LEFTOVERS – Homily for Sunday November 30, 2003

First Unitarian Church of Alton

Rev Carol M Wolff

I wanted to do a Homily today about the process of sermon writing, about hoarding clippings and readings and snippets from books than seemed worthy of sharing someday. About how I work very hard to create a theme for every service and about how today was not going to have a theme but be a potpourri of things that never made into a full fledged thematic service.

It has been thus so far I guess, but I as I began to get everything together on Friday afternoon, as is my wont, I began to see some similarities to the things I chose.

I guess basically everything I collect in some way relates to our UU Principles or has a Unitarian slant of some kind.

I have been saving a little scrap of paper on which I wrote "UU Free PR" that I thought would be of use sometime and today seems like the most appropriate time.

Within a space of a few weeks last year, I happened to catch several references to Unitarianism in the media.

The first was Christopher Reeve’s book about his paralysis and struggle to regain his life after a fall from a horse that resulted in a broken neck. He talks about his recovery and refers to his religious journey which eventually led him to Unitarianism – what I great thing I thought! We will surely get a lot of curious members after they read about that!

Then there was the tragedy of Laurel Clark’s death on the space shuttle Challenger. Her widely distributed letter written from space was sent all over the Internet, was printed in newspapers and shared by many – in most cases her church, a Unitarian church is mentioned – wow! I thought – more exposure and more people being curious.

Less sensational and not as tragic as these was the episode on Oprah where a single woman who is relating her dating experiences mentions her personal ad and that she tries very hard to explain her liberal beliefs as a Unitarian in order to avoid attracting mainline of fundamental men.

I thought I would be hearing and seeing a lot of print about some of these free PR evetns. But except for my little scribbled scrap of paper, I have heard nothing nor have I ever encountered anyone who referred to them.

I began to wonder if anyone in the wider world even noticed –I wondered what do they think when they hear the word Unitarian? Do they – the public – still hear Unification like they did in the 70’s or do they think UNITY is the same as Unitarian? Or…mmmm. Does anybody wonder about this AT ALL??

As far as I know no one has ever come here out of curiosity because of those media exposures.

So I guess the word perhaps is not recognizable or has any significance to people. Even if they see it in print rather than just hearing it, they are not curious enough to pursue finding out what it is about.

I would hope identifying with Laurel Clark or Christopher Reeve would be incentive to look into what kind of religion would attract that kind of person, but I guess I am wrong.

Maybe there are less of us out there than I imagined. Maybe no one really is looking for a community of faith that allows one to seek personal truth and meaning.

But this would refute a column I had saved by George Will, surprising myself at that, about connectedness being a basic human need. In it he says_

That we come to church seeking connection is not something I would ever argue with – in our case we do not choose to define the WHAT we come to connect with but I am certain we come for that purpose and whether it ever happens or not, we come because it does or we keep hoping it will.

As a church community to we owe it to ourselves and those who are sitting next to us to present a community that is connect- able with. We have to have space and time and reason for people to want to be here.

This potpourri of reading today is not a focused example of what we are about – it is rather an expanded view of some of the things this minister finds intriguing and worthy of lifting up in this time of worship. For those of you who come regularly it may be a refreshing change from a single issue sermon for others, it may be too much information.

But if you are visiting rest assured, the things I chose to read today are a small sampling of the larger issues usually addressed from this pulpit.

Quite often there are secular articles that are so right on about some UU principle or belief. I have one more to share with you from one of my favorite columnists – Ellen Goodman of the Boston Globe who wrote recently:

That is the kind of chutzpah reporting we can respond to and agree with in principle if not content. It is easy to be uplifted by some of these pieces and to realize that it is not always about issues we cannot agree with. I try to find such things whenever I can and try to discover a way to share them with you on a regular basis.

I have chosen to day to share things from the secular world rather than from any UU publications or materials.

I call them leftovers but in most cases, I think they are a full meal deal. Enjoy!