Apple Seed Wisdom

Commitment Sunday October 22, 2006
Westminster Unitatian Church
Rev. Barbara Fast

This is your sermon advisory: This sermon talks about money. Contents include humor and love.

Everything I want to say is really contained right here. This is an apple seed.

Remember Friday - It was roaring wind and rain. The sheltering walls of my house -- rattled. Clouds crossed the horizon low and steely gray.

I looked into the cupboard and set about to bake a cake. I might have been procrastinating with the sermon.
 
#1- I preheated the oven.  You cannot put dough into a cold oven. 

#2- I assembled the ingredients.
 
I start sifting the flour, salt, leavening, cinnamon and my thoughts. What difference does the sermon make, they know the point. Those who don't want to hear it, won't come.

I blended sugar into the oil.  I need to sweeten the sermon with a good story, to motivate and persuade.

Then I crack open the egg. What credibility do I have! I benefit from the sermon.

I alternated adding the flour mixture then the buttermilk. UU ministers making perennial appeals to reason or emotion.
I stirred.

I cut and squeezed a lemon. I soured on the ideas.

It really doesn't matter what I say. They have heard it all before. Then I picked up an apple and cut it in half. And looked at it. I stopped. I looked at its core.  The symmetry, the seeds of possibility, the beauty. Its scent. Everything made sense! I said: "Thank you."

I poured the mixture into the pan and put it in the oven and sat down to write.

I have read that a canvass sermon is called the "Sermon On The Amount".

Two weeks ago there was a flurry of jokes about money among UU minister.

This goes like this. A few different bills were gathered together and they were talking.  The $50 dollar bill said. "I go to best restaurants, plays and concerts."  The $20 replied, "I often go to outdoor cafés and book stores." The $10 admitted that she still managed to visit coffee shops, bakeries, and the early bird movies.  They turned to the $1 dollar bill. " Where on earth are you keeping yourself?" They asked.  This is what they heard. "Oh it is always the same for me every week. Church, church, church!"

Unitarian Universalism has been described as religion lite. The wife of Oliver Wendell Holmes was asked what religion she was. "Unitarian" she answered. Why?  She answered. "It's the least you can be."

I heard some wonder aloud whether UU's carry a suspicion of religion, especially, religion and money. So they find reasons to withhold themselves.

UU's were thought of as heretics. Heretic means one who can choose. Maybe a heretic is one who has been burned by religion.

If we cannot get past our old wounds and hot button words and small arguments into a larger vision of what we desire to become for ourselves, each other and this world, what will become of us?  A cat, once burned on a stove, will never jump up again, whether the stove is hot or cold. We do not want to learn more than the lesson has to teach.

Such sentiments can cobble our individual and congregational capacity for strength and faithful empowerment. Cobbled like an accused or a horse.   This excerpted essay, from the New York Times, put me in mind of that challenge within our hearts.

The Rural Life; Catching Nell  By VERLYN KLINKENBORG   September 4, 2004
The other night, just before dusk, I walked across the pasture with a bucket of grain. Two dozen chickens followed me in a mob…I led them into their pen, scattered the grain and closed the gate. Then I drove the ducks and the geese into their yard. ''Drove'' is too strong a word. I hinted at the direction I wanted them to go, and they went. I opened another gate and led the horses down to the barnyard. ..

Some evenings I notice the haze that settles in the valley nearby or the big orange moon coming up over the trees. But that night I noticed how we all fit together, the animals and the humans. The piglets arrive pretty wild. Baby chicks clatter about the brooder house in fear. But time passes, and they all settle down. They seem to tame themselves somehow.

That night I suddenly realized all the ways that they've tamed me. I never rush the ducks. It only confuses them. I never ask too much when herding chickens. The horses expect a certain presence from me, which changes with every situation. The pigs want joy and vigorous scratching.

None of the animals seem to want me to be other than human. But they want me to be a human who knows how the world looks to them and respects it.

All of our animals except one were raised among humans from birth. That one is Nell, the mustang. We bought her [after]…. she was adopted as part of the federal adoption program for wild horses.

I've seen other mustangs captured, so I have a good idea what it was like for her. She's 17 now and has lived the last decade with us…. And yet it's always a tossup whether she'll let me catch her.

Our animals show their trust in us every day. But sometimes Nell trusts us, and sometimes she doesn't. The freeze brand on her neck isn't the only sign of that long-ago capture…

The chickens grow placid, the pigs learn to like us, and the other horses go on with their lives. And yet the most meaningful moments, after all these years, are when Nell crosses over from her world to ours. She walks right up, as if to ask where I've been, and settles her head in my arms.  I feel the power of the choice she has made every time she makes it.     THERE IS POWER IN CHOOSING. 

I was impressed how many of you knew Westminster's history. The Canvass campaign is Honoring our Past, Funding Our Present, Forging Our Future.

There is a pamphlet called One Hundred Years of the Westminster Unitarian Society- 1828-1928 by The Reverend George E. Hathaway. As the residential nature of the neighborhood in Providence declined, the church leadership chose to move to a new neighborhood, The Westminster Unitarian Society's new Church was dedicated on September 29, 1907. 100 years ago this coming September.

