"O" FOR THE "P"

a sermon preached by
the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Religious Society in Carlisle, Massachusetts Sunday February 25th, 2007


I know I’ve told this story here before, but it’s been awhile and it bears repeating. But about a month after I first saw this fresco of the Good Samaritan in the Unitarian Church in Copenhagen, I had a very vivid lesson in the ethical challenge offered by this parable. My mother was visiting me in Denmark for a few weeks, and we were headed to the train station early in the morning, on our way to do some sightseeing, when a rather frail, elderly woman came up to us started jabbering at me in very rapid, heavily accented Danish. And I was trying to explain to her that we were in a hurry, and that I didn’t really understand what she was saying, but she didn’t seem to understand me either; instead, she just kept grabbing at my arm and pointing to a nearby bus shelter. So I looked over at where she was pointing and saw a person, this body, really, seated on the bench and slumped over against the glass wall on the side of the shelter, with a thin trickle of blood running down the side of his face....

And at that point the conversation suddenly got very animated. I was trying to tell this woman (in a jumble of Danish, English, French, German, Greek and Latin all at once) that she needed to call the police, but she wasn’t having any of it. She’d shown the body to me, an obviously competent and responsible younger person, and now she had to catch her bus, “Tak skal du have” and away she went.

And there I was.

Now this particular bus shelter was right outside a government hospital that had recently closed due to budget cuts, so naturally, being an American, I assumed that this young man had been shot or beaten up in some sort of gang-related drug deal and then dumped by his buddies outside the hospital because they didn’t want to risk involvement with the authorities. I tried to rouse him, just like I had been taught in the Boy Scouts, but I got no response, so I went inside the hospital just to see if I could find anyone there who could help me. Eventually I found a caretaker, who explained to me (in English) about the hospital being closed, and then agreed to accompany me back outside to see the body for himself.

He also tried to rouse this fellow, a little more loudly and aggressively than I had, and sure enough, the body responded... and after a brief conversation between the two of them, the caretaker assured me that the gentleman in question was merely someone who had stayed out a little too late the night before, and had fallen asleep while waiting for his bus, having fallen down and banged his head against something hard earlier in the evening... but not to worry, because [wink,wink] he was feeling no pain. So I was able to explain all this to my mother, who of course had also seen the body, but basically understood nothing else of what had been going on, that everything was OK and that we could continue on our way.

And I honestly don’t know to this day whether or not I would have spent as much time I did trying to help this stranger if I hadn’t seen the fresco of the Good Samaritan in the Unitarian Church just a few weeks earlier. But I do know this...having just seen that fresco, only a few blocks from that bus shelter, I would have felt like a terrible hypocrite if I had simply passed him by.

As a general rule, we Unitarian Universalists don’t ordinarily put much stock in guilt and shame as spiritual and ethical motivators, but I suppose there’s a time and a place for everything. Because yes: I was confused, and also a little afraid, far from home on unfamiliar ground, and in many ways it would have been a lot easier for me to turn my back and walk away. But how was I going to explain that behavior to my mother? (who, in all honesty, would have probably just as soon walked away herself). And, more importantly, how was I going to live with myself afterwards?

And since that day, which was almost seven years ago now, I’ve often thought about just how appropriate a fresco of the Good Samaritan is for a Unitarian Church -- so much more appropriate than so many other stories from the Bible that might have been chosen instead. Even if we weren’t raised in the Christian tradition, we’ve all known the story since we were children. It’s part of our cultural lexicon. A Samaritan is someone who does good deeds, who helps others in need, even if they happen to be strangers. In fact, especially if they happen to be strangers....

But it’s also easy for children to miss the real message of this story, and even for adults the actual context is often a little obscure. A traveler is attacked, robbed, and left for dead at the side of the road. A Priest and a Levite (which was basically just another kind of priest) see him there but pass him by...not necessarily because they are bad people, or even because they are afraid of being robbed themselves, but most likely simply because they assumed he is already dead, and knew that touching a corpse would leave them ritually unclean and therefore incapable of performing their religious duties. In other words, their positions of social privilege and their responsibilities for community leadership caused them to look past the immediate and pressing need right in front of their own eyes, and to continue on their way.

