Dive Deep

Celebration Sunday 2010
© 2010 Revs. Bill and Barbara Hamilton-Holway and Chris Holton Jablonski

Listen Now!

Bill:
In 1891 the First Unitarian Church of Berkeley was organized, and seven years later the first church building was dedicated, on the corner of Dana and Bancroft in Berkeley. It cost less than $6,000. For the next 63 years that church building housed a growing congregation. The University of California at Berkeley was also growing and expanding, and by the late 1950s, condemned the property by right of eminent domain.

The congregation, with a vision for the future, bought this land from church members Annie and Bernard Maybeck, raised $900,000, and in 1961 this building was dedicated. Next year, when we celebrate the 120th anniversary of the founding of this congregation, we also will celebrate 50 years on this high hill.

Celebrate the people, the families who have walked through these doors. Celebrate those who, finding themselves flowing with tears, have said, “I didn’t know a place like this existed. This is my religious home.”

The first committee to be formed in this church, back in 1891, was the Music Committee. Celebrate all the music, the melodies rising from piano, flute, harpsichord, and violin. Celebrate the gift of this million-dollar organ. Celebrate all the voices joining, choir and congregation, commemorating the experiences of life, of loss, and of love.

Celebrate the children dedicated here, welcomed to life, supported in their growth through all the years of our Religious Education program. Celebrate the couples who have met and married here. And celebrate the memorial services, honoring people who have found in this place support for their religious lives.

Unitarian Universalists have a different take on life than adherents of most other religions. Ours is an intentional melding of reason and intuition, a celebration of scientific method and creative expression, an affirmation of the inherent good residing within each and every person.

We come together supporting the religious journey, not requiring same beliefs, but inviting a passionate commitment to live our lives based in ethical values affirming compassion and justice. We come here to be reminded of the best we may be, and to encourage one another on our journey.

We affirm a vision of human community grounded in truths known in the religions of the world, yet constantly open to new expression. We proclaim our truths in the languages of theology, science, poetry, and all the arts, and we know how deep is the longing in each person for meaning and purpose.

This is Celebration Sunday. This is an annual event where we invite one another to reflect on this church and its importance in our lives and in the world. Our Stewardship Team has invited us to “Dive Deep,” this year, to pause in the busyness of our days to remember how sweet is the experience of community.

It is not that we are perfect, or even striving for perfection. We have a vision of community continually created of healthy relationships, where we embrace the spiritual practices of listening with appreciation and speaking with care and gratitude. We would honor our differences and assume good intentions.

We know that together our voice is stronger. Together we can give away 10,000 pounds of food. We can send a postal truck full of valentines inviting all who will listen to stand on the side of love. Together we fill to overflowing a carload of new underwear, for those in need at the family shelter we support.

Together our voice is stronger. Do you know what this congregation did in the 1950s?

In 1952 the California legislature legalized having the Bible read for 15 minutes each day in all classrooms. Dr. Raymond Cope, minister of this church, advised the congregation that this law should be protested. In 1953 the Levering Act required all teachers and college faculties to sign a loyalty oath.

The next year, in 1954, churches were notified that ministers must sign the loyalty oath or their churches would be subjected to additional taxes. This Church stood firm, paid the taxes, and refused to have Dr. Cope sign the loyalty oath.

Then, with the cooperation of two other Unitarian congregations and one Methodist church, we took the matter to court – all the way to the Supreme Court – where the Levering Act was declared unconstitutional. The taxes were refunded with interest. And we knew that together our voice is stronger.

In this 21st century we have joined with all the Unitarian Universalist churches in California to create the first statewide Legislative Ministry, to make our voices heard in Sacramento, whether the issues be Health Care Reform, Water Rights, Climate Change, or Marriage Equality. Yes, together our voice is stronger.

And we know that the principles we affirm, that every person has worth, that peace is possible when every voice is heard, that we are inherently a part of one another and this life-giving Universe, these principle must take human form, must be embodied in word, and action, and legislation, if they are to be made real.

This congregation, through one hundred and nineteen years, has touched countless people, provided inspiration and support, called us all to lives of authenticity, service, love, and justice. Here we are called to dive deep into this ocean of human community.

Barbara:
Our lives are brief, fleeting.

How transient we are, how fragile everything we love.

All of us flash into being, as insubstantial as the flame of one small candle.

Each moment is precious, each relationship dear.

Last weekend Sandy Tremblay decorated the tables for our concert Love Songs and Chocolate.

She publicized the event and sang in the concert her beautiful high soprano voice.

Sandy played in the church’s gamelan ensemble, sang in the choir, created costumes for our pageants, old tires into soldiers’ armor, plastic six pack holders into angel halos.

