to share their joys and sorrows, and to connect with others in the community. Many of the "Monday Night at the Church" programs are being designed for families to engage together in a spiritual way. And this Sunday I look forward to celebrating autumn with our first Community Worship Service, a time for all ages to join together in the sanctuary for the entire worship hour. For families with young children (early elementary and toddlers), we will offer "Extended Care" beyond our normal nursery services with activities connected to the theme, but older children and youth are strongly encouraged to join with the in this time of worship. Together, we will find new ways to express worth and honor in our community.

I hope each of us will find the time in our busy schedules to connect to our families and to our spiritual community. These are truly the moments of worth.

Bright Autumn Blessings!

Jessica Gray, Director FDM
First Unitarian Church of Worcester

Candles and Flames

What is it about candles and flames? In this now un-magical world, candles and flames still seem to have magical and spiritual powers. I remember a time, maybe 5th or 6th grade, when I would write my wishes on pieces of paper and burn them in my garage. I thought that committing them to the flame would, through some unknown process, make them come true. People in many traditions light candles as a vigil, as a prayer, as a way to steady the breath and the heart.


We light candles, two big candles, at the beginning of every worship service. It is the ritual that moves us from ordinary time into exalted time. Words are said at that moment, words that invoke a holy spirit.

In a ritual, meaning is shown in two ways, whenever a candle is lit. One is how it is lit. The other is what it lights.

What does it mean that the candles in the front of the sanctuary are lit, first by me as the minister, and the other by a congregant? What does that suggest? To me, it suggests that we move from the "ordinary" into the "sacred" through ordinary means.

These are not two entirely separate realms of life. What if we had a sacred fire, one we kept burning through the week and never allowed it to go out. What if we lit our sanctuary candles from an eternal flame? That would mean something different, wouldn't it?

Consider, on the other hand, how we light candles from our large candles and then, pass that light hand to hand through the congregation on Christmas Eve? One flame shared, multiplying and spreading, lighting up each other's faces. The motion is "from the one to the many."

On Sunday morning, at 10:05, a member of the Lay Leadership Council will light a flaming chalice, on a table by the door from the Bancroft Room into the sanctuary. This will mark the start of the Time For Community portion of the morning. They will say a few chalice lighting words.

On that table, there will be many small candles or tea-lights. Worshippers are invited to light a tea-light from the chalice and leave it burning on that table.

• Light a candle for someone who is sick, or grieving.

• Light a candle as a family to celebrate a birthday, or a new pet.

• Light a candle to pray for a good outcome on a test.

• Light a candle with your children; let them practice with making a prayer or a wish with ritual.

• Light a candle in memory.

Worshippers can light these candles up through the musical prelude before the service.

There will also be cards on that table, on which you can write down your personal concern. When the service starts, I will collect those cards and may refer to them as we pray together as a congregation in the service. You may identify yourself on the card, or remain anonymous.

I think of that flaming chalice as somehow being all of us, the gathered spirits of our congregation and our tradition. You can light a candle from that strong flame to be a sign of your hope or need. And all those gathered candles are all of us coming together to worship. There is both a motion of the one to the many, and the motion of the many gathered together as one. You do not weaken it all by making a bit of it yours for a moment. We are here to offer you a source of strength and hope and companionship for life's journey. Let these flames be a reminder of that.

I am looking forward to seeing you in church this week.

"You'll Do Great" by Sierra-Marie Gerfao

One year ago, the Rev. Barbara Merritt, newly retiring, wrote to you: "We are like birds that spend the night in the same tree, and then, in the morning, fly off in different directions. At least that is the metaphor I heard in India to describe the transitory nature of all human relationships."

Day is a-breaking! Soon, we will fly off in different directions. Though my last day will not be until July 31^st, we have come to the end of much of our work together.

Thank you to everyone who came to hear me preach, in my staff role here, one final time last Sunday. I believe the divine spirit was present with us. Thank you for the very fun and sweet going-away party. I appreciated every detail, truly, and I know how hard so many of you worked on it. Thank you so much for the honor of the Montessori globes given to each of the Spirit Play classrooms. I am humbled and grateful. Thank you also for my Kindle, which I had wanted for so long, and for my memory book, which I already treasure dearly. And the giant card, well, my goodness how I appreciate your kind words.

