“Living History, Making History”
A Sermon by
The Rev. Shana Lynngood
All Souls Church, Unitarian
Washington, D.C.
2 March, 2008
I don’t know if, like me, when you enter this sanctuary, or really any part of this building, you sometimes have a feeling, a sense of all of those people who have entered this building over the years, but I sense it acutely this morning as we honor the long-time members who are here with us today and as we honor this space and this place, this community, which was created over 186 years ago and that we all are now blessed with.
This morning’s reading is a poem by Carl Dennis, entitled “Candles,” and I think it evokes some of the sense of gratitude owed to those who have come before us. “Candles.”
If on your grandmother's birthday you burn a candle
To honor her memory, you might think of burning an extra
To honor the memory of someone who never met her,
A man who may have come to the town she lived in
Looking for work and couldn’t find it.
Picture him taking a stroll one morning,
After a month of grief with the want ads,
To refresh himself in the park before moving on.
Suppose he notices on the gravel path the shards
Of a green glass bottle that your grandmother,
Then still a girl, will be destined to step on
When she wanders barefoot away from her school picnic
If he doesn't stoop down and scoop the mess up
With the want-ad section and carry it to a trash can.
For you to burn a candle for him
You needn't suppose the cut would be a deep one,
Just deep enough to keep her at home
The night of the hay ride when she meets Helen,
Who is soon to become her dearest friend,
Whose brother George, thirty years later,
Helps your grandfather with a loan so his shoe store
Doesn't go under in the Great Depression
And his son, your father, is able to stay in school
Where his love of learning is fanned into flames,
A love he labors, later, to kindle in you.
How grateful you are for your father's efforts
Is shown by the candles you've burned for him.
But today, for a change, why not a candle
For the man whose name is unknown to you?
Take a moment to wonder whether he died at home
With friends and family or alone on the road,
On the look-out for no one to sit at his bedside
And hold his hand, the very hand
It's time for you to imagine holding.
I love the poignant imagery of that poem because I think if we’re all honest with ourselves and take time to think back or to imagine the unfolding lives of the generations of those who came before us, it’s not hard at all for us to imagine that there are many candles that should be burning in their honor, many hands we could and should be holding through the generations. And perhaps we can even, with the poet, imagine that many of the people’s names and faces who made our lives, our existence as we know it, possible, are never to be known to us. And yet, without them having existed, so much of what we feel fortunate in our own lives to experience, so much of what we have felt graced with in this life, would not be.
I bring this up because, as I began thinking about and reading over the various accounts of the history of All Souls Church, Unitarian, which was first First Unitarian Church of Washington, it occurred to me that, for every famous name, for every John Quincy Adams and Charles Bullfinch and A. Powell Davies, and David Eaton that helped create and shape this place, there was an equal number of names, nameless, faceless to many of us, but so many people who gave so much to make this place what it is, whose hands we now can imagine holding this morning, and saying thank you. It’s so important that we take time, as we do this morning, to honor and to express gratitude to those names and those faces that we know that are with us still, that are urging us onward, to give thanks to them for all of the time, for all of the talent, for all of the sharing of resources and vision and dreams and energy that each of you gave to help All Souls Church keep going.
And, although it isn’t sufficient, and although I think it’s true that we don’t ever say it enough, we can say simply, and with deep gratitude this morning to each of our honorees, thank you. [Applause]
I will confess that when I was approached about preaching this sermon, when I was approached and sat down, nicely, by Emily and Dorothy and Judy, and approached about preaching a sermon about the history of All Souls Church and about honoring those long-time members who are with us, as well as, they also told me they also wanted me to lift up what we who are writing the current chapter of the life of this church could, and should, think about as our dreams and our vision for this place, I was both intimidated and excited. Excited because the history of this congregation, of all that it has stood for and meant to so many people, throughout the generations, is a remarkable and, in some ways – at least in the current life of the church – underappreciated. And I was intimidated because it is simply not possible, not humanly possibly, and believe me this weekend I have tried, to cover that much ground – 186 years – in a twenty-minute sermon. It just can’t be done.
