May 20, 2012
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TOP TEN OF LIFE AND FAITH
A Sermon By
The Rev. Susan Manker-Seale
May 20, 2012
Intro: Top Ten of Life and Faith
As I was completing fourteen years of ministry with the UU Congregation of NW
Tucson, I did some reflecting on some of what I’d learned, some of the habits of thought I’d
developed, some of the behaviors I would cling to to get through the day. I can’t share them all,
but I was watching Bill Maher one night, and it occurred to me that I could do my own version
of the top ten that comedians love so much.
It seems especially appropriate to share them with you today, since the Board just hired
me to serve as your consulting minister for the next two years, which I’m very pleased about. I
know it will be fun and enlightening to explore ministry with you, and clarify why we gather and
what that ministry shall be.
So, here’s my top ten of life and faith. They’re subject to tweaking, as is everything in
our lives, so I would caution you to make up your own list out of your own lives. It’s a fun, and
possibly life-saving, exercise.
Ten: Fear and Loathing in the Parish (Courage)
I title the number ten - and this is in count-down order so this might be the least of them “Fear and Loathing in the Parish.” Now don’t take offense! This applies to all of us. When I
was in seminary, a colleague gave me a copy of his book, entitled, “A Machiavellian View of the
Ministry.” Another colleague gave me one he wrote called, “Love Meets the Dragons.” Both
titles were enough to scare me away. Ministry isn’t easy.
When I was doing my clinical pastoral education (otherwise known as CPE) in San
Francisco Hospital, my supervisor told me a story. He said that when we first get to a parish or a
church, the congregation will drive to your house with a truckload of power and dump it on your
lawn. Then they’ll spend the rest of your ministry trying to take it back! Don’t let anyone tell
you congregational life isn’t about power and authority. Your power and authority as
parishioners, as well as that of the ministers, and all the conflicts that come hand in hand with it.
There are larger reasons we enter into ministry, and larger reasons we join congregations.
But in order to confront our fear and loathing, using the title phrase from the book that takes
place in Las Vegas, our fear and loathing is something to face with courage. Because it takes
courage to survive as a minister and as a parishioner, in beloved, and ever-strife-ful community.
Nine: The Keys that Didn’t Fit (Forgiveness)
Number nine is a story I call, “The Keys that Didn’t Fit.” When I arrived on my first
Sunday in my first church as a parish minister (this was 1989), the keys they had made for me
didn’t work. They wouldn’t go in the lock, and I had to stand outside for half an hour in the
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summer heat until someone showed up to let me in. Remember, this was before cell phones!
And texting!
Now, this might not seem such a harsh thing, but my mind was going over the Board
retreat the day before when three of the members didn’t arrive until the exact moment my
introduction to them was scheduled to be finished. I had taken it in stride, because I really didn’t
know them, or how to measure this behavior. But I also remembered the power story from my
CPE, and wondered what was going on. And as I stood there in the sunshine locked out on my
first day as minister, feeling slighted two days in a row, I realized I had a choice. I could read
this as a slight or power-play, or I could let it all go, forgive them and the universe, and choose to
believe in good intentions, which I have done for the rest of my ministry.
That doesn’t mean I haven’t had fights, and it also doesn’t mean that people forgive me.
We can’t force forgiveness from others, but we can forgive. And it’s a saving way to live.
Eight: The Good Enough Mantra (Balance)
Number eight I call “The Good Enough Mantra.” I learned it from my therapist long ago,
when I was struggling to balance motherhood and ministry. She said to let the idea of perfection
go, and allow myself to be a good enough mother. I have applied that to my ministry as well,
and tell myself over and over that I have done good enough.
There are so many pushes and pulls, so many expectations, so many disappointments in
ministry that being good enough is good enough to get me through. The same sermon that
someone loves is sometimes the very one another will be upset by. And they both let me know.
We can’t be everything to everyone, and you know that in your own lives with your own
relationships and homes and parenting and professions. Perfection is a concept springing from
our Judeo-Christian heritage, and since it’s an impossible concept, we need to let it go, and aim
for good enough instead, with a lot of forgiveness and courage to sustain us.
Being good enough is living in balance. It forces us to acknowledge best intentions, the
reality of those pushes and pulls of life, failure of our best efforts and ideals, and appreciation of
that balance beam upon which we so often, perhaps always, find ourselves. Being good enough
allows us to accept ourselves, and others, as we are.
Rumi’s poetry speaks to this in its own way. Let’s rise in body and spirit to sing song
188, “Come, Come, Whoever You Are.”
