2082 Friday Afternoon Worship Homily

"The Song in the Forest " by The Rev. Sarah Lammert

Just last week I was helping my ten year old daughter complete one of those school projects that are designed for maximum parental anxiety and annoyance – you know the kind – first you have to research weather instruments, then put together a poster with illustrations, and then build one of these instruments, and somehow get it to school in working order. We were almost finished, and I was waiting for my daughter to finish some of the text, so I decided to take a brief break.

I walked out the back door and sat down on the step. I took a deep breath, realized that this was the first time I had sat all day, and suddenly began to hear the most beautiful birdsong in a large oak tree. I searched the tree limbs for the source of the joyful noise, and finally spotted a common robin singing its little heart out, red breast puffing with the effort of it. This went on for minutes, until, suddenly, it swooped down out of the tree and flew away.

If we have ears to hear, or eyes to see, or fingers to sense the vibrations, and if we will sit still long enough to attune ourselves to the world, we will find that there is a song in the forest, calling to us in the voice of beauty and urgency.

First we need to learn to listen, to still the words, the monkey mind, the opinions, the defensiveness, the part of us that thinks it already knows what to say. We need to listen for the song in the forest; that saving word, that earth song; that which stirs beneath the heart's own beating, beneath even the breath itself.

What is it that calls out to you to be done?

What is it that calls out for us to do together, in this our Unitarian Universalist faith community?

Can we, together, with all of our differences, listen for the calling that is uniquely ours as a religious faith? What is the saving word that we offer? What can we say in a world that is both terrible and full of grace; that is both hungry and abundant? What is it that we offer, and what must we do to manifest the potential that is so beautifully alive here in our gathering?

The historian Earl Moore Wilbur used three words to describe our way of being religious. Freedom! Reason! Tolerance! We embraced his words as a new trinity, and even displayed his slogan on billboards and other advertising media. But is this adequate for our age? Or do we need a new way of framing our free faith?

For me, Unitarian Universalism is about the freedom to seek the truth using the gift of reason, yes, and it is about offering a wide umbrella of tolerance and acceptance. But Unitarian Universalism also has a jucier side to it – a side that is profoundly spiritual, and deeply engaged in justice. For me, Unitarian Universalism is about joy, belonging, and generating possibility.

Sometimes I think that stories are an access to new ways of thinking, so let me illustrate this with two stories from my own congregation's life. I live in a small village in Northern New Jersey that serves as a bedroom community for the financial district in New York . So our area was heavily impacted by September 11, 2001. Tom and Maria's world nearly collapsed along with the towers. These parents of two young children were both employed by Cantor Fitzgerald – the company most impacted by this attack. Canto Fitzgerald, housed between the 101 st and the 105 th floors of One World Trade Center , lost 658 employees that day. Those lucky enough to survive, like Tom and Maria, were left with emotional wounds and grief that is difficult to fathom.

After briefly turning to the religion of his childhood for comfort, but finding no sustenance there, Tom and Maria started to attend the Unitarian Society of Ridgewood in the fall of 2003 – and quickly became involved in RE as well as our outreach work at a homeless shelter for families. During the new member ceremony at which they joined the Society, Tom stood before the congregation with tears streaming down his face, and shared that he had come to us spiritually dead inside. "In the loving, accepting atmosphere of this congregation, I've come alive again" he declared. "I've regained the ability to feel moments of happiness , even joy, after so much anger and sadness."

Tom and Maria, inspired by a meeting they attended at the congregation on becoming foster to adopt families, are now in the process of adding to their family an eight-year old girl from a local group home for severely abused children who have been unable to function within foster families. They visit her several times a week, and hope to bring her home at the end of a year long process of therapy, support, training, and getting to know one another. Joy, belonging, and generating possibility.

Brima's story seems a world apart from that of Tom and Maria, except that his world too was turned on its head because of 9/11, and he too found new hope in the lived experience of our UU faith. Brima originally came to the country as a refugee fleeing the brutal civil strife of Sierra Leone . Before he was suddenly detained in June of 20-04, Brima could have been held up as a model American immigrant. Although he came here on a tourist visa, he had obtained temporary legal sanctuary, earned a Masters in Social Work, and had been counseling drug and alcohol addict. Brima married an American citizen in 1995, had children, and dutifully sent money each month to help his relatives back at home. Then, when he went to apply for permanent status last year, he was detained thanks to the overzealous climate of post 9-11 immigration policies. He was whisked away to airless, windowless prison that is known as the " Elizabeth Detention Center " housed in an old warehouse by the Newark airport. There, he quickly fell victim to an unscrupulous lawyer took $5,000 in legal fees but never worked on his case. He was threatened with deportation, and was held for over 8 months before a judge, realizing that he had been married to an American citizen for nine years, threw his case out and Brima was finally released.

While he was in prison, his car was repossessed, the bank foreclosed on his house, and his wife and children had to move in with some cousins. Our congregation had become involved in visiting the detainees at Elizabeth , many of whom are asylum seekers who have experienced trauma, imprisonment, torture and death threats in their home counties. Helen, an 80 year old member from our Society, met Brima one day while visiting another detainee. Helen supported Brima through the ups and downs of his tenure there, and now that he has been released she is helping him to look for a job. I wish I could say that Brima's story has a happy ending, but that has yet to be written. He is, at the moment, very depressed and bitter about his experience, and how much ground he has lost. Still, in a speech at our congregation, he acknowledged Helen for the difference she had made in his life: "You gave me hope, friendship, and a sense of connection with the outer world at a time when I was isolated, despairing, and lonely," he shared. "it helped. It helped a lot."

We live in a time in which the illusion of wellbeing and security can be quickly and devastatingly turned upside down. Truly terrible things are happening in our nation and worls in the areas of human rights abuses, environmental destruction, and the widening gap between the haves and have nots. In Africa alone there are over 200 million people living on incomes of one dollar or less per day. And, within that larger context, here we are living out our human journeys with all of our own joys and sorrows, failures and successes, highs and lows, losses and new beginnings.

Perhaps never before has it been more important for Unitarian Universalists to claim our prophetic voice; to share our good word; to sing our song of compassionate, embracing love. We need a religion, a place, that reminds us that joy is still possible, that it endures alongside of sorrow. We need a faith that says you belong in our human community, just as you are, broken or whole. In fact, you belong to something greater than that – the interdependent world and the world of spirit. Finally, we need a faith (ours) that can generate new possibilities for love and justice.

It requires, however, a commitment to make a difference, and we have, quite frankly been low-commitment kind of enterprise. Can we rise to the challenge? Can we expand our capacity to give deeply of ourselves, in our time, in our money, and in our willingness to dive into the conversations about who we really are, and what we really offer as a faith community.

For me, Unitarian Universalism's saving message is about joyful belonging and generating new possibilities for expression of justice and love. Seven may rise from their chairs and leave the room as we struggle together to find the language which expresses the good news, while seven others lean forward in their chairs, and seven more feign indifference. But seven and seventy and 700,000 more will walk in our doors and stay when they hear us claim our saving words for:

their hearts are open, their hope is high that they will hear the word even again. The word is already, for them, the song in the forest. They know already how every- thing is better- the dark trees less terrible, the ocean less hungry- when it comes forth, and looks around with its crisp and lovely eye, and begins to sing.

How Wonderful!

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