But then a Samaritan -- an outsider, an outcast -- sees the body and takes the time to investigate. He’s not worried about his formal religious duties interfering with his compassion for another human being, nor is he afraid to take the risk of becoming a victim himself. Or at the very least he is willing to face that fear. And all this in the context of the one Great Commandment of both Christianity and Judaism: “Love the Lord Your God With All Your Heart (and all your Soul and all your Strength and all your Mind), and Love Your Neighbor As Yourself.” The lawyers, the priests, the Levites and the Pharisees may wish to quibble about the precise definition of neighbor, if only to reassure themselves of their own wisdom and importance. But the Samaritan knows that if you happen to be in the neighborhood, whoever you see there is your neighbor. Even if he happens to be a stranger, and you yourself are traveling far from home.

In many ways, Dr Paul Farmer is a perfect example of a modern day Samaritan, yet in other ways he is exactly the opposite. “Doktè Paul” (as he is known in Haiti) is a Harvard-educated physician and anthropologist who has essentially devoted his entire adult life to pursuing his compelling mission of providing first world health care to third world people. The Cambridge-based not-for-profit “Partners in Health” and its Haitian counterpart “Zanmi Lasante,” which he founded while still a medical student in the 1980’s, are now the much-admired working paradigms for his philosophy of “solving global health problems through a clear-eyed understanding of the interactions of politics, wealth, social systems, and disease.”

In more specific terms, Farmer’s philosophy combines the scientific discipline and humanitarian concern of the very best of modern medical practice with Liberation Theology’s “preferential Option for the Poor,” and it’s “powerful rebuke to the hiding away of poverty, a rebuke that transcends scholarly analysis.” Farmer’s extraordinary combination of scientific excellence and spiritual commitment in many ways simply reflects the profound contrast between the two worlds of Harvard and Haiti.

“The fact that any sort of religious faith was so disdained at Harvard and so important to the poor -- not just in Haiti but elsewhere too -- made me even more convinced that faith must be something good,” he once explained to author and friend Tracy Kidder. He amplified these sentiments on another occasion while trying to explain why he lives the life he lives. “If you’re making sacrifices, unless you’re automatically following some rule, it stands to reason that you’re trying to lessen some psychic discomfort. So, for example, if I took steps to be a doctor for those who don’t have medical care, it could be regarded as a sacrifice, but it could also be regarded as a way to deal with ambivalence.... I feel ambivalent about selling my services in a world where some can’t buy them. You can feel ambivalent about that, because you should feel ambivalent....”

If you want to know the entire story of Paul Farmer’s remarkable medical career, I’m afraid you’re going to have to read the book yourself. It’s not that I don’t want to tell you about it; it’s just that I can’t. Paul Farmer defies easy summarization; even Kidder’s 300 page New York Times bestseller often seems only to scratch the surface of this incredibly talented and complex individual. He also defies imitation. As his colleague at PIH, Jim Kim, once put it “Paul has created technical solutions to help the rest of us get to decency, a road map to decency that we can all follow without trying to imitate him.... Paul is a model of what should be done. He’s not a model for how it has to be done. Let’s celebrate him. Let’s make sure people are inspired by him. But we can’t say anybody should or could be just like him...because if the poor have to wait for a lot of people like Paul to come along before they get good health care, they are totally....” (and I’ll just leave you to fill in that last word for yourselves).

But this notion of a “road map to decency” is a very intriguing and provocative one. What does it take to inspire brilliant and talented people like Paul Farmer to step off the fast track to wealth and power and privilege, and instead become successful and accomplished on their own terms, by turning their attention to those who have been robbed, beaten and left helpless along the side of the road? How would the World be different if we all shared the assumption that our highest priority should be those with the greatest need? It’s hard to imagine, but it might look a little like this. During a trip to Moscow to consult with Russian doctors about the epidemic of Multi-Drug Resistant Tuberculosis in that country, Farmer shared this anecdote about himself:

“I have been working in Haiti for almost twenty years, ever since I was a young chap, and some years ago I was asked by the state of Massachusetts to be a TB commissioner, and I said ‘What the hell do we do?’ I was in Haiti and I had a couple of MDR-TB patients and I took sputums and I brought them to Boston. And I took them into the lab and I wrote, ‘Paul Farmer, Sate TB Commissioner.’ I wanted them to process my samples from Haiti and they did and never asked any questions, so I did it more and more and then I did it with sputums from Peru, and of course, eventually they asked me why. I said, ‘Massachusetts is a great state, it has a big TB lab, lots of TB doctors, lots of TB nurses, lots of TB lab specialists. It lacks only one thing. Tuberculosis.’ “