Most of all, as I said last Sunday, thank you for allowing me to take this walk with you over the last four years. Thank you for your patience, forgiveness, and good humor, and for allowing me to grow into my gifts, and allowing me to be your partner as you grow into your gifts. Thank you for teaching me, and thank you for being willing to learn from me, even though I came to be what you didn't expect, and maybe what you didn't think you wanted. Thank you for being proactive and enthusiastic in the development of your own ministries, which belong to you, and of which I was only your partner, nothing more and nothing less. It has been an honor and a joy.

As I said over a year ago when I first announced my acceptance into divinity school: "You are a magnificent congregation, and you have my love, loyalties, best wishes, and affection."

Now, a few final words to all of you, as a congregation:

First, I am excited for you about your future. This coming Sunday, an announcement will be made introducing you to your new Director of Faith Development Ministries. I know you will welcome her right in, celebrate, and use fully the unique gifts and strengths she brings with her to this work. In the Fall, I understand that you will also be welcoming another new staff person with the addition of a quarter-time Youth Ministries Coordinator to the Faith Development staff team. This is the result of several years of hard work and persistence, and I know it will serve you well.

What is most exciting about your future, however, is you. In my time here, I never once presented you with a vision that was not yours. As I wrote moments ago, your ministries belong to you. Instead, I partnered with you to bring to articulation the vision that you had for your ministries, and to work toward this vision. It is this vision - this vision that arises out of you - this vision of lifespan faith development ministries - ever-more articulated each year, that makes me certain that you will do great! In our short years together, we plotted the garden, tilled the soil, and in some cases, planted some seeds for a new era in your life as a congregation. We have seen a few blooms, but mostly we have been waiting. The best years are yet to come.

Now, to mix some metaphors and return to the birds in the tree, I close thusly: Many blessings to you, as we prepare to take flight from this tree, which we have shared for a time much briefer than we thought we might, but long enough for us to see the promise in one another, and the divine spark that lives in all of us. Be well, and I trust our paths will someday cross again!

With the warmth of the chalice flame,

Sierra-Marie Gerfao

Director of Religious Education/

Director of Faith Development Ministries

"Unique Faces" by Rev. Tom Schade

The Emperor Qinshihuang was the first Emperor of a unified China and the founder of the Qin (pronounced "Chin") dynasty.  At the age of 13 he became the King of Qin kingdom.  By 221 BCE, he defeated a combination of rivals and came to power as an Emperor at the age of 39. He died at the age of 50 in 210 BCE.  

 

Qinshihuang was morbidly afraid of death and sought immortality throughout his life. In service of that goal, he had built a huge mausoleum and tomb for himself, outside of the city of Xi'an.  It was his life's work.

As part of that burial site, a terra cotta replica of an army was buried to guard his tomb.  Eight thousand terra cotta figures, horses and men.  They were discovered in 1974 by local farmers. 

Sue and I visited the Terra Cotta Museum on our trip to China.  It is simply mind-boggling.  We stood in a vast room, the size of football field at least, in which thousands of the terra-cotta warriors were arrayed, in rows and columns like an army. 

In the beginning, they were standing covered by beams and a wooden structure.  During a later rebellion, they were all smashed and the wooden structure burned and collapsed over the wreckage.  Now, they are being painstakingly dug up and reassembled , thousands of them. 

We could see them in all their stages:  from faces and limbs emerging from the soil to the finally restored figures, whole and seemingly undamaged despite time.  They have all faded to a dusty gray brown, but it is possible to see that they were all once brightly painted.

This vast room is 1.5 kilometers from the Emperor's tomb itself, which has not been opened yet. The entire area is full of other burial sites containing all sorts of things.   Other buried objects are made of more precious materials than terra-cotta: bronze horse and chariots, armor made of linked jade panels. 

It appears that near the end of his life, 720,000 conscripts were working on the tomb. 

It is hard to imagine our way back into Qinshihuang's head, to see life through his eyes and to understand how he thought this was an effective way to stay death. How did he understand life and death that this all made sense to him, and to the people around him?

 

Death must have been, for him, a lonely journey of an isolated soul.  You will be alone, except for what and who you bring with you.  Compare his vision to the picture of heaven popular now.  The popular imagination is that in death we will be reunited with those we have loved and lost.We talk of "the choir invisible."   Since it is estimated that 95% of the human beings who have ever lived are already dead, heaven must be twenty times the size of our present earthly community. 

