First Parish Cohasset

Farewell Chalice Reflection for Jan
Written and delivered by Annie Spang
First Parish Unitarian Universalist
Cohasset, Massachusetts
June 20, 2010

Thank you, Jan, for being our minister. You have journeyed with us for 6 years, First Parish’s 19th Ministry. I’d love to be an historian and accurately speak for many people here by recounting the highlights of our time together. But alas I am not, so I’ll share what your ministry has meant to me and trust that others find common ground in their own way.

I have gotten to know you best through Circle Ministry and I consider our time together a deep honor. As a member of your Ministerial Search Committee I had said that a priority was bringing Small Group Ministry to First Parish. You shared this conviction. Over the next two years I, along with Jack Martin and others, was blessed to work closely with you toward the launching of Circle Ministry, the term you coined. You, Jack and I have met monthly for the past 5 years creating and nurturing Circle Ministry. These meetings, led by you, were characterized by high energy, unabashed creativity, steady inputs of humor, and deep caring. I will miss the inspiration and love that we shared in our work together, an idyllic microcosm which drew us to be the better angels of ourselves, as you would say. I am grateful for your legacy of Circle Ministry that you leave with First Parish.

Sometimes the 3 of us would end our meeting with only a general notion of how the next session topic would come together but soon enough you would follow up with a beautifully crafted session plan. Countless, and I mean countless times when I would open your email I would say to myself “Jan is amazing”. And then I would think “Thank God she is on my team, I could never get this done with such grace and speed”. I felt similarly when I listened to your prayers and meditations during worship; I was amazed and moved by the resonant chord that they struck. It seemed so easy for you to instantly draw from a deep spiritual well.

One of the least successful aspects of Small Group Ministry nation-wide is the community-service project component. Not so here! Oh no, it has been a wildly successful component of our Circle Ministry. You have held all of us at First Parish to a high standard of awareness and giving in a world with inequalities. You instilled faith in me that participants would benefit from giving and that the act of reaching outside the groups would enrich the whole community. This has been our experience. Your spirit of generosity has led us, and has been a beacon for me. You have been a role model, and even though I have a long way to go, I do not feel judged, I feel inspired.

Finally, I feel blessed to be a witness to your abundant resilience. You particularly exemplified this for me both in how you handled your diagnosis of breast cancer and in how you have finished out this year. I know that it is hard won but I also sense that it is your belief. That a human life is built in response to challenges and in fully facing what is, always transforming and being transformed, creating hope. I know that here you created hope with so many congregants in times of need.

At home over the years I have posted various pieces that you have written, I’ve had them as wisdom reminders. One is a Thanksgiving blessing you wrote in The Common in 2006. In part it is as follows:

“I am thankful for this life and this day. I am thankful for resilience that we might at any point alter our course in this life and this day. I am thankful for imagination that we might transcend our habits. I am thankful for laughter that we might give expression to its many sources. I am thankful for peace, how ever we find it, how ever we attain it. I am thankful that together, we might be instruments of peace in a world where hope is too commonly a scarce commodity. I am thankful that together, we might be instruments of hope.”

Though our paths now diverge, we are together in peace, hope and love.
Thank you, Jan, for being our minister.

“Benediction”
A Sermon by Rev. Dr. Jan Carlsson-Bull
First Parish Unitarian Universalist
Cohasset, MA
June 20, 2010

“See ya!” we casually say to a friend as we part ways for awhile. “See ya around!” Or simply, “Ciao!” “So long” is only a tad less casual. “Farewell” is antiquated, though we often speak it at celebrations of life that are also services of memory. “This is goodbye,” we might say with an edge if we’re willfully severing a relationship. “We must stay in touch,” is a common mode of saying “I think I should, but I know I won’t, and I really don’t want to anyway.” “I’ll miss you,” we speak sometimes tearfully to a loved one, who may be going away for a weekend or forever.

How to part ways reflectively, mindfully, compassionately, in the spirit of religious community? How to part ways with no strings attached, but words that ring with….what might we call it….blessing? At the conclusion of each of our worship experiences together, I offer you a blessing, a benediction.

