“Hearing Our Call”
Rev. Robert M. Hardies, Rev. Shana Lynngood and Senior Program Staff
Sunday, 3 December 2006
Rev. Robert M. Hardies: “Hush,” says the spiritual, “hush, somebody’s calling my name.” Do you know that experience? Have you heard your name called out, out of the silence? Have you heard the call? Sometimes it begins just as a whisper, a voice calling quietly from inside of us. That’s how Gandhi talked about his call. He said, “The only tyrant I will ever obey is the still, small voice within.” Sometimes the call comes from all around us. The world and its people cry out to us in need. One of my favorite definitions of calling, of mission, is this, that calling is where the world’s deep hunger, where the world’s deep need, meets out deep joy. And sometimes the call comes the old-fashioned way, in a booming voice of God. That’s how it happened to Jonah. “Jonah,” said God, “I want you to go to Nineveh.” And Jonah looked up to the heavens and said, “You want me to do what?” Which reminds us of something else that’s true about calling which is that it often comes as a surprise and we often respond kicking and screaming. That’s why in the spiritual, after we sing “Hush, somebody’s calling my name,” we respond “Oh my lord, what shall I do?” What shall I do?
This morning, we’ve invited some talented people from our staff to share with us about how they answered that question, to share with us the story of their calling to ministry, a call that isn’t limited to ministers and to religious professionals, but it is something that we all share. We’ve done this this morning for two reasons: First, because we want to honor today the gifted and inspired leadership that these people provide to the ministry of our church, but also because we want to invite each of us, each of you, to consider your own calling. Hush, somebody’s calling my name.
John Strang: In six years of serving as your Music Director, I’ve spent many hours making music with you and the choir. Rob has reminded me, though, that this is the first time that I’ve spoken from the pulpit. So the first thing I’d must say is, thank you for your wonderful singing. I feel honored to be your accompanist each Sunday as we sing hymns and create music together. I am also honored to work with my esteemed colleagues, Leonard Starks, Director of the Jubilee Singers and Sylvia Twine, Director of the D.C. Children’s Choir. We are blessed at All Souls.
I’m a bit of a rarity in that I’m a fourth-generation Unitarian and that is not even counting the one generation between my mom and her grandmother that skipped Unitarianism. Of the many traditions I inherited from my family, being a Unitarian is among the most important and I consider supporting the Unitarian Church as a primary calling. This is because the Unitarian Church saved my life.
I knew I was gay from a very early age and growing up in a Southern city with this knowledge in the 1970s and ‘80s was extremely difficult. I had no positive gay role models; as a matter of fact, the two classmates in high school who I knew to be gay, both died before their 25th birthdays, one from suicide. Members of my own family were highly homophobic and I regularly heard phrases like, “You can be anything you want, just as long as you’re not a ballet dancer or a hair dresser.” Well, it turns out that I became an organist. [Laughter and applause] I guess they didn’t know that just about every organist on the planet, except for Parker Kitterman, is gay. [Laughter]
Some of my first memories are experiences at my home church, the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Unitarian Universalist Church in Charlottesville, Virginia. Eventually, though, I lost my connection with the church until several years later, when I was fifteen. At that time, the pressures of being gay in a homophobic community, school and family were reaching a dire level. Even my therapist was trying to convert me to being straight.
Each of us experiences a miracle at some time in our lives and my miracle came one September day in 1986 when I was called by my old church to come play for a Unitarian Yom Kippur service. Interestingly, the people who called me had no idea I grew up in the church, but it wasn’t long before I had officially signed the membership book as the youngest adult member of the congregation. Although I never came out during my high school years, it was the safe and nurturing environment of the Unitarian Church that gave me hope to get through that dreary time. I knew gay people in the church and seeing that they were valued as other people was just enough to keep my eyes focused on a future that might be different.
