Rev. Furrer talks about what we are—or should be—about and outlines some of the changes he will be making in our weekly Order of Service.

“The Value of Ritual”

September 30, 2018

Whenever I think about ritual, I think of Rabbi Jerome Molino of Danbury, CT. I’ve mentioned Rabbi Molino before. I met him in 1983, but his connection to our UU movement goes back much further: to 1935, when he was called as the first Rabbi at the Reform synagogue in Danbury. As I mentioned two weeks ago, the Minister at the First Universalist Church at the time—the Reverend Harry Adams Hersey—was the only cleric in town to reach out to the young rabbi and offer to switch pulpits. Rabbi Molino retied and became Emeritus Rabbi in 1981, but he remained active in interfaith efforts until he died sixteen years ago; He remained, too, a friend of every UU minister who was lucky enough to serve with him in the same town, as I was in the mid-1980. “You Universalist Unitarians (as he always called us) are a lot like us Reform Jews,” he once said to me; “Same theology, same polity—you just don’t have rituals.”

There’s a lot of truth to that. But in fact, ritual is any activity that a society establishes to celebrate and renew commonly held perceptions. As the liberal Congregationalist Charles Hambrick-Stowe has written: “Even seemingly anti-ritualists cannot live without ritual, and iconoclasts cannot live without images that give meaning to their lives.”

This is true for Universalist Unitarians, too. And indeed, our regular Sunday services have their ritual dimensions:

Hymns, Chalice, Joys & Sorrows, Music

Needs to include:   Some continuity     /          Some originality

Some left lobe stimulation:         sermon, readings

Some right lobe stimulation:       music, candles, periods of silence

(Just try to drop one of these! )

And don’t forget the Social Hour immediately afterwards          (Try to drop that!)

Plus, almost all UU groups have some intentionally designed and collectively enacted rituals. Here at ESUC…  (the “Chalice Response,” the “Unison Affirmation” and your particular way of ending services with the “Sung Affirmation.”)

Most of our congregations have variations of a flower communion  /  a water communion  / an annual bread or apple or other kind of communion service/ A Christmas pageant / In June: a Teacher Appreciation & Bridging Ceremony.

As today’s Order of Service makes clear, I have tried to add a little shape to our services by suggesting what the form, what the arc of the service is aiming at. Notice the six stages I’ve outlined in the Order of Service to help reveal what I’m trying to achieve each Sunday: Gathering, Centering, Affirming Community, Introspection, Exploration, and Returning to the Service of Life. One of the reasons I like having Announcements at the very beginning of services is to support and not work against the flow I’m trying to help people experience. As we get back into the practice of offering two services every Sunday—each with slight variations—we’ll try to make them modestly different from one another, but both following the same arc.

We talk about the Flower Communion, the Water Communion. This despite the fact that the word “communion” is emotionally packed for some of Unitarians—as it was for Ralph Waldo Emerson—because of its connection to the Eucharist of Christianity. This is why the Unitarian Norbert Capek sought new rituals unencumbered by emotional baggage carried over from the traditions his members had left behind, and so created the Flower Communion.

In some years past, ESUC has had Water Communions in between Christmas and New Year’s. My hope for the days ahead is to m

Rev. Furrer outlines what he considers to be the four, interlocking foci of healthy, dynamic congregations: worship & the celebration of life, caring community, religious education, and ethical reflection & moral action.

After 11:00 a.m. worship, join Rev. Furrer for a talkback to discuss this sermon and September 16.

“Four Components of a Healthy Church” September 23, 2018

This morning I want to preach a sermon on what makes for a great church. We’re kicking off what ought to be an upbeat, vigorous period here at the East Shore Unitarian Church, with multiple opportunities to become a healthier, stronger community, to refine some of our systems, and eventually—several years down the line—settle a new minister. Things are clearly in transition. Consequently, today is a good time to ask, “What are we doing here?” Let me take this sermon to tell you what I think we’re doing here, or at least trying to do: to nurture and keep alive a thriving, creative, truly liberal Unitarian Universalist congregation here in Bellevue and environs.

