Sunday Service: How Do We Help Each Other? May 24th, 2015

How Do We Help One Another

By Reverend Tom Capo

Delivered on 5/24/2015

      A lot of things drew me to DuPage Unitarian Universalist Church last year: your hunger for social justice/social action causes, your hands-on involvement with PADS and Bridges, helping homeless individuals and families, your eagerness to embrace the use of technology on Sunday mornings.  Another quality that made this church stand out for me was the way you take care of each other, and in particular, the Pastoral Ministry Associates, or PMA, Committee.  Revitalized in 2012, the PMA have been able and effective partners in ministry.  They call people, write cards, monitor our Joys and Concerns Facebook page, and generally reach out to the people here in this community who are in crisis, in need, in pain.  This past year our PMA Committee created an on-call schedule to keep track of and follow up with the many members and friends in need.  And one of the things I love about this congregation is that many of you have formally or informally reached out to people in need in this congregation to give them help and/or support.  This winter and spring in particular, have seen an uptick in the number of members and friends who have needed some support, and I have been so gratified and impressed by the consistently nurturing and caring responses this community offers.  DuPage Unitarian Universalist Church is truly a community of love and truly understands how important expressing that love for one another is.  

      And yet, this community, we, are not like one of Shakespeare’s fictional characters.  Our bounty is not “boundless as the sea.”  And so many times, though we love truly and deeply, we don’t find that “the more [love we] give… the more [we] have” to give.  While there is truth in how our hearts can grow as we share our love with one another and with people in need, unlike a fictional character, our love is not infinite.  We are human, and like it or not, we have limits.  

Many of us have been working long and hard this year helping members and friends who are in need, and I’ve wondered about whether some of us might experience some compassion fatigue.

“You cannot say, I need you

So you say, I like your shoes

I cannot say, I see your gods have failed you

So I say, your eyes look so sad

You fold your arms, the sentences for my crimes is life

I lean in, let’s look at those chains

You look past me, eyes wide, I am alone

And the night is coming for me

My heart pounds

Knowing what waits there

Your breath stops to keep

The next door locked and shut

But my left foot

Is already in it

Outside the trees

Are restless with light

In the settling quiet

Each filament of dust

Streaming in from earth or star

Delivers us, mote by mote

From the hour of undoing

Into the hour of mercy

On what wings

We cannot say”

This poem was written by psychotherapist, mystic, and poet Frances Hatfield. 

      I want to be clear that we will always have people in need in the congregation and we should be willing as a community to step up and be there to help them.  This sermon is not about telling people who are in pain, who are suffering, to “suck it up.”  This sermon is about how we care for others and care for ourselves.

Sunday Service: Christianity, A Different View - February 8, 2015

Christianity, A Different View

Reverend Tom Capo

Preached on 2/8/2015

Before the sermon, I offer this prayer or meditation.  It is selections from the The Thunder: Perfect Mind.  In December 1945, local farmers in Nag Hamadi, Egypt found a sealed earthenware jar containing thirteen leather-bound papyrus codices, together with pages torn from another book.  It is believed that the documents found at Nag Hamadi were texts used by various sects of early Christians, but the texts had been deemed heretical once the church began to formalize the books of the Christian New Testament.  The Thunder: Perfect Mind was contained in those thirteen leather-bound papyrus codices.

I invite you to open your mind, heart, and spirit to these words:

I was sent forth from the power,

and I have come to those who reflect upon me, 

and I have been found among those who seek after me. 

Look upon me, you who reflect upon me,

and you hearers, hear me. 

You who are waiting for me, take me to yourselves. 

And do not banish me from your sight.

And do not make your voice hate me, nor your hearing…

For I am the first and the last.

I am the honored one and the scorned one.

I am the whore and the holy one.

I am the wife and the virgin.

I am <the mother> and the daughter.

I am the members of my mother.

I am the barren one

and many are her sons. 

I am she whose wedding is great,

and I have not taken a husband. 

I am the midwife and she who does not bear.

I am the solace of my labor pains.

I am the bride and the bridegroom,

and it is my husband who begot me. 

I am the mother of my father

and the sister of my husband 

and he is my offspring… 

I am the silence that is incomprehensible

and the idea whose remembrance is frequent. 

I am the voice whose sound is manifold

and the word whose appearance is multiple. 

I am the utterance of my name…

For I am knowledge and ignorance.

I am shame and boldness.

I am shameless; I am ashamed.

I am strength and I am fear.

I am war and peace.

Give heed to me…

Hear me, you hearers

and learn of my words, you who know me. 

I am the hearing that is attainable to everything;

I am the speech that cannot be grasped. 

I am the name of the sound

and the sound of the name. 

I am the sign of the letter

and the designation of the division.

Blessed Be…Amen

Sermon

One of the symbols of early Christianity was not a cross; it was an ankor.  This symbol was used to encourage hope in a time of persecution, and held its meaning from the Hebrew scripture: “We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure.” 

As we begin our journey I thought I would start with this from the Gospel of Thomas, an early Christian text, “Jesus said: “Let the one who seeks continue seeking until he finds.  And when that one finds he will be disturbed, and once that one is disturbed he will become awed, and will rule as a king over the all.”  

