From The Shooting Star, September 7, 2008. Copyright 2008, Ellen Rowse Spero. All rights reserved.
Living Our Convenant
I was so happy to see everyone at our Water Communion service on Sunday. I have missed worship with you over the summer. A beautiful day, with beautiful music, beautiful words, and beautiful people!
In her chalice lighting, Carole Russell, our Standing Committee chair this year, outlined three major foci of the year: exploring what it means to live our covenant, now that we have one; reviewing the report from the Space and Growth Task Force and discussing how to deal with both our space constraints and possibilities; and preparing as a congregation for my sabbatical, which will be May through July of next year. Congregational polity—that governance and authority begin in the congregation—is the ecclesiastical and organizing principle of Unitarian Universalism. As we go through the year, the Standing Committee, other committees, and I will be leading the congregation through discussion and decision-making. Your participation is important, whether it is coming to the State of the Society meeting on September 21st after church, or an all-congregational retreat to discuss living out our covenant or any other congregational meetings, or volunteering to be part of the committees or task forces addressing one of these major issues. Always feel free to contact me with your questions and your interest.
Tom Owen-Towle, author of Growing A Beloved Community: Twelve Hallmarks of a Healthy Congregation, lists the first hallmark as "Occupying Holy Ground." He writes, "A church is not a social club, a hospital wing, a political action center, or even a spiritual refuge, although all of these disparate components are part of what a church (or religious community) is. Rather, healthy congregations are primarily sites for seeking and spreading the holy, however variously referenced by Unitarian Universalist guides: ‘the deep way’ by Unitarian religious educator Sophia Lynn Fahs; ‘the conditions for human transformation’ by the Reverend Edward Frost; ‘centers of redemption’ by the Reverend Ralph Stutzman; and ‘dealing with ultimate things’ by the Reverend Barbara Pescan. Ecclesia is the Greek word for a regularly convoked assembly. It refers to folks being ‘called out’ of their daily routines for a sacred purpose. Ecclesia is not an ethereal entity but a structured grounded reality. Through church life we embody our holy quest. Ecclesia is a chosen kinship circle within which our convictions are refined and our commitments enfleshed. Ecclesia is holy ground."
Whether we are in worship or a committee meeting, singing in the choir or sitting in quiet silence, teaching or learning in RE, caring for the grounds, the building, or the earth, taking a stand on a justice issue or having a cup of coffee and conversation in social hour, we are striving to embody what matters, what is larger than our own lives, our own desires, our own fears, with a hope and a vision for a world healed and transformed by love, by peace, and by justice. We truly occupy holy ground.
In Peace,
Rev. Ellen