* Song 188 “Come, Come, Whoever You Are,” by Rumi
Seven: Hats, Wet Hair, and Forgetfulness (Strength)
Number seven I call “Hats, Wet Hair, and Forgetfulness.” Three very short tales. One of
the interim ministers at the 22nd Street church told me that she had received an email from a
parishioner complaining about the hats she, the minister, was wearing to church. Don’t worry
about it, I said. Just let it go.
Another colleague told me a few years ago that someone in her congregation had
complained about her, the minister’s, coming to church with wet hair. My colleague had been
dealing with her son who was dying of cancer, and there were times she couldn’t get all ready on
time. And anyway, what was wrong with wet hair? Let it go, I said.
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One day a visitor came to us on Sunday and greeted me outside. She said that the
minister at her church back east could never remember her name, and she was so glad that I
seemed to be able to. I let it go, but as the years went by and I began to find it harder and harder
to remember people’s names, I had to let it go again, and again.
People are constantly judging us, and the only way to get through it all is to be strong in
ourselves, to know who we are, hats, wet hair and forgetfulness combined. So living in religious
community, and life, takes courage, forgiveness, balance and strength.
Six: The Money Monster Drinks Starbucks (Mindfulness)
Number six I’ve titled, “The Money Monster Drinks Starbucks.” Even though ministers
have to write a money sermon at least once a year, we do continually reflect on the value and
place of money in our lives. One of my favorite analogies, which I chose to dig up for your
money sermon this year, was when I compared our churches to the plant from outer space in the
movie “Little Shop of Horrors,” the plant that growls “Feed Me!” It does seem like there is
never enough money. And sometimes our arguments about money can turn our congregations,
temporarily, into little shops of horrors.
One of my favorite revelations was when I looked at how much money people spend on
coffees like Starbucks, and when we multiply say, one coffee a week by four dollars, we get two
hundred and eight dollars a year. If someone were really addicted to daily fancy coffees, they’re
spending one thousand four hundred and sixty dollars a year on coffee. It sort of makes us asks
ourselves if we are being mindful enough of where we’re putting our money, where our
commitments really lie in our lives.
The buddhist Thich Nhat Hanh talks about mindfulness in daily life, and that applies to
money, too. Being mindful is paying attention to the choices we’re making and the assumptions
we have about supporting, or not supporting, our faith community.
Five: Injustice, God, and the Broken Soul (Hope)
Number five I’ve titled, “Injustice, God, and the Broken Soul.” One day, someone came
up to me and said that the welcome we were doing--stating each Sunday that we welcomed
people of all races, sexual orientations, genders, etc.--was too repetitive and we ought to stop
doing it. I started to consider how to deal with that feedback when the very next Sunday, two
visitors, both men, came up to me after the service together, with tears in their eyes, and told me
how much those words meant to them, to be publicly welcomed as a gay couple.
I’ve told people over and over in my ministry that our first ministry is to those who come
in our doors on Sunday mornings. They are often in pain, searching for a place to grieve, to find
solace, to be accepted for who they are, to find freedom in faith, to find justice once again in
their lives. Their souls have been broken and poorly healed. They have lost God or thrown out
the concept, and are in search for meaning and a way to ground themselves again, to return to
who they are or be transformed. They’re holding out for hope in a world of pain or apathy. It’s
one of the great three--faith, hope, and love--and it’s important that we hold up the healing power
of hope.
Please rise in body and spirit as we sing song 1011, “Return Again.”
* Song 1011 “Return Again”
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Four: The Fickleness of Life and Death (Faith)
Number four I call “The Fickleness of Life and Death.” Having lost a brother early in my
life, I have lived with death for a long time. I blamed God and got over it--I mean I got over the
blaming God part, not the death part. Death touches us in such random ways that there is no
figuring it out. And our Dia de los Muertos service helps us face it with good humor, as an
inevitable part of being alive.
Life is fickle, too. One of the things I’ve had to struggle with constantly is the way life
seems to conspire to throw the odd wrench into my musin’s almost every time. When I’d be
writing a sermon about peace, for example, someone in my family would start a war. I learned
the practice of examining the ways I write very carefully so that I was sure I was speaking with
honesty and truthfulness as much as possible. Life seems to refuse to cooperate with my ideals,
and I have learned to have faith that what I’m saying will be meaningful to some, not all, but
most of you, of whoever is here. This faith in the attempt to understand, and in the continual
effort to express what is good and right in life, is what keeps me going as a minister. It is a faith
in the rightness of life and death, banishing guilt and fear and laying ourselves at the feet of
whatever it is that guides the universe, if anything or anyone.