What is the key to such a community? What will enable our efforts to flourish? I think there are four ingredients, four dimensions. When I started thinking about this, years ago, the image that initially came to mind was that of a four-cylinder internal combustion engine; an engine in which—when it’s functioning properly—all four pistons are moving smoothly and in synch. A few years later—in the early ‘90s—I came across the image on the cover of today’s Order of Service, discovered in a book by the Reverend Dick Gilbert, Minister Emeritus of Rochester, New York’s First Unitarian Church. I’ll employ the mechanical (four-cylinder engine) metaphor some, but mostly Rev. Gilbert’s wheel image throughout my remarks this morning. The four-cylinder engine model makes sense in that automobiles have many parts and many sub-systems that all need to be in proper tune for the engine to run smoothly. From time to time one sub-system—the electrical system, something about the timing, or what have you—gets out of whack. So, the mechanic (the minister) tinkers with things until she or he gets it all running smoothly again… at which time some other part could probably use some attention. When everything’s working perfectly—even if only for a short time—the congregation can really hum: people are joining, programs expanding, and the coffers are full. A good minister keeps at it without too much anxiety, believing that her or his hard work will, eventually, bear fruit. But like the good mechanic, one has to keep paying attention by checking in, listening, and keeping everything well oiled.

Now let us consider Dick Gilbert’s Wheel… At the center: Worship and the Celebration of Life. “Worship” is one of those words that some Unitarian Universalists struggle with. But the etymology of the word, as I understand it, is worth-ship: the act of making (or re-making) worthy. Archeologists and anthropologists describe the content of ancient worship as ritual, and as dance. This is where religion probably began—celebrating shared joy with song and music.

The single most frequently mentioned aspect in common among growing churches is that they’re festive; they celebrate! Coming-of-age ceremonies, honoring elders, anniversaries of important congregational milestones. What are we celebrating? Ultimately, our connectedness to one another.

The great fin de siècle [tu

Among the Northwest Indians and those who value their wisdom and sensitivity regarding the Interdependent Web, the Native Salmon Symbol symbolizes abundance, fertility, prosperity, and renewal. Join Reverend Furrer and the rest of ESUC as we begin our church year. Followed by ESUC’s annual Salmon Bake.

“Embracing Our Salmon Spirit”

This morning we officially kick off our church year.

The original, pre-Columbian, pre-conquest inhabitants of this part of North America included the Suquamish, Duwamish, Nisqually, Snoqualmie, and Muckleshoot tribes. Among these peoples the salmon was—and remains—a powerful totem.

What’s a totem?

Various neoshamanic and New Age movements sometimes use the totem to signify their identification with a particular animal’s spirit as their daemon, guardian spirit, or guide.

The salmon were central to the life and livelihood and culture of all the Indians tribes native to the Puget Sound area. Tribal health was intimately connected to the health of the salmon—as the Salmon Boy Story LeAnne read to the children makes abundantly clear.

As the more “grown-up” Vine Deloria reading LeAnne shared with us moments ago also made clear—re-membering our intimate interdependence with the flora and fauna in our midst is the challenge our modern day tribe must meet, or we will perish. To that end, let us—like Salmon Boy—learn our lessons and learn them well. And let us begin this day by integrating into our hearts and bodies the salmon spirit to be our animal totem.

The salmon is a noble creature if ever there was one: tough and able to persevere when others less resilient would give up. The path before our tribe today—our UU tribe and our national, American tribe—is filled with challenges as we seek to move from an economy of exploitation and plunder to one that’s more equitable, economically sustainable and ecologically whole. Tall order though it is, let us remember always that within all challenges lie positive goals and opportunities for growth.

To Native Americans, integrating one’s salmon spirit represents taking inside oneself the qualities of determination, strength, and wisdom salmon exemplify. It means overcoming adversity and achieving success, leading—invariably—to regeneration, transformation, and wisdom. Let these good and wholesome goals, then, be our shared mantra this season, and throughout the year ahead.

May it be so. Amen.

We may find ourselves at a loss for too few or too many options as we seek to pursue a purposeful life and to live according to our own deepest truth in all areas of life. Brandon Peele, Author of Planet on Purpose, will share the three worlds of purpose (upper/spirit, middle/human, lower/soul) and the science of purpose, suggesting that purpose is the key to making our highest contribution and living in integrity. He will then facilitate an exercise to reveal a deeper experience of our unique purpose.

