CARING IS EVERYTHING!
Research psychologists have told us that babies need the warmth of tenderness to grow up whole, that monkey babies crave it so much they’ll cling to wire dummies wrapped in fur, and, furthermore, that the babies held and stroked by real mothers emerge as healthy young monkeys while those who had only the wire-and-fur mothers become neurotic.
While I’m never going to be a mother, I’ve had a mother and so has everyone of us in this sanctuary, one biological mother, plus additional mothers of varying closeness and power in our lives. Whether we’re women or men, we must all make sufficient peace with the mother-realities in our existence. We can all heal the wounds and claim the gifts of our mother-child bonds.
For me my mother tie has been the central dyad of longest duration and strongest import in my life. I sometimes feel apologetic talking about such a favorable mother-son kinship, when so many have had wire-and-fur mothers. You might recall that Tolstoy used to say: “Happy families are all alike!” I don’t agree with him, plus, I can’t help it, if I’ve suffered from the crime of an essentially happy childhood and adulthood. And while my mother-son connection had its flaws and warts, the defects and blemishes never eroded our bedrock bond.
Indeed, my mom is the main reason I went into the ministry and have sustained it for 40+ years and really why, for me caring is the cornerstone of religious life. So I dedicate this sermon to my mom, three years after she died, nearing 96 years of age. Yes, genuine caring is everything. Caring is our core calling, and all of us are called.
I want to launch today’s sermon with perhaps the primal phrase in all of scripture: “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” These twin commandments from both the Hebrew and Christian scriptures are so easy to state and so difficult to live.
We humans can be obstreperous and prone to nastiness. Yes, loving humans up close may just be the toughest assignment we earthlings ever receive. Yet I’m persuaded that loving myself and loving my neighbor are imperatives for the good life, and if we faithfully serve these commandments, then we will never stray far from our mission on earth.
“Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself” literally means “as much as” “not more or less than.” There’s an implied equal sign in this sentence, for you can’t fully love your neighbor without actively enjoying yourself or feeling at peace with yourself. Now you may idolize another person, be infatuated with or dependent upon them, but you can’t truly care about your neighbor without having a similar density of respect and affection for yourself. It just won’t work.
And contrary to popular belief, our hearts should not be given away to others, because they’re constantly needed by their original owners. We can share our hearts, but we can never give them away.
So the basic, indisputable religious truth is that love or caring, the genuine article, is indivisible. Love thy neighbor as thyself! Now, remember I’m not talking about narcissism where we’re stuck on some feeble, shaky image of ourselves, but I’m referring to a fundamental self-caring that grounds us and enables us to pour forth compassion…nourishing both neighbor and earth with overflowing affection.
In short, our deepest self is finally found only through loving beyond our own egos. We will never uncover ourselves through ourselves. That’s why all the self-help books in the world can only deliver partial wisdom.
So, life’s basic question stands: “Who is my neighbor?” In recent times we’ve thankfully evolved a global consciousness that expands the concept of neighbor to include not only friends and acquaintances but also strangers and foreigners, and non-human existence as well. Believe me, I’m concerned with Summit expanding your exemplary social justice outreach here in Santee and beyond, but today I want to focus on neighbor as referring to those persons living among us, those brothers and sisters who dwell here in our chosen congregation.
We often forget that members and friends of our beloved church are our neighbors too and covet our care and concern just as much as neighbors far afield. The sad reality is that we Unitarian Universalists, blessed with an ardent prophetic conscience, are sometimes stronger in our social outreach to outsiders in need than in personal inreach to the hurting in our own families.
This is often the case because it’s trickier to care upclose than afar–always has been and always will be. It’s more demanding to assist others with our own hands than with our money, with eye-to-eye caring than through the mail or external projects. And it’s less dramatic to drive a fellow parishioner to church or take them a hot meal than to march for civil liberties or sign an initiative for reproductive rights.
Now don’t get me wrong. Both are crucial for the full-fledged religious journey: outreach and inreach, service to the larger world and caring for our own Summitarians.
Alas, it’s been said that Unitarian Universalism when confronted, for example, with Jesus on the cross might spend more time producing petitions to halt crucifixions than actually caring directly for this dying person.
Again, I say, as religious individuals we don’t have a choice between outreach and inreach; we’re called to love our neighbors both inside and outside our ranks. Authentic caring is indivisible. In our Summit Aspiration we voice every Sunday we utter twin vows: we say “service is our prayer” and we pledge “to help one another in fellowship.” Both/and!
Social justice and interpersonal caregiving are as Siamese twins; when you tear them asunder, both wither and die. Hence, on Mother’s Day 2007, we’re reminded to serve those in need, beyond our four walls, or our religion becomes ingrown…and reminded to serve those, within our four walls, or our religion becomes a fraud. Both/And. I’m proud to tell you that Summit does both quite well, but I urge you never to rest on your laurels…especially now that you have your own home and newcomers are arriving in numbers and fresh community needs will be arising.
Today, we’re focusing upon inreach, next week upon outreach.
We like to claim that we Unitarian Universalists are reasonably comfortable, sane, and sufficient. Since everyone in our congregational boat is in essentially good emotional, physical and spiritual shape, we’re free to expend our resources and energies on those who are truly in trouble–namely the poor, the homeless, the oppressed.