But there must have been, in Qinshihuang's mind, other people in the afterlife.  Otherwise, why bring an army?  Who are they to fight? 

Archeologists estimate that the terra cotta warriors are about 15% larger than the average people of that time.  His army was big and intimidating.

The Chariot for the Afterlife

Yet, the bronze chariot that he was expecting to ride is about half-size with half-size horses.  Did he expect to be in his physical body?  It seems that this vision assumed a spirit-body that survived death that was not fixed by size or shape.  Even that representations of soldiers were enough meant that it was a spirit-body, not a revived body that inhabited the other world.   (There are other cultures in which slaves and soldiers were killed and buried along with the Emperors, so as to be of service in the next life in their present bodies, revived.)

In some ways, Qinshihuang was trying to build a replica of this world in the next.  Other pits have revealed terra cotta figures of other occupations and roles, birds and animals.  One senses a desire to take the whole world in all its variety and diversity with him into the next one.

But perhaps the most striking thing is this:  it appears that each terra cotta warrior has a unique and individual face.  As though each figure was a particular person who sat for a portrait in clay to be made. 

People differ on the question of the afterlife.  Many say, now, that there is none.  But among those who say there is a life after death, some say that we retain our individual personhood, and others say that we do not.  Some imagine that we will know our friends in heaven, and they will know us, and others say that this identity of ours is but a surface accident that will be left behind.

I don't know, and I don't think that anyone really knows.  But I am touched, across all the centuries and cultural difference, that Qinshihuang wanted to take his army with him, not as a mass, but as individuals, people with names and faces, each one unique and irreplaceable.  There is something about the "inherent worth and dignity of every person" there.

Here are some of the faces of the terra cotta warriors of Qinshihuang. 

Under the Care of the Chinese Government by Rev. Tom Schade

Sue and I went to China with a group from the Worcester Art Museum this month.  The group was led by Professor Paul Ropp of Clark University and we had a great time.  Travel broadens.   When I first arrived in China, at the Beijing International Airport, I was denied entry into the country.  Some of you may have heard something about this incident.  I posted it on my facebook wall at the time, but without much detail.  And as Facebook is not available in China, I was not able to update the incident. This is the whole story. There was a mistake on my visa.  I had applied to enter China before May 10, 2011.  My visa however, said that I was to enter China before May 1, 2011.  I arrived on May 09, 2011.   Oops.  I am a decent sort of fellow with a friendly face.  I am an American citizen.  I am white, middle-aged and prosperous.   "A decent sort with a friendly face My first instinct is that people will give me the benefit of the doubt in ambiguous situations.  I sort of expected that the Chinese Immigration officer would look me in my eye, see my lack of guile and benignity and conclude that this was a minor technical error, a clerical transposition of two numbers,  He would wave me through. No, that did not happen.  Sue had been waved through, but I was not.  Of course, a couple of supervisors also examined my papers and they all concluded that I did not have a valid visa to enter China, and so, therefore I could not. A representative of China Airlines explained that they could book me on a flight back to the United States.  Or, he suggested that I do what some people in this situation do: go to Hong Kong and re-apply for a visa there and try again.  Sue contacted China Advocates, the organization that was making the arrangements for the tour we were on, and soon, they had a representative, Dave,  at the airport to talk with me.  (Chinese people who are in the tourism business refer to their "Chinese Name" and to their "English Name.".  Do you have a Chinese name?) Dave arranged for me to get some necessities from my baggage, which had already entered China.  And he got me on a flight to Hong Kong the next morning.  Meanwhile, I was going to be under the care of the Chinese government.  Their care consisted of an orange chair, on which I was instructed to sit.    It was in a waiting area of the large room where people lined up to present their visas.  I watched wave after wave of people pass through the room into China.  After a while, somebody brought me the Chinese equivalent of some Little Debby cakes and a couple of candy bars. At midnight, a Chinese border guard accompanied me into China to a small hotel facility inside the airport.  I was given some soup, and shown to a small bedroom.  I could take a shower but I needed to sleep with the door open, so he could keep an eye on me. In the morning, it was back to the orange chair for another couple of hours.  And then, I was walked to the plane for Hong Kong, given my passport and boarding pass and put on the plane.  None of it was cruel, or mean, or even uncaring.  It was simply impersonal. When I landed in Hong Kong, I was met by Randy from China Advocates.  We went to a photobooth and made some pictures of me for the new visa application.  He booked me into a hotel, took my passport and said that he would be back in 24 hours with a new visa and my boarding pass for a flight back to China.  He was good to his word.  Exiled in beautiful Hong Kong.  I had 24 hours to spend in Hong Kong, a fabulous city.  All in all, the whole experience was a little nerve-wracking at first, and then a little boring, and then ultimately kind of exciting.  It did feel good to get back to Beijing and see Sue again. The story has been going around that I was delayed because I am a minister.  Not so.  I think that the origin of that story is this:  because I listed "Minister" as my profession on my visa application, I was asked to provide a letter by some authority figure that I was not going to China to convert Chinese people to Christianity.  Our moderator David Spanagel graciously wrote that letter.  I am sure that he was quite persuasive about my inability to convert anybody to Christianity.  That never came up again. I will have more about my trip to China along the way. Thanks for the chance to go.