To visit my home town now you would see that things have changed significantly. Not to say there isn’t a long way to go, but I believe that the activism of my home congregation was central to beginning dialogs in the community about many civil rights issues, including support for gay teens, the historical legacy of segregation in Charlottesville and inequality in the public schools. I was particularly moved to learn that over 70 percent of Charlottesville voters voted against the ban on same-sex marriage this past November. [Applause] My church was the first public voice in that community to support the worth and dignity of all people.
Today, I am extremely proud to serve this denomination that saves lives in this world, the world of the here and now. My call is to celebrate our denomination’s heritage of being a place of welcome and healing for all people by having us share diverse, challenging and moving music. What is your calling?
[Choir: Hush, hush, somebody’s calling my name . . . ]
Joyce Palmer: My life experiences have heightened my sensitivity to issues of exclusion, trust and belonging. I tend to immediately notice the separation and divisions of the world: black and white, good and evil, saved and unsaved, rich and poor. Although I had minimal exposure to my family’s Pentecostal church, I clearly felt the influence of its theology of exclusion. It was made clear that as Pentecostals, we were God’s chosen people, saved, sanctified and filled with the holy spirit. We were constantly reminded that we lived in the world but were not of the world. We were to distrust worldly perspectives and to resist its pleasures. And if we managed to do all of this, we might prove ourselves worthy of God’s love and acceptance.
In an attempt to join the ranks of the saved, I answered an alter call as a younger woman. These are dramatic moments in the service when anyone who is not saved is invited to the front to give their lives to God. The minister laid his hands on my head and prayed, hard. Suddenly, I felt this overwhelming power rush through my body and I began sobbing. It was an intense moment of release; I felt cleansed of my troubles and fears. This was definitely the real thing, I thought; I’ve been saved at last.
But had I really been saved? Something about this act of salvation distanced me from other people and from parts of myself. I was not free to question my experience and its meaning. Saved, from what? And for what purpose? What does it mean to be saved and considered a member of the elect? I grew more uncomfortable with the notion of viewing myself as set apart, somehow better than others in the world. I began to suspect that my experience at the altar was really a sign of my need for greater meaning, wholeness and connection. In this discomfort, I sensed the beginning of a calling to a ministry of inclusion.
Years after becoming a Unitarian Universalist, I reread the story of the Samaritan woman at the well, recorded in the Christian scriptures. In her story, I found a way to understand my experience at the altar as a calling to nurture our common search for wholeness and connection. In the Fourth Chapter of John, Jesus meets a Samaritan woman at the well and asks her for a drink. She says to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman; how can you ask me for a drink?” Now this is a woman I can clearly identify with. As a woman who sees clearly the divisions of the world and names them, she reminds Jesus of these divisions and she seems to say “You and I are different; our people have a long history of struggle and strife. Surely you are not speaking to me, a Samaritan woman.” And yet, as the story progresses, the woman remains open to hearing the good news of the living water. In Jesus, she meets a person able to tell her all she has done, the good, the bad and the ugly and still he offers her gifts: the gift of acceptance, the gift of community, the gift of life. The woman leaves her encounter with Jesus reenergized, refreshed and reconnected to her story, to her community. She is reminded of her worth.
In reading her story, I find parallels in my experience at the altar. We each have an encounter with the holy that proves cleansing. Yet the difference is the Samaritan woman finds freedom and connection in her encounter while for me, I felt less free and more disconnected from my hope that what divides us is not final. It is this difference which fueled my calling as a Unitarian Universalist to create encounters where people are free to express their pain fully, to name the injuries of the world which require our just response and to offer the gifts of acceptance and community, so that together we may proclaim the beauty and wholeness of life.
My work here, as the Director of Membership and Lay Ministry, allows me to live my calling as, together, we invite people into this warm and welcoming congregation, affirm and celebrate our journey and our unique gifts and become a truly beloved community. That’s my calling. What’s your calling?
[Choir: Hush, hush, somebody’s calling my name . . .]
