When I first started attending a Unitarian Universalist church I had that experience that so many of our members describe—I felt I had come home. And so I stayed and in not too long, I joined. The church was Cedar Lane in Bethesda, Maryland. And if you had asked me why I was so attracted I might have said it was because of the freedom to believe afforded there. And that was important because all the other churches I had explored demanded a certainly of belief that I just could not pretend, or adherence to doctrines that seemed to constrict the spirit, limit the holy. But in Unitarian Universalism I could keep my doubts, my questions, I was free to continue to discern, to find the holy in a host of expressions. But freedom of belief wasn’t the real reason, the deepest reason. Because after all, I could be free to believe all on my own without belonging to any church.

Or I might have said it had to do with Unitarian Universalist’s concern for social justice and equality—and that, too, was an important part because I did think that religion should be concerned with the world outside its doors, trying to make a difference for the better. But that wasn’t really it, either. After all there were plenty of other non-religious ways, to express my concern for the world.

Or I might have said that it had something to do with the worship services—and that did become a vital part—to be there most every Sunday, sitting shoulder to shoulder with other Cedar Laners, or standing shoulder to shoulder to raise our voices together in song—but the worship wasn’t it really either, not at first—because as much as I respected the ministers, none of them were exceptional preachers, and most of the hymns were unfamiliar and many were hard to sing.

Those are the things I might have said, but they weren’t the real reason, the deeper reason. And, truthfully, I probably couldn’t have articulated just what it was then. But now I would say it was because there at Cedar Lane I tasted for the first time Beloved Community and that taste answered a hunger in my soul.

I was twenty eight years old, had graduated from seminary, and gone through a two year training program in pastoral psychotherapy, was working on my PhD, envisioned a career in pastoral counseling. On the outside I looked strong and put together enough, sure enough of what it was I had learned and what it was I wanted to do. But on the inside I was hurting, so vulnerable and confused. I was in therapy, working through the pain of having an abusive, mentally ill father. Inside I felt betrayed, bereft, as if there was no real place for me to belong. I was struggling to put the pieces of my life together in some meaningful way which moved beyond the pain.

And people in that church opened their hearts and their minds to me. They listened to my faltering attempts to give voice to what it was I was seeking and they heard the longing underneath the theological and psychological language and they held that longing up and reflected it back to me so that I could see. And they embraced the fragile construction that was my ego and held it tenderly, until the pieces began to cohere. And they took my need to be of use and gently directed my efforts and mellowed my greenness with experience. They listened to my pain and they told me of their own and they showed me that pain shared is more easily born. And through it all, in a myriad of ways, they kept saying: find what you love, find what you will serve. Be present to your life—no matter the struggle, no matter the pain. Find the good; find the joy; find the beauty and wonder; find the yes to which you can give yourself in answer. And they helped me see that my struggles were not just my own but part of what it means to be human and to live in this imperfect, unfinished world. They opened my heart and they opened my hands and they said, see, you have gifts to give. And they blessed those gifts and helped me turn them to good use. They encouraged me to live into my calling to become a minister.

It sounds like Cedar Lane was some paragon of virtue as a congregation but it wasn’t really. It was just as imperfect as are all our congregations. It had its share of weird and wacky people. There was political infighting. Someone always had complaints about something or other. There were people insistent on getting their own way, people who were petty, and even people who were sometimes mean. And when I first realized this, that Cedar Lane wasn’t always that compassion filled, justice seeking place I imagined it was when I first walked through its doors, I was disillusioned, thought about leaving. But there was just enough of a taste there of Beloved Community to keep me. Beloved Community, with its expansive embrace of acceptance, that said, “yes, if you feel you belong here then you do, and because you belong here you are now part of us and we will be your people.” Beloved Community that provided a container for my searching, room for me to become who I was meant to be. Beloved Community that issued the call to find my deep center where the answer to those questions—what do you love, what will you serve—could be revealed.

