The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same

2025-06-15

Some of you remember back to the fall of 2023, shortly after I arrived to serve as interim
minister with this congregation. It’s ok if you don’t remember, perfectly ok if you were not here at
the time. I am right now going to curate the experience of the last nearly two years for you. I am
going to put a fine point, like on a pencil, on just how this time of planned pause, between
settled ministers, looks to me. Now, generally when I speak on a Sunday morning, I try not to
speak about how I came to make the message I am delivering. Those folk here who participated
in the sermon reflection writing workshops will recognize such “how the sausage gets made”
talk to be a “No, no.” Well, I’m going to do it anyway, to make a point, of course!

I titled this service “The more things change, the more they stay the same,” a cliché for sure,
another sermon writing

“no, no.” The title serves, though I should have called it “I have too much
to say and need help cramming it all in.”

That’s the truth. So, I turned to a handy assistant that a
former congregant from Mankato, Minnesota gifted me. It’s a packet of sermon-writing pencils,
unsharpened I might add, no point here. Here is some of the inspiration they offered:

“Regurgitate Ideas” (there’s a winner), “Lightly Plagiarize” (well, use all the words from all the
other parts of the service, somewhere in the sermon), “Potential Murder Weapon?” (hoping
not!), “Try vodka” (I’ll just leave that right there).

When I arrived, I told you that one of my jobs as an interim was to hold up a mirror to you, and
that I have done. And, because I am doing the holding up of the mirror, you inevitably get a
reflection of what and how I see. You get my background and references and metaphors,
because, just like all of you, I am a human being who is always bringing myself into the frame,
like we all do. And so, one of the metaphors you got, back in the fall of 2023, was from the
Sergio Leone spaghetti western starring Clint Eastwood, “The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly.”
[sing if I got it in me!] Oof, some of you did not like that metaphor at all! It did not seem nice, at
all. And I tried to convince you that if it was not nice, it was kind. And I believe that, then and
now.

Let’s start with the ugly. What you might not know is that I don’t actually see ugly as negative. I
don’t even see ugly as the opposite of beautiful. I see ugly as the simple reality of what is messy
and difficult, what is seemingly unsolvable or insurmountable, but always worth it, part of the
holy mundanity of life. You have a big, beautiful campus—buildings and grounds and parking
lots—all of which are expensive and difficult to maintain. Things are always breaking down and
getting dirty and how, oh how, are we going to pay for it all. Several people in this congregation,
sitting here among you, are kept up at night by those logistical and financial worries. Those
worries persist. We are all taxed mentally and emotionally and physically—we are taxed
spiritually—to imagine how to hold this altogether so that UCM may remain the religious
community it is and aspires to be, a community much needed. The situation is ugly, but real.
These are the problems of vitality and longing, of yearning for a spiritual and ethical home. The
ugly is really beautiful, if you ask me.

And then there was the bad. This for me is the troubling part, the part where something needs to
be fixed or at least righted. And it was primarily in the realm of covenant, of right relations, that
work in and for this congregation had to be done. Covenant is what makes UCM a Unitarian and
Universalist community. Covenant is the agreement to move together with our differences both
intact and valued—our differences in belief about the nature of the holy; our different histories,
identities, and experiences; our different perspectives on how to live into our Eight Principles,
how to draw strength and inspiration from our Six Sources, how to act for justice in a world
crying out for justice. We leaned into covenant in a big way—With the bookmarks to serve as
our constant reminders. With the covenant posted in the entryway. With our First Sunday unison
recitations and after-worship discussions. With a policy and a procedure for helping people to
have difficult conversations and to treat everyone involved equitably.

This was not in any way easy work, but it had to be done. And it was facilitated by the many
opportunities, familiar and new, to gather and learn more about each other. From weekly bridge
games and monthly book and podcast discussions to new weekly and monthly spiritual
practices and monthly crafting gatherings to sermons about the meaning and significance of
covenant and adult spiritual development sessions to deepen into our Unitarian Universalist
faith. Our community expanded into our faith tradition in fulsome ways. You can feel it is so.

Now I am going to bring something to a point here, a sharp point. There were days, dear ones,
days when I wondered if we would manage the ugly, if we could support financially the many
needs of this congregation. That beautiful ugly is with us still, and I trust this community will rise
to the challenge. But more difficult, dear ones, more difficult to admit, I worried that I might not
have the stamina or the imagination to work with you through the bad—the bad behavior, the
threatening behavior, the resistant behavior. The refusal of conversation and accountability. And
over and again, I found the stamina, for one reason only, though that reason took on many
forms. I found the stamina to persist in ministry with you because of the magnificent and
powerful good that is manifested in and through this congregation: through the people who love
Unitarian Universalism, through those who love this Congregation, and those who came for a
visit and decided to stay, for those who visit and go away to think about whether this is a
community they can be comfortable in. We are here for their search, doors open and hearts
wide, even when we don’t all have our micro-aggression avoidance mechanisms in place, even
when we are all still learning that welcome means not just being warm but making room.