“As we go forth….”
“As we leave this space and this time…..”
“And now in our going….”
“Go in the spirit of…..”

….and whatever follows. Each benediction holds a heart full of hope and love and faith that this blessing will infuse the blessed with a spark of the sacred. Through every benediction I have offered, I have sought to realize this promise.

And now in our going,
may God bless and keep us.
may the light of God shine upon us
and out from within us
and be gracious unto us
and give us peace
and the will to practice peace.
For this is the day we are given;
these are the lives we are given.
Let us rejoice in the miracle that it is so.
Amen.

It’s the benediction I offered on November 21, 2004. This blessing was an adaptation of the benediction offered every Sunday at the Unitarian Church of All Souls, New York City, where I had served for seven years as Assistant Minister before coming here to First Parish Unitarian Universalist in Cohasset. How I recall Forrest Church raising his arms draped in his crimson robe and offering this blessing. It seemed to move from his heart into his fingertips into the soul of every person gathered there. How I recall also the ordination of my colleague, Ken Belton, at All Souls. Ken was a bit anxious that in the excitement of the event, he would forget the exact words of the All Souls benediction, so what did he do? He printed it—in ink—on the inside cuff of his sparkling white dress shirt! A memorable benediction! A souvenir shirt!

May the spirit of Christmas touch us all?
May we stand together on earth’s hillside?
And grow quiet and listen to those angels,
Still singing at the top of their voices,
“Peace on earth, good will to all,”
As the day breaks, and the shadows flee away.
Amen.

The benediction offered on Christmas Eve, 2004, with allusions to my favorite Christmas reading, a letter written by Far Giovanni Giacondo—esteemed architect, archaeologist, scholar and Franciscan monk—to his good friend, Countess Alafia Aldobrandeschi, on Christmas Eve, 1513.

Let us go forth with larger hearts, wider minds, and more passionate spirits,
passionate with possibility and buoyed by hope,
that we might be doers of the dreams imparted by Martin and Marjorie
and so many more,
so many more.
Amen.

The benediction offered on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Sunday, January 14, 2007. Martin referred of course to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Marjorie referred to my dear late friend and colleague, Rev. Marjorie Bowen-Wheatley. Marjorie had co-edited Soul Work: anti-racist theologies in dialogue.   It was the primary source for the series of Soul Work forums that I co-facilitated with Eva Marx, our district’s representative on the Unitarian Universalist Association’s Board of Trustees. That morning marked the launching of these cross-congregational forums with First Parish Unitarian Universalist/Old Ship and Second Parish Unitarian Universalist in Hingham.

Go with the spirit of memory,
moving like the wind through our branches.
Go with the spirit of gratitude,
rising like the sun that does rise.
Go with the spirit of peace,
calling like a lost child in our souls.
Go with the spirit of love,
teaching, teaching us how to remember,
how to be grateful, how to make peace.
Amen.

The benediction offered just a year ago on Father’s Day – June 21, 2009. It was also the first day of summer, that season when we stretch toward the sun and head toward the ocean, a time of promise and renewal.

So it is as we worship together on this Father’s Day, June 20, 2010. We gather on the threshold of another season of promise and renewal. We gather in reflection, in promise, and in this sacred time of blessing the walk that we walk, the walks that we walk, in the time at hand. On this Father’s Day Sunday, we gather mindful of the fathers and mothers who have nurtured us all. We gather grateful for the nurturing we have known from one another. We gather in the blessing known and lived as benediction.

May we each be a blessing to this day and this life, and may we know the sacred blessing of life loved and love lived, whatever path we’re on.

I love you. May God bless us all. Amen.

Sources:
Fra Giovanni Giocondo, Christmas Eve 1513, http://www.inspirationpeak.com/poetry/fragiovanni.html

Soul Work: anti-racist theologies in dialogue, Edited by Marjorie Bowens-Wheatley and Nancy Palmer Jones, Skinner House Books, Boston, 2003.

