Many of us were here on Friday evening [September 25], with others from around our UU Saint Lawrence District, and our district executive, to share a potluck dinner — and to hear about Tom Chulak’s sabbatical. Everyone who has asked Tom about his travels last winter (mostly in Africa) has wanted to hear more. This was our opportunity to hear a whole lot more.

Tom began by explaining why it is that he refers to his journey as “a pilgrimage.” The heart of his trip was Tanzania — not because he has ancestors who came or were brought to America from Africa. Tom wanted to go back much further in time. He wanted to visit where we all came from: Arusha, Tanzania, the discovery site of the oldest remains of homo sapiens. This, he said, is where we started, where we all began.

Tom also spoke about how he traveled — on his own, as much as possible. He said he has learned that, for him, going beyond his comfort zone in human interactions opens him up, opens up his soul.

One of the things that struck me, as I listened to him, was how very different his sabbatical was from the sabbatical I took in the seventh year of my previous settlement. Tom explored people and cultures vastly different from his own. He journeyed to our “genetic genesis” (and the place of our greatest genetic variation). I, with my time, explored a very different connection, and the other extreme of human relatedness. I joined my younger brother’s family for a while; moved right in as a sort of au pair, living (for those months) only a few miles from the Massachusetts town where we grew up.

Just as Tom lights up talking about his sabbatical adventures, so it is impossible for me to recall my times with Nick and Alex, Hannah and Kassie, Ali and Bill without lighting up.

Small and simple as my sabbatical plan sounded, it was a profound interactive experience. Being a part of a young family of six — their home life, church life, work life, school life — strengthened my awareness of how very deeply we are connected, how our lives are intertwined, how very much we all depend on one another — not simply for nurturance, support, and sustenance — but for our very sense of who we are.

Because of events in my congregation at that time, it was a Monday evening in the second week of September when I arrived at my brother’s home. The next morning, Bill and Ali were both off to work, the girls in school. Four-year-old Nick was helping me unload my car, and interpret what little Alex was trying to communicate. My sister called; the World Trade towers were on fire.

On Saturday, I drove the three hours to be back with my congregation on Sunday morning. We needed to be with one another. I drove by one overpass after another draped with a U.S. flag. We Americans needed to be “together”... Sunday morning was, of course, “standing room only.” In that hour, that sacred space, we shared our thoughts and feelings, our fears, our prayers.

I imagine it was much the same here, in this room. On September 16th, we looked around and realized how very much we need one another, how much we needed to be with our people, our “tribe.”

Lois Crisler, in Artic Wild, wrote, “Wolves love to howl. When it started, they instantly seek contact with one another, troop together, fur to fur. Some wolves will run from any distance, panting and bright-eyed, to join in, uttering, as they near, fervent little wows, jaws wide, hardly able to wait to sing.” And Kathleen Brehony, author of Living a Connected Life, comments, “We can learn a lot from wolves....

“If we don’t howl, we won’t find our pack. It’s true that our howls may not pierce the night as wolves’ do, but we can only find our pack when we reach out for it, when we communicate our deepest need to belong, knowing that our lives depend on it.”

“... our deepest need to belong...”

When Nick Cardell was still the parish minister here, he was asked (at one point) to put into words what kept him in ministry, what kept him “at it” all those years. A number of things, he said: his relationship with colleagues; “the members of the congregations I have served – at least most of them”; and the opportunities to grow and serve that come with ministry. Then Nick spoke about what the Unitarian Universalist flaming chalice symbolizes for him: “a search for truths, freedom to be who I am, a challenge to grow, a welcoming inclusiveness, and a caring community.”

He said, “It is that spirit ... that [has] kept me in the UU fold and in our ministry, NOT our practice. [He stressed that.] We are little better than anyone else at living up to our principles. Our [spirit] energizes me, while our practice often enervates. ... I cling to our intentions.”

Our intention is a welcoming inclusivity — that, Here, no one may be a stranger. The image, the model for Nick Cardell, was seeing the congregation as an extended family. But he came to realize that this very image of a congregation had its roots in his own, very personal hunger for a larger family. And Nick knew that we are always in dangerous territory when we ask our faith communities to meet such personal needs.

Instead, we must realize the metaphor for the pretension that it is.
“Here, let no one be a stranger”:
It is a crazy impossibility — and our guiding vision.

The gap — between the vision (“let no one be a stranger”) and the reality — may as well be the gap between Tanzania and Northfield, Massachusetts.

The gap — between who and how I want to be, and how I am, how I act — leaves me feeling like an impostor — to use Nick Cardell’s word, like a “pretender.” He knew that none of us are perfect Unitarian Universalists, and that May Memorial is not a perfect community. But, we hold fast to our vision, we “cling to our intentions.”

When we are open to the grace of our lives in community,
then we can look around us, and see, and experience,
that our dream for May Memorial is not just a crazy dream.

The person sitting beside you — and on the other side of you — can take you there. He has been someplace you have not. She has experienced life in a way you never thought you could. Without you, and him, and her, May Memorial cannot be the congregation where no one need be a stranger.

We need one another, because we need the modeling, the sharing, and learning of new ways to welcome the one who is still a stranger to us. As we companion and accompany one another, we go places we never dreamed that we could go. I saw that here, among us, last spring...

Connection and Community is a Miracle. And a crazy ideal. And it happens — even here.
Here and now.
And so might it be.