Tuberculosis, as Farmer likes to say, asserts its own preferential option for the poor. On the wrong side of what he calls “the great epi divide,” that portion of the epidemiological map where poverty and its associated hunger and malnutrition, overcrowding, poor hygiene, violence and preventable infectious disease reduce average life expectancies by anywhere from a third to a half, TB still kills more people than any other disease but AIDS (with which it shares, in Farmer’s words, a “noxious synergy”), while in more affluent parts of the world, such as here in Massachusetts, it is easily treatable and has all but disappeared. On Paul Farmer’s roadmap, patients always comes first, no matter where they live, just as we would hope we would be treated if we were the patients in question. But this is only the first step.

To borrow terminology from the 19th century German physician Rudolph Virchow (whose writings Farmer first discovered when he was an undergraduate at Duke), it also involves embracing the Politics of Prophylaxis rather than the Politics of Palliation; of practicing real prevention, and not just alleviating suffering. According to Virchow, “It is the curse of humanity that it learns to tolerate even the most horrible situations by habituation” and “medical education does not exist to provide students with a way of making a living, but to insure the health of the community.”

In other words, good medicine, even (and perhaps even especially) in a third world country like Haiti, is not simply about passing out bigger band aids. It involves addressing the underlying economic and public health issues which create the conditions for disease in the first place, as well as confronting the overarching political power structures which keep those conditions in place. It means creating clean and reliable public water supplies, and adequate sewage treatment, training cadres of local public health care assistants, who understand the culture as well as the medicine, and developing top quality medical facilities where they are most urgently needed, rather than merely where they are most easily afforded.

And yet, on Paul Farmer’s roadmap, the distinction between “prevention” and “treatment” doesn’t really exist, and is often just an excuse used by Public Health officials to justify their own inaction. Of course an ounce of prevention worth a pound of cure. But if the patient already has the disease, and the means to cure it exist, the relative cost of these two options is and ought to be essentially irrelevant. This is one of Farmer’s many AMCs (or “areas of moral clarity”). Strictly speaking, as he is fond of saying, all resources everywhere are limited. “But they’re less limited now than ever before in human history,” he continues. It’s just a matter of moving away from an analysis of cost effectiveness to one which puts the needs of the patients first.

His colleague Jim Kim amplifies this sentiment. “There have been fundamental frame shifts in what human beings feel is morally defensible, what not. The world doesn’t bind women’s feet anymore, no one believes in slavery. Paul and I are anthropologists. We know that things change all the time. Culture changes all the time. Advertising people force changes in culture all the time. Why can’t we do that?”

It’s a provocative challenge, not unlike the challenge of the Good Samaritan. But rather than trying to imagine all the details, simply imagine this: how would the United States be viewed differently in the world if our Foreign policy was based on eradicating global poverty and treating endemic communicable diseases like AIDS and tuberculosis and malaria, rather than defeating terrorism of global reach, and defending easy access to Middle Eastern oil?

And perhaps more to the point, how would we feel differently about ourselves?

****

READING: from Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder

The term [triage] comes from the fourteenth-century French trier, “to pick or cull,” and was first used to describe the sorting of wool according to its quality. In modern medical usage, triage has two different meanings, nearly opposite. In situations' where doctors and nurses and tools are limited, on battlefields, for instance, one performs triage by attending first to the severely wounded who have the best chance of survival. The aim is to save as many as possible; the others may have to die unattended. In the peacetime case, however, in well-staffed and well-stocked American emergency rooms, for example, triage isn’t supposed to imply withholding care from anyone; rather, it’s identifying the patients in gravest danger and giving them priority.

[Paul] Farmer has constructed his life around this second kind of triage. What else is a “preferential option for the poor” in medicine. But Haiti more nearly resembles a battlefield than a place at peace. Walking behind him, I say there must always be situations here where the choice to do one necessary thing also means the choice not to do another -- not just to defer the other but not to do it.

“All the time,” he says.

“Throughout your whole career you’ve had to face this, right?”

“Yes. I do it every day. Do this instead of that. Every day all day long, that’s all I do. Is not do things....

“...I have fought for my whole life a long defeat. How about that? How about if I said, That’s all it adds up to is defeat?”

“A long defeat.”