Chalice Reflection
of
Kay Mixon

First Parish Unitarian Universalist
Cohasset, Massachusetts
June 13, 2010

First Parish’s Circle Dance

We all join hands and move together
in the large circle of our church.
We welcome each new baby’s cry
as we step forward into the circle of our future.
We join our hearts to those long gone
as we step back into the circle of our past.
We spin and break into our smaller circles,
the circles of our circle ministry groups
where each has its own rhythm
and we hold each other tight.
We waltz into even smaller circles
paired with friends or loves
where we swing and dip and twirl.
We move again into the large circle of our church
then turn and reach out to help the world.
We do the dance of life as we circle, circle, circle
to the music of the spheres.

By Kay Mixon
With homage to Wendell Berry
and thanks to Joan Kovach for a great writing class
and to the Woman Spirit group, my own dear circle of friends.

“Sing out, sing on….”
A Reflection by Rev. Dr. Jan Carlsson-Bull
First Parish Unitarian Universalist
Cohasset, MA
June 13, 2010

We hold each other’s history. Whether it is a history of six years or six days, it is equally precious. In this time I have learned and grown from the lessons you have taught me, some easy, some not so easy. We turn a page in the respective chapters of our life journeys. As we do so, may we all continue to

Sing out, sing on…

We have worshipped together, greeted newcomers, and dedicated new lives. We are almost three centuries old, and with every passing century, every passing year, every passing day, we are brand new. As we cherish stories old and new, lives old and new, music old and new, may we

Sing out, sing on….

Arrivals are full of warmth and welcome. Departures are bittersweet. Change is inevitable. I would remind you that it is protocol within the guidelines of our Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association that departing ministers forego contact with congregants for at least a year, permitting new ministry to take root, permitting a new form of shared ministry to come to fruition with seeds newly planted. As we move ahead on our respective paths, let us each and all

Sing out, sing on….

For all the rites of passage we have shared—weddings of couples starry-eyed with love and the dreams that love holds; memorials services that are celebrations of lives, some barely begun, others leaning into the span of a century, each precious; and child dedications through which we pledge ourselves that to the best of our ability as religious community we will join in raising this child in the way of loving and mindful living both for herself and for humankind. May each and every child find this to be a community of such nurture, a community ever encouraging him to

Sing out, sing on…

We have made music together. Sometimes that music sounds harmoniously. Sometimes that music sounds with dissonance. In caring community, may we find our voice and with courage and perseverance, might we dare to

Sing out, sing on…

While some of us may understand stewardship as gifts given, may all of us grow to know that through stewardship, gifts are given and received—gifts of time and talent, gifts of money, gifts of leadership, gifts of participation, gifts of presence. May we discover stewardship as a song ever new, ever energizing, ever transforming, and

Sing out, sing on…

You know that my ministerial passion is justice making—charity, yes, outreach, yes—but charity and outreach in solidarity with those among us and beyond us who hurt, with those among us and beyond us who are oppressed, and with those among us and beyond us who are members of the amazing family of life in all its forms, the interconnected web in which we are all woven. In the spirit of love and justice, may we

Sing out, sing on…

For those among us who harbor memories with others among us that chafe and hurt, for those among us who find it difficult to let go of these wounds that have sparked anger and resentment grown hard, may we find it in our hearts to seek out one another, to look into one another’s eyes, to speak the truth of what we feel but in love, that we might reconcile, that we might once again

Sing out, sing on….

For those among us reluctant to welcome the youngest and noisiest among us, for those among us reluctant to welcome consciously or unconsciously those among us who love differently, who learn differently, who look different and sound different, those among us eloquent and ineloquent, those among us who we might feel but be reticent to say, “just don’t fit,” may we find it in our minds and hearts to let go of whatever privilege we’re grasping and to share whatever power accrues with this privilege and sing a new song, a song of faith lived faithfully. In the spirit of wholehearted welcome, may we

Sing out, sing on….