The Rev. Hathaway ended his 100 year anniversary tribute

"Its fine past lays upon its present members the duty of giving it a great future."

The 1950s' brought yet another move. In 1958, the congregation went looking for a new site and chose this site on the hill with sunset rock for their new home.

Robert B. Johnson wrote that "the site offers accessibility from all directions. High visibility. .. When built the church will stand at the top of a high cliff with a ten mile view south and east to the Islands of Naragansett Bay."
I heard a story that this is signal rock and that a flame here would be seen from Naragansett to Providence. This is Signal rock.

We are that future. It is up to us to take care for our home.  As Amy Able wrote, "Westminster begins with WE."

Without us, there is no Westminster. Yet, we are not Westminster. Many have gone before. Many will follow. We warm this place with our love and care and  what we share.

"Its fine past lays upon its present members the duty of giving it a great future." We have a duty to the future.

I found these words from UU minister John Wolf.
 
"There is only one reason for joining a UU church and that is to support it. You want to support it because it stands against superstition and fear. Because this church points to what is noblest and best in human life. Because it is open to women and men of whatever race, creed, color, place of origin or sexual orientation.

You want to support a Unitarian Universalist church because it has a free pulpit. Because you can hear ideas expressed there that would cost any other minister his or her job. You want to support it because it is a place where children come without being saddled with guilt or terrified of some celestial Peeping Tom, where they can learn that religion is for joy, for comfort, for gratitude, for love.

You want to support it because it is a place where walls between people are torn down rather than built up. Because it is a place for the religious displaced persons of our times, the refugees from mixed marriages, the unwanted free thinkers and those who insist against orthodoxy that they must work out their own beliefs

You want to support a Unitarian Universalist Church because it is more concerned with human beings than with dogmas. Because it searches for the holy, rather than dwells on the depraved. Because it calls no one a sinner, yet knows how deep is the struggle in each person's breast and how great is the hunger for what is good.

You want to support a Unitarian Universalist church because it can laugh. Because it stands for something in a day when religion is still more concerned with drinking and smoking than prejudice and war.  You want to support it because it calls you to worship what is truly worthy of your sacrifice.

Yes- there is only one reason for joining a Unitarian Universalist Church. To support it. WILL YOU?

Speaking of financial support and baking - dough alone is not enough. It is necessary, but it is not sufficient. Money has no value- It has utility. It is symbolic.  It has power. It is neither good nor bad, except by the use we make of it. It requires our flame to give it value, meaning. There is power in choosing what use to make of our money.   You choose.

Some of us are nervous Nels about organized religion and the financial and personal support that it takes to make the community thrive.    Truth was- I wished money did not matter. But I have learned to respect it.  It makes our work possible. It makes our values clear.

Here at Westminster we make it from scratch each year. We do it ourselves. We are self supporting and self determining. Those canvas leaders have spent time discerning what it will take to run this place this year. Truth is you have your recipe. You know what is in your cupboard this year.

Every pledge matters whatever the amount. I don't know who pledges what. 
And if you are not pledging today- and one of the volunteers calls you to follow up- be nice to them. They are volunteers. They are members and friends.

Let me offer my thoughts on what will follow this sermon. What we put into this basket should be – at its core- our best offering- the amount is not important to me- what does matter is the value you attach to it- what matters is what it means to you. 

Giving is a spiritual practice. I used to think that giving is all about having faith. Then I realized that giving is all about building faith.

The divine light of the flame of your spirit is kin with the ageless life power held within the apple seed.

When the apple seed -- hidden at the core of the apple- breaks open- puts roots into the dark earth and rises up toward the light, and then blooms transform into fruit, for harvest,  the tree does not withhold its apples- it offers them unconditionally out of its creative generative life power. It is how the apple tree loves this world.  Love is the energy of life that sits at core of all creation. It is at the core of this canvass.

At the core of this congregation -- is the same powerful force that is at the core of all creation- It is LOVE.

Those who came before us chose the high ground- the place for a signal, a light- of truth and love in this world.  The light on signal hill.

They knew- someone is always trying to find their home find safety and love, forgiveness, renewal, the hope that they can love better.  They did not know it would be you. Or me.

What they knew- what we know- each and everyone of us is blessed- just as we are- and that we can bless- just as we are.  This morning invites us again to see that become our living truth. Feel the power of the choice you make every time you make it.    

As Channing preached here at the ordination of Frederick Farley, in 1828, " Hold fast to a faith in the greatness of the human soul---that faith which looks beneath the perishing body, beneath the sweat… the vices of the sensual and the selfish, and discerns in the depths of the soul a divine principle, a ray of Infinite Light, which may yet break forth and shine as the sun ... let that awaken within you this morning – you have a heavenly treasure within you of more worth than the outward universe ..."

We are grateful for what you pledge.
Let love be at the core of your pledge.
Let your pledge be your prayer for this house.
Nothing else is needed but to say thank you.



Copyright Barbara Fast 2006
May be used with attribution.


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