So ten through four are courage, forgiveness, balance, strength, mindfulness, hope and
faith.
Three: Embracing Irreverence (Humor)
Number three is “Embracing Irreverence.” Ministers, at least, my closer colleagues and
the ones I’m most drawn to, love to let their hair down and be silly when we get together. I have
learned that it is a way we heal ourselves from the many stresses of ministry. We usually go see
a movie one night when we’re at our retreat in California, and when one of my colleagues
confessed that he didn’t like Science Fiction, the rest of us decided to take him to see one that
we’d heard was good. Unfortunately, the movie was actually about vampires, and he hated it,
and it was all we could do to try to get him to come with us again. It became a joke to find a
movie he’d trust us on.
When I’m with my colleagues, I’m laughing my head off with all that we say and do.
We’re not making fun of people, we’re telling painful tales and laughing at the absurdity of it all.
One of my favorite stories was one that Diane told, of coming home in a taxi cab from a
conference, and the taxi driver asks her what she does and she says she’s a minister. The taxi
driver says, “Su-weet! So all you have to do is preach on Sundays!”
I had a little revelation not too long ago. Over all these years, I have blamed my
colleagues for being so funny. It never occurred to me that I was the one being funny. It was a
shock, this little revelation, that they think I’m funny! Humor is key to survival, to celebrating
life in a healthy, powerful way.
Two: The Mystic from New York City (Honesty)
Number two is a story about “The Mystic from New York City.” It took me a while to
gather the courage to share my own mystical experience in a sermon, but after I began to speak
openly about it, people began to come up to me to share theirs. It opened a door for the honest
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expression of people’s varied religious and spiritual experiences, and helped to heal those who
had felt excluded in our tradition.
One day, a man whose daughter I’d married, came to see me and he told me about his
own mystical experience. He’d been a young man, walking down the street in New York City.
Suddenly, standing on a corner, he had this overwhelming sense of infinity and eternity,
connectedness and oneness, using my words. He told me this long ago. But when he shared this
with me, he told me he had never told anyone about it. And he was, like, sixty years old. Being
able to speak about it was so healing to him, and reassuring that he could apply whatever
meaning to it he needed.
If we are to be a relevant religious community, we need to be able to speak honestly
about our experiences, even when others don’t understand them. The universe is much more
mysterious than our known five senses can reveal, and we need to acknowledge this honestly, as
well.
“Winds Be Still” is one of what I call my Stillness Trilogy, three hymns that all talk about
stillness, and mystical connections. Please rise in body and spirit.
* Song 83 “Winds Be Still”
Silent Meditation and Prayer
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One: The Disappointed Angel (Love)
Finally! It’s time for the number one of Faith and Life according to Rev. Susan, and, I
think, according to many in the world. I’ve titled this story, “The Disappointed Angel.”
One Sunday, about ten years ago or more, I was happily greeting people outside the
sanctuary, and a woman with blond hair--that’s what I remember about her--came up to me, with
some distress. She said she’d been searching through our brochures and sermons, but she
couldn’t find anything about love. Where’s the love, she asked?
That got me searching as well, and not just physically, but spiritually. What was I doing
in ministry? What was the guiding principle of my life? What was it all for?
Occasionally people have touched me with real concern, and challenged me. I think of
them as angels. Not that I believe in angels, but I do believe in those acts of honest confrontation
that change us, that transform us. This angel, who may have had no idea the effect she had on
me, was critical in knocking me into awareness of what my ministry should be about, and now is.
Because I contemplated the importance of love, and in searching for it, my eyes were opened,
and I found it everywhere, and collected those references in wisdom literature to the importance
of love. And it has become the central message of my ministry, and for many of my
parishioners, the core of their ministries as well.
The top ten: Courage, forgiveness, balance, strength, mindfulness, hope, faith, humor,
honesty, and love.
Hymn 1057 is a new song for a new time in our faith, and is a simple message of love.
Please rise in body and spirit.
* Hymn 1057: “Go Lifted Up”
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* Closing Words
“Much of Ministry is a benediction
A speaking well of each other and the world
A speaking well of what we value:
Honesty, love, forgiveness, trust
A speaking well of our efforts
A speaking well of our dreams
This is how we celebrate life
Through speaking well of it
Living the benediction
And becoming as a word
Well-spoken.”
(-- Susan Manker-Seale)
Beacon UU Congregation