Rev. Dr. Marilyn Sewell

A sermon given at First Unitarian Church, Portland, OR

September 12, 1999

I’m not sure where the phrase "right relationship" comes from. In my own mind it is related to the Buddhists and also to the Quakers. The Quakers believe in the indwelling of the Spirit, sometimes called "the light within" or "that which is eternal": since every human being has "that of God" within, it followed for the Quakers that every human being is worthy of respect. This belief is the ground of their radical emphasis on human equality.

The Buddhists might call this light within our "Buddha nature," or the pure goodness within each of us that is there all the time, but is obscured by the world. In Buddhism the Fourth Noble Truth is the path, the way leading to the cessation of suffering. There are eight divisions, including right understanding, right thought, right speech, right action. So although the term "right relationship" is not used here, certainly it is implied.

In our own tradition during the 19^th century, Unitarians were influenced by transcendentalism, which held that the truth could be known through an intuitive connection with the Divine light within, this light that was a part of the God-stuff in the universe. And of course our First Principle is "We believe in the inherent worth and dignity of every person." That principle calls for right relationship in all our encounters.

So I have heard the term used in different contexts, and yet can place it firmly in no one tradition. Nevertheless, for me the term resonates deeply and has implications for all of my living. More than an intellectual concept, right relationship is a spiritual state. For me, it is very visceral. When I am out of right relationship, I feel agitated, off balance, out of step. On the other hand, being in right relationship gives me a sense of peace and groundedness. To get there, I have to travel through the noise of my living to that quiet inner place of truth-telling. Sometimes I don’t want to go there, because I’m afraid I won’t like what I hear. But if I want to set my spirit free, that’s precisely where I have to go.

I had an experience this past year of being out of right relationship with one of my dearest friends. This is a women with whom I was in a writing group for eight years, with whom I’ve shared loves gained and loves lost, exchanged stories about our children, wondered outloud what the future would bring. She is a brilliant writer and a loving companion. I’ve saved all her letters through the years—and I found out that she has saved all of mine. That kind of friend.

I won’t go into the messy details, but through ignorance and carelessness I deeply hurt and offended her husband. I tried to apologize to him—multiple times—but to no avail. She had not communicated with me since the incident, so I wasn’t sure where she stood on things. I sent her my new book of sermons, and months later I received a response. She wrote, "Thank you for sending your book of sermons. I haven’t been able to read them yet, because I needed to write this letter first." She explained where she felt my fault lay, and then she wrote: "I don’t want our friendship to end over this but neither can it go on unless you admit some of your responsibility here and apologize to <my husband>."

I don’t know whether she knew of all the attempts I had made to apologize. As a matter of fact, I had thought about the broken relationship almost every day for all these months. I felt angry and misjudged, I felt hurt, I felt sad, I felt guilty—all at once. I brought all this into my prayer life, but could find no relief, no peace. I have lost my friend, I thought. I was not in right relationship, and I wanted desperately to be there. But I didn’t know what to say. Maybe whatever I would say would make things worse. Months went by, and out of my fear I did not respond. Finally I came to sit with the fact that I could not control her responses, I could not control my friend’s willingness to forgive. Yes, I might lose her forever. But I had to write. I had to try. I decided, "I’m just going to do the best I can, and trust in my friend."

So I did. I tried to see the incident from her husband’s perspective, to feel how he must have felt. I was honest. I took responsibility where I thought it was mine, and where I thought I was not responsible, I said that, too. I can’t quite remember the contents of my letter exactly, but I’m sure I must have told her that I love her. She knew that my best friend in Portland had been gravely ill, and I told her that my friend had died. And at the end of the letter, I said something like this: "We have so little time on this earth, so little time for loving. My friend is dead. And one day the phone will ring, and it will be you who is gone. Or me. Let us love each other while we can."

A few weeks later I got a letter from her. I was almost afraid to open it. I had lost one friend to death. Would I lose another to a careless mistake? But, no--this story has a happy ending. She wrote, "I appreciate your thoughtful letter. I know it was heartfelt and, as far as I am concerned, your apology heals the estrangement that has really saddened me." I felt such relief. I felt such gratitude at gracious spirit. At that very moment, something within me that had been badly out of place fell back into place. I couldn’t force it. I could only invite it. We were in right relationship once again.

