Can you believe it?!
I never doubted we would get here, really, but we have been talking about needing a bigger sanctuary since I started at Foothills 11 years ago, and that conversation had been going on long before I arrived
To finally be here, with all of you, is glorious, and unbelievable, and it leaves me with just one question:
What are we going to talk about now? Now that we won’t be talking about needing a new sanctuary, what are we going to talk about?
I’m joking, and I’m not.
Plans for this morning’s gathering started over 15 years ago, but were then shelved. We always say it was because of the economic crisis of 2008. But I have wondered sometimes if what really happened is that we just weren’t sure yet why we would need to build a bigger space. I mean, we knew practically why. Fort Collins was growing, the church was growing. The 150 seats were routinely filling up, the choir was taking up half the seats and the children were filling up the rest.
I mean we didn’t know why in a deeper sense.
Beyond the numbers, and the crowds. The need behind the crowds. There were likely seeds of this why, scattered amongst the community. Nothing like this ever happens after all, without the seeds of it being there the whole time. But the particular, articulated why that would drive us towards this sanctuary, this gathering, to see this vision through the pandemic, to give in ways that most of us have never given before, to know we’ll still have to keep giving like this for a while – and to do it gladly – to believe we could do it, and to persist through all of the challenges, and there have been some challenges. We needed to know the deeper why to make through everything – to here, and now. And this why, it took a while.
Hundreds of small conversations. Small groups that at first looked totally unrelated to building a bigger building, but were instead about belonging, and spiritual growth, and deep listening. Wellspring groups, justice groups, groups for grief, and support, for meaning making, and service, and laughter.
And then getting to the why took explicit conversations about mission, values, and vision – and magazine covers with headlines announcing the Foothills church of 20 or more years out.
Most of all getting to the why required taking ourselves, and our work together seriously. Believing that this place, and what we are doing matters – not just to the people who are here, or who will ever come through our doors – but to the wider community, to our world.
To say we are here not just for social gatherings – although we like those too – but for a vital purpose. Our faith has a life-giving, and life-saving purpose.
We had to decide to take ourselves, and this place, our faith seriously. We had to shake off whatever remnants we were holding on to of what former UUA president Susan Frederick Gray described as a casual faith; that is, a Unitarian Universalism, and a covenant, that would require not all that much of us.
We had to decide that we would be the sort of community as she says “where we can bring our heartbreak and our pain and anguish and be reminded that we are not alone, that we are held by a love that never lets us go.” A community of “courage and deep practiced compassion, of resilience and resistance.”
We had to believe that there was – there is something here worth sacrificing for, committing to – and then to call that something the presence and partnership of courageous love.
Without this understanding, these conversations, this commitment, and this clarity of purpose – we would never be here, in this moment, in this building, in this gathering.
In her book, The Art of Gathering, Priya Parker describes gatherings – and she’s not talking specifically about church – although those too – but all gatherings – from the small everyday ways we gather, to holiday parties, to classrooms to competitions to protests – every sort of gathering, she says, is an incredible opportunity for us to learn who we are, and why we matter.
How we gather, she says, is how we live. Except, most gatherings, she says, don’t come close to this possibility or promise.
Mostly, because those of us who plan the gatherings don’t pause to consider any given gathering’s deeper purpose. Instead, we jump right into the gathering’s form – we throw a birthday party, we facilitate a company retreat, we host a candidate forum, we plan Sunday worship….and we skip right over the deeper needs we want to meet in any of these gatherings.
Beyond marking another year of life. Or making a strategic plan. Or knowing the candidates’ positions. Or even, beyond celebrating the opening of a new sanctuary. What is the need we are trying to fulfill behind these obvious and practical tasks?
Once we understand a gathering’s deeper purpose, we can go back to the question of form – and consider more intentionally, what structure we should follow, what rules and expectations we will set, who we will invite, what space we will gather in – all chosen in service of the deeper purpose.
Parker encourages us to find a purpose for our gatherings that is disputable – as in, not something everyone would agree with, or that just anyone would pick.
For example, you may have seen that we are hosting a drag Christmas on Saturday December 23rd. The form we’re using is generally a drag show mixed with the story of the nativity. Which is – let’s be honest – already disputable for some people. But the purpose for the gathering is not simply to see local drag queens as the three magi. Even though we are super excited just for this.
The deeper purpose is to give queer people an explicit place in the Christmas story, especially in a month when many in the LGBTQ+ community struggle with families who aren’t accepting, and in a time in our society when rights are being rolled back.
The need we want to meet is a need for belonging, and inclusion, the need for celebration.
This purpose in turn leads us to the form – the use of this story that has been kept queer people out of community – the Jesus story; and it leads us to this place – a church – that is so often a site of exclusion – and instead to use these tools as expressions of acceptance, and the embodiment of universal love.
Which, by the way, is the actual message Jesus offers. But that’s a different sermon!
Parker talks about the Japanese concept of ichi-go ichi-e, which roughly translates as “one meeting, one moment, in your life that will never happen again.” It’s a way of remembering that even if you recreate the exact concept for a gathering multiple times, the people who gather won’t ever be the same, as their lives continue to change, and life itself changes.
So what is the unique opportunity of this gathering, with these people at this time? And what do we hope will be different, because of this specific, unique gathering?
