“You Can’t Go Home Again”
A Sermon preached by the Rev. Diane Miller
The First Religious Society in Carlisle
May 4, 2008
CHILDREN’S STORY – SEASONS OF THE SPIRIT
My name is Diane Miller, and I’m here being introduced as the minister for the congregation to meet this week. But the funny thing is, I was here once before as a minister. It would be five birthdays ago. Some of you might remember back that far. Some of you weren’t even born then, weren’t even walking, weren’t even in school.
This morning let’s take a walk around the sanctuary…and this time let’s imagine each side as a season, and think about what is special in that season. [Walk around the sanctuary together – spring, summer, autumn, winter, naming the special events of the church year and the season]
Back to our starting place it is springtime all over again. But it isn’t exactly the same. Things are different. Do you notice something that has changed? [Different food in the Family Offering Open Pantry basket.]
We bring things for the food pantry to the church. We bring what we have to give at the time. A year from now, what we bring will be different. We don’t always remember exactly what we brought before. We don’t always know what we will bring in the future. But we always have something to contribute, to offer.
I am glad to be here with this congregation again, in a different year, and I look forward to getting to know you better, from year to year, season to season, through the ordinary days and the special times of our lives.
SERMON “You Can’t Go Home Again” Rev. Diane Miller
I remember well my first month here as your Interim Minister, now more than six years ago. On my way to church, driving through an alee of trees, with dappled light sparkling through the canopy of leaves, I was shot through with a sharp and breathtaking appreciation for the moment. I was glad for the start of the church year, for being again in ministry with a congregation, for the people of The First Religious Society. Even though I had lost the election to the office of UUA President just months before, I felt incredibly lucky for all that life offered.
But my gratitude was much deeper than what was happening to me. It was a speechless thanksgiving for life itself, in all its wondrous complexity and staggering sorrow and beauty. Had I not been driving, I would have dropped on my knees in awe at the improbable goodness of the earth and the deep blue sky. I remember that moment because it was one of those times when spirit is strengthened -- an epiphany, a revelation, a mystical experience. It may seem odd to have a mystical experience while driving, instead of standing on the mountain peak, but that’s what it was, when it was, and where it was.
When I got home that night and thought about how I had felt, the words of an old English hymn came to mind, the text that says,
Oh Earth! Thou art too beautiful,
And thou, dear home, thou art too sweet.
The winning ways of flesh and blood
Too smooth for sinners’ Pilgrim feet.
(Frederick William Faber, 1871)
Earth did seem too beautiful, and home too sweet.
The next morning, under another intensely blue sky, airplanes sliced into the towers in New York, plowed into the Pentagon in Washington DC, and crashed in rural Pennsylvania. The world was not the same. I knew it would be a long time before I would feel such deep communion with all of life as I had felt just the day before. Even the simplest “normal” seemed illusive. Life was not going back to what it had been.
That first month of ministry was marked by the events of September 11th. Tragedy has a way of bringing people together, and perhaps that was part of why I felt quickly bonded to this congregation, as we lived through a time of shared grief and horror. Religious questions, theological questions, were part of conversation more vividly than they are in happy times.
Human suffering, evil, war, peace, righteous anger, mortality, retribution, forgiveness, compassion, selflessness, the will of God, and religious intolerance are always important elements of our understanding of what it is to be human, to be moral, to be religious. They were intensely important to address as a congregation in light of the attacks of September 11th.
After two years here I departed, as all interim ministers do, and continued on with interim ministries in Colorado, Rhode Island, and California, where I am serving a church now. I loved those interims, and those communities. And at the same time, I always missed Massachusetts. Though I was born in Minnesota and grew up there, I’ve lived 29 years of my life in this state, longer than anywhere else. My children were born and grew up here, and left the nest from here. For me, it feels like home.
The title of Thomas Wolfe’s famous novel was You Can’t Go Home Again. The point his story made was that it is impossible to return to the past. At the end of the novel the protagonist, George Webber, realized,
"You can't go back home to your family, back home to your
childhood, ... back home to a young man's dreams of glory and of fame ... back home to places in the country, back home to
the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time—back home to
the escapes of Time and Memory.”
It is now a commonplace idea that it is impossible to return home and to the past. In this restless society our national culture is ever moving onward to the next best thing. In our religious culture we describe our spiritual lives as a journey, a path, more often than a stopping place. The protagonist George Webber went home, in the novel, but came to understand that the idealized home he longed for no longer existed. He realized that you can’t go home again as an escape, if you expect the past to be everlasting. Instead, forms and systems are changing all the time.
Nevertheless,
nostalgia is a common emotion among Americans, perhaps because most of us
undergo so much change personally, and as a society. I’ll certainly admit to
nostalgic feelings about this congregation, though I’d never want to relive
those tragic events.
Of course there are times when going home again is literally, physically impossible – if home is New Orleans after Katrina, or Darfur, or the town of Greensburg, Kansas, that was erased by a tornado last year. When disaster strikes, or war turns populations into refugees, the way back depends on the help and generosity of strangers and the commitment of governments to rebuilding, to peace. A number of you went to New Orleans recently, and many more of you supported and applauded that effort toward rebuilding and helping people find their way home.
In 2006 the rock star Bon Jovi recorded a hit song titled “Who Says You Can’t Go Home.” The single was a fundraiser for Habitat for Humanity, in particular for the rebuilding of homes in New Orleans. With enough support, communities can be rebuilt. And that Kansas town is rebuilding, better than before. The people of Greensburg are taking the name of their town to heart, using sustainable materials and energy use to be a green community.