“I have fought the long defeat and brought other people on to fight the long defeat, and I’m not going to stop because we keep losing. Now I actually think sometimes we may win. I don’t dislike victory. You and I have discussed this so many times.”

“Sorry.”

“No, no, I’m not complaining” he says. “you know, people from our background -- like you, like most PIH-ers, like me -- we’re used to being on a victory team, and actually what we’re trying to do in P[artners] I[n] H[ealth] is to make common cause with the losers. Those are two very different things. We want to be on the winning team, but at the risk of turning our backs on the losers, no, it’s not worth it. So you fight the long defeat....”

“...I like the line about the long defeat, “ I tell him.

“I would regard that as the basic stance of O for the P,” he replies. “I don’t care if we lose. I’m gonna try to do the right thing.”

“But you’re going to try to win.”

“Of course!...”

VISION

a sermon preached by the Rev Dr Tim W Jensen
at the First Religious Society in Carlisle, Massachusetts
Sunday February 11th, 2007

"Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around in awareness." --James Thurber

“Where there is no vision, the people perish...” --Proverbs 29:18



The new arrival was being shown around heaven by Saint Peter, when they came to a room of people sitting in a circle on folding chairs all talking at once.

“What’s going on?” the new arrival asked.

“Oh, those are the Unitarians” Saint Peter replied. “They’re having a meeting to discuss whether or not they’re really here.”

I was at another meeting, a minister’s meeting, this past week, where I heard a colleague talking about the challenges she’d faced leading her congregation through change. “At the start of my second year there,” she told me, “I made a few gentle suggestions about how we might want to try doing things a little differently, and they were universally ignored. The following year, I was a little more insistent in my recommendations, and met with only resistance and resentment. Halfway through my fourth year I became even more forceful and assertive about the changes I wanted to see happen, only to have my ideas rejected outright. But now finally in my fifth year, my parishioners are starting to repeat my ideas back to me as if they were their own, and I don’t have to say anything at all....”

Of course, the whole time I was listening to this I was nodding and smiling to myself, because this certainly wasn’t the first time I’d heard that story, and I also knew from personal experience exactly what she was talking about. Often times things turn out a whole lot better if, rather than trying to persuade other people to see things your way, you simply create opportunities to let them to see things clearly with their own eyes, and then to come up with their own solutions. Real leadership has a lot more to do with asking the right questions and focusing people’s attention in the right direction than it does with always having all the answers. And if you don’t really care who gets the credit either, you can generally accomplish a whole lot more than you might ever have imagined.

Of course, those of you who were here yesterday at the All Church Visioning Event had a chance to see this principle in action with your own eyes. There were about 50 of us in attendance, for all or part of the morning (and early afternoon), and the results (I thought) were very impressive. We invited people to “Bring Your Passion, Create a Plan” and people did both. But before I say too much more about what happened yesterday, I first want to talk a little bit about the idea of Vision itself.

We typically think of Vision as an ability to look ahead -- to gaze out toward the horizon, and see the road before us. Visionaries are people who see the big picture, who perhaps even seem to see into the future...they dream of what might be, and describe it so vividly that it appears as though we can almost reach out and touch it for ourselves. Inevitably we first see the future at a distance; but the more clearly we can bring it into focus, the more obvious the way forward becomes. This is the gift of the true visionary: the ability to see beyond the horizon, and imagine accurately what awaits us there.

But Vision is not just about looking ahead; it is also about looking around, and being able to see what is right in front of our eyes and under our own noses. Often times in life we discover that we have been looking at the same landscape so routinely and for so long that we no longer really even “see” it anymore. It becomes invisible to us, and so we fail to notice the subtle changes that are happening around us all the time. And then one day, we suddenly discover that things have become SO different we can’t ignore them any more. Learning how to see the familiar through fresh eyes, so that we are no longer surprised by gradual change, is a rare gift -- a gift I find is often enhanced by an occasional change of scene, which allows us, in the words of the poet T.S. Eliot, “to arrive where we started, and know the place for the first time.”

Finally, there is also an aspect of Vision that is reflective, and allows us to see ourselves as we truly are. This is generally the most difficult scrutiny of all. Self-examination can often feel like an exercise in placing blame and making excuses: pointing fingers while at the same time covering various other parts of our anatomy. This sort of self-examination is basically nothing but a waste of time. It’s perfectly normal to want to see ourselves in the most flattering light, and to turn a blind eye to our faults. But it’s no more useful than the opposite extreme, which is the merciless self-criticism which only inspires us to beat ourselves up for no good reason. Authentic self-examination needs to be done both honestly and appreciatively, but without the denial and self-deception that is generally the cruelest deception of them all.