A few years ago, this congregation adopted a Mission Statement. With heart, soul, mind, and strength, may we “welcome all to our inclusive spiritual community. May we affirm our Unitarian Universalist principles and put them into action by worshipping together, caring for one another, and working for a safe, just, and sustainable world.” In this faith that we share, a faith bound not by dogma but by covenant grounded in love, let us

Sing out, sing on….

As we seek to grow our souls, may we burst free of whatever fears we harbor and move gracefully and gratefully into whatever lies ahead. Through it all, may we never cease to open the arms of our hearts and the hearts of our minds and in concert,

Sing out, sing on….

So may it be. Amen.

“Wise as OWLs, Innocent as Doves”
A Reflection by Rev. Dr. Jan Carlsson-Bull
Youth Sunday
First Parish Unitarian Universalist
Cohasset, MA
June 6, 2010

One night shortly after my husband Dan and I arrived here, we took a walk up the hill from our home in North Scituate to a vantage point where one can see the tidal marsh stretching into Minot Beach. It was right after the first serious snowfall. Moonlight and starlight cast an aura on snow that answered with its own glistening array of crystalline stars. Off we went for this late evening walk, our feet crunching through the snow.

Running along more or less next to us was Google, our lovable mutt of a dog we had just adopted from the Scituate Animal Shelter. Google is also a UU dog through and through in an endless search for truth and meaning at the tip of his nose. As we walked on through the snow, it didn’t take long for him to tangle in the frost-covered brambles—part of that interconnected web that befuddles us all from time to time.

Then we heard it. “Whooooo, whooooo.” We stopped in our tracks. Dan raised the flashlight toward an ice-caked branch. There, huddled side by side, were two owls. “Whoooo, whoooo” they sang. Even Google stopped and looked up. Wise as owls, their eyes held pools of what we only wonder about. One soft body found the other soft body, warmth finding warmth.

Wise as OWLS, innocent as doves. The biblical phrase doesn’t go quite like that. Rather, in the New Testament’s Gospel According to Matthew, it’s written that Jesus sent his disciples into the larger world with a gospel of love that the world of two millennia past was as reluctant to receive as is the world of our own day. Jesus knew what his friends would face, so what was his charge?

“Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.” (Matthew 10:16)

We don’t commonly think of serpents—or snakes—as wise; but they are. I have a good friend who had a pet python. Her kids adored Willy; and she used to walk through Central Park with Willy resting on her shoulders like an elegant stole. Willy was lovable, and he was savvy—that is, wise. Serpents or snakes don’t suffer foolishness easily. But they can also be lovable.

So it is with owls. They’re known for their wisdom. But for their love? As the “Whoo’s” sounded softly through the wintry wind, two owls sang their song of love and gazed forth into the night as if they knew the churnings of the world far better than any of us.

And doves, what about doves? You’ve perhaps noticed the chalice that I wear Sunday after Sunday. It’s a peace chalice. If you look closely, you’ll see the design of a dove, olive branch in mouth, soaring to wherever.

The sign of the dove with an olive branch in her mouth is a sign of peace. The coos of a dove signal love. What are peace and love, if not innocent—not naïve, but innocent?

For you who are graduating from our OWL program, the Our Whole Lives program; for you who are graduating from high school and turning a pivotal page in your life book; for you who have taught and led and cared for and modeled wisdom and love, peace and innocence, I wish you the blessing of wisdom and innocence. May you grow in wisdom and love as those two owls mystically proclaimed in their community of two from that ice-crusted branch. May you grow in peace and love, as the dove proclaims, olive branch clasped fast in her mouth.

May each and all of you find yourselves at home with wisdom and companionship, and may you soar across the waters with that symbolic olive branch clasped close to your heart. May you do all you can do and be all you can be to know lives of love and peace.

I love you each and all.

Amen.

