To Live in Communion©
Reverend Janet Parsons
Gloucester Unitarian Universalist Church
June 4, 2023
“How would it be
to live like the aspen,
to know the self
as one expression
of a glorious, radiant whole,
to live in communion
instead of competition…”
Each spring, we spend some time in a service simply celebrating the beauty and joy and miracle of flowers. As always seems to happen, the winters tend to feel very long here on Cape Ann, even when they are mostly mild. It was drab and colorless for months, and spring felt very slow in arriving.
We need to celebrate! And as Reverend Norbert Capek expressed, in Prague back in 1923, since we come from so many different religious backgrounds and beliefs, we need to take time to celebrate something that we can all agree upon, something that we can all share with no shadows, no reluctance, no feeling of being left out. When you participate in a Unitarian Universalist religious community sometimes you have to look hard for common ground, for common belief and common joys and celebrations. Here in June, after a long, bleak winter, we come together today to share the joy of all that the earth offers to us. It might feel frivolous, but really, doesn’t this ground us and unite us? What is more important?
Often at our Flower Ceremonies we speak of flowers as a metaphor for a community: how we each arrive bringing something beautiful and unique – ourselves – and how we combine our unique gift into the larger whole, a bouquet of sorts, which becomes something completely different and beautiful in its own way. We offer this gift of ourselves, our presence, our care, and in doing so, we add to the bouquet, the community.
This morning, as you entered the sanctuary, you were each invited to help create bouquets of flowers. Many of you brought flowers from your yard, or from a store, or maybe something pretty plucked from the side of the road. It did not matter where the flowers came from. Because as they came in the door and were added to the waiting vases, the flowers became part of something brand new that was being created, moment by moment. Each of you, arriving with a blossom, or selecting one from the extras waiting for you, made a difference in making the bouquets.
In creating something new in this way, we are symbolically demonstrating how each one of us helps create a congregation. A faith community is a living tradition; it changes, it evolves. Take a quick look at the title of the gray hymnal – that’s right – “Singing the Living Tradition.” Have you ever stopped to think about what that means?
We Unitarian Universalists call ourselves a Living tradition. To me it means that each and every one of you creates this congregation, and our tradition, by your belonging. Today we arrived here, perhaps empty-handed, perhaps carrying one lovely flower. And we combine what we offer to create something that is always new, always changing, full of color and life.
We come offering what we have and hoping to find what we need. We bring our hearts and our hands, our hopes and desires, our loneliness, our need for relationship and support. Sometimes we bring a flower for the bouquet, and sometimes we take one. Sometimes we offer help, and sometimes we receive it.
Our poem this morning, about aspens, made me think of a church community; how there is an amazing root system that ties the individual trees together. One individual aspen tree is just part of a huge organism. It made me think of our song “Spirit of Life”: roots hold us close. Hold us close, in communion, in community.
We humans are meant to live in community. I love how John O’Donohue put it, in his book Eternal Echoes: “Each one of us journeys alone to this world, and it is our nature to seek out belonging…”.
To seek belonging, and communion. There is something deep within us that yearns to belong to something outside of ourselves, and to connect with one another. As unique as each human is, we share this deep need. And so, we bring all of our separate yearnings to a place such as this, and we weave them together, and together we create something new and different, a new bouquet. We are not the same as we were when we were first gathered in 1779, and in fact we are not the same as we were last Sunday, for now we have some new members who have made the decision to join us, to walk together with us, and to weave their lives into the fabric that is this congregation.
Diane and Susan, and Jeff (when you’re back home again), we are so glad that you are with us. We thank you for trusting us with your hopes and dreams, with your yearning for connection and for belonging, and especially with your hearts. We will do our very best to hold you and walk with you on this journey.
Sometimes people think that churches are supposed to be holy places. But in truth, churches are human institutions, and they tend to be full of imperfect humans. What is holy is our desire to join together, to create a community, to work together to make the world healthier, more just, and more loving. We will not do this work perfectly, and of course there will be disappointments along the way.
But I hope that we can all hold the image of aspen trees in our minds as we go forward into our living tradition: individuals rooted together, standing strong together.
The world needs us this way: strong, committed, part of something larger than ourselves. Part of something imperfect, but willing to adapt, to sway in the wind but not tip over.
May you know yourselves as part of this community, and know this community as part of you, as part of your root system.
Blessed Be.
Amen.
