OPENING WORDS

Hmm.
What was that? Did you hear it?
It sounded like a soft voice whispering a suggestion.
Oh, no! I'm not one of those crazy people who hears things.
Still, I feel something inside me responding.
There is an excitement, an energy, a feeling of connection.
My insides and my outsides are getting confused -
The boundary is dissolving.
You and I are becoming united as one.
Oh, yes! Now I am remembering what I am hearing.
It is the echo of the birth cry of creation.

SPOKEN MEDITATION

Spirit of Life
In which we are born, grow and have our being,
Be in and amongst us this morning.

Even though we have our difficult periods,
We are grateful for the blessings of human form;
For the warmth of the Florida sun on cool mornings;
For the delightful gift of color which brings pleasure to the eye;
For the caressing and holding quality of beautiful music.

Along with the irremovable hardships of existence,
There is a joy woven into every moment.
Often it is subtle and difficult to see,
like looking for sharks teeth among the shells on our beaches.
Once one begins to see them, one can find them by the handful.

Hidden in tedium of our lives is a quiet, calming, centered joy.
Not the mountain top exuberant joy
or the long suffering accomplishment joy,
Rather the simple joy of just being.

In the coming silence, may we be touched and restored
by this joy which is freely available.
Help yourself to a handful. SO BE IT
SERMON

This isn't how I planned my life. When I applied to UC Berkeley to finish my engineering degree in 1978, I wanted to design computer systems. I wanted to invent something or discover something that would bring me praise and lots of money. I wanted to live in an expensive home on the side of a hill in Silicon Valley, work as an inventor in my own shop with perhaps a few co-workers and let my creativity run free.

Then I had an experience which altered and continues to alter the course of my life. During the winter of 1980, I played a game of chess unlike one I had ever experienced before or since. I was paired with a much stronger player who I was sure would trounce me. Giving up all hope of winning, I decided to play as if it were a cooperative game. The moves came to me effortlessly and I won the game handily. We reviewed the game together and it seemed I had played quite well - significantly better than I feel I can play. As I walked home I was seized by the feeling of having just discovered something very profound about life. The chess game had been a vehicle for me to open to the experience of unconditional love. My life since that day has been shaped and directed by this experience as I struggle to better open to it, understand it, cultivate it, incarnate it, and share it with a world hungry for love.

I had this experience of unconditional love while I was in the middle of finishing my engineering degree graduating in June of 1981. It wasn't until the fall of 1984 that I recognized and acted upon the strong inward drive this experience of unconditional love had initiated in me to become a minister. I applied to Starr King School for the Ministry for admittance in the fall of 85 and was accepted for the fall of 86.

So ten years ago, in February of 1987, I was in my first year of seminary trying to figure out if ministry was right for me. I was thirty years old, single, unattached, and open to whatever direction the calling pointed me. I delighted in each class as I discovered the varieties of love language found in Jewish and Christian sacred text and theological discourse. I engaged in stimulating dialogue with the other students which both challenged and stretched my thinking and imagination. My year long internship in Rochester, New York allowed me to try out many of my ideas and get much support and encouragement. By the time I graduated from Starr King I felt sure I knew where I was going, full of confidence and enthusiasm.

That confidence and enthusiasm took a dramatic blow when I stood before the credential granting body of the Unitarian Universalist Association: The Ministerial Fellowship Committee. Most seminarians dread this moment of standing before the committee and having them in one hour decide whether or not the budding parson will be officially accepted into our ministry. My first meeting with them did not go smoothly and they requested I return to see them in six months at which time they did accept me into fellowship. The shock of my initial rejection threw me into a tailspin.

About the same time as I was beginning to fully recognize my call to ministry, I was discovering Theravadian Buddhism through Vipassana or insight meditation. In parallel with my seminary classes studying the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures and Theology, I explored the world of Buddhism. The more I read, the more profound the Dharma or teaching of Buddhism became for me. It seemed to me I had finally found a completely empirical, experiential religion. Not only did the philosophy seem sound but it could be tested directly in one's experience of meditation. The unsatisfactory nature of existence wasn't just a remote revealed truth but an intimately testable hypothesis. Through the utterly simple process of observing the breath, the selfless nature of existence could be witnessed directly. In the summer of 1987, I had my first experiential realization of the teachings at a meditation retreat. To my great surprise, the experience of emptiness connected me profoundly with my initial experience during my chess game. In the emptiness of meditation, I rediscovered unconditional love.