Often when people first come to our churches they are at a point of transition or they come from a place of pain or loss or simply a sense of something missing in their lives. We have different ways of expressing what it is we seek—we come for religious freedom or a sense of community, for healing or spiritual inspiration, for ways to make a difference, for help in raising our children. But underneath all the different ways of speaking, there is that desire to be present to our life and to live it as whole as it can be; to find the yes to which we can give ourselves in answer. Even when people say they are coming for the sake of their children, if we probe deep enough we find their hopes for their children mirror their hopes for themselves—to live life from a center of meaning and wholeness.

What do you love; what will you serve ? If we look only at the surface, so much of what we do, and pursue, seems to indicate that we love money or things or status or success. On the surface, so much of what we do, what we pursue, seems to indicate that we serve the ever accelerating tick of the clock, a relentless multi-task master that says there is never enough, we are never enough, so hurry, hurry, more, more. But we know life is meant for more than this surface appearance. Where is that deep center from which we would live? Where is that deep center which gives us life?

In the diverse communities which are our UU congregations, we have different ways of trying to access that center, different ways of imaging it. We speak of God or goddess or the Spirit of Life; or the best of the human spirit or simply the mystery at the heart of it all. We are attracted to different theologies, different spiritual paths. But for all of us the task is the same—to find the ways to say yes to our life, to be present to it, to find the beauty amidst the ugliness, the joy in the midst of the sorrow, to touch moments of transcending wonder - to go deeper and respond ever more fully to that pull of love and service.

And if truth be told we could do all that work on our own—we could afford ourselves—by ourselves—the freedom to explore different theologies and ways of imaging the holy. We could meditate or pray or study alone and find our way to that center all by our lonesome. We could in our own solitude find the ways to transmute the sorrow to joy, the ugliness to beauty. Because the center is everywhere. But there is something about being in religious community, that makes us different when we are here—something about religious community which makes us more open to the spirit, more ready to listen to the call of love, the pull of service. In religious community we find people to stand shoulder to shoulder with, with whom we can unburden our sorrow; people who, because of their own searching, challenge us to go deeper and who keep us honest in our answers to those questions: what do we love, what will we serve. And maybe, if we were incredibly lucky, we could even find such good companions elsewhere. But what makes religious community different is that being such companions to one another is part of our agreement here, part of what we covenant to be to one another. And part of what makes our UU congregations different is that here it doesn’t matter what labels we give to our theologies or even that we think in theological categories; it doesn’t matter how we image the holy or how we pray; it doesn’t matter the elegance of the words we use to describe our beliefs—what is important here is how we live our lives, how we witness to the center of our souls where the answers to those questions—what do you love, what will you serve—reside.

Here at Emerson we would be Beloved Community for one another. A place where we can say the important things and know they will be heard—and not just the words but also the feeling, the searching underneath them. The religious life is not a contest for who is the most erudite, or most articulate; or for who can debate the loudest or the longest. We each should feel free, whatever our passion, to bring it here and trust that it will be received with open hands and hearts. Oh, yes, your life is your project—and you must find your own answers to those questions—what do you love, what will you serve. But here we promise that in your searching you will not be alone. We are and will be your people.

And, no, we are not, Emerson is not, like that all the time. We are but an imperfect embodiment of Beloved Community. We can, each of us, be insistent on our own way, sometimes. We are not free of complaint. We can devolve into political infighting and pettiness, and yes, sometimes even meanness. We make mistakes. I make mistakes. But there is, nonetheless, enough of a taste of Beloved Community here to answer the hunger in our souls—and that taste can only serve to make us hunger for, and thus strive to be, more.

And that brings me to the one fundamental way in which religious community is different from going it alone spiritually. Religious community impresses upon us our essential relational quality, our interdependence. In religious community we see how our own lives share so much with those around us, how our lives mirror the lives of others. The church elevates our private lives to a larger context. In religious community we realize that our individual struggles, and spiritual journeys are not just our own, but part of what it means to be human, part of what it means to live in this imperfect, unfinished world. In religious community we learn the truth of Gwendolyn Brooks’ words, “We are each other’s business; we are each other’s harvest; we are each other’s magnitude and bond.” When we really open to the spirit within us, we know we cannot rest in the answers we find just for ourselves alone. When we really touch that deep center where we are one with the mystery, we know that the suffering of the world really does effect us all. It is no longer a matter of “there but for the grace of God go I”, but rather that by and for the grace of God or goddess or spirit, we do all go there. And so no matter how much we taste of Beloved Community here in our midst, it could never be enough. We must work to make it so for all. And in that moment of realization we come to understand that our expectations of the gifts of religious community have something to do with our own open-handed offering of our own gifts. We hear the call to minister to a hurting world.

