We state the short version of the purpose of our congregation in every service: to transform ourselves, each other, and the world. I wrote this much longer version in one feverish journal-writing session about a year ago, and shared it in three consecutive newsletter columns this fall.
In my vision, UUCPA is and will be:
where we practice creating the beloved community.
where we give each other the encouragement to take risks, in the promised safety of forgiveness and understanding.
where we seek our best selves and ask to be challenged to attain them, and celebrated for our triumphs.
where we go when we are weary, confused, sad, losing our way ethically, or cynical–where we know others understand and will respond with compassion.
a place so well-known for its engagement in the world that when something in our town is happening related to social change, people’s first guess is that it is happening at UUCPA.
where we repeatedly meet the imperative “you must change your life,” and leave assured that we can respond to that call.
where we bring all our fears and brokenness and are assured, in the Universalist tradition, that what we have within us is good and sufficient.
where we are supported in our most loving and justice-loving impulses.
whose people speak of the congregation with such fervor and peace that others say “I want to be a part of that.”
where we touch what is most important–beautiful–real–alive in our world.
where we learn to be better friends, citizens of the world, caretakers of creation, thinkers, parents, parents, neighbors, people.
where we bring our gratitude, and where it swells up so that it bursts out of us in laughter, tears, alleluias, amens.
where we fearlessly acknowledge all that is wrong with the world and boldly imagine how to make things right.
where we listen to each other, to the marginalized, to the far away and the long ago and the not yet born, and to the truest voices of our hearts.
where we confront every dogma–the ones we receive and the ones we promote.
where we accept and celebrate the gorgeous variety of humanity, and dissolve all categories.
where we dare.
where we learn to build to last.
where we seize on every nugget of wisdom, however unlikely the place we find it, and hold it up and share it so that everyone can have every bit of insight human experience can offer.
where we embody immortality by building a land full of wonders we ourselves will never witness, but in which we will live on.
where we regard all children as our hope and our responsibility.
where we regard all elders as our future selves.
where we allow no differences of theological language, spiritual practice, chosen metaphor, or life story to prevent us from walking together.
where we move again and again from false either/ors to encompassing, empowering both/ands.
where we sing the beauty of life.
where we put our strength into bending the arc of the universe toward justice.
where our anger and despair can be transmuted into acts of healing.
where we know we are a part of something far bigger than us in space, time, and power.
where we claim the heritage of all wise thinkers, all brave heretics, all unflagging activists, all teachers and disciples, all artists, all speakers of wise words, all lovers of humanity, all carers for the small and delicate.
where we relive, and re-make, the peak moments of our lives: moments of epiphany, joy, insight.
where we stay in the circle and know we will not give up even when we don’t know how to make this crazy quilt of community hang together.
where we come not halfway to meet others, but 90% of the way, surrendering our fears of being taken advantage of.
where we help each other discover our gifts and our dreams and encourage each other (en-courage: give courage to; give heart to) each other to be bold.
where we ask the hard questions
. . . and listen to the answers
. . . and listen even when the only answers seem to be silence and mystery.
where we are gloriously unfinished and we are enough.
where others take our life mission even more seriously than we do.
where we take others’ life missions seriously, speak them back to them, and help them to keep their hands on the plow.
where we lay down our fears and our burdens.
where love is at the center.
Sermons in Stones 
3 comments
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December 4, 2011 at 9:25 am
Roger
Amy, I appreciate this statement, partly because some of your ideas are relevant to my goal of building bridges between “opposite” philosophies of life. You want your church to be a place:
“where we confront every dogma–the ones we receive and the ones we promote. …
where we accept and celebrate the gorgeous variety of humanity, and dissolve all categories. …
where we seize on every nugget of wisdom, however unlikely the place we find it, and hold it up and share it so that everyone can have every bit of insight human experience can offer. …
where we allow no differences of theological language, spiritual practice, chosen metaphor, or life story to prevent us from walking together.
where we move again and again from false either/ors to encompassing, empowering both/ands. …
where we claim the heritage of all wise thinkers, all brave heretics, all unflagging activists, all teachers and disciples, all artists, all speakers of wise words, all lovers of humanity, all carers for the small and delicate. …
where we stay in the circle and know we will not give up even when we don’t know how to make this crazy quilt of community hang together. …
where we ask the hard questions
. . . and listen to the answers
. . . and listen even when the only answers seem to be silence and mystery.”
Thanks for these bridge-building ideals.
Rev. Roger Christan Schriner
Theists & Atheists: Communication & Common Ground, http://theistsandatheists.wordpress.com
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December 5, 2011 at 9:37 am
Amy Zucker Morgenstern
Interesting to see it through someone else’s eyes and observe the themes that are repeated so many times–clearly this one is dear to my heart. To my life’s purpose, really. I love the bridge-building you’re doing.
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January 22, 2013 at 5:07 pm
Theological unity–another take « Sermons in Stones
[…] and the world”; the benediction we say at the end of each service; the vision I once set out here. None of them, in my opinion, requires that we have a unified […]
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