The good is everywhere—in the planks of a bridge full of aspirations about and fears for our
community that we awkwardly clasped together during an early worship service—it’s up here on
the slide and strung there along the windows. The good is everywhere—in this word cloud of
murmurations, gathered from scraps of paper where you named the six or seven or more
people who help you orient yourself in the congregation, like starlings who cluster close to avoid
danger and thus create beauty. The good is everywhere—in this photo of the shimmering
threads making visible our often invisible connections, another act we co-created in worship that
is now housed at the back on the ritual table as you enter. The good is everywhere—it’s in the
banners now proclaiming our Unitarian Universalist faith in this Great Hall, our building,
whatever else it might be, first and foremost a place of worship. It is in the line of ministry
standing and seated among you today, Rev. Jeff and Rev. Fiona, and me, reminding you that
our faces and bodies will change, our ways of being Unitarian and being ministers will change,
but there will be someone ordained and trained and drawn to be spiritual leaders with you.
Nurture your ministers, take care of the ones that follow, so that together you might continue to
build the world of your aspirations.

We with the stoles and the title will change. What stays the same is a commitment to shared
ministry, the minister and the congregant, the trained and the learning. I know that uncertainty is
difficult. I might be leaving on July 31, and I might not. I imagine that there are a range of
feelings about this, and I encourage you to feel all of them as they arise. In the words of Ross
Gay, “What if joy is not only entangled with pain, or suffering, or sorrow, but it is also what
emerges from how we care for each other through these things.” The uncertainty, our constant
reality, requires that you all hold close, very close, the good here of which you can be sure. The
good is everywhere. Look up, look around, dear ones. It is in all of you. Look and see.

May you always remember yourselves. You are a people for community, for diversity, for
boundaries, for respect, for care. You come to this Great Hall, this sanctuary, this well of
Unitarian Universalism, nourishing your spirits and preparing for the work of justice. You
support and maintain and grow this community to ensure for all a home to return to, where your
inner strength will be nurtured, where you will be held in love.

I know love can feel like weak sauce to many of you. I know that love is hard, always harder
than any of us want it to be. When love is understood it its most fulsome way—as the generative
thriving of the universe, with beginnings and endings that are natural and life-sustaining—we
truly understand the value of a supportive community. And we can feel that love rising in our
hearts and bodies, as a feeling of acceptance—where we accept ourselves and we accept each
other, where we respect our differences and maintain agreements about how we will be
together. Then we begin to approximate the holy land, the heaven of Beloved Community, not a
place to arrive but a place to continuously build, always open to more and new, always strong in
what has been life giving and life sustaining, as well as truthful and honest about what has not
been that. When we know better, we do better, to paraphrase the great ancestor Maya Angelou.

For whatever reason, you seek to live in religious community—not just any old community,
though all community is important. Religious community: to face together the bad that must
continually be confronted, to face the ugly that must be continually tended, and to embrace the
good that must be always cherished and celebrated. This is why we carry the bag of laundry or
groceries together. We need this religious community, a community that is aspirational, that
calls us to breathe in ways that evoke our best selves, that imagines a world beautiful which can
also be more just, more caring, more vital and life-giving, life-sustaining. In the everyday, in the
mundane, the material, the earthly, the earthy, the holy and the sacred rise up and sing out One
Love. “Everything that needs doing—getting the groceries or laundry home—would get done
just fine without this meager collaboration. But the only thing that needs doing, without it, would
not.” The mundane becomes, truly, a blessing.

Spirit of Life and Love, beyond us, and certainly among us, and most definitely in us, diverse,
vibrant, beautiful web of all existence, help us help each other to live authentically as the unique
gifts we are, in the space and for the time we have. Help us help each other to live as true
community—supporting each other in sorrow, celebrating with each other in joy, holding each
other in loving covenant, with compassionate boundaries and respect for the gift of our
differences. Help us help each other to live with curious hearts and spirits—gently inquisitive
about each other, heart-feltly interested in each other, truly thankful for our diversity of
expression and experience. May we know and always rejoice in the mundane, the everyday
community of caring that is our most valuable blessing, as life calls us on. May it ever be so.