In religious community we discover the pull of interdependence, taste of the deep sorrows of the world. But that interdependence also empowers us. As Mother Teresa said, “Love does not remain by itself.” We no longer have to create justice all on our own, but as members of a larger community. We need not carry all the burdens of the world in our individual glasses. We can draw from that deep lake with the power to refresh our souls. The spirit in anyone of us can at times waver, but when we dedicate ourselves to nurture that power together, it is rare for the light to grow dim in all of us at the same time. Together our vision widens and our strength is magnified. We are so much greater together here than in life lived separately.

In religious community we are both restored to ourselves and called out of ourselves, challenged to live from and for a vision of wholeness, of love and service. That was what attracted me to Cedar Lane and what kept me there—the inarticulate, inchoate promise I felt that first visit—that there I might grow toward who I was meant to be, share the love in my heart, give what I was yearning to give, that there I could be so much more together with those people. Of course, the promise of Beloved Community was imperfectly realized at Cedar Lane because Beloved Community is but yet a vision, a vision that has not yet reached its fullness of being. But in religious community we can taste enough to keep us moving forward toward its fulfillment.

I have seen my story repeated countless times, witnessed the ways in which our imperfect UU churches call people to answer those questions—what do you love; what will you serve—in ways which increase the realm of Beloved Community. I think of people I served in Burke, Virginia. Sue, who was so wounded by a childhood of abuse that, when first she came, all her dreams were of darkness and blood; who found acceptance in that church and grew beyond her pain, and turned it to compassion leading that congregation to partner with a home for battered women and their children. I think of Dick, who before coming to that church, had spent most of his sixty years living a lie, hiding the fact that he was gay, fearing rejection and public censure. Dick, who finally trusted enough to come out in that church and who wept, when, after a period of education and discernment, we voted to become a Welcoming Congregation—and we wept with him.

And I think of people here, also—though harder to describe without singling them out or revealing confidences. But you know, as I know, that here people have come, so burdened with sorrow and grief that they are almost ready to give up, and yet here they have found an answering compassion that has given them the courage to persevere and even, in time, sources of joy. Or people who have been so scarred and bruised they have felt as if no one could possibly understand, and yet they have found here so many embracing arms, and through that embrace have found healing and abundance. Or people who were so cynical they have almost despaired of the human project, who’ve yet discovered here their compassion for and faith in others restored. And people, too, who at first seemed so self-absorbed, so concerned only with having their needs met, who, nonetheless, heard here that deep pull toward love and service and came to understand that receiving the gifts of religious community has something to do with our own open-handed offering of our own gifts, and so turned their gifts to minister to a hurting world .

What do you love? What will you serve? The world we live in, it seems to me, is at a critical juncture—ecological crisis, economic crisis, a crisis of resources, and a crisis of peace. And we are all in it together. The suffering of the world really does touch us all. The universal human imperative at this juncture in time is to learn to live in harmony with one another and with the earth. There is no escaping; no where else to go. And yet I am hopeful that change will come as people in community make commitments to discern a better way and to live it and as those communities impact still other communities and in turn larger and larger areas. The hunger for a better way is growing—and that hunger can become a prayer and that prayer can instill a vision, a move to action. And one action can inspire another and another and each day can mean one more. People have the power to save the planet and one another and I believe that nowhere does that power have more potential than in our UU congregations striving to embody the Beloved Community.

What do you love? What will you serve? Yes, we are each here to grow our souls, to transmute our pain and sorrow, to find goodness and joy and beauty and transcending wonder. But individual spiritual growth is not enough. We are also called here to find the ways to say yes to Life itself, to the wider human realm, the common human imperative. Together in this Beloved community our yes must spill out to bless the world. What do we love? What will we serve?