“Lives Celebrated, Living Remembered”

An Invitation to Celebrating and Remembering
on Memorial Day Sunday
by Rev. Dr. Jan Carlsson-Bull
First Parish Unitarian Universalist
Cohasset, MA
May 30, 2010

It may sound strange, but as a minister I find the process of planning a memorial service immensely gratifying. Not because someone died, though we all will. Not because I speak with family and friends of the deceased in the intimacy of their grieving, though we have all been there in the land of grief. Rather because I receive from family and friends a treasure of stories of a life lived and living remembered. The memorial service that unfolds is a celebration of that life through those stories. Almost always there is laughter as well as tears; sometimes there is relief over pain ended; and sometimes there is shock over a life ended abruptly.

I remember as a young child the first memorial service I experienced. I had no knowledge of death; I was barely born myself. I just knew that my Great Uncle Joe had done something my family called “dying.” So being the curious child I was, I wondered: what did this mean? And then, why was my Aunt Annie crying all the time? And then, why didn’t Uncle Joe get up? Why did he just lie there? Those were the days and that was a culture of beholding the remains of the one who had died. As for me, I just stared, fascinated. I had no clue that death is as natural as birth, not a clue, or that memory was how we kept that person alive in our hearts.

Then there was the loss of animals, family pets. Soon enough, I was part of a neighborhood funeral team—kids who staged the most elaborate of celebrations for a beloved cat or dog who had been hit by a car, or even for a cherished goldfish whom we perhaps forgot to feed or fed too much or just died of old age. When my daughter, Sarah, and her friend Kristen produced such a ceremony, it was high church, so to speak. A goldfish had died. So these two eight-year-olds earnestly planned how to memorialize Flipper. They wore their finest party dresses, then presided over a “goldfish communion” – goldfish crackers, as you can imagine, and grape juice. Interestingly, neither of them had been exposed to communion in their young lives. They just went ahead confident that they were paying proper tribute to their beloved Flipper. Chairs were set up in our backyard, and the rest of us were proper mourners at this memorable rite of passage.

Celebrating a life lived—human or otherwise—allows us to hone in on the meaning of that creature’s life through the heart-felt reflections and stories and anecdotes of those of us who were closest to the one we have lost.

Just this past week, we lost a long-time member of this congregation. At the age of 91, Lou Eaton left this life as we know it. On Saturday afternoon, June 12th at 2 PM in this Meeting House, I’ll preside at a celebration of Lou’s life. Lou is an exemplar of why I find such a rite of passage so gratifying. The varied facets of his life weave a many-splendored web, so complex, so luminous, that I hope each of you who attend this service will walk away knowing more of Lou than you had when you arrived. It will be a weaving of stories from many sources. Yet the whole is inevitably greater than the sum of those stories, for the whole speaks of a life lived in all its complexity, with all its strands—many of them unknowable even to daughters and spouses and dear friends who knew him well.

So it is with each of us as we celebrate on this Memorial Day Sunday lives once vibrant in our midst and living remembered. In the words of Steve Smith:

“Each of us has a thousand, a million tendrils of
other souls wrapped
around us and through us.
And this is who we are to ourselves.”

In the spirit of this circle of sharing, I invite you to come forward, light a candle as long as the candles last; and when they give out, light a virtual candle. Come forward in silence if you will and light your candle. Come forward in voice if you will, tell us your name—please, tell us your name—and share briefly please a story of a life celebrated and remembered.

Sources:

Steven F. Smith, “A Little Piece of Our Souls,” in How We Are Called: A Meditation Anthology, Mary Benard and Kirstie Anderson, Editors, Skinner House Books, Boston, 2003, 43-45.

“Nature, Nurture, whatever…”
A Sermon by Rev. Dr. Jan Carlsson-Bull
Mother’s Day Sunday
First Parish Unitarian Universalist
Cohasset, MA
May 9, 2010

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Which came first, the baby or the parent? Which came first, the woman or the man? Well, we all know the answer to this last question. Adam was created from the rib of Eve!

We know too that Eve is the mother of Unitarian Universalism. Who else would refuse to hold back from the prospect of a sumptuous apple offered by one of God’s creatures, each with inherent worth and dignity? Adam followed suit by virtue of the nature transmitted through Eve’s rib and the nurture she imparted once he appeared on the scene. From then on all is history, spotted as it is.

