“What Binds Us Together”
A reflection offered by Rev. Tricia Brennan
Westminster Unitarian Church
September 12, 2010

The title for this brief reflection is What Binds Us together.
The runner up title was “Who is that new face in the pulpit?”
 I’ll try to answer that a bit too.

I am grateful that the Interim Minister Search Committee invited me to be your interim minister this coming year. Of the four congregations with whom I interviewed you were my first choice- even though you are the furthest from my home in Jamaica Plain. I figured it is better to be happy at your destination, even if it is far, then less happy and closer to home. I thought I’d enjoy partnering in ministry with you because you are gutsy- any congregation that builds a new parish house while in search for a new settled minister is gutsy- yes, I know there are other words that could be said as well to describe such an ambition but we’ll go with gutsy. I like being with people who are willing to work hard and take risks; it inspires me.

A few things of note about me. I began my life as a minister in 1995 when I entered seminary, pregnant with my daughter Nora. Since then being a minister and being a mother have been defining realities that have shaped my life in profound and satisfying ways. Prior to ministry I worked as a social worker for 15 years, primary running programs for homeless families.

I grew up a little south of here, in Groton, CT. and have lived in Boston’s neighborhood of Jamaica Plain for a total of 26 years,  much of that time with my husband Chuck Collins and the aforementioned Nora. We love it there, and don’t take for granted the vital community life and friends that we enjoy daily.

It was the reluctance to move for a settled ministry that led to my being an interim minister- and though I entered this particular type of ministry through the back door, as it were, I find I like it very much.
The “Interim time”- once thought to be just the in-between time between real work of settled ministries-  is now seen for what it is- a marvelous time of openness, well-suited for reflection, visioning, and making helpful changes. This new way of looking at interim ministries, and interim ministers, reflects the awareness that church life and leadership is not all about the settled minister, rather it is about each church’s knowing its history and who it is in the world, sensing its particular gifts and identity, forming a vision of the church it desires to be, and taking action to support that vision. It is a very exciting time in a church’s life.

Your interim time will undoubtedly by marked by construction of a new Parish House. You will draw from the recent 4 years of shared ministry you enjoyed with Barbara Fast, your history of a long settled and successful ministry with Fred Gillis and the work you did in your most recent interim time. That history is in your bones as it were, your spiritual and psychic bones.
 
Later you’ll hear more from me about the 5 tasks of Interim Ministry, some of which may sound familiar since it was but 4 years ago that you did this sort of work.

But for today it is the ties that bind that we see, feel, honor and celebrate. One comes to church and joins a church in large part to be connected with others in an enterprise greater than our little selves and little lives.

I can assure you that the year ahead will be very exciting and very demanding. Your leaders especially will be challenged with a large and complex workload, but everyone here will be asked to make sacrifices, contribute more than the usual amount of labor and financial support, and simply hang in there during a year of much upheaval. Your staff has been and will be asked to be flexible and steady in this time of change too. 

I pledge to support you to the best of my ability as your minister in the year ahead, and I will draw up my recent experience with the Sharon MA congregation who successfully completed a major building project and called their settled minister during the interim period.

Yet what matters most are the relationships that you have with one another, and the attention you give to remaining in right relationship with each other. What sustains those ties is the history you share, your shared vision for the future, and your covenant of faith that you state each week- to dwell together in peace, to seek the truth in love and to help one another.

There are some watershed moments in this process of building a new PH. One came on August 8th when the congregation voted to go forward with the project. Another will happen this week, when the old building will actually be demolished, and some trees removed. At that point there truly is no turning back- and all the planning and fundraising becomes very very real.
For some.  the loss of what has been there for years, what has been a placed of shared memory, is indeed sad- even as it is inevitable to make space for the new.  There will be lots of feelings in the year ahead- many happy moments, and proud moments, and funny moments- but there will be sad feelings and scared feelings too.
One mark of a healthy faith community is its capacity to care about each other’s feelings, even where people are feeling different things.

Children have feelings too, and I want to say something directly to the young people here today. I want to say that you are very important to me, and to your church.  In fact it isn’t an exaggeration to say that a very big reason your church is building a new parish house is because of you. People build new building for the future, and you- more than the adults- will live into the future, will be the future.
 I also want to acknowledge that for many of you children, Rev. Barbara was the only person you’ve  known as your minister. She was here for 4 years, which is all your life is you are 4 years old, and half your life is you are 8. She was a kind and good minister and I bet you notice that she is gone and miss her. I can’t be the same as her but I would like to be a kind and good minister to you as well.  Please let me know how you are doing, and what  you are up to. My office is through those doors in the hallway, and just like the adults, you can always come by to visit.  I’d like to get to know you as best I can in the time we have together.

Writer Annie Lamott tells a story about a little girl and her church in her book Traveling Mercies. This little girl, about 7 years old, got lost one day. She ran up and down the streets of the big town where she lived, but she couldn’t find a single landmark. She was very frightened. Finally, a policeman stopped to help her. He put her in the passenger seat of his car, and they drove around until she finally saw her church. She pointed it out to the policeman, and then she told him firmly, ‘You could leave me out now. This is my church, and I can always find my way home from here.’”

Anne Lamott writes, “And that is why I have stayed so close to mine, because no matter how bad I am feeling, how lost or lonely or frightened, when I see the faces of the people at my church, and hear their voices, I can always find my way home.”

This is true, even when the church we are in is rented and not much looks or feels familiar. It is the faces of the people in our church, their voices, the songs we sing together, the trust we place in each other, the common values and belief in something larger than ourselves- that ground us. From that place of love and trust will can always find our way home.