Rev. Nan L. White delivered this homily on Dec. 18, 2016 at Rogue Valley Unitarian Universalist Fellowship.
I invite you to look at the front of your Order of Worship and you’ll see a circle of people holding hands who appear to be falling from the sky. This photo is the inspiration for my sharing with you how I understand the power of community, compassion and courage using the circle as a symbol.
When I officiate at weddings and couples exchange rings I remind them that the words of their vows to each other are powerful, but the sound of them will soon be forgotten. Therefore the wedding ring becomes the enduring symbol of the promises a couple shares with each other. I point out that the ring is round, like the repeated cycles of the year reminding us that marriage must weather all the seasons. I say to the couple that “Love freely given has no giver and no receiver. You are each the giver and the receiver. By wearing these rings you express in visible form, the unbroken circle of your love, so that wherever you go, you may always return to your shared life together your rings can always call to mind the freedom and power of love.”
The circle on the front of the program is not one of those odd weddings you might read about taking place in the sky, but it does represent the power of a circle, especially when in community and the courage it takes to stay in community when the force of gravity is pulling you in a direction that you have little control. We began our service today with a responsive reading by George Odell (#468) expressing how we need one another in the ups and downs of life. And what better way to start our time together as we enter this Great Hall as individuals or couples or families who during the week fumble through daily life faced with challenges and triumphs that we think no one else has experienced … until we begin to share with each other our joys and sorrows as the hour moves on.
The power of community is profound for individuals who live alone and for couples and families who feel alone. One of our basic universal human needs is that we need each other, and yes, there are those times when we’d rather be alone — however, the beauty of our humanity is that we need each other not only for those times when we need something from others – like a bowl of soup or to catch a ride — but we also need each other more profoundly in order to see ourselves more clearly and to keep our best selves to the forefront of our lives.
One way to see ourselves more clearly is when we are in community with each other, like here at RVUUF. It is when you are in community that you can really see who you are, better than when you are alone because communities who especially value compassion can reflect back to you where your weaknesses and strengths lie. When you are in community you can be given encouragement to do something that you might never have even thought about doing on your own. I’m guessing that one person in that ring of skydivers probably thought at one time there is no way he’d even think about skydiving much less go through with it. There are those among you who have told me there is no way that you could be a leader, or it’s not possible for you to think you could impact this community in a purposeful way, or maybe you’ve wondered about others among you who have skills you see this community needs help with or could learn from, and you wonder why they haven’t stepped up.
The beautiful thing about community is that when you grab hold of the hands around you, (like the covenant you made with RVUUF) and when everyone is headed in the same direction, (like our new mission) your sense of connection becomes the energy that can sustain you in the good times and the not so good.
It does take a lot of courage to be in community. Courage, the root of the word is from the Latin word for “heart”. In one of its earliest forms the word courage had a very different definition than it does today. It originally meant “to speak one’s mind by telling all one’s heart.”
Something UU’s are pretty good at is speaking our minds, but what we’re not so good at is telling ‘all one’s heart’ because we tend to think or over-think with our minds instead of reflecting, listening and then speaking from our hearts.
Courage isn’t only about being the most vocal or the one who puts their life on the line. Courage is also present when we speak honestly and openly about who we are, about what we’re feeling and thinking, and about our experiences (good and not so good) [Brene Brown]. While putting your life on the line is what heroes do, in today’s world ordinary courage is about sharing your vulnerability within a circle in community.
In the Mail Tribune news this week we were reminded of the horrific Charleston shooting where a 22-year-old white man killed nine black church members during their weekly prayer and bible study time inside their own church. Dylan Roof was convicted on all 33 counts and it was reported that he said he carried out the killings after researching “black on white crime” on the Internet. And he said he chose a church because that setting posed little danger to him. He called himself brave in his hate-filled journal and I suspect he saw himself as a hero. In the closing arguments the Assistant U.S. Attorney said “those people at Emmanuel African Methodist Church couldn’t see the hatred in Dylan Roofs heart any more than they could see the .45 caliber handgun and at the 8 magazines concealed around his waist.” Can we even imagine how differently Dylan Roof’s life could have been if he had been nurtured and loved with compassion surrounded by a circle of people in community where courage showed up on a regular basis by way of sharing their need for each other and where being vulnerable was a daily sustenance of their lives. Could that kind of circle of friends have helped this young man to see that the path he was choosing to go down was a dead end, literally? 22-year-old Dylan Roof, glued to the Internet, needed someone else to be connected to.
A community who empowers connection by way of being real and vulnerable with each other is a community that has something to offer the world. A community who embraces diversity by way of teaching children to be curious about someone rather than superior is a community that has something to offer the world. A community who engages in the work of living up to principles that promote peace, liberty and justice for all is a community that has something to offer the world.
Compassion completes the circle when you are in a community who manifests courage with their vulnerability. It’s like compassion is the glue, the lock of one’s hand and heart into another when free falling from whatever is happening in a given moment.
The courage it takes to be real in today’s world must have compassion to hold the community together especially when we will always be staring someone in the face who has disappointed, disagreed, or we have disdain for because we are human after all. Since 11.9 it feels like we’re in a free fall when I think too much about what the future of this nation might be. But if I drop down into my heart and remember what sustains me and gives me courage, it is the compassion I’ve experienced over the years from the circle of Unitarian Universalists who taught me how to be curious instead of superior, and who helped me feel safe while showing my vulnerability and who worked with me when justice called me out.
The circle of community, courage and compassion is a life giving circle that the world needs today. When you go about your lives this holiday week listen to your heart and reach out and draw someone in the circle. It seems we do need each other more than ever.