Those titles were questions I was asking myself when I contemplated submitting my name to your Ministerial Search Committee. Can you Go Home Again? and Who Says You Can’t?
I wondered -- What might be in store for us? Can we pick up where we left off? What has changed? How am I different? How are you different?
Would it be possible to return in a different ministerial capacity to The First Religious Society? Can an Interim return in the very different role of Called minister to the same congregation?
I had already considered those questions because I had been asked by the Ministerial Search Committee of a congregation where I had been an interim minister to be their Candidate. After considering that invitation, I decided that I could not go home again, and declined. That situation was different, in that I had not been away long enough, and they had not done a full search process of interviewing all interested candidates.
These days we ministers indicate our interest on line, by clicking on the listing of a congregation to express our interest, and our ministerial record is sent to their Search Committee. So after some consideration of those same questions I reached a different conclusion about returning, and I clicked on FRS. That started the process, a long and elaborate process involving your Ministerial Search Committee, and eventually brought us to this point, Candidating week.
There are many reasons why this congregation attracted me, and some of them should be obvious to you, because after all, you are here! This community and congregation attracted you! This is a question several people have asked me, and so I’ll give you a candid answer. I am drawn here professionally, specifically, and personally.
Professionally – I believe that my best ministry is done over a longer stretch than one or two years. While I have been successful in going in to a congregation and helping it through a transition -- whether shaking up complacency or pouring oil on roiling waters –short term interim work is not the most satisfying ministry for me. I enjoy knowing people over time, being part of a longer arc of change and development.
Specifically – This congregation has always had an important role in this community, and will continue to have an impact in the future. This is a church with a good balance of action and reflection, of worship and learning and music, a congregation strong on celebration and arts and service. This is a congregation both traditional and innovative. This is a place where people step forward to serve a common good, to create community, to build character in children, youth and adults.
Personally -- This area feels like home. I have a sister, Margo, who lives with her husband and two sons nearby in Waltham. My children grew up here. My two volunteer commitments are located in Cambridge: serving on the Board of the UUSC, and on the Alumni Alumnae Council of Harvard Divinity School. I know my way around.
Of course I’ve asked myself: Do I have a romanticized a memory of this congregation, this community? Have I forgotten what the muddy month of March is like in New England? Well, perhaps I have been a bit softened up by living in California, but I still own a sturdy pair of boots! I have changed, you have changed, and as I see it, the past was prologue.
One of the interesting things about being an interim is that I’ve worked with four congregations going through the search for their next minister. Ministerial Search Committees listen to all the wishes expressed by the members, what when they add all those priorities up, they realize they are being asked to find an ideal minister, who walks on water. The people of a congregation have many expectations of a minister, and no one person can meet them all.
Down the street from the church I am currently serving, in Walnut Creek, California, is St. John Vianney Roman Catholic Church. I don’t know why that particular congregation is named for that particular saint, or even why he became saint, but I am fond of an anecdote about Jean Vianney, who was born in France in the late 1700s. He wasn’t a brilliant student, but he managed to become a priest. He had a rocky time as a parish curate, serving his people. He did not meet their expectations. They thought he wasn’t smart enough, sophisticated enough, quick enough. So they did what congregations are wont to do: they got up a petition for his dismissal, arguing to the Bishop that they had been assigned a priest who was inadequate to the task. Father John got wind of the petition his people were circulating, and demanded to see it. Reluctantly they brought him the petition, signed by so many of his flock. He read their complaint. He took up his pen and added his own signature.
I have a fond place in my heart for that man. He admitted what all sensible ministers discover soon enough – we are inadequate to the task entrusted to our care, the sacred trust of ministry. For ministry cannot be done perfectly, or completely, or ideally, or meet every expectation. The best we can do is to love the people, honor the tradition of this free faith, care deeply for the institution of the church and the sacred office of ministry, bend the world toward justice, speak the truth as we know it, and show up as an authentic human being.
I’ve been a successful minister, with a long and proven track record of ministry over 30 years, and I feel good about what I have been able to accomplish. I was chosen by your Ministerial Search Committee to be your Candidate, I am very glad to say. But you should know that I have already signed on to the petition that declares me not adequate to the task of ministry. I will not meet all of your expectations. I will not do all that I might do as well as I might do it.
You can’t go home again to an idealized home or past. There is no perfect ministry and church life ahead . What we have is now. Here we are together.
Annie Dillard wrote in For the Time Being:
There were no formerly heroic times, and there was no formerly
pure generation. There is no one here but us chickens, and so
it has always been: a people busy and powerful,
knowledgeable, ambivalent, important, fearful, and self-aware:
a people who scheme, promote, deceive, and conquer: who
pray for their loved ones, and long to flee misery and skip
death. …There never was a more holy age than ours, and
never a less. …” Each and every day the Divine Voice issues
from Sinai,” says the Talmud.
Your 250 year celebration, so well done throughout this year, honors the culmination of living in the now, generation after generation. Seeking to walk together in the journeys of life, to be aware of the infinite in each of us, to know the beauty of the earth, and the centering of a church home, to speak for justice and sing for gladness, these have been the story of the First Religious Society. We can carry on the tradition of cherishing this church home, now, in these times. “There never was a more holy age than ours, and never a less.”
AMEN