So I thought how can I possibly try to give you the Cliff Notes, but powerful Cliff Notes, of the history of this place that we are now graced with. It occurred to me that the history of any place, of any institution, is really a collection of individual stories, life stories of the people who have been within its walls for many years, who have seen different things come and go. And so, in my difficult work of distillation, here’s what I’ve decided to do this morning, to thank, to try to give a few of the highlights – both of the social justice history of this church which I think has been covered more frequently than other histories of this congregation – but I also want to give some highlights of the art and cultural history of this congregation because I think that’s powerful as well. And finally, I want to take up the work that I was challenged to do by those three members of the Silver Souls, to dream forward, if you will, to think about what we might hope people will say about this era in the life of the church when they look back on it, twenty years, thirty years, however many years hence.
I began with thank you. And I will do more of that later, rest assured. But let me move on to the historical highlights that I want to lift to your attention this morning. First some of the social justice highlights.
The focus of the wonderful Silver Souls exhibit that I hope you’ve all see and read, all the way through – but if you haven’t, you’ve got a little bit of time left to do that – of the social justice history of this congregation through the lens of its ministers, its senior ministers in particular, tells a compelling story. I just want to highlight two of the racial justice stories in the history of the church, stories that I think highlight that it hasn’t always been easy or smooth sailing, but that the congregation has wrestled and struggled with some of the major issues of our time and come out stronger and better and richer for it.
The congregation had a minister here in the 1850s by the name of Reverend Moncure Conway. He came here to serve this congregation in 1852. Throughout his ministry, he lifted up a vision of abolition, of an end to slavery which, in this very much southern town at that time, was controversial, to say the least, in fact, controversial enough that, after only two years of serving All Souls, the congregation asked Moncure Conway to leave. They fired him, to put it more bluntly, because the congregation was conflicted enough around the issue of the abolition of slavery that they didn’t want him preaching these controversial sermons over and over again. There wasn’t enough consensus around the issue of getting rid of slavery. And yet this congregation, remarkable to me in some ways as I looked at the years, only seven years later, in 1861, chose to toll its bell, the Revere bell, at the execution of John Brown, the noted abolitionist.
A bell tolling to us these days doesn’t mean a whole lot. They tolled their bell – not a big deal. But at the time, our bell, because it was cast by Joseph Revere, son of Paul, and because it was at this prominent, top of the hill kind of location in Washington, was the sort of official bell of Washington, tolled for all sorts of occasions of great import, tolled even just to warn people of danger or fires. And after that decision by the congregation, to toll its bell in 1861, at the death of John Brown, that bell of Washington status was no more. The bell was forever known after that as the abolition bell. I lift that up because it seems to me rather remarkable that in only that short span of seven years, the congregation could have gone from firing a minister for being an abolitionist to tolling its bell and having its bell become known as the abolition bell here in this City. Communities can be places of transformation and our theology as Unitarians at that time carried that congregation and reminded them that the goodness of all people was really first and foremost. Before any political expediency or convenience, came what they believed, what was most fervently true.
So from that longer-ago story, I move to the more modern social justice story of perhaps the two ministers that are most associated with this congregation, at least the minister that, when I’m out in the community, most people say to me, if they haven’t been to All Souls Church in awhile, they say, “Oh, that’s Dr. Davies’ church,” or they say, “Oh, that’s David Eaton’s church.” So I want to tell some about Dr. Davies and Reverend Eaton because it seems to me that the story of each of their ministries here is the story of standing up, again and again, for what they believe to be true and right, based on their Unitarian beliefs.
Those two men, throughout their ministries, stood up for things as broad and as wide-ranging as the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, against McCarthyism and all of that witch-hunting for people who were against the American way of life. They stood up against the continued segregation of housing and schools in this city. They stood up for better, affordable housing in this city, and even created an entire building of housing in this city, only a few blocks from here. And Revered Eaton stood very strongly for better education in this city, serving on the School Board several tenures, even as President of the School Board for a time, and having I was surprised to find not only a radio show, which I think I’d heard of, but a TV show, which is a little bit daunting. A radio and a television show, proclaiming always what it meant to be a Unitarian in this city.
