Rev. Emily Wright-Magoon
October 1, 2017
OPENING WORDS
“I pin my hopes to quiet processes and small circles, in which vital and transforming events take place.” – Rufus Jones
We all need some circle of belonging, where we can find fellowship, even or especially amidst difference.
We all need some circle of deep listening, where we can be invited to unfold our hearts and spirits.
We all need some circle of searching, where we can ask the hard questions, formulate our temporary solutions, chart our paths forward.
And the truth is that we are all already and always held in a circle of love.
Our holy task is to make that love more visible, by heeding those quiet processes, by nurturing the bonds of trust between us.
It is good to be together.
SERMON
Maybe I’ve told this story before. When I was a college chaplain, every other Thursday night I would invite students over to our home for dinner and conversation. Sometimes upwards of 60 students would crowd into our home. (The college subsidized our rent because they knew we needed a larger home to accommodate these important gatherings!)
They were young people of all different races, and religions – including no religion. It was Maine, where the tradition is to take off your shoes in someone’s home – especially in the winter, so this is what our entryway would look like.
These young people would drape themselves over the side of the already full couches and chairs, and didn’t mind sitting on the floor. We’d eat dinner on our laps, and then have a conversation. 60 people was too many for a conversation, so I trained some students as facilitators, and we dispersed into the different rooms of the house. We’d have what we called a “query” – from the Quaker tradition. A query is a question such as: “What mask do you wear and what do you think about that?” or “Where do you see new growth happening?” or “What beautiful contradictions do you contain?”
The students treasured this time, as did I, because it was a conversation distinct from their typical modes of conversation in a college environment – which were academic debate, or superficial party banter, or talk with people just like yourself, or that kind of talking where you know the other person is not really listening but waiting to offer their comparison, or advice, or distraction.
Our conversations had a covenant: usually you only spoke once until everyone else had a chance to speak. No one responded directly to someone’s sharing – instead, we nurtured a silence between the responses. Some confessed the silence felt awkward at first. But soon they found the silence nourishing: that the silence could convey better than words could: “I hear you” or “Me, too” or “We’re with you.”
The times of silence also nurtured our abilities to listen better both inwardly and outwardly. Everyone grew to know that silence
was not absence, but presence.
I witnessed these young people sharing things with one another they had never told even themselves. I witnessed them having ideas and insights – sometimes about their classes – that could have been kindled only by the depth of that sacred group.
We called these Thursday evenings “Hearth” – for we felt we were gathered around the warm hearth of a home – a home that we all built through our
brave ventures with one another
into the hearts of our lives and what it meant to live.
WHAT ARE YOU SEEKING?
Do you remember when you first came to Unitarian Universalism? Or the first time you came to this particular congregation? Or any other church? What were you looking for? What were you hoping to find?
Many times people are seeking after what the Unitarian James Luther Adams called: “intimacy and ultimacy.”
INTIMACY
Intimacy is about belonging…connecting…fellowship. We need more people in our lives who truly know us. Brene Brown says:
What we know matters, but who we are matters more. Being rather than knowing requires showing up and letting ourselves be seen.
And the poet Mark Nepo would say that seeing requires us to “slow down and let in what is before us.”
We need more experiences of being deeply listened to without any fixing or advising or comparing or lecturing. We need to better understand people different from us, and feel a sense of belonging within that difference.
ULTIMACY
Ultimacy is about seeking deeper meaning of what is profoundly true and good. The search for truth and meaning requires more than armchair philosophizing or… listening to a sermon. I believe meaning is most powerfully formed through relationship. As I described with those young people at my home: I witnessed them having ideas and insights that could have been kindled only by the depth of that sacred group.
We sometimes think that we have the language for things, the meaning of things, somewhere packaged up within us: in our brain perhaps… and we just need to pull it out, already in paragraph form.
In reality, much of that meaning-making happens with one another, between one another.
We hear each other into speech,
as the feminist Nelle Morton said.((http://actsofhope.blogspot.com/2007/08/hearing-to-speech.html))
And how we listen shapes the meaning one makes. Karl Menninger said:
Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. The friends who listen to us are the ones we move toward. When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand.
The practice of cultivating intimacy and ultimacy are spiritual practices. And we all have a new opportunity for this practice…
CHALICE CIRCLES
If you read our newsletter or weekly announcements or facebook page or chalkboard, you’ll know that today marks the kick-off of our new Chalice Circles sign-up. Chalice Circles are groups of 5-9 people who meet consistently for a covenanted conversation about how a monthly theme connects to their lives.
We wanted to start Chalice Circles here because of that need for intimacy and ultimacy.
Attending Sunday service meets some of that need for us…Going to church social events, working side by side on projects, teaching the children’s classes, attending meditation opportunities…all of these are essential parts of our mission.
And Chalice Circles is an important addition to the fulfillment of our mission because in a small covenant group we can dig deep into our questions about life (ultimacy), and we can deepen relationship and belonging (intimacy).
