Bursting Forth

A sermon delivered by The Rev. Kathy Schmitz on August 19, 2007

At Pathways Church, A Unitarian Universalist Community in Southlake, Texas

Story before the sermon: The Everything Seed: A Story of Beginnings, by Carole Martignacco (Author), Joy Troyer (Illustrator)

There a boy who was angry with a friend who had done him an injustice.  He took his complaint to his Grandfather, who said, "Let me tell you a story.

I too, at times, have felt a great hate for those that take so much, with no sorrow for what they do.

I have struggled with these feelings many times." He continued, "It is as if there are two wolves inside me. One is good and does no harm. He lives in harmony with all around him, and does not take offense when no offense was intended. He will only fight when it is right to do so, and in the right way.

But the other wolf, ah! He is full of anger. The littlest thing will set him into a fit of temper. He fights everyone, all the time, for no reason. He cannot think because his anger and hate are so great.

Sometimes, it is hard to live with these two wolves inside me, for both of them try to dominate my spirit."

The boy looked intently into his Grandfather's eyes and asked, "Which one wins, Grandfather?"

Grandfather smiled and quietly said, "The one I feed."

(http://www.firstpeople.us/FP-Html-Legends/TwoWolves-Cherokee.html, accessed 9-23-06)

This story comes out of the Cherokee tradition.  It speaks a universal message that says that our experience and our actions are determined in good measure by which parts of ourselves we give our attention and our care.

This message is spoken of in another form by Buddhist monk and peace activist, Thich Nhat Hanh.  He speaks of the seeds that we have within us.  Seeds of anger, despair, and fear, but also seeds of understanding, wisdom, compassion, and forgiveness.  He encourages us to water the seeds we would have grow. 

Choose carefully what you bring into your life… what you feed to the seeds that lie dormant… waiting for nourishment… waiting to blossom forth.

How we understand these forces within us tells us something about our view of human nature.  Some people see only the bad seeds or the angry wolf.  They view human nature as something wild that needs to be tamed or something evil that needs to be constrained.  Other people see only the good in humanity, turning a blind eye to the destruction humans have wrought on each other and on our planet.

I find the idea that we are either all bad or all good unsatisfying.  I am drawn to the metaphors that acknowledge the full range of our capacity.  Like the wolves.  Like the seeds.  More than that, I like the idea that our choices influence the expression of our capacity for good or ill – what we do matters.

It is this idea that we have choices to make, and that they matter, that speaks to me most clearly about one of the key purposes of religious community.  A key purpose of religious community is to nurture our best selves, to feed the right wolf, to water the right seeds, to move us in the direction of more love and more light in our lives and in our world.

So the questions we need to ask ourselves go something like this…

What is it we can do nurture the seeds within us?  What seeds in you could stand a little tender loving care?

How might we discover seeds that lie dormant – capacities that we have of which we are currently unaware?  What lies within you, waiting to be awakened, with refreshing rains and warmth and light?

What seeds might find fertile ground if we would open ourselves to their planting?

Understanding, wisdom, compassion, and forgiveness, joy, peace, love,  or hope, – the list goes on –like a huge display in the garden shop of the soul –  courage, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, and faith.

What seeds would you water?   What seeds would you plant?

This question of what new things we can grow in our lives has been very much on my mind as my spouse, Charlie, and I have made the decision to transplant ourselves to another part of the country.

While Charlie has lived outside of the Northeast, I have not.  But it’s not just me that has been rooted in New England.  It is generations before me.  I am what you might call an ethnic Yankee. 

So what happens when you transplant a Yankee in other soil?

I like the image of the hydrangea.  There is certain kind of hydrangea that blooms a different color depending on the ph of the soil in which it is planted.  In acid soils, the flowers will be blue.  In alkaline soils, the flowers will be pink. In neutral soils, they will be purple. 

The plant is still a hydrangea.  No matter where you put down its roots, that won’t change.  It will never be an apple tree.  But still, where it is planted matters.  Environment will change the manner in which it will blossom forth.

And I wonder, is it the same with people?

What happens if you plant a Yankee in Texas?

I don’t know the answer.  That is in part what I came to find out.  I appreciate the words of wisdom that I have heard from the other transplants I have met in my brief time here.

