Seekers and Orphans: For Whom Shall We Be?
Sermon by Stephen D. Edington, September 19, 1999
My travels this summer included what has become my annual trek to the mid-coast area of the State of Maine; a trip I've been making for some 15 summers now. As many of you know, the first congregation I served upon entering the UU ministry was in the town of Rockland, Maine. We developed such an attachment to the place that my family and I have been making a summer trip up there ever since we moved away in 1984. On this particular trip it was my pleasure to meet the gentleman who is beginning, this fall, his ministry with the church I once served. His name is Rolfe Gerhardt. He's around sixty years old, and he's coming back to Maine, where he served his first UU church in the early 1960s (but not the one in Rockland). He's just completed a very good ministry with a rather large UU church in Richmond, Virginia.
Rolfe's avocation is making mandolins, and he was getting his workshop set up when I stopped by. We compared our avocations for awhile--he makes and sells mandolins; I fool around with Kerouac. We didn't find a whole lot of commonality there, other than our common agreement that such diversions are good things for ministers to have, so long as you keep them in their proper perspective.
One of the reasons I wanted to chat with him, however--in addition to hearing about how he was sizing up one of my old ministry stomping grounds--was because of a fascinating article he'd written for a publication put out by the UU Minister's Association about a clear paradigm shift he's seen in the nature of the UU ministry, and in Unitarian Universalism itself, over the course of his 35 year ministry. Now, the phrase "paradigm shift" has got to be one of the most over-worked terms in today's English, and except for where I'll be quoting someone else, I'm going to avoid using it as much as I can. I should, however, offer a definition. A paradigm is a certain kind of thought structure or way of thinking about something. It is the assumptions we usually unconsciously hold in approaching a particular issue. It is a particularly ordered way of perceiving and understanding some aspect of reality.
A paradigm shift, as the term suggests, is when a thought structure or way of perceiving something, noticeably changes. A couple of weeks ago my son informed me that my neckties were hopelessly "retro"--stuck somewhere back in the late 1970s--and that I really need to get out a little more when it comes to keeping my wardrobe contemporary. I am, apparently, stuck in a 1970s paradigm of my own when it comes to what constitutes appropriate neckware. So I am attempting a paradigm shift in my thinking, and buying, on this matter. Gordon took me on a shopping trip recently, and I'm wearing one of my "new paradigm" ties today.
The paradigm shift that my friend Rev. Gerhardt is suggesting is one that is far more worthy of our attention, though, than my choice of ties. His thesis is that the UU ministry has, over the past 35 years, gone from being a ministry of adventure to being a ministry of healing; that we have become more of a religion for "Orphans" than one for "Seekers." I'll say at the outset that I believe Rolfe's point is overdrawn, but I also know from personal experience that in writing an article it is often necessary to overdraw your point in order to adequately get it across. I'm going to read some of what he has to say, because I believe he's identifying something of importance for us to be exploring as we begin another year in the life of this congregation; a year that will bring us to the end of the most amazing century that I daresay this planet, for better and for worse, has seen.
Rev. Gerhardt:
"I am a searcher, always have been. I came into this religion, actually into Universalism first, because it was a searching, adventuresome, risk-taking, growth- oriented religion. [Walt] Whitman sang to my soul in words I first heard in one of our churches, 'Afoot and lighthearted I take to the open road...' The words I was hearing in our churches on Sunday set the course of my life and brought me home to our religion. I absorbed so deeply Frost's 'The Road Not Taken,' I responded so fully to Thoreau's urging me to march to the beat of a different drummer, that I turned away from preparations for a career in industry and began to prepare for the liberal ministry; it beckoned me as the most exciting way to live my life ... My personal paradigm, shared by so many Unitarian Universalist ministers 30 years ago, was that liberal religion is meant to be an adventure."
To make a personal interjection here, while Rolfe was some 10-12 years ahead of me in his entry into the UU ministry, the motives he cites for choosing it are strikingly similar to my own. Like him, Unitarian Universalism represented for me the open road, the unexplored path, the journey of discovery and adventure in one's search for meaning and purpose and for a spiritual dimension to one's life. It represented for me, and for him, an alternative to a prescribed religion to which one is expected to adapt. I was attracted then, back in the mid-to-late 1970s, and continue to be attracted now, to a religion that is lived "on the road"--so to speak. Come to think of it, the fact that I made some of my most life-defining choices in the latter part of the 1970's, could well explain my taste in ties. (You see how this all fits together?)