I think if I was pushed to encapsulate those two men’s ministries here at All Souls, I would say that the brilliance of Dr. Davies was his ability to define Unitarianism in succinct and profound ways and then to continually show its relevance and its meaning in the face of current events. Reverend Eaton, if I was pushed to describe what I thought was part of the brilliance of his ministry, I would say that he was a master at urban ministry before people even were defining it as urban ministry. He showed again and again that a church that didn’t engage with the place in which it lived would rapidly lose sight of its purpose for being. To serve the people of the city, so that in good times and in bad times they knew the church was here for them, was paramount.
As a native Washingtonian, Reverend Eaton believed in the promise and the possibility of this city, and he never let the congregation move too far from its sense of rootedness and groundedness in this place and all that it called the congregation to do and to be.
But before I simply seem like I’m just lionizing the ministers when, of course, we are here to honor those who have been members of this congregation for a long time, let me say this as clearly as I can: I am a firm believer that the ministerial leadership of a congregation, at its best, reflects not just what the minister of that day and age in the life of the church has as a vision for the community, but it reflects back and mirrors to the congregation what the minister hears coming forth. So each of these ministers represented in Pierce Hall now – Dr. Davies, Reverend Eaton, Reverend Howlett and all of the rest – were lifting up the vision that the members of All Souls Church believed in as well, that it was this congregation as a whole that found its way to belief in moving people forward and closer together across racial lines, moving the city’s school system toward educating all children, being a community’s place of refuge throughout the years where people could come together and talk, and figure out a new strategy to make life a little bit better for more people in the city.
That’s just a little tiny bit of the social justice history of this place. I hope that you who are passionate about history, even you who think history is only past, will note that the history of this place has much to teach us going forward and has much to do with who we are today.
Let me just briefly pull out a few cultural and artistic threads of the history of this church that I’ve heard from long-time members were equally important, maybe even what brought them in the doors of this building in the first place. I remember when I first arrived and I was in Pierce Hall; I was talking to our of our long-time members and she said to me that one of the first things she knew about this church was that it was a movie theater. There in Pierce Hall, in fact, if you look up at the back of Pierce Hall you can see where the projection room was. You know, you can see the little holes. As I was reading through the history I read that they used to, starting in 1925 here at the church, so only a year after this building was up, have motion picture hour here at the church. It was one of the first places you could see a foreign language film here in Washington, D.C., if not the first place. When they started motion picture hour in 1925, motion pictures had no sound. So in 1932, when they were continuing it, they added in the sound. And of course, I can’t help it – I’m a jazz fan – so I’m going to tell my favorite jazz history moment about this church. A seminal, I mean seminal, jazz recording was recorded right here at this church in 1962. Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd recorded an album, a little album we like to call “Jazz Samba,” which, for those of you who’ve heard of it, know it was one of the first major bossa nova jazz recordings on the scene and helped bring that Brazilian musical form here, and brought that wave of popularity that then spread on with “Girl from Ipanema,” and “Desafinado,” and all those great songs. I couldn’t believe it when I heard that story! I thought it wasn’t true. But I did the fact checking and it really is true that that album was recorded right here at the church.
I bring that up, in part, to say that I think the music in this congregation has always been at the heart of its history. As I read through the historical records, I saw prices for organs and notes about long-time music directors, and saw conversations about how important the music program was and how the choirs of this church went all around the city to perform and lift up the vision of this community. So I think it bears mention that this congregation has always believed that music and the arts are at the heart of the spiritual life and that without them our lives are a little diminished and that that love of music is with us still.