I don’t know the answer, but I hope that some seeds within me will be nurtured in new ways.  I hope that dormant seeds will come to life.  I hope that I will discover new seeds to plant within my soul.

Oh, I expect to thrive and bloom, but what new colors might I show?  In what new ways might my blossoms burst forth?

I love the mystery and the wonder of this reality… that a year from now, I will have transformed in ways I cannot yet know.

And I bring with me another curiosity?  One that has to do with this religious tradition of which we are a part and to the service of which I have been called.

What happens when you plant a Unitarian Universalist community in Northeast Tarrant County?

And since planting has seasons, there are questions of time as well as place. 

What happens when you plant a Unitarian Universalist community in the 21^st century?

I don’t think we know the complete answers to these questions yet.

But, I am sure that a UU congregation planted in Texas in the 21^st century does burst forth in a different way than one that was planted in Massachusetts in 1901 like my previous congregation, or in 1620 like the one that was several towns over.

I am delighted by the mystery and wonder of this.  Pathway Church is still unfolding.  It is not today what it has been in the past.  It is not what it will be in the future.  And yet, in each stage it bursts forth in its own unique expression.

Someone once said that change in inevitable but growth is optional… change in inevitable but growth is optional

Each of us is changing.  Every day.  Sometimes in ways we are aware of.  Sometimes beneath our radar.  Sometimes we choose the change.  Sometimes it chooses us.  But always there is change.

The same is true of our human institutions.  The same is true of our world.

Since change is inevitable, the choice we have is not ‘to change or not to change.’  The choice we have is how we will be changed. Will we go kicking and screaming or will we embrace the change and allow ourselves to be transformed.

We can look to many sources for lessons on change and transformation – most obviously to the natural world and the lessons that it teaches us.

Seed to sprout to leaf to flower.  And then to seed again.  The natural world teaches about change.

And while this morning’s story, The Everything Seed, used the metaphor of a seed blossoming forth, we recognize it as a poetic telling of what we have learned from science about the origins of our universe.  It reminds us that our whole universe – all we know and beyond – is in a state of constant change.  From that moment, currently estimated to be about 14 billion years ago, when the event known to us as the Big Bang began, we have been moving through time and space.  The whole of the cosmos in constant evolution.

And our religious traditions have echoed this knowledge.  At one level, every generation seems to think that it is the pinnacle of creation, the completion of evolution, that somehow we have come to a point where we know it all. And, yet, at another level, we know that the unfolding continues.

A story from the Sufi tradition. 

A woman comes to see the Mulla, the spiritual teacher. 

“Mulla, Mulla,” she exclaims, “My son has written from the Abode of Learning to say that he has completely finished his studies!”

The Mulla replies, “Console yourself, madam, with the thought that God will no doubt send him more.”

(Adapted from a telling in Soul Food, edited by Jack Kornfield and Christina Feldman, page 55.)

Always there are new lessons.

In Buddhist tradition, one of the primary teachings is that of impermanence.  Nothing is permanent.  The teaching tells us that a deep source of our suffering is our tendency to become attached to things the way they are.  To believe they will never change – should never change.  We sometimes cling to this delusion in the face of astounding evidence to the contrary.

Even the Christian tradition, out of which both Unitarianism and Universalism grew, tells us that life is about transformation.

In his letter to the young church in Rome, the early Christian evangelist Paul writes: (Rom. 12:2) “Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”

(Temporary Shepherds, by Roger S Nicholson, page 121)

And so over the centuries our religious traditions have experienced transformation.  Liberal religion, in particular, finds new expression across time and space.  It is a feature of liberal religions, such as Unitarian Universalism, to adapt to the current culture.  To adapt.  This does not mean that it accepts the culture without question.  For surely those of us who are religiously liberal find much to critique about the injustices and excesses of the world in which we live.

Those of us who are religiously liberal adapt to culture by asking how our deepest values speak to the issues of our day.  We know that the answers that worked 1000 years ago or even 100 years ago do not necessarily address the questions of today.

A simply story from my own experience.

A few years back, I served as treasurer for Unitarian Sunday School Society.  It was a great position because my main function was to write out big checks in response to grant requests from people developing curriculum in our congregations.