Brandon Peele helps leaders and teams discover their higher purpose, create a fully aligned and electrified life. As author of Planet on Purpose (2018), Brandon brings to life the science of purpose, the pathway to discover and embody it and shares a vision for a global political economy and culture that empowers every one of our 7.5 billion human family to reach their fullest potential.

A sermon on the value of seriously contributing one’s time and energy for the betterment and uplift of others—and how that is central to Unitarian Universalism.

“The Call of Service”

September 2, 2018

I want to talk this morning about service; about the value of contributing one’s time and energy for the betterment and uplift of others; and about how that changes a person, makes them a better, more fulfilled human being. And a better, more faithful Unitarian Universalist.

In this morning’s First Reading, my colleague Don Southworth writes about serving others as becoming caretakers of the soul. I remember an ethics class in seminary with Dr. Karen Lebacqz. A medical ethicist, her classes were usually analytical, with lots of reading and discussion about how to weigh competing values and make ethical choices. One day, however, she just wrote the word “soul” on the chalkboard. “What is it?” she asked. And we spent the next hour and a half trying to figure it out. Indeed, in my case, the next forty+ years.

Soul is a word that some Unitarian Universalists struggle with; since the soul can’t be “located” somewhere in the body or “measured” in any way, they’re skeptical of its existence. But it’s an ancient word, used by poets, songwriters, and shamans from time immemorial. For the Unitarian Walt Whitman the body and the soul were “conjoined and inseparable,” two words for the same reality. I think of the soul as one’s life spirit, accessible—felt, experienced—whenever we break through our social roles and re-member our connections to the world all around us…and to others. There is an on-the-threshold aspect to experiencing one’s soul, and often an expanded sense of identity. Falling in love, narrowly escaping death, giving birth, caring for an infant, sitting by the water’s edge, lovemaking, all of these can be soulful experiences. But there are other ways to experience soul. Service is one.

I remember back in the 1990s, when I was serving a UU congregation in Pittsburgh. My closest colleague there was Art McDonald. A former Dominican priest, he’d left Catholicism after twenty years, married Melanie (a former nun), and together they’d discovered Unitarian Universalism. By the time I met them, they’d turned a dying inner city UU congregation around, helped it grow from less than a dozen to over a hundred fifty members, and reengaged them with the community. Anyway, one day Melanie and I were talking. I think it was about something at Head Start, where she worked, but it may well have been about church. She said something I’ve never forgotten: “Some people haven’t figured out yet that it’s all about service.”

Our tradition has been supportive of social action from the beginning. Initially our forebears were inspired by the words attributed to Jesus in Matthew 25: “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” Later they were inspired by the Transcendentalist vision of a world made more fair—more beautiful and more equitable both—by an unflinching commitment to democracy. Humanism preached on self-empowerment for everyone. So, it is that while Unitarian Universalist theology has changed a lot over the decades, one aspect has remained constant: the moral necessity to help others.

Helping others. Serving, as best we can, “the least of these my brethren.” Not just because it’s the right thing, the moral thing, to do. But because of its spiritual value; its capacity to help us grow our souls.

The Bible is written on many levels. All sacred texts are written on many levels. There’s a lot of material–all different kinds of material—in the world’s various scriptures, some of it completely out of date, much of it opaque, and even more of it obscure. But whatever else they are, s

Our new Developmental Minister, Rev. Dr. Stephen H. Furrer focuses on those things that influenced his theology and point of view. After worship, join him in the Sanctuary for a reflection hour.

Today I want to introduce myself to you. I want to share, essentially, where I’m coming from. I want to give you an idea what people and experiences shaped and influenced my life so that you can weigh and evaluate and better understand what I’m saying.

I’ve narrowed my list down to 15, but it could be many more, or fewer. As I go through them, think about what your sources are. What are the touchstones of your life? As for me:

(1) Geography

I was born on June 9, 1950. A Beautiful day, according to my mom. Throughout my life, June 9 has almost always been a beautiful day. Late spring, balmy, warm and with still-lengthening daylight. Where I was born, I feel, was important: 2003 Chestnut Hills Drive, Cleveland Heights, Ohio. Chestnut Hills Drive is right along the edge of the Great Plains, demarcating the exact, precise boundary between the Allegheny Plateau to the east and—to the west—1000 miles of prairie. The late Vine Deloria, Jr., author of about a dozen books including Custer Died For Your Sins and God is Red, held that people, all of us, are manifestations of the earth. Our hymn #303, written by the great and beautifully poetic humanist Unitarian, Kenneth Patton, articulates the same idea when it sings out “We are the earth, upright and proud.” Deloria went on to propose that people’s dreams, their spirit, their whole way of connecting to life are all intimately connected to the land out of which they came and grew up. I think that’s true for me. And where I came from is right on the line between the east and west, looking west.