It was, in fact, just as I was entering the UU ministry that the "you-know-what" that Rev. Gerhardt is writing about was starting to get underway. Let's return now to his observations:
"I read a new paradigm for our ministry when I scan these opening words from (a collection of UU worship materials) for 1995. 'With the worries and woes of our world weighing upon us, we enter in...' 'We are called to seek and share comfort for the hurts that afflict...' 'Here we gather in strength as well as brokenness of body and spirit, and here may we find healing and peace...'"This is only a quick sample, to which I add the multitude of healing rituals and support groups now common among us. This is not to say that adventure is completely absent in what we speak and preach of in our religion, but I question whether religious and spiritual adventure is still the paradigm of our religion, the emphasis that lured me into our ministry and has kept me here to this day.
"It could be that the new paradigm of healing is a healthy feminization [and please note he does call it a 'healthy' feminization] of our ministry compared to my generation's macho attitude toward pain. The previous generation of male ministers often had their attitude encapsulated in the samurai movie in which, during the battle, one character was slashed open from stem to stern, following which his companion shook the dying man and shouted, 'Brace up! Brace up!' More compassion than that is needed, but if compassion and healing are all our religion becomes, then it would be sad to lose that rare and wonderful emphasis on religious adventure that is almost uniquely Unitarian Universalist."
These are very wise words. They come from someone who, in a very real way, is standing between two paradigms; and who sees a certain amount of merit in the more newly emerging one. Compassion and healing are a necessary part of any viable religion, but Rev. Gerhardt is hardly ready to let go of the older paradigm that first attracted him. He prefers, that is, to dance with the one who brought him to the party. Once again, I largely identify with the place where he finds himself. But I'm also aware of how I have moved between the paradigms he describes in the course of my 20+ years in the UU ministry; more than half of those years being spent with this congregation.
In looking back over a number of the sermons I've prepared and delivered in just the past 4-5 years, I became aware of how many of them have addressed such themes as how we find wholeness in the midst of brokenness; how we find healing from the psychic and spiritual wounds we've received--even the ones that are self-inflicted; about what it means to be a compassionate and caring community in response to the needs that confront and challenge us. Beyond the personal, I am gratified at how we as both a congregation and as individuals have sought to be bearers of greater levels of "justice, equity, and compassion in human relations", as our Purposes and Principles call us to do. And like my friend and colleague who has re-located himself to the place where I began my career in the UU ministry, I, too, continue to feel most strongly attracted to a ministry of adventure and joyful journey-making. But the challenge, as I see it, is not to choose a single paradigm, but to find how we can best move between the paradigms he suggests in the ongoing life and work of this liberal religious congregation here at the onset of a new church year.
In speaking to that challenge, I am going to go one more round with Rev. Gerhardt. Towards the end of his article he introduces two archetypes, whom he calls the "Orphan" and the "Seeker." He offers them as representative of the shifting paradigm he describes. He gets these archetypes from the work a psychologist named Terry Tafoya, who specialized in grief work, and with whom, I must acknowledge, I am unfamiliar. The archetypes themselves, however, are easy enough to grasp. With respect to how I'm using the term here archetype simply means a particular word/characterization that used to designate a larger category, or type, of person.
From the text once more:
"The Orphan archetype is energized by feelings of pain, disillusionment, loss of faith, failure of hopes and dreams, and powerlessness--common feelings in our impersonal world with shifting structures and values...The Orphan seeks out persons, groups, and structures that will help (him/her) feel safe again. From there the Orphan can grow into finding a shared strength in an interdependent group. The group and its sense of community become salvation for the Orphan. Another common archetype that is called up by the challenges of our culture is the Seeker. The Seeker feels less pain than alienation, dissatisfaction and emptiness. And markedly different is that the Seeker uses feelings of uneasiness as motivation to explore and wander, to take risks and search out the new. The Seeker is always looking for something better, ultimately for spiritual transformation. This is vital information for our ministry, for the Orphan and the Seeker come to our churches looking for very different messages and structures."
Rolfe continues on in this vein, with his underlying point being that the Orphan is primarily in need of healing, and the Seeker is primarily looking for adventure. He concludes on this note:
"Which of these two paradigms--healing or adventure--we put forward as the primary style of Unitarian Universalism will determine the very image of who we are as ministers ... I don't want to make these totally exclusive ... a successful religious institution must help us employ all archetypes for effective living. But the people now newly looking to religion are most apt to be in need of adventure or healing."
So while he wishes to make room for both, Rev. Gerhardt ends by clearly stating where his preferences lie:
"It is my final hope that whatever new paradigms are brought into Unitarian Universalism and our ministry, we will continue to be there for the Seekers, be there as ministers of the religion of adventure."
This piece was written as one UU minister addressing some concerns and ideas to his fellow clergy, and it works very well in that vein. It also frames very well, I think, the question of "for whom shall we be?" for both Unitarian Universalist ministers and congregations alike. This is why I present it to you as we begin this church year. The easy answer to the question, of course, is we should be for both. That also happens to be the correct answer. What's not so easy to manage, however, is actually doing it--actually being a religion of both adventure and healing, and offering a religion that meaningfully speaks to the orphan and seeker alike. In attempting to answer that question I'll also be giving my response to Rev. Gerhardt's article.
