Sanctuaries, Kitchens, Classrooms and Closets
A Sermon By The Rev. Susan Manker-Seale
November 14, 2004
…The thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn,
are put in museums but you know
they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.”
(--Marge Piercy, “To Be of Use,” Singing the Living Tradition, 567)
We love to make beautiful things--we always have throughout what we know of the history of humankind. We decorate our daily tools as well as our sacred objects, and imbue our mundane and sacred spaces with the sense of the beautiful. Beauty is subjective, as we know, but it is also theologically foundational, as in the Navajo prayer:
Beauty is before me, and Beauty behind me,
above me and below me hovers the beautiful.
I am surrounded by it, I am immersed in it.
In my youth, I am aware of it, and, in old age,
I shall walk quietly the beautiful trail.
In beauty it is begun.
In beauty, it is ended. (SLT, 682)
Beauty is more than something we humans express tangibly, as in creating Hopi vases, or appreciate as a sacred presence, as in putting those vases in museums. Those vases, as Piercy says, were made to be used. The beautiful trail is a path of life that flows with work that is real.
Imagine the Hopi vase. Or any beautiful vase. Feel the curve of its sides and the coolness of its clay. Recognize that there is an outside and an inside. Its decorated shape defines and holds space, but it is also open to the flow from outside to inside to outside. Think about it: what is the work, the real work, of the vase? (to hold, to carry, to feed, to protect, to support…)
Now, imagine our beautiful church in the same way as the vase. Our decorated walls define and hold space. There is an outside and an inside. But we are also open to the flow from outside to inside to outside. What is the work, the real work, of the church?
In asking that question about the church, of course, we have the double-entendre of the church as a building and the church as a people, a community. The work of the building and the work of the people--are they the same?
My reflections have led me to believe that they are, almost. Buildings serve our work, our ministries, but they also take on a ministry of their own, both in their tangible being and because of the role such sacred spaces have played in human history. A
building standing all alone, with nothing having happened in it yet, nor people arrived, could minister to a stranger with just its name: church… synagogue… temple… chapel… shrine. Such names invite the sacred relationship to come into being for those who are in search.
Not that a sacred relationship needs a building. Linda Sexson, a professor of Humanities, in an essay on “Home as Eden‘s Picture Book: The Fiction of Sacred Space,” writes about what we inherited from the ancient Hebrew story of moving the sacred out of the land and into a designated centralized place:
The exclusivist Hebrew prophets, in establishing their pure monotheism, condemned gods, trees, beasts, and stones to oblivion. Jeremiah was the voice of a reform movement to abolish the contaminated authority of ‘high places,’ making Jerusalem the central and sole holy place. It was a political measure with implications for all the generations following, to make us doubt the blessings of place. (The Sacred Place, Olsen and Cairns, p. 141)
That heritage permeates our society today, imbuing religious buildings with the power of the holy to minister to those who search for sacred relationship. But there are also traditions that proclaim the sacred to be everywhere. Sexson cites Chuang Tzu, the great Taoist philosopher: “He was asked, where is the Tao? He answered the humbug question, in the floor tile. And when his questioner protested, he said, in the shit on the tile.” (p. 141) What is sacred, and where is sacred, depends on your theological and philosophical points of view. I agree with Sexson when she says, “If place can be fenced in, then the sacred will mock the fence from outside the boundary.”
But, we do have buildings and they do serve a purpose and hopefully they are not fenced in with the sacred mocking us from beyond our walls. Our buildings must be open so that the sacred, along with work that is real, can flow in and out like the water in and out of a vase. Can breathe, as is necessary for all of life. Can inspire.
The ministry of the building and the ministry of the people who gather in that building, though not exactly the same, are certainly interwoven, interdependent, interconnected. Buildings serve as a gathering place for our ministries. They are the homes, the nests of communal ministry. They are the nexus, the central point, where we can see each other, share our values and touch our common heritage. And they embody both an institution of memory and hope, and a physical expression of vision for the future. Buildings weave us into the past, present and future of our religious tradition.
How do buildings do this? Well, let me take you through the church I grew up in, First Unitarian Universalist Church of Phoenix. That is the church in which I was first interwoven -- not the one I was born into, but the one I grew up in. The congregations I have joined or served since then were extensions of that first conscious and unconscious interweaving of my life into the life of our faith, and the building embodied that weave.
Four main places, five actually--the sanctuary, the kitchen, the classrooms, the closets, and the memorial garden--each held mystery and ministry for me.
