November 16, 1997

Prelude - Debbi Galvin

Welcome and Announcements

Chalice Lighting and Call to Worship

Children's Moment - Where Cookies Come From

(children may go to their classes)

fellowship singers: #53: I Walk the Unfrequented Road

UU Comments - Becky Todd

Offertory - Margaret Hoos

*Hymn - #303: We Are The Earth Upright and Proud

Earth, Fire, Air and Water - Jonathan Black

Reading - St. Crispin's Day^# - Jeff Baumann

Meditation

Dirt - Jonathan Black

*Hymn - #21: For the Beauty of the Earth

Closing Words (responsive reading)

(A discussion circle will follow: please gather if you wish to participate)

* Please Stand

Chalice Lighting and Call to Worship

"Mankind have conceived to themselves certain laws by which what they call nature is supposed to act; and that a miracle is something contrary to the operation and effect of those laws; but unless we know the whole extent of those laws, and of what are commonly called the powers of nature, we are not able to judge whether anything that may appear to us wonderful or miraculous be within, or beyond, or be contrary to, her natural power of acting."

Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason (1794)

Come, let us together accord just worth to earth, a part of the powers of nature. Come, let us worship together.

Meditation

We are all made of star stuff - we are, each and all, children of the stars. Every atom of our being, and of everything about us, earth, air and water, was born in the fire of a dying star. Truly, if we think about it, this is miraculous. Let us abide together awhile and consider this in silence.

Dirt

Common as dirt.

Consider with me for a moment, just how common is dirt?

Dirt is remarkably uncommon, in fact miraculous, in the sense that Paine and Emerson spoke of miracles, true miracles, as being: "One with the blowing clover and the falling rain."

We stand here, or rather today sit here, on a thin, incredibly thin, solid shell, between the fires of the deep and the frozen cold of space.

In most places, less than a foot of fertile earth, of topsoil, of mere common dirt, measures the difference between abundant life and sterile death.

It is suitable that we ask, "How did we come to be here?" Well, I want you to turn your mind back in time, not a year or ten years or 100 years or 1,000 years or even a million years or even a billion years.

Try to imagine a morning four or four and half billion years ago, we' re not actually certain of the time. The Earth was a very different place in those days. It was hot and active. There were volcanoes and earthquakes. There was no air. There were gases, mostly nitrogen, very little oxygen. There was constant thunder and lightning, almost constant rain. Not the sort of rain we know, because there was very little water.

And there were no living thing, on the land, in the water or in the air. There was not one living thing. But chemistry had already begun, in fact chemistry had gone on for billions of years. On this particular morning, in one muddy puddle, somewhere on this planet, a rather remarkable and unique event took place. A new molecule was formed. Now, that in itself was not unique because molecules were being formed for millions and billions of years before that.

But on this particular morning a molecule was formed, either by design or by happy chance, depending upon your theological view, that had a remarkable property of being able to replicate itself. This primate replicator is, in fact, the progenitor of all life that is around us today. It is the ancient, ancient ancestor of DNA, the informational code that we find today in all life, whether it be animal or vegetable, whether it be single cell algae or whether it be a human being.

We are the children of the stars but, more than that, we are the direct lineal descendants of that original replicator.

Cookies, as we found out earlier today with the children, come from the earth, and so does everything about us here and all that we wear on our bodies and, yes, our bodies themselves.

Simply put, we are dirt.

You, me, all of us, we are dirt.

First the replicator, then our ancestors and then we, ourselves, each of us arose from dirt and all will return, quite certainly, to dirt.

This common dirt about us that you might scuff up as you walk out to the playground perhaps, contains atoms and even molecules of our ancestors, back 10s, 100s, thousands, tens of thousands of generations.

Now, I say, dirt is noble and so are we.

The earth has its life and its moments

It goes to sleep in the autumn and awakens in the spring - bringing forth new life and accepting, without complaint, the husks of lives completed.

I know about dirt: when I bed my garden down at Thanksgiving; I know it.

I know about dirt: when I run my hands through the warm soil at Easter; I know it.

We have our life and our moments, too.

I know about us: We have each, in our common searching, found our way here, and joined in a covenantal community; I know that.

I know about us: We came here not by chance but with purpose; I know that.

This fellowship is middle aged, if you trust the calendar, but, in the average length of our individual membership, it's really quite young, not yet even adolescent.

Yet, each of us here is a grown up, each experienced in our own ways and our own places, in our professions and avocations, firm in family and friends.

However, we came here to find, to make, a new thing: a communality, a community, a joining of our interests.

Our common interests in learning, in seeking, in finding ways to live well enough, to live our lives without regret but with fulfillment, for ourselves, for our children and, through community, for each other, these common interests have brought us here.

We are strange to this activity, treading uneasily on soft ground.

We are feeling our way, finding our way, coping with growth, being surprised by change.

We are at times quite awkward with each other.

Most of us forget, many of us never knew, the shared history of this fellowship.

Some of us remember it far too well and, confused, have difficulty with the present and with the future as it bears down on us.