Furthermore, often it’s really not enough merely to look at ourselves regularly in the mirror. After awhile our own faces simply become part of that familiar landscape I spoke of earlier. The most useful insights come when we can manage to get even just a small glimpse of ourselves as others see us. This perspective can sometimes be quite startling. For example, I can still remember quite vividly how it felt the first time I got a good look at the top of my own head. I was kinda watching out of the corner of my eye the Public Access Cable broadcast of the Nantucket Town Meeting, where I had been invited to offer the opening Invocation. And I thought to myself “Who is that fat old, bald guy walking up to the podium, dressed in a Crimson Harvard Robe that looks an awful lot like mine?”

And then the next thing I knew, I knew...and it was a bit of a shock. And since that time, I have actually managed to lose both a little more weight and a lot more hair.... But the main thing I lost that day was the illusion that I still possessed my charming and athletic boyish good looks, or that it mattered. And frankly, that was OK with me. Because no matter what we see, it’s always much healthier to be able to see ourselves as we truly are, warts and all, rather than clinging desperately to an illusion that is mostly just delusional....

I also suppose it almost goes without saying that our Vision should be Vivid. It should encompass as broad a perspective, and as much detail, as we can possibly manage. But the truth of the matter is that we can never see or anticipate EVERY possible detail, and so “Realizing our Vision” also embodies a certain amount of Trust regarding the things we do NOT see clearly. This ability to Trust also helps us cope with our inevitable disillusionment, when we finally are able to see things up close, and become aware that the things we thought we saw quite clearly are not quite they way they first appeared. “Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, Can’t Lose.” Sometimes even network television gets it right.

I do want to talk a little bit now about what we did yesterday, and to try to summarize (at least in broad terms) a little of what I saw emerging out of that five-hour event. But first let me explain the process for those of you who weren’t there.

[Three Tables: “Marketplace of Ideas” -- break-out rooms, lots of NRG

Four Principles:
1) Whoever Comes is the Right People.
2) Whatever happens is the only thing that could have.
3) Whenever it starts is the right time.
4) When it is over it is over.

The Law of Two Feet -- Bumblebees and Butterflies...

“What really counts is that people truly listen to people really speaking....”]

I was only one person out of fifty. I obviously didn’t see and hear everything, but I did try to get around to as many groups as I could, and I’ve also had a chance to read over the reports, which we plan to have transcribed and publicly available before the Parish Committee meeting next Thursday. Based on my own experience and interpretation, our work basically revolved around four larger themes.

1) Largest of these themes is perhaps best characterized as: What does it mean to “belong” to FRS? What is our identity, and how can we better focus and develop that understanding in order to deepen our sense of connection and relationship with one another, reach out to and involve newcomers, grow the church, and extend our legacy of service (or ministry) to both the larger Carlisle community and the wider world? Like I said, it’s a big theme, and I can’t even begin to summarize all of the conversation that took place around it yesterday, and which I imagine will continue to take place wherever two or three of us are gathered in Our Name.

But I will share with all of you something I said in one of the groups that I attended, which is that I often tend to think of the mission of this church (or any church) in terms of three basic tasks. The first is Hospitality: simply creating a safe and inviting place where people can come and be our guests. There are also certain services we provide as a church, beginning of course with our Worship Service, but also including things like Education and Pastoral Care, as well as various Outreach and Social Action ministries. And then finally, there is an invitation to a Relationship, a covenantal partnership in which we join together to do unto others as we would have others do unto us, and in particular to provide both the hospitality and the specific services I just spoke of a moment ago.

Of course, this isn’t the final word about what it means to “belong” to FRS...but it is kind of a starting point -- making a shared commitment to create for others the same kind of positive experiences that brought us to this place in the first place. It means being the church we wish we’d found when we arrived, so that we might become the church we hope to see here on this hill in the future.