The sanctuary there seats three hundred or more and is formed in a semi-circle, with a very high ceiling and sliding glass doors to each side. The large space - what other large interior space did I know as a child? Noisy cafeterias or auditoriums for concerts, movie theatres. But this space was mine, and the mystery began when two hundred people gathered on a Sunday - my extended family. Two hundred people whose values were similar to mine, under whose wings I was tended along with the many other children. Two hundred people whose voices rose in amazing chorus and harmony each Sunday singing out for hope and peace and justice and love. A covenant recited weekly for my entire life: “Love is the doctrine of this church, the quest for truth is its sacrament, and service is its prayer. To dwell together in peace, to seek knowledge in freedom, to serve one another in friendship, thus do we covenant.” The sanctuary embodied, held as in the palm of a hand, or in the curve of an arm, our most precious values and persons.
It was also a place of challenge, of deeper thoughts and concerns. Every week the challenge to go out and face the world. Do something. Be what you need to be, but keep the world in mind, keep love in mind. Hearts and hands changing the world. Every Sunday this message in new ways. All ways.
The kitchens…well, you know kitchens. Who doesn’t gather in the kitchen, but these are smaller gatherings, people busy with serving others. Huge cookware, huge ovens and refrigerators. We are a large family which cares for each other and takes turns providing sustenance. Potlucks and Christmas sales, raising money for our work in the world. From there, it was just a short conceptual distance to the food bank and packing Thanksgiving boxes as a teen.
Classrooms were places of creativity and focus. Classrooms are small, with shelves holding every imaginable craft item from glue to toilet paper rolls, things everyone in the congregation donated on a regular basis. We learn in those classroom. We learn we are also part of a small group of similar ages exploring ideas and stories and myths and ourselves with the guidance and special attention of one or two teachers. We belong, not just to this group and this church, but to an amazing heritage and world. And we get to express it creatively, in our own ways, with respect for who we really are.
As youth, with our own room, we grow into our power as people able to change the world. Supporting each other through our crises of self and faith. Sleeping overnight and sneaking down into the dark sanctuary to light a candle in the dark and share our deepest yearnings. Secrets only those sacred spaces would ever hear.
Closets are inherently mysterious to the young, but they also show we are not just clean and beautiful. Junk hides there too, and often junk with a purpose. We aren’t supposed to go there, into the large upstairs closet where the furnaces are, so that becomes the dare only the brave or foolish indulge in, which we are all.
The meditation garden lies outside to the southeast of the entrance to the church. It has many trees grown tall through the years--acacia, ironwood, olive, mesquite and paloverde, some planted by my father, but all tended by many. Four life-sized bronze statues stand in the middle of a circular pond, the four girls killed in the bombing of the church in Birmingham in the early sixties. I played around those statues. We celebrated Easter outside with their message interpreted by dancers. We learned that justice is something we constantly have to fight for, and that grief is just as much a part of religious community as is hope. My brother was buried there under the olive tree. Generations tied to the earth and to us. Hearts interwoven in life and death.
Such is the ministry of sacred space.
Its mystery is the way we imbue such space with our dreams and our visions so that in reality they become part of our psyche, reflecting back to ourselves, ministering to our lives. And just as the building becomes interwoven with us, so are we interwoven with each other. Building a church isn’t just laying bricks upon bricks. Building a church is forming a legacy and a ministry that will last for generations with us mortared into it. Like Clare Toth is as the mother of this congregation and the story of her kitchen. No one will forget it, and there might even be a brick with her name on it some day. Or a room, like the Isabel Johnson room in my church in Phoenix.
I heard someone speak this week about their love for and commitment to their former congregation, and she expressed a concern for what seemed like a difficulty feeling her commitment to this one, even after being here a while. I think we speak about commitment, but it’s really about how interwoven our lives have become with a religious community. It’s hard to unravel the ties to a former congregation, and we don’t want to, necessarily. Those will always be with us, as mine are to First Church in Phoenix. What we need to be aware of is the organic nature of the weaving. How easily are we finding our place? How many threads of others’ lives have we touched? How many threads have become tied to ours for guidance or support?
We form a beautiful cloth here with our ministries, like this altar cloth from our Unitarian brothers and sisters in Transylvania. We see it every Sunday, and like a covenant or the Chalice Song, it becomes part of our sense of ministry and heritage on an often unconscious level. We see our roots right there every Sunday, and our international connections, that is if we know the story of the cloth. Our rituals and beautiful traditions flow in and out of us even as our ministries flow in and out of this sacred space, with work that is real, keeping our values and concerns alive in the world beyond these walls.
Whether in a kitchen or an auditorium or a triple-wide or a new dream building, our ministries and ministry become focused and empowered in the gathering of our hearts in sacred space. Let us beware the fences that falsely keep out that sense of the sacred. Let us keep open the flow from outside to inside and back again so that we truly breathe our ministry into the world. And let us honor the interwoven nature of our lives within this religious community and honor the ministries that call to each of us as well as that which lies in all our hearts as one.
So shall we find ourselves walking the beautiful trail with beauty before us and beauty behind.
Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Northwest Tucson