WATER ON A STONE
Rev. Kathleen Ellis
21 November 2004
Water—even on a stone—carves the landscape, drop by drop, into rivulets,
streams, and rivers, and by tides roaring in and out. This week has brought more
than enough rain to central Texas. At my house, a little more of our driveway
has been washed away by an unusual number of drops pouring down all at once. It
is the wettest year we’ve experienced in years. The accumulation of countless
drops of water joined together to create flood conditions. When we harness our
own human power we can also make a difference in the world—and the more of us
join together, the greater impact we can expect. Dare to join persistence and
patience along with many hands and hearts and we may even transform ...
ourselves.
One of our hymns came from the preamble to the Constitution of the United
Mine Workers of America. Its text is very fitting here: “Step by step the
longest march can be won, can be won. Many stones can form an arch, singly none,
singly none. And by union, what we will can be accomplished still; drops of
water turn a mill, singly none, singly none.”
Like drops of water on a pond, everyone here makes ripples across the surface
of Live Oak that also stir the waters below the surface. From Sunday to Sunday
and throughout the week of committee meetings, spirituality groups, and private
conversations, each of us shapes our beloved congregation for better or worse.
Likewise, the actions we take on behalf of the larger world have ripple
effects that extend far beyond our ability to predict. Live Oak’s Community
Outreach encourages us to give blood, apply muscle to repair old houses, bring
food for the hungry, prepare Thanksgiving boxes for Hill Country Ministries this
Tuesday, and next month to bring gifts for the Angel Tree. The Social Action
Committee aims to affect the sources of injustice. Their next meeting is two
weeks from today, after the service on Dec. 5.
On a larger scale, the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee works for
improvements in human rights in the United States and around the world. This
year they are highlighting their work to promote peace in Guatemala and to
support the growth of democracy in Burma. Their STOP Campaign, whose mission is
to Stop Torture Permanently, works to end U.S. sanctioned torture anywhere in
the world.
Since 1996 the UU Service Committee has operated more than 25 work camps
across the United States. More than 2,000 people from around the country, as
well as overseas, have worked on issues of racial, social, and economic
injustice. Volunteers typically spend a week working hand in hand with people in
the communities they serve. They move out of their usual comfort zones to
experience social justice struggles firsthand. Work camp participants have
helped rebuild criminally burned-out churches in Alabama; they have learned
about border issues between Arizona and Nogales, Mexico; they have been to a
farm in New York re-established by a community of Mohawk people to strengthen
Mohawk cultural traditions; and this year they organized voter registration
drives.
Under the direction of new president Charlie Clements, the UUSC began a
program review process and chose three priority themes for program development,
each of which includes race/ethnicity and gender rights. Primary themes are
economic justice, environmental justice, and civil liberties.
Economic justice addresses the issues of globalization and privatization,
with particular attention to workers’ rights. Environmental justice focuses on
the human right to water. Promoting civil liberties defends the democratic
processes threatened by terrorism on one side and increasing authoritarianism on
the other.
Guest at Your Table is a program to raise awareness about the work of the
Service Committee, to help educate us about justice issues in several parts of
the world, and to promote membership. Individual members support UUSC
independently of the Unitarian Universalist Association. Membership begins at
$25 a year, though donations of any amount are welcome. Gifts of $60 or more are
doubled by a matching grant. The children and youth will bring boxes home with
them today, along with an additional information sheet prepared by Leah Korn,
our congregational contact.
For the rest of us, there are a few boxes available and lots of envelopes for
your checks. The return date is January 16. Last year, with the box on my table
as a reminder, I collected $15.89 plus a few Canadian coins, wrote a $25 check
to UUSC, and took the coins to the bank. It was relatively painless to empty my
coin purse every day, and it felt good to renew my membership in the UUSC.
The Service Committee works to help people like Lindi and her Grandmother
Maloko in this morning’s parable to become self-sufficient. Heavy rains and
floods prevented timely spring planting in their case. Elsewhere, brutal
military regimes have destroyed rice paddies, fields and barns in Burma, and
villagers have been forcibly recruited as unpaid laborers, army porters, and
human minesweepers; indigenous people have been massacred in Guatemala.
We enrich ourselves spiritually when we reach out to others. Maybe it will be
a loaf of bread, donations of money to the Service Committee, a coat or a canned
ham for someone in need. Maybe it will be a gift of the spirit, a word of
kindness, a listening ear, or a smile.