2) A second theme had to do more specifically with our worship service. This is obviously something that is particularly important to me, so perhaps I’m giving it more priority than it really deserves, but I don’t think so. There were two specific ideas which came out of yesterday’s visioning event. The first is simply to schedule more guest speakers, in order to broaden the diversity of views and voices we experience on Sunday morning. The second is to conduct a detailed and comprehensive review of our worship service, with emphasis on exploring what other churches do in their worship, and experimenting with our own in order to determine what style of worship our membership prefers.

I don’t want to say too much more about this, because one of the basic principles of this exploration is that we are not going to begin already knowing what the outcome will be. But basically it will involve members of this church visiting other churches and attending their worship services, and then engaging in conversation with one another and the minister about what they saw there and how it felt.

And out of this process, together with a little further learning about the theory and practice of worship itself, we hope to determine just the right spiritual balance, for our congregation, between the contemplative and the expressive, the reflective and the enthusiastic, the traditional and the contemporary, while at the same time creating enough worship alternatives in both directions on this spectrum that there is enough inspiration to go around for everyone.

If this all seems just a little too abstract to you, it might help to think about the three services we offer on Christmas Eve: an early service specifically for families with younger children, our “main” service of traditional Music, Carols and Readings from Scripture, and then a later, more solemn candlelight service. But talking in an intentional way about what we do on Sunday morning, in an on-going dialog based in a large degree on what we have actually seen and experienced in other churches, can not only allow us to envision a more profound and spiritually satisfying worship service for ourselves, it can also help us to clarify in a larger sense who we are as a spiritual community, and what it means to us to be people of faith.

3) A third major area of discussion had to do with our facilities, and specifically the maintenance and preservation of our historic meeting house, the possible acquisition of the adjacent Tincher property at Seven School Street (and what we might do with it once we own it), the creation of a memorial garden in the space between the two properties, making important and necessary renovations to the parsonage, the possibility of installing photovoltaic solar panels on the roof of our building, and taking other steps to give FRS a “zero carbon footprint,” and then finally the general concept of creating a more inviting FRS “campus” here in the center of town, which could help better link together FRS with other public spaces like the Gleason Library and the Town Common.

4) The fourth theme was a little more eclectic, but in many ways it coalesces together around the occasion of our 250th Anniversary celebration. These ideas included not only a retrospective look at where FRS has been, but also a wide variety of new initiatives, including things like the creation of an FRS Human Rights Commission, and an FRS coffeehouse, writing and publishing a Katrina Cookbook, developing ecumenical activities that might allow the three churches here in Carlisle to discover areas of common ground through civil dialogue, and work together on projects of shared community concern which transcend our theological differences. And then, of course, there is the celebration of the event itself, which will be taking place all next year.

Yesterday was just the beginning. And tomorrow we will start to transcribe the reports of all the working groups, in order to make them widely available to all of us who wish to see them. On Thursday the Parish Committee will receive the originals, and continue this process of identifying and refining the themes, and allocating our resources in order to match our priorities. Some of these ideas we can begin to pursue immediately. Others are going to take a little more preparation and planning. But whatever we chose to do with this material, that decision is in our hands. Because you see, the question isn’t merely “What does it mean to belong to FRS?” The real question is what does it mean when we truly understand, that FRS belongs to us as well...

TREASURE

a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Religious Society in Carlisle, Massachusetts
Sunday February 4th, 2007

“Do not store up for yourself treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not consume, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” -- Mt 6: 19-21


[extemporaneous introduction -- Super Bowl Sunday: a celebration of the traditional American Values of Competition, Consumption, and Gambling]

I don’t know how many of you regularly listen to “A Prairie Home Companion,” but last night was the annual Joke show, which naturally featured a good assortment of new Unitarian jokes. Here was my favorite: Unitarian Universalism is a religion which prays “To Whom It May Concern,” and where nobody has to listen to anybody else, and everybody disagrees. Hits a little close to home, doesn’t it?

I heard something else interesting awhile ago, and of course now I can’t even remember where I heard it (although maybe some of you heard it too); but I heard that here in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts our little town of Carlisle has the highest per capita ownership of both the Toyota Prius and the General Motors Hummer. Did anybody else hear this, or did I just imagine it? I remember thinking at the time, that it seemed a little puzzling to me that two so very different vehicles could both be so popular in the same little town; but after further review it started to make perfect sense, especially when I paused to consider that in a community of only 5000 souls, it doesn’t really take that many actual vehicles to have the highest number of them per head. And then, with that conundrum resolved, I simply filed this little tidbit of information away in that part of MY head where I store similar such trivia, such as the familiar statistic that (at over $144,000/year) Carlisle has the third highest median household income in the Commonwealth (trailing only the towns of Weston and Dover), but also the fourth highest average tax bill (behind Weston, Sherborn, and Lincoln).