So now, what does this little, very brief, trip down memory lane and the history of this congregation lead us today? What do we who are here now want the next 50 years to look like? What will be said in the city and in the historical record about this era in the life of our community? If you haven’t thought about this question before, I hope you’ll take this as your invitation to not only think about this era in the life of the church, but to think about what you, as an individual, can do to help shape the life of the church in the direction that you dream it might go.
How would I answer that question? I’ll tell you how I’d answer it today, starting with another thank you. One of our honorees this morning, and one of the archivists of our church, Bob Freeman, who’s sitting in the front row, handed me a nice big box full of materials to prepare for this morning’s sermon of histories written by many different members of the church over the years. I read through a history that Maureen Mulliner wrote of this church. And one of the things that Bob so graciously provided me was a photocopy of a hand-written address that Muriel Davies, widow of A. Powell Davies, had given here at the church at the 175th anniversary of the church. She delivered this address in 1997, talking about the history of All Souls.
I was struck by several things that she said that helped give me context for that part of the life of the church, that’s part of my dream of where we might go. She described a Unitarianism at time, in the ‘40s and ‘50s that was really seen as a very provincial religion, a provincial New England religion. She said that there was a saying at the time that people thought of Unitarianism and Unitarians as believing in “the fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man and the vicinity of Boston.” [Laughter] She said that it was her husband who really pushed the denomination at that time to start thinking beyond the vicinity of Boston, to think that Unitarianism might be relevant for a few people outside of the city of Boston, that it might have a theology and a message that more people and other people could believe in as fervently as they did in New England. And while the people at the AUA – the American Unitarian Association – at the time were pushing against Dr. Davies’ idea of creating a bold statement of belief for our faith, because they said a creedless faith can’t possibly have a single statement of belief, Dr. Davies didn’t believe that. He actually went just the other direction. He said not only could he create a belief statement, a sort of credo if you will for Unitarians of the time, but he could find a way, I think, again and again to say, this is what it means to believe as a Unitarian. This is how we are called to live our lives because we believe this way, because we believe in the love of God and the connection between people. Because we believe this way, he seemed to say over and over again, we cannot stand by while others are being bombed; we cannot stand by while others are being persecuted because our belief and our faith tells us something different is true.
I hope that of this era we will grow our membership in such a way – not just the membership numbers – I actually hope more than that, I hope that we grow in spiritual depth as a community. That’s my dream. My dream is that we will grow the spiritual depth of each and every member of this community, such that theological and spiritual answers to life’s questions are the answers that rise to the tips of our tongues. That we will, by the example of our living, each in our own way, show what being a Unitarian Universalist means, that we will see faithful answers as everyday answers, that we will see what we believe and who we are as one and the same. Truth be told, I think that this is the most fundamental aspect of the life of a church, the source from which everything else flows. If we are not spiritually substantive, what else do we have?
And so, friends, I want to close with a few more thank yous. Because we are fortunate to be part of a community that has meant so much to so many for so long. We are fortunate to have received these gifts of spiritual, theological, social justice, cultural justice legacies. And so, I want to thank again our long-time member honorees for staying through all manner of ups and downs and dilemmas, for voting at all the congregational meetings, for going to board meetings, for going to potlucks, for all of the thousands of meetings you all represent. [Applause] Yes, just think of all the meetings these people had to go to. I want to say thank you to the Silver Souls for that tremendous exhibit that they put together [Applause] because that exhibit reminds us that our history is not past, but very much part and parcel of who we are, of who we have become as a church community, and holds many lessons for us in terms of where we may be headed.
So may we, with the inspiration of our forbears, go forward with great visions of what is possible, believing that there is tremendous power in community, in these hallowed walls, in the vision of a faith that believes we each have something to give. May we each play our part, finding a niche in which to give ourselves and our hearts, not holding back or waiting for someone else to do what only we can. We are All Souls Church in this chapter, all of us together, like that bundle of sticks, and it is up to us to write this chapter in gratitude for all that we have been given, and in hope about what we can do and be together. So may we make the most of this opportunity. May we light those candles of gratitude and vision and allow them to light the way in this present hour as we look ahead. So may it always be and amen. [Applause]