Potluck ©
Reverend Janet Parsons
Gloucester UU Church
February 23, 2025
There is an old fable that I’m sure just about everyone knows: the story of Stone Soup. In this tale, an old woman suddenly arrives in a poor village. People there lived a pinched existence, and no one had enough to eat. They tended to hoard what little they had, and treated each other with suspicion.
The old woman walked into the center of the village, and lit a fire. She took a cauldron she was carrying, and filled it with water at the nearby well. Then she set the cauldron of water on the fire, and added a large stone, and began to stir.
The village started to come to life: first curious children and then adults began to emerge from their cottages and gathered around the old woman and the fire. “What are you doing?” asked a child. “Why, I’m making Stone Soup,” the woman replied. “I’m hungry,” said a child. “When will it be ready?” “Well, it’s close,” she replied, “but it could use some carrots.” A man left the group and returned with a few carrots. The woman chopped them up, and added them to the pot. A little while later, an impatient villager asked if the soup was ready. “Well,” said the old woman, smacking her lips as she tasted the broth, “it’s almost done, but it could use some potatoes.” And from nowhere, potatoes appeared.
And so the story continued, with the old woman telling the villagers that it just needed one more thing, and one more. A little bit of seasoning. Some turnips. And as it began to boil and to smell delicious, people began to bring bread, and tables and chairs appeared. And they feasted together.
It’s an old story, but let’s think about it in a new way. What if the old woman had arrived and started lecturing the people about what failures they were to be so poor? What if she pointed out how selfish they were, and how no one was willing to share? But she didn’t shame anyone, or divide them. Instead, one vegetable at a time, she showed them how much they did have, and how they could better use their limited resources.
In short, rather than further antagonize people, rather than tear them further apart, the old woman began to build something for them. Yes, she made soup. But truly, what she did was to build community.
In his book We Need to Build, Eboo Patel writes about the challenges of American society here in the 21st century. We are, in many ways, a noble experiment; we are one of the most diverse countries in the world, both in terms of people’s origins, and in religious belief. But this diversity presents a tremendous challenge for us: how do we make sure that there is room for everyone at the table, and how do we find ways to build cohesive community from this, to not just merely tolerate the differences, but learn to enjoy them?
We are in an era of winning vs. losing. It seems that everything is framed as this vs. that – red states vs. blue states, liberals vs. conservatives, and so on. The wall that is so often discussed isn’t across the border with Mexico. It’s already here, present in all of our communities, and in our hearts and minds.
It’s possible to be a diverse society and to live with this sort of division. But to truly live into our ideals, our aspirations of creating a more perfect Union, we need to build more than walls. We need to move beyond diversity toward true pluralism. Harvard scholar Diana Eck defines the two this way: “Diversity is simply the fact of people with diverse identities living together in close quarters. Pluralism, on the other hand, is the proactive and positive engagement of difference.” (in We Need to Build, p. 64.). Eboo Patel expands this definition by writing about civic pluralism, which he calls shared spaces and institutions, shared activities, and cooperative relationships. And potlucks.
We take for granted our schools and hospitals, our parks and roads and services, which are here to serve everyone. And all of this is here in our lives because we build them. And of course we have so often failed at welcoming everyone into these shared civic spaces. Much of the work of our country over the course of our history has been to learn to share the space, to be welcoming and inclusive.
Civic space is not simply infrastructure, however. It is also relationships, and laws, and processes for making a country together.
Jeffrey Stout, author of Democracy and Tradition, wrote that managing disagreement is the defining quality of a diverse democracy. He went on, “Democracy takes for granted that reasonable people will differ in their conceptions of piety, in their grounds for hope, in their ultimate concerns…Yet it holds that people who differ on such matters can still exchange reasons with each other.” (in We Need to Build, pp. 65-6)
We’ve entered a time in our history where we are good at building physical civic space. But we struggle terribly these days to build the relationships needed to build community, to be welcoming and inclusive.
And so, my friends, we are at something of a crossroads. We have choices to make, both as individuals and as a society, and the choice is this: will we choose to be builders, or destroyers? Will we show up with water and a stone and build community vegetable by vegetable, or will we watch as the richest man in the world brandishes a chainsaw on a stage, symbolizing his desire to tear down our civic spaces?
Eboo Patel has a cautionary tale for us, in the story of the city of Mostar, in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Long after the civil war that tore up Yugoslavia, Mostar exists as two parallel societies. There are two fire departments, one for the homes of Christians, and one for the homes of Muslims. The Christians attend school in the mornings, and the Muslims attend in the same buildings in the afternoons. There are two hospitals, and clubs and activities for each religious group. The city might be considered diverse. But it is segregated, and the citizens are not in relationship. (Ibid., p. 61.)
My friends, we are so fortunate to live here on Cape Ann. Think of the civic spaces we maintain here, by working together: the religious institutions, the Open Door, and Pathways for Children, and the Writer’s Center, the Grace Center, the hospital, all the art spaces, our Meetinghouse Foundation. This all exists because we here have chosen, time and time again, to be builders. My hope for us all is that we will continue to be builders – to keep making the choice to build bridges, build relationships, build paths forward toward a genuinely inclusive and pluralistic society. It is up to us. Grab a stone and a pot, and let’s get to work.
May it be so,
Amen.
