Deep Gladness and Deep Hunger
In our most recent Starting Point class someone asked me how it was I came to be a Unitarian Universalist minister. I gave my usual answer–that having been raised by a schoolteacher mom and a social worker dad, the chances I would end up a helping professional were great, and that having also been raised in the Unitarian Universalist church by those same parents who brought our family to church more Sundays than not, and who were active volunteers at church in a variety of roles, the chances that that profession would be Unitarian Universalist ministry were also great. I described the sermon that I’d heard that first started me thinking, ‘I could do that’. I said that ministry is a combination of lots of things I love – reading and writing and study and working with people. That this life of ministry ‘fits’.
Several years ago I gave that answer to another person who asked the question, adding that I considered other career paths, but somehow, from the age of 15 on, my life moved steadily in this direction. “Oh,” that questioner replied, “you were called. Then wistfully, he added, “I wish God would tell me what to do.”
That long ago questioner made sure I understood that he was in earnest. He was someone who had no time or room in his life for religion. But feeling a bit lost and anchorless at the moment, unsure what to do with his life, he genuinely desired some ultimate unquestionable authority to weigh in on the matter. He wanted God to tell him what to do.
I don’t think of it in those terms most of the time – that God told me to become a minister. I only know it was something it seems I had no choice about once the idea came to me. In the words of Parker Palmer, I listened to what my life had to say, and what I heard was that the truths and values I couldn’t help but live by, along with my natural talents and interests, shaped me for a life of ministry. With one exception, I don’t actually know of anyone who has heard God, or the universe of the spirit of life, telling them clearly what to do, although I know, lots of people who say they were called to their lives work
Children’s author Stephen Krensky tells the story of How Santa Got His Job. According to Krensky’s tale, Santa took a most circuitous route to the familiar job we know he now holds. He was first fired from a job as a chimney sweep for being too neat. No one believed he’d really done the job because he didn’t get dirty or leave a mess in fireplaces. Next Santa lost a job with the post office because of his habit of delivering the mail in the middle of the night, when there was less traffic to contend with. Santa's next job, at an all night diner, caused him to gain a lot of weight, what with all that tasting and sampling he did on the job, so he took a job at the zoo, hoping to get some exercise. Keeping track of animals gave Santa a knack for knowing when they were asleep or awake, whether they were naughty or nice. But, alas, he became too close to the reindeer, making the other animals jealous, and he lost the zoo job, too. The reindeer left with him when he went, and they all joined the circus, where the reindeer began shooting Santa out of a cannon, wearing a bright red costume. Santa loved flying through the air, and shouted ho ho ho as he went, so the ringmaster fired Santa for not looking, frightening enough. But now Santa’s luck finally took a turn for the better. Some toymaker elves were at the circus, and invited Santa and his reindeer home for supper. Their home was filled with toys they made, but couldn’t be bothered to sell. Santa suggested giving the toys away and volunteered to deliver them himself. After a few more mishaps, Santa and the reindeer set out on the darkest part of the winter, when“people needed their spirits lifted most.” They delivered all the toys in one night, and have done so once a year ever since.
It may be fanciful and a bit extreme, but that’s more like how most of us find our role in life. No voice from on high or out there telling us what to do. Just trial and error after trial and error, each experience teaching us one or two valuable, if unlikely, lessons or skills, until at last, if we’re lucky and tenacious, we happen upon our vocation.
The one person I knew who stated clearly and emphatically that God had told him what to do with his life was a minister from another denomination. This man insisted that he didn’t really want to be a minister, but God wanted him to be a minister, so that was that. I had more than one argument with this colleague about that concept of calling. I argued that God, being God, must have many ways of telling us things, and surely a sense of joyful desire is a clearer sign of a call than is a reluctant sense of obligation. My colleague would have nothing of such a free and liberal interpretation of God’s ways. Somehow God had told him what to do, and his own skills, talents, desires didn’t factor in at all. Finally we had to give up the conversation. Our theological outlooks were so fundamentally different at the core we couldn’t communicate
I didn’t know it then, but I was arguing Presbyterian writer and popular theologian Frederick Buechner’s point of view. Today’s sermon title comes from one of his writings: “The place God calls you to the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” This theology says that God or the Great Mystery or Life with a capital L, wants us to be glad, and that the needs of the world are so great and so varied that there is a place where our deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger come together in a harmony of need and service. All we have to do, in order to live into God’s desire for us, or in other words, to take up our purpose in life, is discover that meeting place. Of course, that’s the challenge.
An Hasidic tale gets at the same point from a slightly different angle. It tells us that it his old age Rabbi Zusyia said, “In the coming world, they will not ask me, ‘why were you not Moses?’ They will ask me, ‘why were you not Zusya?’” The point is, we are called to be who we are, not to be someone else, even someone as revered as Moses. Ultimately we are no good to the world, or to ourselves, if we are not fully, wholly ourselves.
I once overheard someone comparing the relative importance of monks in a monastery with Mother Teresa. Monasteries have their place, he grudgingly admitted, but more lives are saved by those who are engaged with the world. From the pragmatic, results-oriented perspective, through which we are mostly trained to see the world, there is a great deal of sense to his words. But not everybody is Mother Teresa. Not even every person of faith and goodwill is cut out for life among the destitute of Calcutta. Some are built for life in a monastery, a life of prayer or study, or other contemplative work. Others are built for lives of direct service to the poor, the elderly, the young, the marginalized, the forgotten. And with rare exceptions, a person whose temperament suits them for one type of life would be a miserable failure in the other type of life. Miserable because they are denying their true calling. A failure no matter how productive they might seem, because when heart and soul are not behind one’s actions, that lack is always seen or felt in the results of the action, however subtly. The skills and talents, and basic way of being in the world that make one an excellent monk, or cloistered nun, would not necessarily serve one well in another setting, such as the streets of a slum, or the offices of a social service agency, or the front lines of an environmental battle. Fortunately, though it is strange to use that word, the hunger of the world is vast and varied. There is need enough for both those who serve others directly and those who study and pray. As the poem suggests, ask whether what you have done is your life. If you can answer yes chances are the world and not just your life, is better off for it.
