“Make No Little Plans”
Rev. Peg Boyle Morgan
January 8, 2006
West Seattle UU Fellowship
The author of “Everything I need to know I learned in Kindergarten” Robert Fulghum, is less known for the fact that he is a Unitarian Universalist minister. Like Ralph Waldo Emerson, he left Unitarian parish ministry to strike out on his own in the field of being a writer. I don’t know what it is about him and I, but several times I have bumped into him out in the community, like recently finding myself sitting next to him, at the Seven Gables theatre.
He is a gifted man for his ability to see the profound in the ordinary. Like when he tells about sitting on his deck next to a school yard, watching parents drive up and drop of their children for school. He tells of the time when a mom was dropping off one of her older children at the school, getting out of the car and helping him get his little backpack on, kissing him goodbye, and saying “see you at 3:00, I’ll be here! Love you!” Then before getting back in the car she checks on her toddler who is in a car seat in the back of the car. To her great dismay she sees that little Jimmy has gotten hold of a magic marker, and has begun his artistic career on the back seat upholstery. She screams loud enough for him to hear “What on earth have you done?! What in the name of God are you doing!”
Now having raised two active boys, I can identify with this mom. My kids and I had our moments. It seems hard to believe that my 30 year old son, who used to draw star wars explosions on the bedroom wall-- is now determining bond ratings for cities and school districts. But now my new puppy throws me right back into the mode of “who knows what will happen next” around our home as I find how clever she is in finding good things to chew on—emphasis on GOOD things.
Fulghum, however, sees the transcendent and the transformative in these moments, moments in which we often voice what he calls the “Four Mother Questions.” These questions are:
“What on earth have you done?” or
“What in the name of God are you doing?” and
“Who do you think you are?” and
“What will you think of next?”
And it seems that these questions are the right questions for us to ask of ourselves as we begin the new year of 2006. When you think about it, and as you begin this year, wouldn’t you like to know who you really think you are, what in the heck you are doing in God’s name or otherwise, and what you will think of doing next?
And as a religious community the same questions are germane, particularly as we are pondering our future and the goals and vision we want for our Fellowship’s future. We have had several small meetings for members to share their ideas about the Fellowship; I have purposefully stayed away from those meetings, in order to allow members to talk with members, without any influence from my presence. But I will join you for a special afternoon next Saturday, the 14th 12-4:30 (see the flier included in your order of service) when we will have a very special opportunity to further the conversations through a structured format called World Café, addressing ideas related to the Fellowship’s Health, Heart and Home. I hope everyone will make every effort to be there.
But today is my opportunity to express an in depth look at what in the world we have been doing, who I think we are and what I think we might think to do next. As your minister, I do not make these decisions, you do. This is your congregation that I serve- but I have a unique view from my position, and my experience with other congregations.
What in the world has West Seattle UU Fellowship done? Beginning a little over 40 years ago, our Fellowship has been a community of people who have cared for and nurtured each other through Sunday morning programs, discussions and social gatherings. Families have always joined together to provide our children fun activities and orientation to our Unitarian Universalist values. Much of the Fellowship’s energy has come from sharing common values, which has lead to a rich history of being a voice in the community for peace and social justice; consistently over the years taking stands and joining community wide demonstrations and marches.
In the early years Fellowship members organized sit-ins in real estate offices to protest segregated housing practices. Social action programs have also been numerous, such as tutoring at High Point, organizing community meals, sorting disaster relief donations, the Christmas family giving tree, and supporting women’s shelters, the West Seattle Helpline and the West Seattle Food Bank.
The Fellowship has obviously been up to plenty of good over the years, and to those of you who have been around for many years, like the Bruno and Liz Pierinis (and the Smiths and Pickerings) who lit our chalice today, I want to say thank you for sustaining this vital community which, because of you, is here today for all of us and the children of the Fellowship.
So what, in that name of God or in the name of all that is good and holy, are we doing now? To those of you who are new to the Fellowship, I want to say that you are arriving at a very exciting time, inheriting a rich legacy and being welcomed into a vibrant and creative community. On the justice front, in 2002 the Fellowship voted to take an ad out in the West Seattle Herald against beginning a war in Iraq, and recently a corps group of our members have joined people of other faiths at the West Seattle Junction to regularly protest the war.
This past year the Fellowship unanimously voted to designate itself as a Welcoming Congregation to gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and questioning people, and in a separate action to add our Fellowship name to the legal briefs submitted to the Washington State Supreme Court requesting the civil right to marry for same gender citizens. I am so proud that our voice for peace and justice continues to be strong.