The Unitarian Sunday School Society was founded in 1827 by William Ellery Channing and others.  Channing was an important figure in early Unitarianism. 

I know that The Coming of Age group visited Boston this summer.  If you had the chance to visit Arlington Street Church, then perhaps, as you came back out of the building and faced Boston Public Garden, you saw the statue looking back at the church.  There on the edge of the Garden stands the likeness of William Ellery Channing, who once served as that congregation’s minister.

It was Channing who proudly claimed the title ‘Unitarian’ as the name for the newly emerging movement.  In doing so, he took its negative power away from those who had previously hurled it at liberals as a slur.

Well, in 1827, Channing and others founded the Unitarian Sunday School Society to support the development of Sunday Schools in that growing movement.

Some 170 year later, in an office not far from where Channing had served, I sat in a board meeting of the Sunday School Society.  We were reviewing grants application according to the standard that had been established well before any of us had come onto the board. 

Up until that time, successful grant applications had been expansions of the theme, “I request funding to develop a curriculum for this age group on this topic and this is important because of these reasons.”

But on the day in question we were stumped.  Out of the 5 applications before us, 2 intriguing and exciting proposals did not fit our standard form.  In particular, they were for the development of electronic tools for use in curriculum development and implementation.

Someone said, “We can’t fund these.  Our standard says that we only fund the development of specific new curriculum.”

There was discomfort around the table.  It was a true statement.  And yet, we knew it was wrong.

After several minutes of confused silence someone finally said, “Well, what would Channing do?”

It was the right question.  Not because we owed a debt to Channing for founding the Society, but because Channing was a pioneer in his day.  And it was clear that a pioneering spirit was needed.

Of course we could not scour Channing’s writing for the place where he said, “And thou shall fund the development of DVDs and on-line training when given the opportunity.”

We could, however, invoke his bold spirit that would clearly have said, “Be on the lookout always for new and exciting ways to share this faith and communicate its important message.”

And then we knew that it was time for our tried and true funding standards to change.  It was time to evolve.

When we look to the women and men who have walked the road before us, we look not for specific answers, but for direction and inspiration.  Their answers were for their day.  Our answers need to be for ours.

And so we seek answers for our day.

And so here we are. 

You, a congregation with a mission to build a spiritual community that changes lives, embarking on yet the next phase of your own on-going evolution.

Me, your interim pastor, here to walk with you for a time.

It is the beginning of our journey together.  It is ripe with possibility.

What shall we do with this gift of time?

Shall we tend the gardens that have been entrusted to our care? 

In one garden grow the spirits of the members and friends of this congregation.

Let us nurture them with a wide variety of opportunities for spiritual development.

Nearby are the spiritually homeless, who would find a place among you, to thrive and to grow, if they only knew you were here.

Let us cast wide the message of acceptance and affirmation that can be found here – that others will know that this is a place where their spirits, too, might take root and flourish.

And there is a larger garden as well.  It is the garden that grows well beyond these walls, in Northeast Tarrant County and beyond.  Whether those people ever step inside these walls, whether they ever even understand what Unitarian Universalism is, their lives and our world can be changed and made better by the way that we live out our deepest values.

By the way we live out our deepest values.

And so I ask you, this week, what seeds will you water?  Within yourself?  What seeds will you scatter as you make your way through the in the world?

There is so much to choose from in the garden shop of the soul.

Understanding, wisdom, compassion, forgiveness.

Joy, peace, love, hope.

– the list goes on –– 

Courage, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence.

Empathy, generosity, truth, and faith.

Chose well.

Let us tend well the gardens that have been entrusted to our care, so that, before our very eyes, in this congregation and in the world, more love and more light will surely burst forth.

Guidelines for use:  Here are Rev. Kathy's wishes for the material offered here.  The main purpose for making these sermons available is for the use of members and friends of Pathways Church and for those interested in Pathways Church.  In this capacity, it is expected that they will be read in place by interested individuals.  Should they come to the attention of others, with attribution they may be quoted freely, without permission.  With attribution they may be used in whole in the context of worship or religious education without advance permission though Rev. Kathy would be interested to know how they are used and by who.  She asks that the text not be used in whole in print press or on another web site without advance permission.   Thanks!