Sandy could be seen with a parrot on the shoulder, a stuffed turkey on her head.

She cooked for the Music Committee and for the church’s Thanksgiving Dinner.

She was colorful, zany, playful, opinionated, hard-working, larger than life.

It seems unbelievable that a week later she is gone.

Sandy struggled with the disease of alcoholism.

Sandy’s husband Jim says her participation in this church extended her life.

But what he feared would one day happen, happened Wednesday.

Alcoholism took her life.

Struggles like substance abuse, addictions and mental health are not often shared here where we name so many other sorrows.

Maybe we can be more honest with each other.

These sorrows touch all our lives.

No one should suffer in isolation.

We can learn from one another.

We can never fully save the life of another.

We can be life-giving support.

Thursday Jim, Sandy’s husband, was here at church.

He was crying, laughing, angry, numb.

He was here with the full range of feelings.

What better place for him to be?

Here he was held, hugged, accepted, offered love, support, chocolates and chilis, and songs.

Dear people, this is a place of grace, both divine and human.

This is a place of giving and receiving.

Grace is here – in the beautiful view out to the bay, the trees in the atrium, the silence we hold at the beginning of our meditation and prayer.

Grace is here in the music of the choir, the touch of one another’s hands.

This is a place to cry, to laugh, to be your full self.

Here is acceptance for who you are. Here is healing, motivation, inspiration and support for transformation and change.

The personal sanctuary and healing we find here, we want for everybody.

So, we join our strengths to make the world a better place.

Life gives life.

Here we are and we are alive now in this moment.

Right now a new day is dawning.

Now, right now, the light of life shines in your soul.

Here we stoke the flame. Live while you are alive.

Burn bright with the full force of who you are.

Bless us with your warmth and light.

Day is breaking. Shine, dear one, shine.

Chris:
Arieal and her family had come months before, and they had worshipped together as a family for a while before venturing into the Religious Education classes.

By that time we were in the thick of our summer classes. Just like this summer we were exploring one of our sources, the “Words and Deeds of Prophetic Women and Men”.

We had classes on Gandhi, on Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, on Cesar Chavez and Rosa Parks and more.

And Arieal and her brothers dove deep that summer.

And as the school year began I was amazed to hear first her parents and then her tell me this story.

You see Arieal had had a tough time in school the previous year. She had been in fights, particularly with this one student who seemed bent on starting trouble with her.

And when the new year started, on the first day, this same tough girl came up and tried to start a fight.

But instead of hitting back, instead of repeating the same pattern of violence and escalation, Arieal removed herself from the situation and went to her teacher.

Later when they were talking to their parents about what had happened, she said, “Well I got to thinking about what we had been talking about in RE, I though about Gandhi and wondered what the non-violent thing to do would be.”

This is precisely what I promise my dedicated group of volunteer teachers every year and remind them of every week, that religious education, that loving community changes lives.

In every corner, in every program, in every branch of this place we are about the transformation of our selves and the healing of this world. We are about growing ever more true, ever more real, ever more whole.

And this is what we pledge ourselves to today.

This is what we support with our love and our sweat and our passion and our money.

Our place in this long and rich history of this community, our current chapter in these one hundred and nineteen years of lives changed and world made more loving and just.

Our loving, supportive community, Jim and Sandy, all of us whose lives and hearts she touched.

All this, the fullness and totality of who we are and more who we will be in this dawning future, this is what we pledge ourselves to today.

This year for the first time Lauren and I are joining so many of you in pledging our support to this place. In years past we have supported our home church, the Arlington Street Church in Boston.

But this year, largely due to the amazing work of this Stewardship Team and the example of Bill and Barbara, and so many of you, we have decided to take a large jump in our practice of generosity and to start supporting both UUCB and San Mateo where she is a minister.

Many of you might not know that for years Bill and Barbara have tithed, for many years they have more than tithed, pledging over 10% of their income to the health and thriving, to the legacy and the potential and future of this place.

Lauren and I are pledging $1,000 to each of our churches, as well as continuing to support our home church, and are taking a large step this year in our journey towards tithing. We are committed to taking more such steps every year to come.

So I invite you to join Bill and Barbara and the Stewardship Team and so many other people we have heard from in the last few weeks and take a large leap in your generosity this year.

May we dive deep, this morning and always.

May we build here on our rich legacy, standing firm and strong on the shoulders of all those who have come before.

May we pledge ourselves today to our common purpose and our vibrant future.

For Arieal, for Jim, for Sandy, for our children, for all those who have yet to come through our doors,

And for this waiting world crying out for love and for justice,

Amen.