“Who Are We When We’re Alone?  Reflections on Sabbaticals and Identity”
Readings & Sermon Preached by Dr. Erik Wingrove-Haugland , January 11, 2009

Readings

Who is a Unitarian Universalist minister?  A person who is never completely satisfied or satisfiable, never completely adjusted or adjustable, who walks in two worlds—one of things as they are, the other of things as they ought to be—and loves them both.  A UU minister is a person with a pincushion soul and an elastic heart, who sits with the happy and the sad in a chaotic pattern of laugh, cry, laugh, cry—and who knows deep down that the first time the laughter is false, or the tears are make-believe, his or her days as a real minister are over.
UU ministers have dreams they can never wholly share, partly because they have some doubts about those dreams themselves and partly because they are unable adequately to explain, describe, or define what it is they think they see and understand.
A UU minister continually runs out of time, out of wisdom, out of ability, out of courage, and out of money.  A UU minister is hurtable, with great responsibility and little power, who must learn to accept people where they are and go on from there.  UU ministers who are worth their salt know all this, and are still thankful every day for the privilege of being what they are.
The future of the liberal church is almost totally dependent on two factors: great congregations (whether large or small) and skilled, effective, dedicated ministers.  The strangest feature of their relationship is that they create one another.
-Jack Mendelsohn, “Why I am a Unitarian Universalist”

They say you are not you except in terms of relation to other people. If there weren't any other people, there wouldn't be any you because what you do, which is what you are, only has meaning in relation to other people. That is a very comforting thought when you are…alone, for then you aren't you, and not being you or anything, you can really lie back and get some rest. It is a vacation from being you…. 
-Robert Penn Warren, All the King’s Men

Sermon

As you know, this is the first Sunday service of Carolyn’s sabbatical; she preached last Sunday, but she won’t be preaching again until June.  I’m sure we’ll all miss her; I know that I will.  I am convinced, however, that her sabbatical is not just a good thing but an incredibly good thing; that’s why I agreed to co-chair the Sabbatical Committee, to write the Sabbatical Handbook, and to preach today, on the first Sunday of Carolyn’s sabbatical. 

I don’t think there is any need for lengthy arguments to convince anyone that her sabbatical will be a good thing for Carolyn; that’s pretty obvious.  This sabbatical will give Carolyn a chance to rejuvenate herself as a minister, to renew her spirit, and to rededicate herself to her ministry here at All Souls.  Like every member of a stressful or caring profession, ministers need time away in order to avoid burnout, and to keep seeing members of the congregation as human beings, rather than as additions to an enormous workload.  Shortly before I took a sabbatical from my job as a philosophy professor at the Coast Guard Academy, one of my students asked me “why do professors get sabbaticals?”  Instantly, without thinking at all, I replied “so they don’t kill students.”  Somewhat taken aback, he replied “oh…that’s a good reason.”  He was right; it’s a darn good reason.

As Jack Mendelsohn said in our first reading this morning, a minister’s laughter and tears cannot be false; to really minister to someone, the tears and laughter have to be real.  No human being, however, can sustain that level of genuine emotion indefinitely; without some time to rest, there inevitably comes a time when one is simply going through the motions.  To paraphrase the final line of the reading from Robert Penn Warren, this sabbatical will allow Carolyn to take a break from being Reverend Carolyn Patierno, and to spend some time just being Carolyn. It will also give Kate and Lily Jun some time when they don’t have to be the minister’s wife, or the preacher’s kid.  When people are in these roles for too long, they run the risk of losing themselves in their role, or forgetting to be Carolyn and simply becoming Reverend Patierno.  Carolyn needs this sabbatical to remind herself that she is a human being first, and a minister second. 

In my opinion, however, the benefits of this sabbatical to Carolyn are actually less than half of the story.  The other part—the greater part—are the benefits to this congregation.   It may seem somewhat odd to speak of benefits to the congregation from having our minister on sabbatical for five months, but I think it makes a great deal of sense.  Just as Carolyn needs to reclaim her sense of identity apart from this congregation, so this congregation needs to reclaim its sense of identity apart from Reverend Patierno.  We, too, need this sabbatical—not as a break from Carolyn, but as a break from Reverend Patierno.  Without such a break, we run the risk of allowing our relationship with Carolyn to stagnate and become stale.  Those who have been in a marriage or committed relationship for many years will understand what I mean when I say that you both need to take a few breaks from each other; if you don’t, you will end up killing each other.

As many of you know, my wife Suzanne is a playwright and poet, and I am a professor of philosophy; both of these involve writing.  We each regularly take writing retreats; I took one over New Year’s and she took one last week.  This is partly because when we are at home we simply cannot devote long enough stretches of time to our writing projects, but it also has the additional positive effect of taking us away from our daily lives; as Robert Penn Warren would put it, each of us gets a short vacation from being ourselves.  I think this has really helped sustain us, both as individuals and as a couple, over the years.

If, as Robert Penn Warren says, you are not you except in relation to other people, then it is not only true regarding Carolyn, it is also true regarding us: a congregation can also have a tendency to allow its own identity to be defined by its minister.  This is particularly the case when a congregation has an excellent minister, as we do.  Having a skilled, effective, and dedicated minister like Carolyn is primarily a blessing for this congregation, it has a potential downside; because Carolyn is so competent, we may be tempted to rely upon her too much, to forget that each of us has to conduct our own free and responsible search for truth and meaning - Carolyn cannot conduct that search for any of us. 