This experience caused me to wonder what makes right relationship possible and what prevents it. Certainly, it relies upon truth. When we lie to another, we immediately fall out of right relationship. A distance rises up between us, and we cannot bridge the gap so long as the lie remains. What else causes us to fall out of right relationship? Manipulation of another for our own purposes. Envy. Competition. Greed. Denial. Inability to forgive.

Right relationship starts, then, with our own spiritual state and with those closest to us. We need to make peace with our family of origin, to forgive them for their failings, to rest in gratitude for the good they gave us. And then our partners and our children. Can we let our partners be who they are, without demanding that they be who we want them to be? Can we genuinely respect their uniqueness? And what about our children?

Recently I did a wedding, and after the ceremony, I attended the wedding dinner at one of our better hotels here in town. I happened to be seated next to a Ph.D. psychologist, a handsome man, and clearly successful and affluent. He was a bit wary of me, because I am after all, a minister. We chatted for a while, and since I didn’t tell him he was doomed to hell or anything threatening like that, he decided that I was trustworthy. After a few glasses of wine, he leaned over and said to me very quietly, "Could I ask your advice about something?" "Certainly," I said. He said to me, "I’m worried about my 13-year-old son. He has gotten caught up in a fundamentalist religious group, and they’re taking him on hikes and picnics and he’s having a great time, but they are—well, very narrow in what they are teaching him. What do you think I should do?"

I asked him, "Well, have you ever talked with your son about your religious beliefs?"

"Well, no," he said. "You know, I’m kind of—kind of an agnostic." He sounded apologetic. But as for me, I was thinking, "What else is new?" I told him that many of my congregants were what we might call humanists, and they did not believe in God. I explained to him that agnosticism was certainly a legitimate religious perspective—in fact, maybe it was the theological stance that allows for the most openness to truth, that was most characterized by humility and reverence for the Mystery of life. "You might consider yourself a humanist, perhaps?" I said, and obviously relieved, he said, "Yes, yes, that’s what I am!"

I told him that he might start by sharing his own thoughts about religion with his son. "And do you think I ought to expose him to some alternative religion?" he asked.

"Well, yes, sure," I answered. "I understand your concerns."

This conversation caused me to reflect upon what children need from their parents and what right relationship is between parents and children. Children are not just extensions of their parents—they should be loved and respected as their own little people. They have preferences, and they can make decisions. But because they lack maturity, when they make decisions that are harmful, parents are obliged to keep them safe.

Some parents are actually afraid of their children, afraid if they say no, their children won’t like them. Parenting is not about being liked. It’s about loving children and keeping them safe and letting them try their wings when they’re ready. When parents—or teachers, for that matter-- do not claim their authority, children feel unsafe.

I remember one time as a single mom when my son Madison, who was then about 7 or 8 years old, was acting out, throwing a screaming fit to get his way. You know the scene. I ended up straddling him, pinning his arms on the floor, and I got down right in his face, and I said, in very measured tones, "I am the mommy and you are the little boy." Parents, we don’t encourage our teachers to use this technique in our religious education classes, you’ll be glad to know. But my son needed to know, above all else, that somebody besides him was in charge.

What about right relationship with our neighbors? We need to get to know our neighbors. I’m lucky enough to be in a neighborhood where people are neighborly. For a while I was going to a health club to get my exercise, but I discovered that the club was essentially a lonely place—I was relating chiefly to machines. Now I walk, rain or shine, in my neighborhood. I’ve decided that I want to be convivial. I speak to people I encounter. I engage them in conversation. I say things like, "What beautiful roses you have!" or "What a cute pup—what kind of dog is that?" I stop and stroke their cats. I fetch balls that children throw in the street.

The only thing that threatens my newfound neighborliness is the dreaded cell phone. I have what is perhaps an irrational hatred of all cell phones, because they separate me from people, from people in what I would call our common space: sidewalks and front yards and movie theatres. Once in a while when I am out for a walk, I will pass a house where someone is watering his lawn with one hand and talking on a cell phone with the other. I feel the anger rising up in me. I have this fantasy that I will go over and snatch the cell phone away from the person and stomp it into the flower bed and say, "Dammit, I want to be convivial!" I have refrained from doing this because clearly this would not constitute right relationship.