My enthusiasm for insight meditation convinced me I should go forth and convert Unitarian Universalism to this form of meditation. This kind of meditation seemed to me to be the answer to the hunger for spirituality within our religious tradition I found in myself and many others. Requiring no faith and no devotion, even an atheist could get benefit from it. In my last semester of classes at Starr King in the fall of 1989, I did a tutorial with Dr. Bob Kimball, an eccentric and very wise professor who confronted my desire to mold Unitarian Universalism into my own image. I didn't feel very good about our confrontation and it continued to bug me after graduating. My ill fated first meeting with the Ministerial Fellowship Committee stimulated my doubts. I wondered if UUism was the right place for me to follow my call.

I didn't immediately search for a congregation after graduating from seminary and being accepted into fellowship. Philomena and I were married in March of 1990 and we decided to stay in Buffalo until after the birth of the child we both desired. The only ministerial opportunity there was in the Buffalo area was guest preaching in Niagara Falls. During that time I brooded about exactly how I should be following this calling. ?Should I perhaps return to industry to be a religiously guided entrepreneur and follow my inclination to make oodles of money and become fat, rich, and happy? Should I follow my passion for Buddhism? Should I continue towards settled UU ministry? What about community ministry teaching computer skills to inner city youth?

This came to a head for me in the winter of 1991. I had just returned from a ten day meditation retreat of sitting motionless and walking slowly in silence feeling great appreciation for insight meditation practice. I became convinced that what I needed religiously was to be found in Buddhism and not in Unitarian Universalism. I wrote in a long letter to Dr. Kimball explaining why I could no longer be a Unitarian Universalist minister:

I have known this on some level for a long time but have felt that I could change UUism into what I wanted it to be. I am beginning to respect that this does not serve me or UUism.

While I don't believe in divine meddling in our lives, sometimes things happen that make me suspicious. Just as I finished writing that letter, a UU minister , Rev. Judy Quarles, called me and I emptied my heart to her of my struggle feeling pulled in two different directions religiously. I felt terrible after the conversation for several days as I contemplated ending my connection with Unitarian Universalism. Gradually I began to realize that the conflict wasn't so much in my heart as in my head. A little over a month later I wrote a second letter to Dr. Kimball saying:

...UU ministry [isn't] really about the transmission of ideas or the introduction of spirituality or pulpit presence but, as my mentor Rev. Rob Eller-Isaacs [,minister in Oakland California,] used to tell me, [it's] being with the people. I began to see the way to effective ministry wasn't going to be getting people to think the way I think or practice the way I practice or worship the way I worship. Telling wasn't the way. Being with. in relationship could open the way... This experience of presence, so fundamentally Christian is also nourished by Buddhism.

In the intersection of Christianity, Science, Humanism, and Buddhism I found much truth greater than any religious tradition which could be the foundation of my ministry in Unitarian Universalism. My ministry following the call of unconditional love was to be with people, support and encourage people rather than shape and direct them. It was the process of ministry that transformed me and those whom I served more than the content. I am called to be myself and be in relationship creating together a healing presence.

So what does following the call mean to me as I look into the future of my ministry? Having served this congregation three and a half years, I've had a chance to test my sense of calling and found it as alive and vibrant as it was after my chess game. I am regularly reminded and feel grateful for this precious opportunity to serve the cause of love as your minister. With each sermon, with each meeting, with each activity, with each conversation or visit, I'm stretching and opening myself to be a larger channel for the stream of Love to flow through me to this congregation and back again.

I'm learning to love people as they are not as how I wish them to be. Whatever our weaknesses or flaws, we are all, every one of us, acceptable and lovable. This is the great insight of the Universalists enshrined in our religious tradition. Even our lowest and most base moments, even the moments we look back on with regret and loathing, cannot blot out our inherent worth which will lead to our salvation and union with God. We may wish to damn ourselves or others but God never gives up on us, or in humanistic terms, the light of goodness within us never goes out.

