Showing Up

"Ask not what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive . . . then go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive." -Howard Thurman

One of my friend and colleague Thomas Wintle’s definitions of God is that God means not being alone. God, in this definition, is a companion along the way.

I like this definition. Not because I believe literally that God is a person who "walks with me and talks with me," as the old hymn has it, because I don’t. But I am open to the idea of a God who otherwise is with me always and who stands by me. I am open to the idea of a God who is within me and within all that is.

I think that what Tom’s idea of God is about is presence.

Oh, I often act as if God’s presence is a reality, even though I am skeptical about it. I often find myself speaking with the universe. Not that I am expecting an answer, though I wouldn’t mind if I got one! (Though I might not like the answer.) But I feel graced that I have almost always had the feeling that I am not alone in my walk through life. I can’t explain this, nor do I need to. It is what it is.

To some, though, this may seem like a pretty thin definition of God. For here, God is not omniscient, all-powerful, or all-seeing. God does not intervene in human affairs, directly answer prayers, reward or punish. God is not a cosmic magician.

"God," as my colleague Forrest Church has famously said, is "not [even] God’s name." God is our name for something which is ultimately beyond naming. But God is there as presence. And although God can’t do anything about it directly, God is there in our suffering. God suffers with us. In the bad times or the good, in both sorrow and joy, God is present.

Most often, however, we find God’s presence manifest in other human beings. We are, if you will, God’s stand-ins. We are God’s understudies. We are God’s eyes and ears and hands. Indeed, the only way God’s work gets done in the world is if we do it. This idea that I come in the name of something greater than myself has gotten me through many a difficult encounter with tragedy, when otherwise I would have felt completely overwhelmed and totally unequipped for the job.

Again, if you are looking for a God to do it for you and make it all better, this will not be very satisfying. For it means that the responsibility is ultimately ours. We are the ones who must do God’s work. But at least we are not alone.

All this talk of God is by way of preface. What I really want to talk about with you today is presence. Just showing up. As the old saw has it, "Just showing up is half the battle." Or, "Half of life is just showing up." How many times have you heard that? How many times have you said it to your kids?

It is found in Buddhist teachings which tell us, "Don’t just do something. Stand there." Just be. Or in this little piece of Buddhist wisdom which Linda Tulley shared with me just this week: "Show up. Pay attention. Tell the truth. Be unattached to the results."

I’m here this morning to tell you that it is true: just showing up, just being there, is often the most important thing you can do. Today or any day. Presence.

Every minister learns this lesson early on if he or she has any humility at all. Often, we find, there are no words to say. Often, in the face of tragedy, illness, loneliness, or grief, it would be a travesty to say anything, anyway. Often all we can do is be there. Be present at the bedside or the graveside. Show our solidarity. Let the silence speak what there are no words left to say. It’s not about performance, after all, but about our common humanity.

Don’t just do something. Stand there.

If this is dramatically true in the bad times, it is still true, though usually not so evidently, in the mundane and ordinary times as well. "Half of life is just showing up." Whether for a class or for work, for a meeting you don‘t really want to attend or your child’s soccer game, or some other every day responsibility or commitment, it is sometimes about simply showing up.

We can’t always be happy and enthusiastic about that, but we can be there. And sometimes, once we are there, we find that it is where we have wanted to be. Garrison Keillor has a great take on this idea, writing in one of his stories that "Some luck lies in not getting what you thought you wanted, but in getting what you have, which once you have it, you may be smart enough to see is what you have wanted had you known." You get the picture.

How true "just showing up" is in the life of the church I cannot begin to tell you. Anyone who has had any experience trying to build community can tell you: it’s all about showing up. In a real community, every one is important. It’s just not the same when you aren’t here. That’s why "all souls" is a great name for a church; it says it all: everyone is necessary. In traditional terms, everyone is precious is God’s eyes. Even if you don’t believe that God has eyes.

We have eyes. And we believe that everyone is important. Everyone, according to our purposes and principles, has "inherent worth and dignity." The great 20th century teacher Rabbi Abraham Heschel sums this idea up well: "There is no human being," he says, "who does not carry a treasure in the soul, a moment of insight, a memory of life, a dream of excellence, a call to worship."