Americans, it seems, not longer argue about what the government should do, or not do.  We argue, instead, about what we should feel about what happens.  For example, did President Obama show too little triumphant joy when he announced the death of Osama Bin Ladin?  Is it appropriate to dance in the streets and shout "USA, USA" on the news? Should we feel grateful about George Bush now?  Or even President Obama?

Almost everyone on Facebook has posted their feelings on the subject of their feelings.  What is the precise mix of joy, triumph, sadness, forgiveness, vengeance that is to be expressed?  There are dueling Bible verses being bandied back and forth.  I have seen Proverbs 24:17 often quoted:  "Do not rejoice when your enemies fall and do not let your heart be glad when they stumble." I also note that the proverb is about observing that your enemy has fallen, not about killing your enemy yourself. 

A spurious Martin Luther King, Jr. quote is circulating.  "I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that." 

Apparently, the first sentence was not King's, but the introductory comment of a contemporary person. 

However, we all know from our personal lives that nothing is more futile than trying to convince another person to feel differently than they do.  People "move on" from their emotions only after they have felt them enough to see their limits. 

The death of Osama is another step in the long emotional journey started on 9/11/2001.  One emotional path taken from that day to now has been to personalize the attack as the work of one person and to want vengeance.  I remember watching a televised fundraiser in the immediate aftermath and seeing New York firefighters spitting on and shaking their fist at photos of Osama Bin Ladin.  For them, it had become personal and individual.   For many, it still is.   

Now that emotional journey has come to its natural end.  Vengeance has come.  And the promise that George Bush made with his bullhorn that those to blame "would soon hear from us" has been fulfilled.  And for those who needed Osama's death, there will be great joy.  For some, it will be closure.  For others, it will not really change a thing.

America did go crazy after 9/11.  Right from the beginning, there were widely different emotional responses.  Many people were irritated, angered and irked when other people responded differently.  

 

I believe that the deeply emotional political polarization of the country was born in the emotions around 9/11.  Those emotional differences became fused with politics.  Liberals were sad, reflective and self-critical.  Conservatives were angry, terrified and vengeful.  The lines were drawn.

Someday, we will have to explain to our grandchildren why the Dixie Chicks fell so swiftly from grace.  Our grandkids will think that we were nuts.  (If none of this makes sense, call a random number in a Texas area code and ask whoever answers the phone to explain.)

The emotional pathways from 9/11 are coming to their natural ends.  Osama is dead.  There was no World War 3 or 4, no great war for the future of humanity.  The great war against Islamic fundamentalism in Afghanistan turned into a battle between warlords and tribes in distant mountains The war against tyranny in Iraq turned out to be a orgy of sectarian violence and ethnic cleansing in a weak and fragile state.  Saddam Hussien died and it changed nothing.  And now, even when Arab peoples rise in their streets for democracy, we realize that all our military power is relatively useless for advancing their and our aspirations.

They say that at the end of grief's journey is acceptance.  We all will come to the journey's end in our  own time and in our own way.  Let us not judge each other.

So after 9/11, what?  There are holes in the ground in lower Manhattan.  The great mass of the dead, now joined by so many Iraqis and Afghanis, have become individuals, not symbols.  They are missed by their families who treasure their memories.  Hopeful signs of growing interfaith tolerance and cooperation have sprung up; they will endure long after the anti-Muslim hysteria has faded.  Time is working.

There is a gap in the New York skyline; we are beginning to see in it the sky, the blue blue sky.