Rev. Nan L. White delivered this sermon on June 4, 2017.

I begin with thanks.

Gratitude for the lovely tea yesterday when many expressed to me their personal experience of my ministry here at RVUUF and the care and love and good wishes
for Sam and I as we head back to the southeast.

My gratitude for each of you and collectively as a congregation is hard to express because there is so much to be grateful for, but I’ll give you my short list framed in each year that I served you.

In 2014 I was gifted by many of you telling me your experience of the recent hard times at RVUUF. The gift was that you trusted me with your story and over time I’ve been gifted with many stories. In recent times the stories were personal and private and remain confidential touching my life in meaningful ways.

I thank you for that gift.

When I arrived in 2014 I was committed to model right relations and a covenantal way of being together and I asked staff and leadership to begin to do the same where many covenants were made between people and between members of committees and the Board. Your receptivity to that practice is not only a gift to me, it’s a greater gift to yourselves. Your chances of carrying on in your relationships with each other and your new minister has a far better chance of being successful and more so it has a chance of being meaningful and satisfying so that the practice of making covenants will reinforce your “We”-ness to do great things in the Rogue valley in the name of Unitarian Universalism.

In 2015 my gratitude extended to witnessing your commitment to this congregation and to Unitarian Universalism when you showed up for the large and small volunteer tasks on behalf of RVUUF. I saw many individuals putting many hours into a variety of projects all for the good of RVUUF and too often with little gratitude received. I witnessed tender care and inclusivity when individuals or committees were working on something and you stopped to ask “Who else needs to be included in this decision or this project or service?” Your ability to get out of the silos is another manifestation of covenantal relationships that is the hallmark of our Unitarian Universalist theology and historical narrative. Additionally your willingness to participate in the process of creating a new mission and using that mission as a guiding tool for every facet of RVUUF is inspiring.

In this final year, 2017, my gratitude expanded even further when I learned of your ability to take in the news of a difficult election year and its impact on everyone and you reached out to each other for solace and support and you reached outside of yourselves to help those who are the most impacted through standing in solidarity with our Muslim neighbors and through the pilot parking program for the homeless right in your own backyard.

Additionally, your ability to trust the leadership with the search for a new minister is another sign of your strength and longing to sustain all the good work you’ve done these last three years that brought you to a better place in ministry. And your ability to take-in my decision to retire with respect and acceptance solidified in my own mind the confidence I have that RVUUF will continue to grow in spirit and depth in spite of my presence here with you because it is you who will make it happen and it is you who this congregation ultimately relies on in order for the future to unfold.

Ministers certainly play a part but you are the ones you have been waiting for. You are the ones you have been waiting for.

For you I am grateful. Meister Eckhart said “If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.” So, I say, thank you.

This morning’s quote you’ll find in the order of service is by Gilda Radner:

“I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity.”

Delicious ambiguity is probably better known as a time of transition that goes really, really well.

I’ve heard some of you say that as a congregation it often feels like transition is the only kind of time you ever experienced here at RVUUF, especially for the last recent years, and as you look at continuing the Developmental Ministry for years ahead I’m guessing the ambiguity of it all might seem far from delicious. I have heard the longing and desire you have to finally arrive as a settled congregation doing ministry with a minister you know will be with you for a very long time. The truth in that longing and desire is exactly what Gilda Radner spoke about – “Life is about not knowing.” As a congregation I would even go so far as to suggest that congregational life is about not knowing and that being settled is more about knowing how to live in transition and how to make it delicious.
Friday morning I particularly found this quote as a gift reminding me that “Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next.”

Friday morning was when I learned of the death of UUA Moderator Jim Key and this life lesson of taking the moment and making the best of it was hard to face. I couldn’t possibly want to make the best of the moment when hearing about Jim’s death, but I did find comfort in Radner’s words that reminded me of how fragile and precious all of our lives are.And how we really don’t ever know what’s going to happen next. Faced with realizing I will never be able to say goodbye to Jim, face to face, reminds me of how growing up I avoided endings and goodbyes, face to face, like the plague. I was so uncomfortable with the emotions behind the goodbyes that I usually found a way to get out of saying goodbye.

This is also why my gratitude for your planning a tea yesterday and a picnic next Sunday is the greatest gift for all of us because it provided us safe space to say what we needed to say to each other as part of the process of facing yet another ending. My hope is that you continue to provide such space for each other in the days ahead. Even when there is loss in your lives, there seems to be at the same time much excitement and gratitude. May you give each other the room to live in ambiguity and may you find a way for it to become delicious.

The last thing I want to speak about today is trust in the same way many of you trusted me in listening to your story. It is when we are in transition that trust is the hardest to imagine.

Let’s imagine, for example, when I’m gone in July and you still don’t know who the new minister will be. Your time in transition can be the most delicious when at the same time you are in a state of trust for and with each other. You have already put your trust in the Board by electing them to lead you and they in turn have put their trust in the Search committee to find a minister.

Whenever the news is revealed who this minister will be, your trust in their ability to discern and to do due diligence and be open to not only the names of a minister but to their lives as well, that includes spouses and children and jobs. Your trust in bringing to you who they believe will be the best minister for this time and not knowing what the future will bring I encourage you to hang on to Radner’s words and read them over again, out loud to each other, especially when you find yourself questioning the decision of your search committee with whom you’ve put your trust. Your search committee is in relationship with a process that is far greater than just looking for a new minister. They are in relationship with the mystery of life and have no control.

Remember that “Life is about not knowing, what’s going to happen next.” It is equally true about trust in that it’s also about “not knowing what’s going to happen next.” What’s important is not the “not knowing” but it’s your response to the “not knowing” that matters and when you choose to trust the unknowing it could bring you the deliciousness to every moment, every decision or every experience that you face. It is your trust that feeds and nourishes your moments when living in transition and ambiguity.

If you remember three years ago, you nor I, knew how our relationship would begin or come to an end. Now you find yourselves not knowing who your next new minister will be nor do you know how long they will last or how your relationship will come to an end. Instead of spending energy worrying about whether or not you’ll like this minister and if they’ll like you, try expecting “delicious ambiguity.” Try trusting the process and the people and the mystery of life and maybe the transition you find yourself in just might turn into a delicious and deeply abiding joy.

I always say, since you don’t know what you don’t know … you might as well trust the not knowing. None of us knows what is going to happen next but I do know that even with one more Sunday planned for next week and that I might repeat what I’m about to say will say it now and that is I thank you for being you and giving me a chance to serve you. I thank you for making our transition time on this planet together these last three years a journey that ends not perfectly but a delicious ambiguity. Between now and next Sunday may your attention be focused on your calling and your mission even as you face the unknowing of your future.