These are spiritual gifts that we all need. We need to give them and we most
certainly need to receive them.
Many of us have heard biblical quotations about the poor all our lives: From
the Psalms, “I am poor and needy, and my heart is pierced within me” (Ps.
109:22). From the Sermon on the Mount, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for
theirs is the kingdom of heaven (Mt. 5:3).” These quotations are not so much
about material poverty but about poverty of the spirit. That includes you and
me, no matter how much or how little money we have. That includes most of the
human race. At some level we are poor in spirit.
I used to work in a shelter for battered women and their children. Every
interchange one-on-one with a woman in flight absolutely made a difference in
both our lives. Some of them worked really hard to make a new life for
themselves without abuse. Others chose to go back to their abusers no matter
what I said. I would lie in bed at night thinking of one other perfect point to
make even though I knew she was not ready to hear it. Still, even though women
sometimes chose to go back to a bad situation, they had changed in some small
way. At the very least, they knew that there was a place to go and they knew
that someone believed their story and believed in them. At staff meetings we
sometimes talked about how we were planting seeds of hope that could remain
dormant for a long time, but given the right conditions they would sprout. We
taught parenting skills, too, so that mothers and children lived by rules of no
hitting, no yelling, and no name-calling.
One of our great joys was to celebrate the victory stories of women who made
a new life in spite of tremendous odds. Each one made a change and the ripple
effect extended to people around them. They were changing their relationship to
other people as well as themselves. Years later some of them told me how
something I had said made a positive difference.
All of this change can happen because we are conscious human beings. We have
the capacity to reflect on our experience and to learn from it. We can develop
the network of mutuality called for by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who came
forward reluctantly when he was young and inexperienced. For King, love served
as the binding force that led him toward justice. He referred to love as “the
only cement that can hold this broken community together.” He is also remembered
for saying, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
I am truly grateful for what I have, mostly from the good fortune of the time
and place of my birth. Here are a few things for which I am grateful. They feed
my body first of all, but mostly they feed my spirit:
-physical well being, including food, shelter, security; -work that is real,
with an opportunity to serve; -an ethical framework for making choices; -a
context of love and respect, for myself, for others, and for the larger world of
living things; -an opportunity to learn, from people as well as books;
-resilience in the face of evil, tragedy, and hardship; -and beauty all around
to notice and appreciate.
Benjamin Franklin expressed it differently in this prayer of thanks: For
Peace and Liberty, for Food and Raiment, for Corn and Wine, and Milk, and every
kind of Healthful Nourishment, Good God, I Thank thee.
For the Common Benefits of Air and Light, for useful Fire and delicious
Water, Good God, I Thank thee.
For Knowledge and Literature and every useful Art; for my Friends and their
Prosperity, and for the fewness of my Enemies, Good God, I Thank thee.
For all thy innumerable Benefits; For Life and Reason, and the Use of Speech,
for Health and Joy and every Pleasant Hour, my Good God, I thank thee.
When some of us gather here on Thursday afternoon for a Thanksgiving meal and
games, we will give thanks for friends as well as food. We begin with gratitude
for the extraordinary opportunity of life on this beautiful planet. Gratitude
sustains us and lifts our spirits. Gratitude seeps into one’s consciousness even
in the midst of loss and pain. But Thanksgiving, however heartfelt, must be more
than gratitude. As the Rev. Richard Gilbert reminds us, “religion begins in
gratitude and ends in service.” Service takes both physical and spiritual
energy. As Gilbert says, “To move from a spirituality of gratitude to a
spirituality of service - to move from thanksgiving to “thanks-living” is a very
long and difficult step.”
One of the reasons I became a minister was a calling to give back to the
world some of what I had received through no particular effort of my own.
Gratitude moved me toward service and the opportunity to serve has brought fresh
blessings into my life. It is a self-renewing cycle, and for that I give thanks.
Let me share this closing thought from the Rev. Eileen Karpeles:
“The power of good in any one of us must at times waver. But when a group
together is dedicated to nurturing that power, it is rare for the light to
grow dim in all individuals at the same moment. So we borrow courage and
wisdom from one another, to warm us and keep us even when we are apart.”
The gift of life is yours and mine. . . . Let us harness our own human power
like so many drops of water and make a difference in the world. Let gratitude
sustain us and let service be our prayer.
Amen
Copyright
©2006, Live Oak Unitarian Universalist Church.