But, we have each agreed upon seven covenantal principles. I shall today touch on only two of them.

The first of these principles is:

That every person has inherent worth and dignity.

Look at your neighbor, at the person sitting next to you, really, really look:

If you look past the differences in age, in gender, in appearance, in genetic heritage, even past the skin and into the flesh, and down to the bone, we are all the same.

And that sameness is not merely perception, but absolute reality, for we all come from the common dirt.

If I or you deny the nobility of anyone, if we refuse to affirm their inherent worth and dignity, we deny the nobility of dirt.

Now, I say, dirt is noble and so are we.

We are all far, far more alike than we are different - our similarity and our nobility arise, as did we, from the earth, from dirt.

The second covenantal principle is

That we all hold for justice, equity and compassion in human relations.

Justice, equity these are easy, no problem really to understand or to achieve.

In our quest for a just society of laws, not of men or women,

In our quest for equity not caprice, for democratic process rather than autocratic pragmatism,

We are simply trying to reach up to the standard of the dirt beneath our feet.

For the earth, soil, dirt, are part of nature. And nature holds fast to certain laws, as Paine said, to a "natural power of acting."

Earth knows its' laws and exercises them uniformly, miraculously.

It raises us up, it supports us, it nurtures us and, at the end, takes us back, all without question or hesitation.

In earth, in dirt, there is perfect justice, perfect equity.

Justice, equity, these shouldn't be difficult for us to achieve, should they?

But, on the other hand, consider compassion:

In this we are unique, perhaps the need for compassion is the reason stars died to make the stuff of our soil;

For the human species is the only part of nature; animal, vegetable or mineral, which appears to exercise compassion.

There is no compassion in a wolf, in a tree, in the entire world, in dirt itself, except in us.

But we, we care for those beyond care, we tolerate the intolerable, and, even, at times, we forgive the unforgivable, with a compassionate smile and a gentle word;

We are a compassionate race, compassionate people. And we need to be so, especially, here in the fellowship.

The past few years and, especially the recent months, have been difficult.

We have achieved so much: this beautiful new building, a parking lot, a new minister, a wonderful and growing children's religious education program.

And yet we are not at ease, we are agitated, we are divided; unlike the earth in this fall about us, we are not slowly easing into a calming rest.

Let me say this clearly to each and all of you: we are compassionate, each and all of us.

I doubt this not for a moment.

But, we must exercise this compassion more freely and more often, lest in disuse, we forget how.

Each of you who will stand with me in this, in Shakespeare's terms, "Shall be my brother and my sister; be you ne'er so vile; this day shall gentle your condition."

Be you ne'er so vile? We don't have that problem here. There are no vile people here - only people who, by occasional mean or thoughtless words or acts, may from time to time, appear unsatisfactory, even undesirable as fellows.

It is not our common nature but our acts, our deeds, our words which raise us up or cast us down in conscience and in the sight of others.

Emerson spoke, in 1838 to the graduating class of the Harvard School of Divinity, and still speaks to us today:

"In the soul of man (and of course women), there is a justice whose retributions are instant and entire. He who does a good deed, is instantly ennobled. He who does a mean deed, is by the action itself contracted."

Let me set you a puzzle: "If I have a dog, and I call his tail a leg, how many legs does he have?"

Let me count: one, two, three, four. Of course four, only four, because calling a tail a leg doesn't make it so - my dog has no more legs than before I called his tail a leg.

In a similar way, accepting a harsh word with a smile does not make that word sweet or even tolerable. Nor does any, even unacceptable, conduct render an individual unqualified for our continued embrace.

We must, in compassion, embrace any such individual but reject any such act - and in fellowship, we must bear witness to both the rejection and the embrace.

We must stand and say, "You are my sister, my brother, but what you have done hurts me, it is unacceptable. Come let us reason together and find a better way."

Such are the firm foundations and sweet demands of fellowship.

Today, let me call upon each of you to undertake two things, two good deeds, two acts of compassion, for yourself and for those in our fellowship:

First reflection: Ask, what brought me here and what keeps me here?

We are, each and all, here voluntarily. But we need to know, and to tell ourselves, and each other, as Becky did this morning, in clarity, why we came and why we stay.

The second act of compassion that I would ask of you is one of reconciliation: Ask, how shall I be reconciled with the earth, with the common yet noble dirt of my nature, and, thus, with my brothers and sisters in fellowship?

We are, each and all, common in nature and incomplete. But we need to accept, in ourselves and each other, our common defects and work to make them right.

I say, finally, dirt is noble and so are we.

If we are to progress together, we must recognize our common nature, our common needs, our common ambitions and reach out to each other, and especially to others in our fellowship now absent, in free and easy reconciliation.

We are the earth upright and proud, in us the earth is growing.

Let's not disappoint her.

Blessed be.

Closing Words (responsive reading)

Cookies come from the Earth

We come from the Earth

Cookies come from dirt

We come from dirt

The earth is dirt

The earth is good

(together) Blessed be