As you are planning your gatherings over the next few weeks, I encourage you to ask yourselves these questions – what is your disputable purpose? And what is the specific opportunity this gathering offers?
Especially for those gatherings you do every December, and including family gatherings, and work gatherings, even larger gatherings you may be hosting.
What is the unique opportunity – with these people, at this time?
What do you hope will be different because you gathered?
For example – instead of a holiday gathering being just about getting the family together, a deeper purpose might be to connect the younger generations of cousins together after the recent death of the family matriarch. This deeper need might then mean the cousins are invited to bring a gift for one another that tells about their connections to their grandmother, and what part of her lives in their own lives. And this would become the centerpiece of the whole gathering.
As you’re thinking about these questions, you might find some resistance coming up in yourself, something along the lines of – Who am I to impose my desires on everyone else? Or, what if everyone thinks my idea for a purpose is dumb, or overly earnest?
Inviting and hosting is always vulnerable – it asks us to put ourselves, and our intentions out there, and to see if and how people will respond. Will they want to come? Will they have a good time? Will it be meaningful, or boring, or worse? A gathering is ultimately an invitation to give away your time – which is a precious resource. So we want to respect our guest’s time most of all – we want it to feel like this gathering was something worth showing up for.
Given the stresses of life today, you might be saying to yourself – my guests just want to chill, no pressure, no expectations. They want to chill, and they want a host who will also chill.
This impulse to chill, as in stay relaxed, and low-key, or to use Susan Frederick-Gray’s word, casual – this impulse Parker says, is the biggest obstacle to meaningful gatherings today.
As hosts of any given gathering, we don’t want to seem controlling, or invasive; we don’t want to be laughed at for taking something more seriously than other people are willing to, and we sincerely worry that it would be arrogant to assert a more explicit purpose or structure for any particular gathering.
Gathering people together is an act of love, Parker says, and it is also an act of power. The power to create something that connects people, fosters belonging, and forms identity. Gathering together has the power to change people – guests, and hosts. And, gathering people together also has the power to leave people feeling pretty much the way they did before, just with a little less time on their hands.
To step into this power with intention is to recognize that gatherings – and their guests – require protection. They need protection from each other – not usually in a physical sense, although sometimes. But more, there needs to be some set – and enforced – norms and boundaries that help protect the purpose above anything else.
You’ll see, for example, in our new all-gender bathrooms, we have some guidelines posted – some new norms. Because we want to protect the purpose of that space – which is about safety, and inclusion, and respect.
Enforcing set norms can sometimes feel like we are being mean, or overly harsh, or taking it all too seriously – but really, we are just doing our job of protecting the purpose for everyone who has come to the gathering for that purpose.
Over the last 15 years, I’d guess I’ve been a part of planning more than 600 Sunday gatherings, where the task is always to identify the deeper purpose and need, in the particular – and to shape the form and structure to serve that need. As a staff team, for every Sunday, we ask ourselves how the whole service, and how every element in the service will be worth people’s time – your precious time – how this gathering will be worth showing up for, staying put for.
How each moment can tend to all of those things our chalice lighters named, and more. And sometimes, it’s true, we all have moments where we wonder if it would be better to be more chill. Especially in our faith where we affirm the agency of each individual person, and the freedom to act according to your own conscience, we are cautious about anything that could seem imposing, or controlling.
But ultimately, we know that every person who will come through those doors every Sunday for years beyond our own lifetimes will arrive like each of us here today – “hungry to be gathered in, nothing of them found foreign, or strange, and nothing of their lives left behind, or carried in silence, or in shame.”
To find here, sanctuary, and refuge, to be sanctuary for one another. In these days -we know – it is no time for a casual faith, or for chill gatherings.
It can sound like a lot of pressure to hold – and sometimes I get confused and feel it that way. But then I remember – in this faith, and in this community- we are not a bunch of guests, with just a few of us hosts responsible for it all. Here, to be a member, means to join a whole team of hosts – so that all of us are responsible for gathering people in – including and also beyond Sundays – responsible for focusing us and our gatherings over and over again on a deeper purpose, the deeper why that we all worked so hard to discern and articulate, the deeper need that brought us all here.
Which brings me back to the question I started this sermon with:
Now that the building is done – what are we going to talk about?
Let’s be honest, for a while we’re going to keep talking about the building.
How amazing is it is. How incredible it is that we did it. And we should. We need to take a deep breath and keep taking it all in.
But then, after some time, my guess is we will all feel ready to think and to talk not just about a place to gather, but about the gatherings themselves. The gatherings that will happen in this great room, and also in all the little rooms we gather in – in our building, and in homes, in zoom rooms, and in the community, in advocacy, and in service.
Because even now the need we are called to meet is changing, our needs, the world’s needs. The hunger we are called to feed. The norms we will need to set, the boundaries we need to hold, the structures we are called to explore in order to serve these changing needs – all of these are yet to be discovered anew, as we now get to turn our attention fully to our deeper purpose and the way it is calling to us in the particular here, and now.
What I’m saying is – it’s official. We never have to talk about having three Sunday services ever again. Instead, we get to put that energy into the deeper purpose we were after all along. From here on, we get to discover and then we get to fiercely protect all that this purpose requires of us in all the ways we gather, for all of our days ahead.
This is the work before us, and friends, it is our gift, and our joy.
Another Possibility 