So to the core question of developmental psychology: Is it nature or nurture? Are we human creatures the harvest of what was transmitted genetically or of what was transmitted environmentally? As much time as I spent on this question in graduate academia, I do believe the answer is straightforward. “Yes!” Each of us is an amalgam of our genetic and our environmental legacies. Often it’s hard, if not impossible, to identify those traits biological and psychological that reveal which threads are which. There are surely situations in which it’s helpful to know what our genetic legacy is, however. It’s helpful to have that medical history. Sometimes it’s reassuring, sometimes not; but almost always it’s informative and sometimes, lifesaving. It’s also helpful to be attuned to the cradle of nurture or otherwise from which we have each developed. From neglect and abuse to love and cultivation of caring responsible behavior, we’re each the harvest of how that cradle was rocked.

Many of you know that I have three children—adult daughters. Two are my birth children; one is technically my stepchild, though I’ve raised Lisa since she was nine years old. She still calls me Jan, not Mom, but I commonly refer to her as my daughter. Dan and his first wife, who died when Lisa was 16 months old, adopted Lisa from Korea when she was just four months old. It can be said that Lisa has had three Mothers—a challenge in many ways, a blessing of nurture in others, though the identity of her birth mother is unknown. Mothering and being mothered are in flux for each of us, whether we know the identity of our birth mother or not.

Imagine a stone formed at the mouth of a river. It moves along that river’s course year after year, twisting and turning over rapids and across tranquil pools, tossed and settled and raised and urged on by the inevitable flow. Miles and miles downstream, will that stone be recognizable? In some ways, yes; in some ways, no. It will be the same and different. What transpired upstream and what continues to transpire along the journey matter; but this imperfect metaphor doesn’t account for free will, which is itself exercised in the framework of source and journey.

Were I to ask my own mother—she who gave birth to me and did indeed nurture me— what her opinion is on this matter of nature or nurture, I can only guess what she would say. Her response would emerge from a century of traveling her own life course. In fact, this is my first Mother’s Day without my mother here to ask such questions. I love her and am still not free from the instinct to give her a call, to check in. So what would she say as a mother, a grandmother, a great-grandmother, and a longtime nurse, on this matter? I’ll tell you exactly what she’d say: “Whatever….”

Oh yes, some commentary would follow, but her essential response would be this fluid, resilient expression. Whenever things grew controversial on any issue, this was her response. It’s a response that took shape again when last November, right after Thanksgiving, our entire family gathered at the home of our nephew, Todd, and his family in Vermont. To all her grandchildren, Mom was Gram. To all her great-grandchildren, she was Gigi. To any and all, she was known for that endearing offhand expression that her grandson, Todd, put to music for that evening of remembering and celebrating this remarkable woman, my Mother.

He picked up his guitar, strummed out the melody he’d composed earlier that day, and sang these lyrics:

Whenever I hear the word “whatever”
it makes me think of a blessed life
that we all thought just might last forever
though we all know we all must die

She’d just wave and say “whatever”
and let the strife pass her on by.
In the time it takes to say “whatever”
she’d forgive and forget and resume her smile.

Lake Mistake is a sacred place [Just ask me; I’ll tell you that story later.]
in our thoughts and in our minds;
so let us embrace our immortal disposition
and try to keep that spirit alive.

Well I’ll just wave and say “whatever;”
I feel inspired by her refrain.
Look at all the beauty around us
and count life’s blessings day to day.

It’s up to us now to go further in our experience
and to expand on our horizons,
not just for ourselves and our dear family,
but all who surround us in our lives.

It’s time to wave and say “whatever,”
in our own ways say our goodbyes;
and on the other side of that “whatever”
I’m pretty sure you’ll find her smile.

May each of us continue our life journey assured that nature and nurture affirm a fluidity of travel, resilience for the rapids, grace for grounding, and gratitude for every moment as we move toward the other side of the mystery of “whatever” and behold now and then the assurance of a loving smile.

I love you each and all. Amen.

Sources:

Todd White, “Whatever,” for “Gram” – November, 2009.