What more are we doing now? As more and more people have discovered the Fellowship in the last few years, the Fellowship has been adjusting itself to the needs of more members. Just since I have been with you the Fellowship has grown over 50% to 120 members. So one of the things the Fellowship is doing now is shoring up its organizational systems to care for more adults and more children, developing a geographical caring cluster system, and encouraging a wide variety of smaller interest and activity groups—from choir, to discussions about anything in the universe, to covenant groups, meditation, books and movie groups, lunches, and adult religious education classes—just to name some.
In order to maintain a sense of intimate community within a larger congregation, we know we need to have small groups within which we can be known and know others well. The increase in membership has brought with it an awareness that there is no way anyone can know everything and all people well.
Now this loss is real, particularly for some who have been part of the Fellowship for six or more years; but I keep thinking and respecting what our member Christy Karis said a few weeks ago from this pulpit when she acknowledged this personal loss but also that she felt called to support what is in the best interests of the future of the Fellowship, and the growing numbers of people who need us. Leaders in the Fellowship have talked about how being open to new members not only is good for the vital energy and new ideas they bring, but also that to be welcoming is the moral equivalent of the biblical injunction to feed the hungry and clothe the naked.
Every new person who comes in our door is in need, we all were when we each came; in need of the vital message and values, including family values, that we UUs offer to the world; each new person can find a kind of salvation in the caring, open community we form around those values. The question is not “Do we want to grow.” I hope we have put that question to bed long ago.
The questions are “how do we best respond to growth” and “how do we thoughtfully develop our congregation’s organization so that each person who comes and decides to stay, feels valued, loved, challenged and comforted.” I am reminded of Edwin Markham, who is considered by some to be one of the finest American poets of the 1900’s, whose poem was read at the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial. It is his poem entitled “Outwitted” that makes my blood warm in a time when our society still draws too many boundaries between people. It applies to our throwing our doors open widely, treating all people with dignity. He says:
He drew a circle that shut me out—
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But love and I had the wit to win;
We drew a circle that took him in.
Let’s not draw certain sized circles to shut out people, because of some arbitrary size limitation; let’s be deliberate about letting West Seattle know we are here, and grow organically as people present themselves.
Our growth so far has meant more children and more children means better age related class groupings—where a critical mass in each class makes a huge difference in how we can interest and teach our children. The Fellowship is making a major commitment to its children and youth through two RE Summit meetings, from which have come clear goals and related curriculum for substantial religious education for our children and youth; plus this year we have an increase to 1/3 time staffing, and we have been leaders in helping to develop collaborations with other congregations for our youth in sexuality education and in the rite of passage for 8th and 9th graders called “Coming of Age.” I am enormously proud of the high quality program created by the RE Committee with chair Shannon Day leading, and Kari Kopnick staff coordinator.
What about the mother question “Who do you think you are?” We should be able to turn to our mission to answer this question. Can any of you tell us what it is? We have a good mission that was here before I came. “We are committed to being a caring community that celebrates and respects the diversity of individuals. We strive to nourish our spiritual, intellectual, and ethical growth, take personal and collective action to promote social justice, and inspire and encourage each other to live the values we share as Unitarian Universalists.”
I remember it by shortening it to: Caring within community, nurturing growth, acting for justice. Do you feel the movement in that mission? It begins here with each other on Sunday. It continues in our reaching out to each other, in small groups, activities and classes, and then it moves out into the world into service, into an intentional plan to be of greater use in our community. It is a perfect mission to guide our future thinking.
So the final mother question for our Fellowship is “What will you think of next?!” (and I would add “to more fully realize our mission.”) This question is about moving from maintenance of something good, and the Fellowship as it stands today certainly is good, to something even better. And in making plans to do so I hope we will heed the words of Daniel Burnham. Daniel was a Chicago architect and urban planner. He is said to have developed the skyscraper, and many spectacular buildings. His quote which you can take home with you on the front of the order of service is this:
“Make no little plans, they have no magic to stir the blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans, aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die.”
Here’s what I think we need to think about and act on to build our Fellowship’s future of health, heart and home to cluster my dreams for the Fellowship. And I should add that I have come to these conclusions after substantial dialogue with members on every subject.
For the health of our congregation—
1) Covenant of Right Relations.