Personally, I always get a little nervous when I start hearing numbers like this getting tossed around, because I’m never really sure what they really mean. I know, for example, that my annual household income is nowhere near $144,000; in fact, it’s not even half that, but then again, my household consists only and entirely of me and a twelve-year-old, 23 pound dog. Likewise, because I live in a church-owned parsonage I don’t really pay any property taxes either (or perhaps more accurately, the church itself isn’t taxed on the value of that property) -- a tradition which goes back to the days when clergy here in Massachusetts were paid out of general tax revenues, and considered to be just another town employee, like school teachers, police officers, and firefighters. But what really makes me nervous is the way that tossing around these big, six-figure numbers can start to make the rest of us feel like maybe we aren’t making as good a living as we ought to, when in fact (if you pause to think about how a lot of the world lives), we’re all actually doing pretty well for ourselves.

But let me get back to the vehicles for a moment. Personally, I’ve always sorta felt that it takes a lot of chutzpah to drive a Hummer in this era of high gas prices and global warming. And I suspect there are a lot of folks here in the Unitarian Church who would tend to agree with those sentiments. Even if someone desperately desired to express their solidarity with the troops in Iraq by cruising around Carlisle in the same kind of vehicle our soldiers drive daily through the streets of Baghdad, I still think they could make an even stronger statement by driving a Hybrid...or perhaps even just riding their bicycle. But here’s the bottom line. If your sentiments run the way mine do, and you’ve already made up your mind that you wouldn’t really want to be caught dead riding in a Humvee (no matter HOW much money you may have), that still doesn’t put you behind the wheel of a Prius. Taking that next step requires some form of positive action, and not merely the rejection of the undesirable alternative.

Likewise, when it comes to the subject of treasure, until I went away to Divinity School and started reading the Bible more seriously, I’d always sort of associated the term with words like “pirate” and “buried.” A treasure was something Pirates put in a treasure chest and buried on a deserted island: Treasure Island (something which I now know was historically very rare, since most pirates tended to prefer quickly spending their ill-gotten gains drinking and carousing in places like Jamaica or the Bahamas, rather than wasting their time digging holes in the sand to hide something they might easily not live long enough to ever see again if they were foolish enough to leave it behind in the first place).

But thanks to my extensive theological education, I now possess a much more sophisticated understanding of the topic. For example, I know that the word “treasure” in the Greek New Testament -- thesaurous -- and the Greek verb in that same verse which we translate “to store up” -- thesaurizete -- are basically one and the same. A treasury is literally a “storehouse” where we store up the things we have accumulated that are precious to us, and thus worth holding on to. And if you have a good ear, you may have also recognized the root of yet another familiar English word -- Thesaurus -- which is, of course, a treasury or storehouse of words: linguistic synonyms which writers can draw upon in order to communicate a precise nuance of meaning, or perhaps simply to spice up their writing, and vary the tone and rhythm of their narrative voice and discourse.

Most writers I know still treasure a good Thesaurus, although with so many built-in editing tools now written right into most word processing software, my trusty old dog-eared paperback Roget’s now seems like a dinosaur threatened with extinction...or at least it would, if I could still even find it. And yet, as valuable a tool as a good Thesaurus can be in the right hands, many inexperienced writers tend to squander their treasure, by simply looking for a different word instead of the Right Word -- the perfect word which expresses precisely the meaning they wish to convey. And along these same lines, one of my former writing teachers (Annie Dillard) often advised the students in her workshop to think of words as if we were spending money. “Never use a twenty-five cent word when a ten cent word will do,” she’d say. Yet this can be difficult advice to follow, for those of use who love the language, and are easily tempted into showing off our erudition.

When I think about the things I personally treasure most, books would certainly be close to the top of the list. And yet, as Thoreau so eloquently cautioned, there are many times when I do not so much feel that I possess my books as though my books possess me. Often times the things we think we treasure most end up taking over and consuming our lives, and we become prisoners of our possessions. Or as Scripture warns us, we strive to accumulate treasures on earth, which are impermanent and pass away, rather than learning and remembering to treasure the things that are NOT of this world: our spiritual and ethical values, our personal integrity, our interpersonal relationships with friends, family, neighbors and colleagues. For where our treasure is, there shall our hearts be also. And likewise, whatever it is our hearts desire, our treasure will surely follow.