What about you? Is what you have been doing your life? It's worthwhile to interrogate ourselves every now and then. Does my life need a course correction because the life I’ve been living isn’t genuinely mine? Do I let my life speak? Before making decisions about career or how to spend my leisure time or what volunteer opportunities to undertake, do I listen to hear what my life intends for me to do with it? Am I serving the world, not because I should or because, because ‘good people’ do, not because of those to whom much is given much will be received, but because I can’t help doing so, because my gladness is deep and rich and overflowing, and I found just the hungry, thirsty spot in the world that needs such a gladness? In the next world, or on the brink of death, will you be asked why you were not you? Or will you be spared that question, when it is too late for a course correction?
Such self examination takes time. It certainly isn’t as simple as God–a voice from on high–telling us what to do. And it may take even more time, once we have identified our particular gladness, to find the matching hunger in the world. Like Santa we may find and reject (or be rejected by) a dozen different paths before we find the one, but the rewards for such work are great. To live one’s own life, to act out of gladness, not obligation, is a powerful means of combating depression, bitterness, and exhaustion. Life so lived renews one and serves the world at the same time
Church is one place to do the work of identifying our gladness and matching it with the world’s hunger. Here we offer silence in which to listen deeply to our life. Here we share our stories with others and learn from their vocational journeys. Here we provide some avenues of access to the world’s hunger–for those whose gladness is caring for the building and grounds, or working with our children and youth, or being leaders in the community, or working towards anti-racism, healing the planet, combating injustice and inequity in Savannah. Here we are exposed to challenging, liberating ideas from voices we’re not accustomed to hearing–such as the reading Jane shared with us this morning. Such an important truth–that never moving beyond defiance keeps us forever tied to whatever it is we stand in opposition to, while moving toward occupying both shores frees us to create, build, heal. A deeper and more subtle take on the relationship between hunger and gladness. One I’ll be pondering for some time to come. Finally, here at church, at our best, we hold up the importance of listening to one’s life and celebrate with folks as they become more and more skilled at living the lives they are called to live.
Speaking of church, I believe that churches like individuals are called to match their gladness with the world’s hunger. Some churches live most authentically and service to children and youth. Others find their deep gladness in music, matching it with the world’s need for harmony and beauty. Still other churches find their calling in social justice, work of one kind or another. Or in robust interfaith partnerships. Churches which will never be asked why were you not yourself listen to the collective life of the congregation telling them who they are, what their truths and values are, what standards they can’t help, but live by, and then shape their ministries, their worship, their budgets around the answers they hear.
As we move closer to this congregation voting on whether or not to call me as your next settled minister, I am asked from time to time about my vision for the church. It is an appropriate and important question. The church is abuzz with spirit these days. Each week visitors are becoming established participants in church life. Each week folks are reestablishing attendance and volunteer patterns disrupted by the pandemic shutdown and ministerial transitions. This all feels vibrantly generative; yet there is uncertainty. Everything has changed in perceptible and imperceptible ways since 2020. The pandemic shutdown, the departure of David Messner, the interim ministry of Susan Karlson, the return to in-person worship and programming. At the current moment I’m the visible embodiment of all that feels like it is shifting still. And you want to know if this church will still be your church, if this nearly-two-year-long job interview ends with me settling in here long term. I get that. I too have been in communities that have undergone changes that brought new life and creative energy–and I too worried about losing what my community had been before all the change. I get that you want to hear my vision for this beloved church.
And… I’m pretty convinced that a vision born in and emerging from my mind and heart would ultimately fit the Unitarian Universalist Church of Savannah as poorly and inauthentically as the life built as nothing more than a fervent imitation of Dorothy Day, Gandhi, Rosa Parks and the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, fit Parker Palmer.
It is absolutely the role of the minister to keep the vision of the church, to interpret the nuances and implications of the vision, to remind the congregation of the vision, to guide and support lay leaders and staff in keeping the programs and policies of the church centered on the vision of the church. But the church’s vision mostly properly germinates within and emerges from the heart and mind of the congregation. If I were to answer the question with a fully formed, specific, and distinct vision of what UUSC should be five years from now–what programs it should offer, how the budget and staff time should be divided between RE and the congregation’s four social justice ministries and music, and what I think the demographics of the congregation should be–then you might well wonder if this church would still be your church if you call me. Be assured, however: I believe at my core, that should my deep gladness at listening to individual and congregation stories, recognizing patterns and longing and possibilities those stories reveal, and implementing ministries out of those patterns and longings and possibilities–should my gladness be invited to meet the deep hunger of this congregation to become clear about what it is and could be, moving forward from 2024, what would unfold over the coming years would indeed be this congregation’s life, its essence at once deeply familiar and shimmering with unexpected potential.
“In the coming world, they will not ask me, ‘why were you, not Moses?’ They will ask me ‘why were you not Zusya.’
With grace and hard work and willingness to listen deeply for whatever time we have together, may each of us alone, and all of us together avoid the fate of being asked such a painfully poignant question. Amen.