And what is right relationship with the land? Books have been written about this topic, books by writers like Wendell Berry and Barry Lopez and the poet Gary Snyder. Suffice it to say that I know that I am a part of the consumerist culture that all of us Americans live in—that is a given—and I know that I am out of touch with the sacredness of the land. I did a simple thing the other day that was the most enjoyable thing I’ve done in a long time—a friend and I picked some blackberries that would otherwise go to waste and made some jam. The fruit of the vine. Somehow that little activity—the picking, the squashing, the cooking, the pouring—made me feel whole in a way I’ve not felt for a long time. Our Seventh Principle people—our members working on environmental issues--(and these folks are hard-core, I have to say) have made me, and I know have made many of us, more aware of our connection to the earth and what it would mean to move to more of a right relationship with the earth. Now when I start to throw away a piece of plastic, I think, "Five hundred years in the landfill! Is this what I want to do for my children and grandchildren?" Who knows? Recycling. Car pooling. Composting may be next.

In Berkeley about 10 years back, I was touring a friend from Kentucky around the U.C.B. campus. We passed a dumpster and on its side in huge letters were the words RECYCLE OR DIE. She looked at me and said, "People out here are a little--intense, aren’t they?" But you know as the years have gone by, I realize that the sign was right. It begins with a spiritual death as we misuse our source of life and leads to literal illness and death.

We need to be in right relationship in our economic lives. There is an alarming movement of resources from our public lives to our private lives. No taxes for public schools, but plenty of private money for private schools. "Utne Reader" in this last issue featured an article entitled "McMansion Mania." I don’t think of Oregonians as being ostentatious, but surprisingly the article begins, "On Northwest Skyline Boulevard overlooking Portland, Oregon, a French country manor sits majestically atop a 25-acre hillside, offering 360-degree views of the mountains and the Willamette Valley." I’ll spare you the other details, but the article continues by describing other mansions being built right now, right here in Portland. The proliferation of such houses parallels the decline of affordable housing for the middle-class and working class. These trends reflect, of course, the increasing disparity of resources in our country.

We can begin our justice seeking in economic matters by considering our own economic priorities—how we spend our money, and why. I have to say I was taken aback a few months ago when a young woman I know told me about a dog bakery that had just opened over in the Northwest. She was excited to have discovered this place, and she recounted how she had spent $50 on treats for her little Woofie. Then just a few days ago I read an article about the 6 doggie day-care centers that have opened in the Portland area. For $20 a day, you can leave Woofie in the center, where he will have companions and receive appropriate stimulation. He can watch doggie videos and even dress up in funny doggie outfits. In California—the cutting edge of the absurd--there is doggie psychotherapy, and even doggie liposuction for your cocker spaniel when her thighs get too fat. Now, I don’t want to be a wet blanket or anything—and I certainly don’t want to suggest that I am anti-pet--but does anyone else see this as a little on the decadent side? Is our money really our money, to do with whatever we wish? What is right relationship between those who have way too much and those who are struggling just to survive? In my own life, I don’t have a clear answer as to how I should spend my money—your decadence is my necessity. But it’s a crucial question that we all must raise over and over again.

Now last, I want to talk for a moment about right relationship in our church. How we treat one another is the most telling sign of our spiritual development. I have to say that I am amazed at the patience and love and respect that are so evident in this church community. I have sat in many, many meetings during the past seven years, and though of course people sometimes have differences of opinion, I’ve never really heard those differences move into disrespect. In all these years, the worst thing I have noted is that maybe four or five times, I heard an edge in someone’s voice. Usually it was my voice. Actually, I am in awe of you people. I can truthfully say I have never been in an institution that was so healthy, with people so responsible, so authentically caring as you are. You folks are so easy to love.

And not only is there caring among us, there is commitment. Because we are healthy, we can genuinely be mission-centered. We are committed to something larger than ourselves, and that commitment keeps us focused. We do not fritter away our time arguing over what colors are on the banner; we don’t have a running battle between the humanists and those more spirit-centered. We don’t have time for that, for we have a great work to do, and we’re doing it. We’re growing spiritually, we’re coming more completely into right relationship with one another, and we’re making justice in the larger community. We are a great church, not because we are big, not because we are powerful, but because we know what we serve. Let us keep our eyes on the prize.

So be it. Amen.

 
PRAYER

Spirit of Life, we come at this time of new beginnings thankful for this church—what it means to our lives and what it means to our community. We have a great work before us, but we know if we are called to do this work, we will find a way. Lead us in the ways of right relationship, hold us fast in the bonds of love, as we dedicate ourselves to the greater good.

 
BENEDICTION

Go from this house now, back out into the world, and live in right relationship with the earth and with all those who move upon it. Go in love and go in peace. Amen.