Aren't We Already Our Best, True Selves?

I worked in a large suburban branch of a county library all through high school, and in a university library all through college, and a very small town library for a couple years just before moving to Savannah. In all three places I heard the same comment over and over again: "it must be great to work somewhere so quiet and calm". But libraries host community meetings. Draw people of all ages eagerly searching for books, dvds, and audio books, and enthusiastically researching every imaginable topic. Host storytimes of wiggly, giggly toddlers and curious preschoolers, and study groups of college students, and adult literacy classes. Provide internet access for unhoused folks and folks who lack access at home. Serve as free lunch sites for kids when school isn’t in session. Run summer reading programs. Function as polling places. Libraries are neither calm nor especially quiet.

Over thirty years of congregational ministry I’ve heard plenty of similar misunderstandings about churches: "it must be great to work with people who are all good and kind; it must be great to work someplace free of political intrigue; it must be great to work with folks who always have the best interest of one another and the institution at heart". It is great to work with church members and friends–here and in all the other congregations I’ve served. I love this work and I love the people I serve. But none of you is always good and kind. There is at least as much political intrigue in congregations as in any other institution–and it’s more acrimonious because the stakes are so high. And it is never the case that church members always have the best interest of one another and the whole congregation at heart.

You’ve probably seen some congregations sum up this reality in a pithy statement on roadside signs: this church isn’t a museum for saints; it’s a hospital for sinners. Saints and sinners don’t fit comfortably into Unitarian Universalist theology. If we’re going for pithy, we might turn instead to the tired witticism that says our Unitarian forebears believed they were too good to be damned, and our Universalist forebears believed God was too good to damn them.

It’s an imperfect distinction between the two historical strands of our merged tradition, and the God language probably offends some of you and the damnation language probably offends or at least confuses others of you. All those objections notwithstanding, I don’t reject that characterization of who we were and still are out of hand.

Here at the end of the first quarter of the twenty-first century, Unitarian Universalism exists in a tension between believing that we are each good enough just as we were born and are every day of our lives (that is to say, too good to be damned), and knowing that we are each flawed (that is too say, thank goodness God is too good to damn us). Our salvation might lie in that very tension, in the degree to which we as individual Unitarian Universalists and as gathered groups of UUs come to know in our bones that being flawed is not the opposite of being good enough.

I pulled this morning’s story, Giraffes Can’t Dance, from the largest section of my picture book collection–the section I call Best True Self. I’m convinced that one of the primary tasks of Unitarian Universalist congregations is to ensure that every child, youth and adult in the congregation knows that the rest of us see, recognize and celebrate them as their best true self–especially when they can’t see it or believe it themselves, and even when their words and actions falls short of kindness, generosity, compassion, care for others and for our RE community, our small groups, our entire congregation. I take this task seriously not because I think the church is a substitute for therapy or support groups, and certainly not as a misguided attempt to turn the church into a flat collection of perfect, good, kind, ever cooperative people we will never be.

Rather, knowing ourselves and our companions in the church as already and always good enough and recognizing that our words and actions often fall short of what we’d like our best true selves to be is imperative because we live in a wondrous and very, very troubled world. To survive and thrive in that world, to take up our part in repairing that world, we need to not be tangled up in knots of inadequacy or shame. When we know, in our bones, that being flawed is not the opposite of being good enough, we’re released and emboldened to act creatively, joyfully, fiercely and steadfastly–strengthening the church as a place of belonging, serving our neighbors, sewing seeds of justice, and helping to transform the world as it is into the world as it could be.

Fulfilling the basic congregational task of ensuring that every child, youth and adult in the congregation knows that we see, recognize and celebrate them as their best true self requires at least three interconnected elements of church life. First, the repetition and reinforcement of the message in worship and religious education: being flawed is not the opposite of being good enough; we already and always recognize you as your best true self.

Second, the development of and commitment to a congregational covenant that we then integrate into worship services and keep at the center of our decision making and our program planning. We started that process a few weeks ago and will complete it by the time of our annual meeting in the spring.

Finally, developing and utilizing a mechanism for calling our words and actions back into alignment with our best true selves. That process began a year and a half ago when our Board of Trustees appointed our Healthy Congregations Team. I won’t go into detail because the team will do that themselves in just a moment. Instead, I’ll close with a brief story that illustrates my hope for this initiative.

I once knew a director of a small daycare center who forbade her employees from forcing one child to apologize to another child–ever. “They might not be sorry,” she said, “and we don’t want to compel them to tell a lie.” Instead the daycare workers were encouraged to help the offending child find a way to make the injured child feel better–return the snatched toy, share a snack, give a hug, or play a game together, for example.

That’s an example of restorative justice: recognition that a relationship has been harmed and third party facilitation of efforts to repair the harm in a way that is meaningful and acceptable to the two involved parties. No shaming. No punishment. And no mandatory participation either, which is a slight deviation from the childcare example.

We want this congregation, this Unitarian Universalist Church of Savannah, to be a place of deep and salvific belonging. A place and a community that are balm to parched spirits and chaffed souls. With robust and prayerful engagement in restorative justice processes and practices devised and guided by our HCT, with the adoption of a new covenant, and with continuing, creative, reaffirmation that we exist in the space where our too-good-to-be-damned being is held by an all-embracing Love that is too good to damn us for our falling short of the wholeness of our best true selves–with these three practices we will guarantee that this place and community are a balm and a salve–now and for years to come. Not perfect, not without flaws. But again, being flawed is not the opposite of being good enough. What a blessing it is to rest in that knowledge. Amen.