So my first source is Geography, and my second (2) is FAMILY.

STORIES (3)          (A.A. Milne, Wind in the Willows)

It was here where I got acquainted with my fourth source (4): NATURE

Another source (5), though I wouldn’t have acknowledged it at the time, was my Unitarian Universalist Church.

Join us as we welcome our new Developmental Minister, Rev. Dr. Stephen H. Furrer as he gives his first sermon at East Shore!

The beginning of our five years together has led me to contemplate ministry. What do ministers do? Or what are they trying to do? For me, the whole subject is conscience stirring. It forces me to think about what people like Chadbourne Spring, Leon Hopper, Joan Montagne, and other ministers—including me—are supposedly up to. And to consider the standards (Isaiah, Theodore Parker, Olympia Brown) by which our craft is—and always should be—measured.

Old timers say one should preach on ministry at least twice a year. As your Developmental Minister, I’m trying to foster a conversation that asks many questions, none less central than “what is ministry?” So I will preach on that question repeatedly. But I must tell you at the start, I always find writing and delivering such sermons incredibly difficult, mostly because ministry, as I understand it, is an almost impossible job.

The problem: There are several implicit contradictions woven right into the fabric of ministry. Success in the ministry, it seems to me, is the art and practice of turning these contradictions into creative contrasts.

Well, how does one do this? How to avoid the pitfalls and turn the interactive relationship we call parish ministry into a dance? The first step, it seems to me, is to recognize and identify some of the implicit contradictions; whereby we’re less likely to be trapped by them unconsciously.

* * *

The first potential contradiction grows out of the various roles ministers are asked to assume. Get clear on what you’re looking for, and then express it—to me, to my successor, but also to yourselves. Do you want me, do you want your next settled minister, to be a prophet, a scholar, a comforter, a friend, a toastmaster, an administrator, a PR man, a hipster, or an Old Salt? Probably—if you’re like just about every other church—you want all of these things. Well, good luck! Since that’s impossible, just be attentive to when your minister is wearing which hat. And talk to him or her—talk to me—about which hat you want the minister to wear today.

Take, as just one example, the prophet role…. Churches say they want to be challenged; to be inspired and motivated to new heights, new levels of social action and personal growth…. But the truth is that most of the time we don’t want to be challenged all that much. We want to be patted on the back. We want the minister’s spiritual blessing on our all-too-conventional lifestyles and social complacency. We want to be affirmed and supported in our social and psychological ruts.

That’s all right, but…. Many of us tend to think in terms of the ‘60s civil rights and anti-war movements and to forget that, by and large, the church, along with the University, is a great supporter

Unitarian Universalism is considered a “creedless” religion. What on earth does that mean, and how does one practice such a faith?  This sermon follows the lead of Socrates who, because he “knew nothing except the fact of his ignorance,” kept asking questions–all in hopes of finding a suitable answer.

Bio: Joseph Bednarik served as the Pulpit Assistant at Quimper Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Port Townsend, and speaks monthly at the UU congregations in Bremerton and Sequim. He earned a degree in philosophy from Haverford College, and his day-job is Co-Publisher at Copper Canyon Press, a nonprofit literary publisher dedicated to poetry.

This will be a celebration of Dharma Day – the day dedicated to the Buddha’s first teachings (after his enlightenment) The service will cover the Four Noble Truths which form the basis of Buddhism:

The Eightfold Path is:

The word ‘right’ can be defined in many ways, but most of them boil down to awareness and compassion.

There will be Buddhist songs, a Buddhist speaker or two, and a few guided meditations.

Books mentioned during today’s Dharma Day service:

Video: Pema Chödrön: This Lousy World 

Video: Little Buddha

Video: Eastern Philosophy

We’ve been thinking about our church and want to share those thoughts with you. We’ll use movement, geometry, music and other insights to provide new angles on how we pursue our mission to practice love, and where we are on our journey together. Religious Education for children and youth will start at 10:00 a.m. in the Education building.