The Fellowship is true to its name. It enjoys much joyful, authentic, and caring person to person interactions. Nonetheless, I have for the past at least two years been recommending that we create a covenant with one another. A covenant is an agreement, wrapped in love. I believe that we need to make a covenant of how we promise to be with one another, how we promise to treat one another. Occasionally, naturally, conflict occurs here, when people feel hurt, or betrayed, or left out. What happens then? At times a person will decide to pout, or be angry or downright rude. Or someone will snipe at a well meaning volunteer who has just worked hard on an event, causing discouragement. Those behaviors reduce the joy of those on the receiving end, and are hurtful, dysfunctional and toxic. They are not consistent with our Unitarian Universalists principles.
But the truth is that we haven’t given each other the tools or expectations for how we want to handle conflict. I believe a partial preventative solution is to do as hundreds of other congregations have done—to sit together as a whole group, as many of us as are available-- for a workshop, led by a member of the District’s Healthy Congregations team, where we create our own Covenant of Right Relations, an agreement on what we promise to one another in terms of our courtesies, kindness and respect; and what steps we will take to handle conflicts—i.e. the steps we want to take when we get upset with someone, or when someone violates our covenant or what we say to someone who comes to us complaining about someone else. This would be a powerful process, beneficial to all of us personally --as well as communally.
2) Secondly, in terms of the spiritual health of the congregation, we need to continue to strengthen our Sunday morning experience of worship—continuing to include more of a balance of music, word, silence, and-- pray tell-- maybe even some movement! To worship means to hold up that which is of value to us; in Unitarian Universalism we do not worship a deity or a golden calf, but we have much that we uphold and value that we speak and sing about together. Our services need to meet the needs of those among us who dwell primarily in their intelligent minds as well as those among us who are highly intelligent spiritually. Our Sunday Services need to speak to our whole selves: our minds, our hearts, our spirits and our bodies.
We have made such progress in this over the last few years. The addition of more music has been wonderful, as music is as important a way to the spirit as the spoken word. The unison affirmation reminds us of the essence of our faith, and our silence and reflections together give us an opportunity to feel our oneness. Our chalice lighting rituals reveal our valuing of our children and our elders. My vision for the Fellowship includes continuing a quest for each service to be celebratory, thoughtful and transformative, and I hope you will share your thoughts on this with me.
3) And the third concept of health is to continue to explore, experiment, and evaluate our communication methods. Keeping members informed enhances community, through equal opportunity and inclusion. This is complex as technology offers new avenues. Recognize that your Fellowship leaders have some members telling them that they prefer their information to be received through by e-mail, rather than the U.S. Postal Service, and so we have seen that as technology evolves, some people’s preferences are changing. Your Board of Trustees is dealing with a complex situation and rich opportunities, and I respect their willingness to experiment.
We need to continue to do so, and to evaluate our multiple methods, without losing our ability to inform members who do not have e-mail. Substantial Sunday announcements have been developed to keep everyone current on fast changing opportunities and happenings, in a way that the monthly newsletter could not. And, since there have been many weeks when our Board Secretary has received several requests for timely information to be sent to Fellowship members by e-mail, we are now sending a Wednesday E-News—consolidating the most current and critical information with links to more details; which allows us now to develop a quarterly more in-depth newsletter magazine which will be mailed to everyone. This is all breath catching movement. Thanks to the Board for being responsive and for trying new things. Be nice to them; we know change is startling; share your constructive, but not bitchy feedback. Thanks go to Cary Day, Carolyn Mathews and Bill Coniff for their work in these communication areas.
4) And finally, I hope our congregation will continue to participate in our wider UU world, through collaborations with other congregations, through attending General Assemblies and District meetings and trainings, and through advancing our Transylvanian Partner Church program. We learn much from these connections.
NOW For the heart of our congregation
1) Our Fellowship has excelled in its in-reach and caring for each other. As we get larger, it is more difficult to keep track of everyone’s needs and life happenings. To enhance the heart of our congregation, I would put my money behind the new efforts to organize our Fellowship into geographical care cluster groups. The idea is that groups of us living in closer proximity can more easily help out when another member needs some special help after a fall, or an illness. What this is really about is extending the ministry of the congregation into the hands of each of you. Ministry is what we all do, not just the called minister. This is called shared ministry. Clusters would also have the option of occasional social gatherings. Thanks to Susan Castelazo and Linda Tally for their work in the care ministry of our congregation.
