Sermon | July 26, 2020 | Rev. Emily Wright-Magoon
Before the sermon, we watched together a video very similar to this one: The Parable of the Trapeze by Danaan Parry.
I love this parable of the trapeze – this meditation on the transitions in our lives.
And yet when I watch it closely, I find such an interesting disconnect between the words and the images.
The words paint a picture of a solitary person grasping onto that next empty trapeze bar. He says, “I see another trapeze bar swinging toward me. It’s empty.”
But in fact the trapeze artist isn’t up there alone. When the trapeze artist lets go of one bar, they are not grabbing onto another empty bar – they are being caught – and grasping onto – another person.
…And in the case where they do go from mid-air to an empty trapeze bar, it’s because one partner has just let them go at the right time, and the other partner has swung out the empty bar.
We are never truly alone.
I said last week that one of my mantras has been that the individual self is a fiction. As one my mentors said, individuals are relational achievements. The self is community internalized.
Even when we feel we have done something completely on our own, it is because we have been shaped by others. We carry them with us. Their words and actions, love and neglect, pain and care make us who we are.
When I began my ministry 14 years ago, I was still wounded from religion and was stubbornly unaffiliated with any religious tradition. I no longer had even the interfaith community that nurtured me through divinity school, because I had moved away. I was a 20-something college multifaith chaplain going solo.
I realized it didn’t work, going it alone. I started attending a UU church and became an engaged member. I became fellowshipped as a UU minister. I continued my chaplaincy work from a deeper place because I was accountable to, and held by, larger communities.
And then five years ago, I became your minister and I felt what it was like to be accountable to and held by you.
You have changed me and made me. And we and you have changed each other.
Five years ago, I was new, and you chose to trust me.
Over and over, you chose to trust me. And I, you. And you, each other.
The trapeze is not about some solo flight, but about relationship and trust – about trusting, amidst the never-ending transitions in our lives, that we can trust each other to swing, to leap, to grasp, to let go.
Just like the trapeze, these relationships take practice and courage and care.
Now you all as a congregation are swinging toward your next minister. You will need to let go of me in order to swing through and grasp that next relationship of trust – that next wonderful shared ministry.
The letting go is necessary for the movement to the next.
That’s why, as you’ve hopefully heard from my newsletter article and other communications, there’s a covenant among UU ministers that the departing minister keep a period of no contact for 1-3 years. We’ve decided on 1 year, and we’ve made an exception for letter-writing. So if you’d like to send me a snail-mail letter, you may do so, but otherwise, this will truly be a goodbye for at least a year.
Now hopefully I sound like a broken-record when I say again that I believe being intentional about making good endings, opens us up to more fully embrace the next chapter. As I talked about last week, we have done so much good work together these past five years, and I am so excited to see what your next chapter as a congregation holds.
I’ve talked about the spiritual tasks of good endings, and I have four final tasks to complete with you today.
Dr. Ira Byock says the four most important things we can say to one another are:
I forgive you. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you.
I forgive you and please forgive me.
Honestly, you didn’t give me a lot to forgive you about! The feedback I did give consistently to the Board and the Committee on Ministry is that roles and responsibilities are fuzzy. This has probably been the hardest part of ministry for me. Coming from college chaplaincy work that has much clearer divisions of responsibility, it was often hard for me to discern (even after asking) what was mine to do and what was yours to do and what was shared and how to navigate that. This is hard in every church, and I think we have grown in our ability to have those conversations and navigate those decisions. I forgive you.
And will you please forgive me for the times I overstepped or understepped in responsibilities? I wouldn’t be surprised if the next minister says, “Wait, why did Emily do (some particular task)…so-and-so is supposed to do that…” and maybe there were times when you wondered… “why isn’t Emily doing ______?”
Please forgive me.
Please also forgive me for the times I may have been distracted and did not attend to you as I should – when I hurt you or neglected you without knowing it. If you’re carrying something like that with you, I hope you’ll come to me still. Forgiveness – giving it and asking for it are such important spiritual tasks.
Now on to the next tasks:
Thank you and I love you.
Thank you for trusting me. Thank you for trusting me to come into your homes and your hospital rooms and your text threads. Thank you for trusting me to make decisions and to rearrange the sanctuary. Thank you for letting me bring up hard subjects and for sharing your stories and lives and feelings with me. Thank you for being brave when we ventured into new territory together, whether that was with a right relations policy, or through a hard conversation, or beyond our walls doing justice work together.
Thank you for helping me learn how to be a parish minister. For being my first congregation. For the freedom to experiment, collaborate, grow, and change. Thank you for the kind laughter when I made silly mistakes. I loved the Sunday when I forgot to put the new member covenant on a slide, and so the new members had to huddle together and read the covenant off of one small piece of paper.
Thank you for showing up for this congregation and for each other – even when it was hard or boring or tiresome.
Thank you for accompanying me and my family – with care and patience and homecooked meals– through our changes. Cora grew up in this congregation. Sofia was born in this congregation. You were there for me after my miscarriage, during my harrowing sickness for six months of pregnancy, and for my maternity leave.
Thank you for learning Zoom and showing up here, too, finding ways to say good goodbyes to one another even though we are not in person.
I love you. I am proud to have served as your minister. You have changed me.
Yesterday evening after the sun set, I walked into our backyard barefoot thinking of you all and today’s service. The sun was down, but the flat stones I walked on still held the heat, and I could feel the lovely warmth on my soles. Those stones will become cold each night, yet I will always feel the warmth of this community.
I will hold you all and our stories so close –I can’t help but hold them close, because they are part of me now.
The self is community internalized. You have changed me.
I’ll close this sermon with the entirety of the poem whose beginning I started today’s service with. This poem by our own Harry Nutter:
Living, loving, learning, leaving
All these we must do
As we spin our life’s work weaving
Warp of old with weft anew
…
I would not leave without a yearning.
I will arrive with some regret.
For even as my mind is learning,
My heart turns back. It can’t forget. [1]
We are wound and bound together. Let’s get free together.
Thank you for the privilege of serving as your minister. I’m always rooting for you.
– Rev. Emily
[1] “Living…” published by the Unitarian Universalist Church of Midland in “Fragments” in Mosaic: A Summer Anthology of Good Reading 2009