Not so fast, my friends. Don’t be swayed by another 100% half-truth. I know my own life only too well to make such an erroneous generalization and so do you. In our modest crossection of humanity here at Summit we aren’t immune to disruption, depression, disease, and death. There isn’t a member of our congregation who doesn’t also hold membership in the largest fellowship in the world–the fellowship of those who bear the mark of suffering and pain. Sometimes secret and unnoticeable pain!
In this very religious community there are financial woes, terminal illnesses, runaway youth, victims or perpetrators of sexual abuse, and terrible loneliness. There are families burdened by chronic mental illness; there are couples who aren’t doing well. Members and friends of Summit are hospitalized, grieving, disabled, facing overwhelming job pressures or loss of employment, homebound or institutionalized, experiencing a spiritual crisis or chemically dependent, as well as wrestling in one recovery program or another.
There are individuals in our Summit Fellowship who may experience an unplanned pregnancy, or who have to terminate one, or who are unsuccessfully trying to get pregnant. Others are experiencing the birth or adoption of a child; still others feel embattled as single parents.
There are fellow Summitarians to your very right and left who have been affected by accidental or natural disasters. Our very own in this tribe have been jailed or imprisoned. And many of you have experienced the stress of moving to or from San Diego as will the Green family come this July. Be unfailingly patient and gentle with Kathleen, Mitchell, and Adam, for they will soon rocket off the Rahe psycho-social stress chart, due to multiple disruptions in their lives, however positive the changes may prove!
And there are plenty of us who feel isolated, disoriented, despondent and don’t need professional help so much as spiritual peers willing to be present, to listen, to call, to comfort, to hug. Remember we’re not a creedal but a covenantal community. In a creedal faith you’re united because of shared beliefs; in a covenantal faith we’re united because of shared trust and caring.
As Unitarian Universalists, we don’t promise to believe alike but rather to love alike as our Unitarian founder Frances David said in the 16th century. Our covenant is to trust one another enough to ask for help when we’re down and to offer assistance when we’re able. Our covenant is to listen to and learn from the strangest of strangers in our household–yes, to love alike even when we may not believe alike.
To phrase it biblically, we’re members, one with another, members of the same body. And when there is an ache or loss, torment or separation in one of the limbs, our whole body shudders and rallies to restore equilibrium. Our Summit Caring Committee says, in effect, to our religious body: if one of our arms gets caught in the door, then the other arm needs to help set it free. You and I are intertwining limbs of the same body. We can’t save one another from anguish, but we must serve one another in the throes of it.
Our Caring Committee, under the faithful, attentive leadership of Rod Orth, is responsible for providing a clearing house, along with your minister, for the visits, phone calls, transportation and support needs of Summit Fellowship. Ours will never be a perfect system, it will occasionally break down and periodically need to be revised or expanded. All I know is that caring isn’t a passing fancy.
And we urge you to be strong enough to give care and vulnerable enough to receive care. And, most of all, know well that the caregivers at Summit are you: they are neither outside counselors nor paid consultants but spiritual sisters and brothers, companions, your peers. They are you, fellow members of the same body. So we can’t say, I’ll let the caring committee do the caregiving at Summit any more than the stewards during our Commitment Drive get us off the hook of pledging ourselves. Summit is a religious co-operative and covets the hearts and hands of everyone in our Summit congregation. Caring is a calling, and we’re all called!
Friends, when we come to the end of our earthly existence we won’t be asked: “How much do you know?” or “How many toys or trophies have you garnered?” but simply “How deeply did you care? How deeply did you care about the sisters and brothers whom you were blessed to meet along your path?”
But lest we flee this call or become overburdened, let me remind you that you’re called to be caregivers not caretakers. We simply can’t resolve or take care of another person’s concerns, so you don’t have to worry about doing that. Rather our mission as Summit caregivers is to give care–steady and appropriate care in the face of stress, sorrow, and difficulty. I like the way Unitarian Oliver Wendell Holmes put it: “The physician’s task is to cure rarely, relieve often, and comfort always.” That’s our role too. We caregivers at Summit aren’t going to cure many ills, social or personal. But we can surely care and comfort.
Comfort literally means to “place your strength alongside” another person. And that’s precisely what we’re asking Summitarians to do: to give comfort, to put your strength next to the weakness of another in need–on the phone, through a note, or in person. As caregivers we’re willing to show up, be present, stand alongside, offer our strength, despite our own frailties, since, lest we forget, all of us are “wounded healers” around here.
Yet our tendency is to be productive, performance-driven, do-gooders, who say: “Don’t just stand there, do something!” Whereas Buddha would counsel: “Don’t just do something, stand there!” Comfort and be available, stand tall, stand strong, stand alongside your neighbor with hands and heart outstretched.
And so, my friends, as a Fellowship we exist primarily to care. As humans beings we come fully alive through caring. When Baron Von Hugel, the great philosopher and mystic was dying, his niece bent over because she could see his lips moving and couldn’t quite catch what he said.
She put her ear close against his mouth and heard this, the last words that great saint ever uttered: “Caring is everything, nothing matters but caring.” There couldn’t be a finer Mother’s Day message or mission.
Tom Owen-Towle
May 13, 2007
