Community and Conflict

"In community we discover the conflicts that exist within each one of us."

--Jean Vanier

First of all, I'm afraid that I won't even recognize our new members! We have grown so much in recent years that unless you come to see me and introduce yourself, more than once, which I hope you will, I may have trouble knowing who you are. Or, maybe, I'll recognize your face, but I haven't yet put your name to it. I may not know how to pronounce your name yet. I'm always worried that we will leave someone out. Did we order enough flowers for everyone? Did we remember to remind the Parish Committee Chair and the Membership Committee Chair to be here to welcome you?

You get the picture, or begin to.

But it goes deeper than that. Do they know what they are getting into? As in any religious community, there is a culture here which must be learned. Unitarian Universalists are proud of their diversity, but in my experience we are remarkably alike in many ways, coast to coast. We are generally people who dislike authority, and prefer to make decisions for ourselves. We have a fairly high tolerance for ambiguity and paradox. We usually prefer the questions to the answers, and don't mind a certain amount of uncertainty. Ethically, we are in most areas relativists rather than absolutists. We tend to be social, though not necessarily political, liberals. Whether highly educated or not, we tend to think a lot--maybe sometimes too much! We believe in freedom of choice in most areas of life. We include iconoclasts and heretics in our ranks. We believe that religious convictions are personal. Some of us believe in God, and some don't, or aren't sure. Supposedly, we are open-minded about religious language and ideas, but I have found that this is not always the case. Careful how you use the G-word. We think the separation of church and state is a very good thing. We are skeptical. Most of us are rationalists at some level, but some of us are also mystics. Don't ask . . . oh, I know, you can't help it! Some of us are here to search for spirituality and some of us are here to avoid it, whatever it is. Some of us don't even like to sing hymns until we have had a chance to read them first.

But it's deeper still. What are these new members looking for?

Have they ever belonged to a religious community before? Did they come here curious about religion, or did they come here angry about it? We get both kinds of people. Do they understand what congregational polity really means, that, in sixties lingo, we believe in "power to the people"? That it's up to them? That the church will only accomplish what they help it to accomplish with their time, talent, and treasure? That there really isn't any "them" running this place, and that good old "someone else" is not going to do it for them? Do they really understand that we don't get any money from the Unitarian Universalist Association? That, in fact, we pay the Association dues for the services we receive?

And more: will we be able to meet their needs? Will we be able to assimilate them, and make them feel that they have a place in our community, that they are wanted and loved? Will they be able to use their gifts here, or will they feel that they have been overlooked? It is perhaps the greatest dilemma of all that we face: will they be offended if we ask them to do something, or will they be offended if we don't? We're never quite sure which.

Oh, and we don't proselytize. Which means you may have had a very hard time finding us.

And even more: do these new members know that we are imperfect people? That, as the old hymn says, we are not yet finished, but in the making still? Will they love us anyway? Because in my experience, Unitarian Universalists need to be loved. It can be lonely being a religious liberal. Do they know that sometimes we disagree about things, and have arguments? That sometimes they will think that what their minister has to say is just great, and at other times they may be offended? Have they heard what Jesus once said about being a prophet in one's own community? That, to put it mildly, sometimes he or she isn't appreciated? Do they know that being part of a community inevitably means sometimes being in conflict? Do they know that we don't always like each other? Do they know that it took, conservatively, twenty years to decide to expand our facilities? Do they really know what that means? Do they know that the democratic process is painfully slow, and that it means someone always loses, that although it's great when we can reach consensus, we don't always? Do they know how many meetings it takes to run an institution such as this? How much it costs? Do they know how good it feels when you accomplish something, in spite of all the difficulties and differences of opinion?

Jean Vanier, in lectures delivered at Harvard Divinity School some years ago, said that

Community is the place where all the darkness and anger, jealously and rivalry hidden in our hearts are revealed. In community we discover the conflicts that exist within each one of us. There is the conflict between the values of the world and the values of community, between togetherness and independence. We face the conflict between caring for people and caring only for ourselves, and we discover that really caring for the growth and freedom of other people means sacrificing our own freedom.

My colleague John Gibbons in Bedford has written that, "In community, we put up with all that is jostling, disappointing, and disconcerting because we have had enough of loneliness, independence, competition, powerlessness, and despair." While I agree, it is equally true that sometimes people are unwilling to ride out the stormy times in a community's life. Sometimes, fortunately not often, they get mad and leave. They ask--and who can blame them?--"What am I doing here? This isn't what I signed on for. I don't come to church to engage in conflict. I come here for. . . ." You fill in the blank. But the reality is, you cannot avoid conflict if you participate in community. It's inevitable. It comes with the territory.

And, I guarantee you, if you really engage in the work of building community, you will be changed. If you don't want to be changed, you probably don't belong here. Did I mention that we Unitarian Universalists affirm change?

Here at the First Religious Society, we are pretty good at avoiding open warfare. It's one of the reasons I love our church. I tend to be a peacemaker, anyway. I'm not so good at confrontation, though sometimes I realize that it is necessary. But I think it would be better if we trusted the process a little more, and were more honest about sharing our disagreements. Sometimes I should probably be more of a rabble-rouser, in order to sort of open up conversation a little. It's a myth that we are all in agreement around here, or that we need to be. I have plenty of dear friends with whom I disagree on politics and religion and other things. I think we could be more open than we are about sharing our differences of opinion. Provided, of course, that we maintain a modicum of civility and politeness, and really listen to one another.

And let's not forget about why we are really here. Yes, it's about our own spiritual pilgrimage, our own personal, religious life. But it is also for what is traditionally called our "mission." We talk about our mission here in lots of different ways: in our Chalice Lighting words, and in our Affirmation of Faith, and in our Benediction, and in the New Member Covenant which we recited this morning. Our mission is to change the world, and our own lives in it. It is, in traditional parlance, to build the Kingdom of Heaven here on earth. It is to help ourselves and others to be what we were truly intended to be, and to affirm that we are all God's children in spite of the vagaries of economics, or race, or sexual orientation, or you name it.

The promise of this mission, as my friend John Gibbons puts it, is "(unattainably) great." Do our new members realize this? Do we? Do we understand that it is the striving to achieve that goal that really matters, even though, ultimately, we may fail? In his lectures, Jean Vanier said,

That is our hope, that God is doing the impossible: changing death to life inside each of us, and that perhaps, through our community, each one of us can be agents in the world of this transformation of broken- ness into wholeness, and of death into life.

Our job, as we reminded ourselves last week during our building dedication ceremony, is still, as it has always been, to build the beloved community here on earth. We won't always succeed, but there will be moments, glimpses, small epiphanies when we know that, in spite of our flaws and shortcomings, in spite of the inevitable conflicts which will divide us, we have already experienced the beloved community. It is here, now, only awaiting our waking up to its reality, our growing up to our covenant of love and care for each other and to all those without these walls who yet share this gift of life with us.

May we remember this, and may our community be always becoming more than it has hitherto been. May the addition of these new members remind us of our commitment and covenant, of our ever striving and ever growing toward the light. So may it be. Amen.

The Rev. Harold E. Babcock