The point I would make in response is that while archetypes are very helpful in sizing up a situation or in framing an issue or problem, there is a danger, or hazard, in taking them too literally. By that I mean it's hard to find an actual human being who perfectly fits an archetype. Individual human beings may well have certain kinds of inclinations, but they are not categories. For example, I primarily fit into the Seeker profile. I often experience the restlessness that sparks the journey for new insights and meanings, for new ways of looking at life and living. I like restlessness. It has a way of pulling me out of a funk and getting me to where I need to be. It was a restlessness first with the religion of my upbringing, and then with the one of my early adulthood, that pushed me into Unitarian Universalism. But I'm hardly invulnerable to feelings, at times, of loss and pain and disillusionment. I am a Seeker who also has his "Orphan moments," and I need a religious community that will attend to both modes. Many of the folk I've worked with, and ministered to and with, in the congregations I've served over the years have a similar type of mix.
Seeker that I primarily am, I also know that there are those men and women do come to our communities primarily needing a place to put together the broken parts of their lives more than they need Walt Whitman's call to take lighthearted to the open road. I believe we need to be here for them at just such a point in their lives. We can be a community of healing as well as one of adventure; I truly believe that. But staying with my point that no single human being can be fully defined by an archetype, I would say that every Orphan has something of the Seeker in him/her somewhere. I believe one of the tasks or missions of a liberal religious community is to help them find that Seeker part and lift it up and give it a chance to flourish and grow. One does not pursue healing, after all, simply for the sake of having a nice looking scar. Healing is pursued for the sake of coming to live as whole of a life as possible.
The emphasis upon healing and upon restoring brokenness that has characterized our movement in more recent years, as Rev. Gerhardt correctly, I feel, observes, may well be a corrective to an earlier period in our movement's history where the idea of being the "masters of our fate and the captains of our souls" was taken to unrealistic lengths. As such, I welcome it. But I also feel that it is largely the call of a religion of adventure that constitutes the most healing balm of all.
It is my hope that the months ahead will have a large element of adventure to them as our shared life as a congregation goes forward. Adventure, as I'm using the term here, encompasses more than just finding what gives zest to our lives, exciting as that can be. How we engage with a sometimes perplexing, sometimes troubling, and sometimes frightening world is also part of that adventure. I plan to speak to some of those perplexities, and to some of those aspects of the cultural milieu in which we live that I do find either troubling or frightening.
We continue to see deadly outbursts of rage and hatred--one just this past week--that are both frightening and perplexing. How we be a people of hope and human promise in the face of such hatred is an enormous and sobering challenge. One of the more crucial searches we can engage in is the search for what lies at the heart of such perverse heartlessness. We are already in the throes, God help us, of a Presidential campaign in which practically every candidate across the political spectrum feels the need to stress his or her religious background and beliefs and their strong commitment to upholding certain eternal values. I regard this as neither good nor bad in and of itself, but it raises some interesting questions about the place of religion in our public, civic life. We need to seek some answers to this one.
At the risk of sounding like a Luddite, I become increasingly concerned about what our ever multiplying advances in communications technology are doing to our sense of personhood, of who we are. I am beginning to wonder if it is still possible to cultivate a personal self, if it is still possible to have a boundary for the "uniquely me." Who am I if I have no place to which I can personally repair? The New York Times columnist, Thomas Friedman, has suggested that "over-connectedness" is the "social disease of the twenty-first century." I think he's onto something, and I've got some thoughts of my own percolating on this one.
I've got a number of thoughts percolating, actually; and it is definitely the better part of wisdom to leave them in the pot for today. I offer this very sketchy preview as a way of reiterating my point that a religion of adventure is one that encompasses far more that the quest for personal fulfillment--worthy a pursuit as that may be. A religion of adventure, and a religion for the seeker is one that looks for what it mean to be an authentic human being, and a caring human community, in the face of all that poses a challenge, if not a threat, to our individual and to our shared humanity. Engaging such a challenge is an integral part of any journey of meaning and discovery.
I have long appreciated the ministry of song that Rev. Ric Masten has brought to our Unitarian Universalist movement. Ric celebrates his 70th birthday this year, which means he's seen us UUs move through a number of paradigms in the course of his life. Ric is a troubadour, who captures something of the spirit of Walt Whitman in his life and in his music. He wrote the song "Let It Be A Dance" over 20 years ago, and I feel it continues to capture the mood of our faith today. As you sing the words I think you'll see how it speaks to both the Seeker and the Orphan, how it calls us to both a religion of adventure and of healing. Let Ric's words set our tone for this year; and "Let It Be A Dance."Copyright © 1999 by the Unitarian-Universalist Church of Nashua NH. All rights reserved.