I'm learning again and again to examine my expectations, my preconceptions, my projections to see if they are true or false. I ask myself, "Do they help or harm?" This is the great insight of our Unitarian forbears who looked critically at the church and the Bible and questioned what they found. Too often the Bible has been used to oppress people rather than liberate them. Too often creeds have been used to narrow the heart rather than to expand it. Too often have historic conceptions limited our imagination about human possibility. There is no one way for a congregation to be Unitarian Universalist and no one way to be a Unitarian Universalist in our congregation. While this is a tremendous institutional liability, it can be a tremendous asset to the individual exploring their identity and growing into who they are becoming.

I'm learning to encourage people to become who they are becoming. This is one translation for the what the burning bush said when Moses asked, "If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, `The God of your fathers has sent me to you', and they ask me, `What is his name?' what shall I say to them?" "I am what I am," says the burning bush, or alternately translated "I will be what I will be." The process of revelation is far from sealed but continues in each of our lives. This is why our religious tradition is called the priesthood of all believers. I am no closer to that revelation inside you than you are. The only difference between us perhaps is my public commitment to listen, respond and encourage others to do the same.

I'm learning to accept the irresolvable tension between what was yesterday, what is today and what is possible tomorrow. Every congregation, every church, every house of worship is perpetually unfinished. I have yet to hear of a congregation without problems. This is the profound insight of the Buddha: Things are never exactly the way you'd like them to be and if by some miracle they get there, they don't stay that way forever. We live in a universe in constant flux and change. The institution cannot be the repository of the final answers for each individual, for all generations. The answers will always be waiting in our own hearts to be discovered in each moment. And having a place to gather in the celebration of life is very helpful and affirming as we encourage each other to grow from within. Peace between the individual and the institution is found in acceptance of this irresolvable tension.

And I'm learning that to accept does not mean an end to action. Far from it. I'm learning to act constantly from a provisional inner certainty and be open to and willing to be changed by the results of my actions. Inaction cannot stop the flow of change. Resistance to movement is death. We are all called to participate in the ongoing transformation that is happening all around us. Wherever we are on the timeline of life, "it ain't done yet." By acting from the deepest sense of the good and the true, we participate positively and constructively in the ongoing creation of which we are a part. By being willing to be changed by the results of our actions, we open ourselves to further growth in love, wisdom and understanding constantly refining our sense of what is good and true.

I'm learning, as I follow the call, I become part of the process of love's continual unfolding in the world. In becoming part of this ongoing creation, this ongoing evolution of life, who I am is paradoxically extremely important and completely irrelevant. Love's unpredictable agenda to expand and create gleefully flows through all those who listen within, desiring all of our ears and yet bears no grudge if ignored. My call is no better or worse than anyone else's. The joy and meaning I have found these past 17 years has come from listening within to Love's agenda for today rather than ignoring my thoughts and feelings and following the world's conventions and expectations.

Finally, I'm learning, through the concluding marriage vow I took with Philomena, to be "patient towards all that is unsolved in my heart and to love the mystery about you like locked rooms and books written in a foreign tongue." This is perhaps the most difficult part of following the call. Patience. I'm not enlightened yet. Sometimes I feel like I can smell the scent of enlightenment, then I stumble on my own self-righteousness. What keeps me going is loving the mystery. If there is anything we share as Unitarian Universalists, it is the love of mystery. We know we don't have or need all the answers and can be happy beholding the questions which just egg us on to further engage with living.

There may come a day when I have exhausted my ability to follow the call. There may come a moment when I have no more energy or ability to look within and become what I am becoming. There may come a day when I have nothing left to say on Sunday morning. If that day comes, I hope I have the dignity to step down from the pulpit, and put aside the robe of office.

At this moment though, that day seems a long way off, if it ever comes at all. I feel the spirit pulsing as strongly in my veins as it ever has and see an open road before me as I do for this congregation. This day I pledge myself anew to following the call as it directs me from within and I pledge myself anew to serving you as your minister.

SO BE IT.

Copyright (c) 1997 by Rev. Samuel A. Trumbore. All rights reserved.