We didn’t just make this stuff up. In the Protestant tradition of which we are the inheritors, albeit very liberal ones, the individual is important. Among our Puritan ancestors, a public confession of one’s personal faith was a prerequisite for church membership. Each of us is unique. Each of us sees the world a little differently. Each of us has gifts. Each of us possesses reason with which to discover truth. We are even responsible for our own salvation, which I take to mean finding our own wholeness and health. It’s up to us.

Another way to say this is to say that every one of you is important to this beloved community we are trying to build. Each of you brings something special, something that no one else can bring.

All of which, I hope, brings me to my point at last. You have heard about the visioning process that we are about to undertake at the First Religious Society. I cannot emphasize strongly enough how important it is that you participate in this process. Whether you are young or old, a recent attendee or a long time member, we need your input. We need your unique and irreplaceable perspective. We need your individual point of view. We need your hopes and your dreams. No one is, or ought to be, superfluous to this process. And let me tell you why.

Eleven years ago, when I came to the First Religious Society as your minister, it was pretty clear what we needed to do. Oh, the church was basically in good shape, but there were lots of little things we could do to make it stronger. And there was one, big, obvious need: we needed more space. As we continued the growth which had begun under my predecessor Bert Steeves, this need became more and more pressing. It really became the focus of the church for the first ten years of my tenure as your minister.

Finally, in 2003, we completed the renovation of the lower meeting house. Now we had the space we needed. For the last couple of years we have been busy figuring out what to do with it. And, not surprisingly, we have continued to grow. Now, I believe, we are at a point of needing to decide what comes next. Where should we be putting our energy over the next five to ten years? That is where all of you come in.

I can not emphasize strongly enough how important it is that you be involved in the visioning process. Because it is not up to me. Oh, I may have opinions about what we ought to be doing, but I am only one person. I can’t possibly have all the good ideas. And besides, as I often say, it’s your church, not mine. Ministers come and go, but the church abides. As the Proverb reminds us, "Without a vision, the people perish." If we are to continue our growth both numerically and spiritually, we need to know where we are going and we need to know what we are doing.

I am already a year into a second decade as your minister. And I must tell you that I am depending on you to help provide me with the direction for the decade to come. I need your leadership on this. Where do we go next? What should we be doing in our community and in the wider world, to alleviate the terrible problems we see out there? How do we make a difference? How do we become the better people we long to be? What should we be doing for our children, to be sure that they do not grow up without a sense of meaning and purpose in their lives? What should we be doing for ourselves?

These are just a few of the questions that we hope our visioning process will begin to answer. I honestly cannot think of anything more exciting or more hope-full than this. I am convinced that if you just show up, you will find this to be true! Please, do it for me! This is your opportunity to have a voice in the future of this great congregation, which has already, remarkably, existed for 281 years--or over 350 years if you count our early history as part of the First Parish Church of Newbury. If you think of it, that’s pretty amazing.

We are in a powerful and advantageous position to undertake this effort at this time in our history. For right now we have a growing and vital congregation of hugely talented people of all ages, as well as a large and thriving Young Church made up of wonderful young people who are, we mustn’t forget, our future. Looked at through that lens, how can this visioning process not be energizing for us all? A few hours of your precious time could mean the difference between a church that is floating along on the good times, directionless but well meaning, ineffectual perhaps, and one which is focused and purposeful, ready for those times when things are not so good, ready to make a difference in the world.

Many of you remember how, in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, this church was there for people who otherwise might never have come through our doors. We need to be there in the years to come, a place of comfort and inspiration and we hope of positive change for ourselves and for our troubled and troubling world. Will you show up to help us make this hope a reality?

In closing, I want to leave you with some words of one of the great Black preacher of the civil rights generation, Howard Thurman, who for many years was the minister at Marsh Chapel at Boston University, and who in that capacity served as a mentor to Martin Luther King, Jr. Thurman wrote, in the face of difficult challenges not unlike those of our own time, "Ask not what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive . . . then go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive." My hope, my prayer, is that this church will come alive. Amen, and may it be so!

The Rev. Harold E. Babcock