Gabrielle Farrell: My parents, while posted by the Army Corps of Engineers to Ankara, spoke to my brother and me more about the ideas of Karl Marx than of Jesus or Mohammed, so you might guess, we didn’t go to church. Trumping it all, though, the call of the Islamic muezzin, from Ankara’s minarets, infused my childhood with his five-daily reminders that God was calling, after all. Later, living in a small town in the Hudson River Valley, I grew up in a loving home with modern-day anxieties and the stresses of the privileged. I was a good student; I made friends easily. Despite this, my feeling of an outsider was constant. The reasons are few, but one clearly was that my family still did not go to church. So I did, by myself.
I was immediately drawn to the religion of my grandparents with its kneeling and incantations and rosary beads and mystery. Ahhh, the mystery. Instead of playing house or teacher or ballet dancer, I played priest. [Laughter] Actually, I played a nun performing priestly functions. [Applause] Head wrapped in a towel as if it were a nun’s habit, I would turn bread into the body of Christ. Years later, my Sunday church going ended because I stopped in, almost daily, on my way home from middle school. The church’s sanctuary took up an entire block, corner to corner. If one walked through it, from one side of the octagon-shaped sanctuary to the other, it was a bit of a shortcut. Entering the silence of the space called to me every time. Sitting there, I heard the voice for the first time. But I had understood it as an embrace, not a call. That embrace, however, felt like a shove when later I asked why women never performed communion. The push was hard enough to keep me away from church, not returning until the eve of my marriage.
When I returned to church, it was to a Unitarian one, immediately volunteering to teach in the religious education program. The first Sunday’s class was, kindly put, disappointing, and it didn’t improve much as the weeks passed. Nothing seemed to help; it didn’t feel meaningful or fulfilling. It was so trying and difficult. Surprisingly, especially to me, I signed up to teach the next year. I don’t remember the experience changing much, except in one important way. One Sunday, I told the lesson story to a classroom of restless and bored primary-aged children, and their bodies stilled. At its end we held a silence, together. I asked a question; there was just a bit more silence, and then one of them spoke. What was said was not important. The silence was. In the silence of that particular Sunday morning, I heard a voice as if for the very first time, though its timbre seemed familiar. “Will you do what you were meant to do? Will you be what you were meant to be? Will you say ‘yes?’”
By the way, that morning’s classroom returned to its usual mayhem and the silence wasn’t repeated for weeks, maybe months later. Over time, though, the silence returned more often, so much so that years later I said “Yes,” when asked to serve as that church’s religious educator. I had been waiting a long time. My life is not unusual; I’m pretty much like everyone else and it has always been so. I heard the small voice as a child, or even the call of God. And this was not unique either. John heard something too; so did Joyce, all of us as children. My calling is to create the space for your child, for any child, to hear that voice, be it the single voice of God or the multiple voices of beings blended into a cacophony of humanness. What’s your calling?
[Choir: Hush, hush, somebody’s calling my name . . . ]
Louise Green: If there’s one thing I can say about calls, it’s that my sense of radical surprise never ends. Maybe it’s God’s sense of humor with me. I am always startled when opportunity arises exactly where I wasn’t looking. Disruption and disbelief are in my call journey , inevitably followed by a deep sense of internal alignment that I am in the right place at the right time. My first call to ministry was the biggest surprise of all. I was a professional modern dancer, working in Chicago, questioning my life as I approached thirty. One Sunday, I visited a church that I kept seeing on my commute to the El Train. I found a congregation focused on urban ministry, something I had never seen before. After just a few months of worship, I began to feel urgently drawn to explore seminary. This was not a comfortable feeling. This was “Oh my, God! Not what shall I do? [Laughter]
It was really a return to my family roots, though. I was raised as an active child of the church and came from several generations of Presbyterian elders and ministers. But I had been out of church since high school and no one, and I mean no one, was predicting my return. The next year, I landed at Harvard Divinity School, feeling amazed and excited. I ended up loving the theological questions, ate up the learning, was intrigued by the students and the faculty. My life had been disrupted dramatically and yet I felt at home in a place I had never intended to be.
