From The Shooting Star, May 6, 2007. Copyright 2007, Ellen Rowse Spero. All rights reserved.
After almost two years of learning and asking questions, of expressing concerns and hopes, of sharing and of listening, we are now about a month away from voting on whether to join in covenant with approximately 80% of our fellow Unitarian Universalist Congregations to become an officially recognized Welcoming Congregation for lesbian, gay, transgender, and bisexual persons. As we approach this first milestone, I would like to thank the Welcoming Congregation Ministry team for all their hard work: planning workshops, cottage meetings, panel discussions, and worship services to help us understand why it matters that we become a Welcoming Congregation. This process has not been easy: with any kind of deep consideration of change, and of exploring both our beliefs and our prejudices comes anxiety and questions: "Why this minority group and not that one?" "Aren’t we welcoming already?" With this process have also come important and sometimes difficult conversations about what being welcoming means, and what it means to live out our Unitarian Universalist principles and faith. We have all had to take some risks to be open and honest about our opinions and our experiences. This has opened old wounds for some among us who have painful fears, memories and experiences. I appreciate each and every one of you who have shared your stories about living as a gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender person or as a straight person who loves someone who has faced discrimination and censure because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. I appreciate each and every one of you who have listened and risked your own comfort zone to consider what it means to take a public stand with your fellow parishioners and your fellow human beings who have been judged harshly in both religious and political arenas, not for the content of their character, but for whom they love and how they express their true selves.
We have heard about why it matters that we become an official UUA Welcoming Congregation from legal perspectives, personal perspectives, religious and political perspectives, moral perspectives, and practical perspectives. This past Sunday, we heard from the perspectives of those who have gone through the Welcoming Congregation process and have lived as a Welcoming Congregation for the last seven years. Betty Keddy and Karen Johnson, members of First Parish in Groton and of the Welcoming Congregation team that guided their congregation to the decision to become a Welcoming Congregation spoke about their congregation’s experiences pre, during and post vote. I learned several things from listening to them. First, I learned that becoming a Welcoming Congregation took a lot of time and conversation and listening. Their team, like ours, worked very hard over a couple of years. I learned also that the questions and concerns raised in their process were very similar to the ones raised here and that like us, they didn’t always have answers, but have kept the conversations going. I learned also that becoming a Welcoming Congregation didn’t change the church community into something else. Rather, it helped the congregation become more deeply who it is. The church grew in all kinds of ways: in numbers, in vitality, in commitment, and involvement in all kinds of social justice. People are attracted to and more invested in a religious community that is willing to live intentionally its principles and its faith.
From my perspective, becoming a Welcoming Congregation is not a matter of mandate or meeting UUA criteria. It is ultimately, like all acts of covenant, an act of trust and of love. Most of us here, myself included, can and do take for granted that we can have a religious home without question and without fear. And most of us, myself included, have never encountered circumstances where having a religious home, a faith community, one that claims a moral voice and authority on our behalf, one that blesses and honors our lives, one that loves us for who and what we are, can make the difference between life and death. But I promise you that for some of our members and friends in this congregation, and for others in our larger community, this is a reality. Becoming a Welcoming Congregation is intentionally taking on the sacred trust of each other’s lives with as deep an understanding and a commitment as we can. Becoming a Welcoming Congregation removes barriers for all of us, that allow us each to be who we are without fear of censure, without having to subsume or hide some essential part of ourselves. It means that we can be trusted: not only by gay, lesbian, transgender or bisexual people looking for a religious home, but by anyone looking for a religious home that is in harmony with our purposes and principles, our vision and our commitments.
When faced with making an intentional change or taking an intentional stand, it is easy for us to magnify the risks and problems and minimize the blessings and the joys. Karen and Betty reminded me that whenever we act out of a spirit of love rather than one of fear, we are wonderfully and surprisingly blessed, our own lives and souls deepened. The blessings are more than worth the risks. Or as the Buddhist teacher Joanna Macy says, "Grace happens when we act with others on behalf of our world."
In faith,
Ellen