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This Week
A Place of Meeting
"May the rain fall lightly on this house, the sun shine warmly, the winds blow softly, and bless it as a place of joy and peace.""Out of wood and stone, out of dreams and sacrifice, the People build a home."
--Eileen B. Karpeles
Well, folks, we did it! Thanks to your generosity and hard work, thanks to your vision of what might be, thanks to years of meetings, of surveys and plans and more plans, of fundraising, and of steps forward and steps backward and steps forward again, we have finally reached our goal of creating more space for the First Religious Society in Newburyport.
"Out of the work of their hands and hearts and minds the People fashion a symbol and a reality."
I admit, there were times when I thought it might not happen. There were times when it really seemed like "the impossible dream." There were sleepless nights when I, for one, wondered if we were doing the right thing, in the right way. There are still sleepless nights.
Only time will tell, of course. We really don't know what this new space, and our increased visibility in downtown Newburyport, is going to mean, yet. Our work has really just begun! Now, we have to figure out how to use our expanded facilities to grow our church, not only in numbers, but in service and spirit. It's not the new space which ultimately matters, of course, but what we do with it. As the Responsive Reading which Bert Steeves lead us in reminds us,
May this house be trulyOur task, as it has always been, is to build up the beloved community, and, obviously, that can't be done with bricks and mortar alone. The architects and contractors have done all they can do. Now it's up to us.
a place of Meeting--
meeting one with another
in warmth and joy and openness;
meeting one with another
in courage and love and trust.
Our Puritan ancestors knew that the building was not the church: the church was, and is, the people. The building was, and is, a "meeting house." It is only a tool; and, beautiful as our historic old meeting house is, it is only the vessel for our dreams of a better world, for our hopes and joys and sorrows along the path of life. It is what we do in this place that matters. And that is why the reading implores,
May all who enter hereI will confess that this project, and the move into our new offices and meeting rooms, has been a consuming preoccupation this fall. It feels very strange to come to work these days. It's hard to stay on task. That is why it is good to be reminded about why it is that we come here in the first place.
trust one another so surely
that they dare to share the deep fires
that burst into anger
as much as the sweet springwaters
that swell into laughter;
the slow erosion of wounded tears
as much as the soaring song.
Oh, I know, a few of us actually do come for the building. And that's OK, because, as I have said on a few occasions, this place is a visual prayer. It is good just to be in this sacred space. Just look around at the light flooding in, at what John Mercer calls in his hymn its "airy grace and soaring wood," and ask yourself: can all the stereotypes of our religious ancestors really be true? Could the creators of a space like this really have been "God's frozen people?"
To me, this place speaks of a bright and spare spirituality, a down-to-earth spirituality. God is in this place as light and space and peace and quiet. It seems to say, "This world is enough. You just have to stop long enough to pay attention."
This building is not a museum to a dead spirituality. It is, in Philip Larkin's wonderful phrase, "a serious house on serious ground." And as much as we have tried to maintain its integrity, we must never forget that this building was meant to be used. The need for it has not diminished over the last 202 years. We come here out of a deep spiritual need, a need to know and to be known, a need to explore both the depths and heights of our lives, and to make sense of it all, a need to confront the powers and principalities which still seek to dominate our world.
May these walls know silenceIt is appropriate that we have decided to utilize the space beneath our meeting house for our expansion. It is a statement of our connectedness to the past and of our faith in the future. It is a sign that our faith is alive, and not dead. As I said at last November's ground breaking ceremony, "We should be proud of the use this building still gets. We should be thrilled that it is still being used for what it was intended: a place for the church to meet. Not an end in itself. We should be glad that this is still a place of tears, and that it still echoes with laughter and with the sounds of children's voices and footsteps. That is what it was intended for, and we honor its builders and the spirit in which it was raised when we use it often and well."
as a hundred hearts search inward
each for its own small spark of hope
that might otherwise
be snuffed out in the noise.
Now more than ever, this is become a place of "memory and hope":
May these rafters hear the voice of the childWe are not finished yet. As the old hymn states, "we are in the making still." Thanks be to God! There is still work to be done. Now is not the time to relax and rest on our laurels. Heck, we still need to finish paying for it! But think of what we have accomplished together. Just think!
as surely as that of the orator,
and the sound of the lute,
the clack of the typewriter,
the swish of the broom,
and know that all are as holy
as the shout of a million stars.
May the rain fall lightly on this house,It is an honor to serve as your minister, and truly, it is good to be together, on this special day, and we trust, in all the days still to come. Amen.
the sun shine warmly,
the winds blow softly,
and bless it
as a place of joy and peace.
The Rev. Harold E. Babcock
Remarks on the Dedication of the Renovation
by Bill Heenehan
Chairman of the Renovation Steering Committee