Chalice Circles are what church people call “small group ministry.” The groups are called by many different names: Covenant Groups, Small Groups, etc – but all with the same purpose and structure. They are more and more relied upon in many churches, including UU churches, as a powerful way to live out our principles.
I’d like to tell you my colleague’s story of her first experience of Chalice Circles – she refers to it as small group ministry.
Rev. Lora Brandis says:
I was introduced to small group ministry at the First Unitarian Church of Dallas… I co-led a group for three years with my friend Bill. He wasn’t my friend before we co-led the group together; I had never met him before we were thrown together as co-leaders.
There was a woman in our group named Janie who taught me a lot of what I now know about small group ministry. She’s gone now, having died several years ago from cancer. When I met her she was in her late 60s or early 70s and if she had not by chance been assigned to my group, I doubt if I would have even known her. Her one child was an adult. My children were in grade school. She lived in one of the wealthy areas of Dallas; I lived in one of the more modest areas. She wore fur in the winter. I wore my grandmother’s hand-me-down Harris Tweed wool coat. She frequented the high-end arts establishments like the opera and the Dallas Theater Center. I worked behind the scenes in the arts. She was a patron. I was staff. We did not travel in the same circles, but as Unitarian Universalists looking for a place to belong and a place to seek meaning we landed in the same circle – a circle that would eventually provide a sacred space for deep listening.
Our group did not start out that way. We did not know each other. We did not trust each other. We did not trust the process. We did not want to follow the covenant to refrain from cross-talk, judging, or giving advice. And we really didn’t want to sit in silence waiting for the next person to speak. We were all really uncomfortable with letting any instant of unknowing grow between what is said and our impulse to immediately respond. We were Unitarian Universalists. We wanted to discuss and argue like we had always done. We wanted to give advice and fix. We wanted to judge the ones wearing fur and to make our arguments for or against.
Bill and I were trained to respect the process and the covenant and eventually we came to trust both the process and the covenant. Janie came infrequently to our meetings and couldn’t quite get onboard with how we were all beginning to trust the process, the covenant and each other, how we would actively listen to each other without interrupting, and how we would listen even when we were speaking so that one person wouldn’t dominate the conversation. One night Janie dominated the conversation by responding to what everyone had previously shared with rebuttals and defense of the way she saw the topic. Rather than honoring the safety of the group by listening with an open heart, Janie wanted to enter into a debate and I stopped her. I gently reminded her that our purpose was to hear each other’s stories and to begin to know each other in some depth. Janie wanted a discussion group, not a covenant group. I wasn’t sure we would see her again after that night.
Janie didn’t come back to our group right away, but not because she didn’t like the structure or the process. Two nights after I had stopped Janie from wrecking our group process, her son, a policeman responding to a call of a robbery in progress, was shot and killed. Janie didn’t come back to the group immediately after her son’s tragic death, but she did come back. She came back and we sat with her in stunned silence. She came back and we said we didn’t know what to say. She came back and we waited with her. We waited with her letting unknowing grow between us. Without a ready response, all we could do was climb down with her into the depths of her despair and sit and wait.
“I pin my hopes to quiet processes and small circles, in which vital and transforming events take place.”
It turns out Janie’s son was killed as part of the crime spree perpetrated by what would become known as the “Texas 7.” Janie ended up feeling called to pursue justice for her son, and work to reform the prison system in Texas.
We all need intimacy and ultimacy.
What “quiet processes” and “small circles” do you have that help you cultivate intimacy and ultimacy?
I believe these small circles are where we can dig deep into the mission of our church, which includes the practice of “welcoming diversity.”
To welcome diversity – to find belonging amidst difference. When people talk about the importance of finding our commonalities, I think what is most transformative to relationships is not necessarily finding common beliefs, or even common values. 
What we have in common are deep needs, strength, courage, and wisdom. We can know about those commonalities intellectually, but experiencing them: “getting proximate” as Bryan Stevenson says, is what transforms.
Then we can hear other people’s diverse understandings of reality with curiosity and humility. …
I’m going to close with a few words specifically about Chalice Circles. Sign-ups begin today, and close near the end of October. Circles will start in November. You can read more about Chalice Circles in any of our communications or on our webpage. And next Sunday right after service, we will have a short intro to Chalice Circles and a Q&A. TODAY, right after the service, we invite you into an experience of small group discussions. They will only be 30 minutes long, and they will invite you to reflect on your experience of the service – something that moved you: a phrase or concept, the music, a feeling, a memory, an insight. Because the conversations are only 30-minutes long, the structure will be different from Chalice Circles, but you’ll still get a taste of having a covenanted conversation in a small group. So I encourage you, if you hear a small, still voice of curiosity – or a big voice! – to follow it and either sign up for the Circles and/or stay after service for the discussions.
Lastly, I want to introduce your facilitators for Chalice Circles: Anna Paradox and Lynn Alsup.
I’ve invited Anna and Lynn to come up now and lead us in a responsive reading about those
“quiet processes and small circles in which vital and transforming events take place.”
– Rev. Emily Wright-Magoon