We are all seekers here; that it the very essence of our faith, to seek truth and meaning individually and collectively, to share with one another and be enriched and disturbed by one another.  To look more closely at ourselves, each other, and the universe around us, and be awed by what we see.  We will find that life is not static, belief is not static, the universe is not static. If we believe in the divine, perhaps we will find even the divine is not static.  We are all co-creators, integral parts of the beauty and wonder that surrounds us.  

Sunday Service: ISIS and the Middle East - November 16th, 2014

   ISIS and the Middle East

By Reverend Tom Capo  

11/16/14

    “They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up swords against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore; but they shall all sit under their own vines and fig trees, and no one shall make them afraid.”  This quote from the Jewish Bible prophet Micah is a statement of hope for our world.  I wish I could say that this is happening right now, but I’d have to be blind to the many wars and atrocities that are occurring in so many places.  This image of the Tao with peace and justice represents the complexity that we face.  I believe all of us would prefer that the human race would sit together peacefully under vines and trees with no-one prodding us, through words or actions, to be afraid, but that, most emphatically, is not the world we live in.  How do we balance justice with peace? 

     What has been on my heart for some time has been the group ISIS, also known as ISL or the Islamic State or Isil or Daesh.  This splinter group from the Al-Queda network has taken over vast swaths of Iraq and Syria.  They are well armed, extremely well-funded, and have lots of people from around the world volunteering to fight for them.  They have used mass killings, beheadings, intimidation, and fear to control their own soldiers as well as the people in the cities that they have taken over.  As far as I know, they seem to have no interest in peaceful dialogue as a means to their ends.   Unitarian minister, Transcendentalist, orator, and poet, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote: “Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding.”  So how do we reach an understanding with people who have no interest in any understanding beyond, “join us or die?” How do we reconcile Emerson’s lofty philosophy with the fact of a violent fundamentalist group whose rampage must be halted?

    I am increasingly disturbed and, let’s be honest, afraid of what they are doing and what they might do.  I am having some flashbacks to feelings that I had during 9-11 when the twin towers were destroyed and the country was afraid—having experienced a  catastrophic foreign terrorist attack on United States soil for the first time in modern history.  I remember my irrational fear while interacting with a Middle-eastern stranger in a grocery store a few days after the attack.  Yet, after a time, I was able to find an inner peace. I chose not to live in fear; I chose not to give power over my behavior to a group that wanted me to be afraid; and I chose not to treat my Middle-eastern and Islamic brothers and sisters differently because of what some extremists chose to do.

     What’s helping me cope this time is an experience I had about 6 years ago, while serving in Cedar Rapids.  Tensions were high between the Jewish and the Islamic communities due to what was going on in the Middle East.  People here in the United States had family and friends who had been wounded or were in imminent danger due to the fighting in Israel.   The Rabbi at the time defended the right of the people of Israel to protect themselves against the bombings of innocents, and one of the Imams compared the Israelis’ persecution of the Palestinians along the West Bank to the Holocaust.  They took this dialogue to Facebook, and predictably, the tension between the two groups escalated.  A number of faith leaders in Cedar Rapids, of which I was one, decided to hold a Peace service on neutral ground, the Unitarian Universalist church that I was serving.  Both the Imam and the Rabbi were invited and attended.  They consciously put aside their reactive and inflammatory words.  The Rabbi said a beautiful, elegant, and loving prayer for the Palestinian children along the West Bank.  Then the Iman stood up, thanking the Rabbi for his words while he shook his hand, and then prayed for peace for all the people who live in Israel.  Some of you may be sitting there thinking, “so what? That didn’t solve the conflict in the Middle East.”  And you’re right, it didn’t.   But it did bring peace to our own multi-national community.  In a sense, we thought globally and acted locally, and the result was peace between the Jewish and Islamic communities in Cedar Rapids.

    The Rabbi prayed for the children, just as we did today in our prayer.  But again I wonder what is the balance between protection and love—how do we know when we go too far in one direction, thinking of protection, and believing that we are at war primarily because we are safeguarding the world for our children or our children’s children?  Mother Teresa wrote:  “If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.”  The Rabbi and the Imam remembered that we belong to one another, but there are so many in our world who forget.

Resources: Those Who Are Homeless

Reverend Tom's powerful sermon last Sunday was paired so well by music, story, and video.  Asking each of us to start seeing the person behind the box - to start giving to all in the ways we can.

We encourage you to watch, listen, read some of the amazing pieces that helped make the sermon so powerful.

In addition, if you can give of your time, your energy, or your resources DUUC works with the following local groups to end homelessness and provide temporary (and long-term) housing.

DuPage County PADS

Bridge Communities

The Lady in the Box written by Ann McGovern
(find it at your local library or hometown bookseller!)

(Youth RE Director Steve Cooper reads The Lady in the Box)

Make Them Visible Campaign Video

Would You Harbor Me?

Song by Ysaye M. Barnwell 

Performace by the Choral Project (almost as flawless as our own DUUC choir's performance!)

Homeless
Song by Paul Simon and Joseph Shabalala
Performance Ladysmith Black Mombazo

DUUC congregants were invited to decorate some of the boxes that will be used for  Sleep Out Saturday.