This congregation recently went through a significant change in our identity when we moved from the building at 60 Huntington Street to this building at 19 Jay Street.  This was a difficult process, which involved a tremendous amount of time and energy from a tremendous number of people.  It is true that this move could not have happened without Carolyn; her popularity generated the pressure which made this move necessary.  We could not have made this move without Carolyn.  To put that in logical terms, however, that only means that having Carolyn as our minister was a necessary condition for the move—not that it was a sufficient condition.  While it is true that we could not have moved into this building without Carolyn, it is equally true that we could not have moved into this building without Spencer Johnson, without Nick and Claire Evento, without Jackie Pick, without Jean Hanor, or without the hundreds of people who donated money and time to reclaim this land and to transform this building into the home of our congregation.  To put it in terms that those familiar with the history of Yankee Stadium will understand, this is not just the house that Carolyn built; this is the house that we built.

During the process of moving from 60 Huntington Street into this building, we learned an important truth: that the identity of this congregation does not depend upon any particular building.  This congregation is not the building at 60 Huntington Street, nor is it this building at 19 Jay Street.  Congregations do not exist for the sake of buildings; buildings exist for the sake of congregations.
As many of you know, for the past two and a half years I have been preaching twice a month at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Norwich.  They have been learning a similar lesson, from the opposite direction.  As you may have heard, they have decided to put their historic building up for sale, in order to get out of the significant demands of labor and money which that building imposes on their congregation.  Getting out from under this significant burden will allow their congregation to decide who they want to be, just as moving into this building will allow our congregation to decide who we want to be.

In Unitarian Universalism, what I said about buildings is also true of ministers: congregations do not exist for the sake of minister; ministers exist for the sake of congregations.  It is important to remember that this is not true of many other denominations, in which congregations exist for the sake of ministers or priests, who in turn exist for the sake of God.  In many denominations, the church hierarchy assigns priests or ministers to congregations, who have no say regarding who will preach in their pulpit.  Fortunately, Unitarian Universalism inherited the idea of congregational sovereignty from our Congregationalist ancestors; thanks to that tradition, we have the power to hire and fire our own ministers.  Carolyn Patierno is an employee of this congregation, whom we hired and whom we could fire.  That is not true in many other denominations, and we are fortunate that it is true in ours.  The right of this congregation to determine our own destiny is one of the most precious gifts of our religious heritage.

That gift - the gift of congregational sovereignty, or self-determination - is our most important inheritance from our living tradition.  It is what puts us in charge of defining our own identity as a congregation.  It gives us the opportunity of determining who we are going to be.  It is the application of our denominational commitment to a free and responsible search for truth and meaning to the collective level.  As a congregation, we are free to determine our own destiny - but we are also responsible for the choices that we make. 

Carolyn has left us with an incredible parting gift.  She is the one who scheduled all these incredible visitors to come in and preach during her sabbatical.  Several of you have come up to me and complemented me on the list of services in the sabbatical handbook, but Carolyn made the arrangements, along with Mary Jean Kanabis, and Heidi Carrier did the graphics; all I did was write them down.  Look at next Sunday; Reflections on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. with Father Emmett Jarrett of Saint Francis House, Rabbi Carl Astor of Congregation Beth El, and Mongi Dhaouadi of the Council on American & Islamic Relations; featuring special music by Carl Franklin. Wow.  Talk about a congregation to whom much has been given.  That sounds so good that I may try to scoot in and catch as much of the 9 o’clock service as I can before I have to leave to drive up to Norwich and preach.

In addition to all these wonderful preachers, we will hold three services in which members of All Souls preach about various aspects of our mission statement, followed by facilitated discussions.  These services will help us clarify our mission, and make a fully informed choice as to what this congregation is going to become. 

Finally, it is completely appropriate that key work on our congregation’s long range plan will occur during this time.  Some may ask, “how can we do that while Carolyn is gone?”  That question is what we need to answer in developing our long range plan. 
I do not think that it was accidental that Carolyn chose the reading from Jack Mendelsohn, which says that great congregations and skilled, effective, dedicated ministers create one another, for her ordination ceremony seven years ago.  It seems clear to me that Carolyn is a skilled, effective, dedicated minister; you don’t need a course in logic to figure out that these premises support the conclusion that we are a great congregation.  I think we don’t acknowledge that to ourselves as often as we should, partly because of a typically Unitarian Universalist refusal to toot our own horn, partly because of a typically New England fear of any kind of self-promotion, and partly perhaps because we let the fact that we could not have done all of this without Carolyn obscure the far more fundamental fact that Carolyn could not have done any of this without us. 

That’s something that we can be proud of, but it is also something that generates a certain level of responsibility.  Just as Carolyn has a responsibility to be a skilled, effective, and dedicated minister, so we have a responsibility to be a great congregation.  Much has been given to us, and therefore, as the gospel of Luke says, much will be expected from us.  It is thus appropriate that we will be focusing on homelessness during this time.  The rising foreclosure rate serves as a reminder that one of the many things we have been given is a home, and that what is expected from us in return is help for those who do not have a home.

In the message that she wrote for the sabbatical handbook, Carolyn mentioned that one of the functions of a sabbatical is to deepen a minister’s sense of having been called to the ministry as a vocation.  I hope that her sabbatical will also deepen this congregation’s understanding that we, too, have been called - just as Carolyn has been called to be a minister, so we, too, have been called to be a great congregation. Just as Carolyn’s call to the ministry imposes certain responsibilities on her, so our call to be a great congregation imposes certain responsibilities on us; it challenges us to be worthy of our minister, and worthy of our living tradition.

May it ever be so.  Amen.