My first call to ministry out of graduation came after I did field work in prison ministry, campus chaplaincy and social work. I didn’t even prepare for parish ministry because I was absolutely positive I was never, ever going to do that. Through an odd synchronicity of events, I ended up accepting a call to be an associate pastor in a suburban parish, the one place I never thought I wanted to work. I was ordained in the United Church of Christ for a suburban calling, but once I encountered the people of Memorial Church in Sudbury, Mass., I knew that my call was that congregation. I experienced a deep sense of being aligned in vocation and place. Surprised, once more.
When I moved to New York City I pursued congregational ministry. I sent my profile out to sixteen UCC congregations but this time, when I was actually looking, I got not one call, not one interview, not even a letter. At the same time, I loved attending community organizing training and I left hungry to learn more. I didn’t know at the time but I was launched, unexpectedly, in a new direction with the Industrial Areas Foundation, working as an organizer with congregations to build public power and action on urban issues. Once again, I was surprised that the road of my journey had shifted and yet I was clear that this vocation emerged directly out of my passion for social justice ministry.
In my life, and perhaps in yours, call is like that – moving, dancing, transforming. Just when you think you have it pinned, it may shift shape again. My next decade was an ongoing duet between two strong calls – to be a minister at a church, which I was once again at Judson Memorial in Manhattan, and to be a community organizer, working with member congregations and organizations in Manhattan and Brooklyn. Almost three years ago, I learned from Washington Interfaith Network organizers that All Souls was in a social justice job search. I didn’t know the church. The description was not what I thought I would do next. I probably was not the candidate expected. So, in my life, that means I get the job. On my first visit here in worship, I got that familiar feeling: the heightened sense of awareness, the energetic knowledge that the call was emerging.
My twin passions would intertwine in the same place – a Unitarian congregation. That surprised me. That’s why my ministry and my call is to work with you, to build this congregation to be a place where justice is at the heart of why we want to be a community of faith. What’s your calling?
Rev. Shana Lynngood: Friends, the ministry that Rob and I offer to All Souls, as the two ministers called by the members of the congregation to serve you, is obvious. Less obvious, but no less vital, is the ministry offered by the program directors seated behind me. After hearing their words this morning, I hope that it is abundantly clear to all of you how much the work they do is deeply felt ministry and how blessed we are to have them. [Applause]
As someone who works with them every day, I will tell you that we are blessed not only by what they do here at the church but by who they are, by their very presence and their being. We are very fortunate to have them on staff. Some of you knew this already; we didn’t need this service to remind you. Some of you have worked closely with them. And others of you have probably guessed that maybe this was true, that they were doing good work. But many of you had no idea until this morning what gifts these four people are. So I hope and trust that this reintroduction has been evidence of just what a blessing and gift they are to us. In honor of their work and their dedication and the ministry that they offer to us, we are changing their titles this morning.
I invite them to come and stand around the pulpit here with me. John Strang will henceforth be known as the Director of Music Ministry. Gabrielle Farrell will henceforth be known as the Director of Religious Education Ministry. Joyce Palmer, who is soon to be ordained and soon to be called Reverend Joyce Palmer, is our Minister of Membership and Lay Ministry. And the Reverend Louise Green is our Minister of Social Justice. Finally, I invite you into a prayer of blessing with me, a prayer which I see as a prayer of consecration. “Consecration” means, “to solemnly dedicate to, to make sacred, to hallow, to render holy.” So will you please help me pray that our relationship with these four might indeed be holy.
Spirit of Life and God of love, we give thanks for John and for Joyce,
for Gabrielle and for Louise, for the gifts that they bring to this community.
We pray that we might be aware of the blessing that they each have to bring,
that we might work with them as closely as possible to build this beloved
community, to make all of our work, all of our living, holy, each and every
day. We give thanks for them and we pray that we might be alongside them in
this ministry for many years to come. So may it be. And amen.