2) Also for our heart, I will put some of my time in supporting our covenant group ministry, small groups of members who meet together each month to check in with each other and to follow a structured format for deep sharing around the evening’s topic. New groups will be forming in March. Read more about this in the Common Quest brochure which will be in your hands next week. Thanks to Shannon Day for keeping this need in front of us and to her and Viv Monahan for leading our past groups.
3) And third, I believe strongly that at the heart of our congregation needs to be social action—hands on help to people in need, in our wider community. In Isabel Allende’s book, Daughter of Fortune, a master physician and acupuncturist tells his student that knowledge is of little use without wisdom, and that there is no wisdom without spirituality, and that true spirituality always includes services to others.
I believe that our spiritual vitality as a congregation can only be truly healthy if we have an active social action program where there is a coordinated focus for generating the ideas and opportunities for going out together to provide service to people who in some way are at risk. I believe that within each of us is an impulse to want to help others. We long for empowerment and opportunity to make a difference.
Our spirits thrive when we do. It doesn’t matter to me whether activities would include tutoring, or food programs, or mentoring, or ESL classes, or any other ideas, but we do need a coordinated effort to stimulate our imaginations of potential service projects and to schedule opportunities to go out together to serve real people, hands on, in the local community. We are fortunate to have two co-chairs for this effort: Jon Matteson who is interested in bringing his experience with this from his former UU church in Spokane, and Eileen Duffy, who has long earned her stripes as one of the many in this congregation to do social action through the years. Talk to them, join them, listen for developments to come.
NOW For the home of our congregation
The Fellowship has been in this facility now for many years. We enjoy an excellent relationship with the Masons, due in large part to John Monahan’s active liaison relationship and all of us being respectful of the building. We should make the best of this place, and we do. The building has its good points, including this room being quite large allowing many more people to join us; and the large social hall downstairs is excellent. The building stinks in terms of real aesthetics for our worship services, because it has no windows and no connection with nature. The downstairs is critically inadequate for dividing up our children’s groups, though we are grateful for the new portable dividers that have made life a bit more workable this year. Our storage capacity is also too tight, and the tiny office which was fixed up beautifully three years ago is still too small, and there is no space for a minister’s pastoral study to meet privately with parishioners.
In order to make improvements in our programming, particularly for our children and youth, and to eventually be in a position to purchase property which would better service the needs of our congregation, I would call us to do four things:
1) Commit in the long run to the goal of owning our own full facility property.
2) In the short run, let’s buy a home within a block or two to develop addition RE space for our older children, for a pastoral study, and for small group activities including outreach service projects. This would get the Fellowship into the real estate market as values climb, while we wait for the time when we have the financial resources to buy a larger facility. We are capable now to put together a financial package to see this happen. We would continue to meet here on Sunday mornings. Peggy Abby chairs our Permanent Home Committee. Throw your support her way.
3) Develop a clear endowment and bequest system, and ask all our members to include the Fellowship in their wills. In this real estate market, we need generous members to leave large bequests to our Fellowship for our future facility. By large, I mean $1,000,000 or $500,000 or $100,000 or $50,000. This is not unrealistic. I’ve seen it happen in other congregations. At the same time, everyone’s situation is different. I hope we could encourage everyone in our Fellowship to include the Fellowship in their estate planning, realizing that even 10% of all of our wills would in time begin empowering our Fellowship to own its own facility; and 10% would not disinherit any children we may have.
Ron Corley is now chairing our endowment committee. Give him your support.
4) Unitarian Universalists are among the most highly educated of any religious denomination, right up there with the Jewish and Episcopalians. Correspondingly, we have as a whole, high levels of discretionary income. But our level of support for our congregations is at the bottom of religious denominations. And this congregation is about $200 per household below the average of all the other local UU congregations. We need to get more generous in supporting our annual budget, but also so we can increase our children’s re staffing, and develop an office support position that can support a growing and vital congregation. Tracy Burrows will be chairing our annual canvass this year. Let’s get behind her, and make her job easy and fun!
This congregation is poised for a big leap forward into our future. By continuing to strengthen ourselves within, we can provide a healthy and heart-full community for our children and ourselves; and we will then attract and welcome a larger more energetic base of people to more fully realize our mission to be of greater use in our community.
Our faith offers the values the world needs for its survival. Let us be bold, let us make no little plans, let us make big plans, aiming high in hope, service, in trust and kindness, in worship, in caring, in fun, in money, in home, and in support of our children.
For these are the days of our lives to plan our future, to pass on a legacy to the Pierini’s grandchildren, and we are the people to do it!
May it be so. Amen.