Over the years I’ve come to think of Treasure in terms of three words which my Thesaurus tells me are synonyms, but which in my own mind have three very distinct and precise meanings: Wealth, Worth, and Value.

Let me start with the last word first. The things I value are the things I esteem, which I appreciate and admire and find valuable in their own right, whether or not they are actually in my possession. They reflect my personal values: the standards and principles by which I attempt to live my life, and which give my life its meaning, as well as those things which simply give me pleasure and which make life more pleasant. And believe it or not, it’s a pretty abundant list -- ranging everywhere from Peace on Earth, Goodwill to All to a good plate of BBQ ribs and a nice cold beer on a hot summer day.

Worth, on the other hand, is a measure of those things which are truly worthy of my time and attention. There are lots of things which I value personally which are relatively unimportant in the greater scheme of things, and which are therefore unworthy of my unmitigated devotion. It’s not that they are without value; it’s just that there is only so much of me to go around, and so I have to be selective about what I choose to give myself and my life to.

And then finally, Wealth is basically a measure of my ability to balance these other two priorities -- to match my resources to my values in a worthwhile way, so that my life feels abundant and fulfilling, rather than limited and empty. And I hope it’s clear from what I’ve said so far that these understandings of Wealth, Worth and Value are not limited only to money, or to the things that money can buy. In many ways, how I am able to spend my time and use my talents are even more precious to me than whatever “stuff” I may have accumulated along the way, and I imagine they are for many of you as well.

Last fall I agreed to do something which at the time I thought was very important, but which I’m already beginning to regret. Last fall I agreed to serve as the Treasurer of the Unitarian Universalist Historical Society. I took on this responsibility for two reasons. First, I was the chair of the Nominating Committee, and I couldn’t find anyone else who was willing to do the job. But I also felt that it important for me to get a little different perspective on some of these issues, and that serving as an actual “Treasurer” might be just the thing to help me do that.

I’m sure you’ve figured this out already, but clergy don’t necessarily do math in the same way as other, normal human beings. As ministers, we are encouraged to think about potential and possibility -- to draw upon the promise of God’s limitless blessings, and to lift up our eyes to the horizon, as prophetic visionaries proclaiming our faith in what might someday be, if only we will devote ourselves to the challenge of doing God’s good work in the world. And nothing is ever impossible.

But Treasurers pretty much need to stay focused on the bottom line. And being the treasurer of any organization is pretty much a thankless job, because basically you always find yourself saying “no” to other people who see something exciting that they want, and want you to sign the check that pays for it. As the Treasurer, you know how much money there is in the bank, and you also know that money doesn’t grow on trees: that every dollar you spend today on this or that is a dollar that won’t be available to spend on something else tomorrow.

Fortunately, the responsibilities of the Treasurer of the Unitarian Universalist Historical Society are not especially complicated as Treasurer-responsibilities go. The mission of that organization is basically to republish old books which have gone out of print, and to create opportunities for people like myself to write and talk about other people who are now long ago dead. But it is a good thing (or at least I think it has) for me to catch a tiny glimpse of life on the other side of the ledger.

Ministers can stand up here and talk about Prosperity and Abundance and Generosity to our heart’s content, but when the checks start bouncing, it’s the treasurer who is generally held accountable, and who has to answer all the hard questions. And, of course, both these perspectives are important, even essential, for the on-going health and prosperity of any organization, religious or otherwise. Balancing the available resources to the multitude of potential opportunities is a never-ending challenge. There is never enough money to do everything we dream of doing. Yet somehow we always seem to find enough to do the things we feel are essential, the worthwhile things which we truly value.

I’ve been debating in my own mind for several months now about just how specific I wanted to make this last portion of my message here this morning. And I’m not so sure that I’ve really made up my mind even now. So let me just say that next Saturday I’m hoping that all of you will be back here at church bright and early, to participate in the process of envisioning the future of this congregation, and creating the kind of church you dream of as we approach our 250th year of ministry in this community: a community which in many ways has coalesced around the existence of the church itself, and our on-going mission of service and hospitality to our “Neighbours & Fellow Cretures.” Yet none of these dreams will amount to anything if we can’t come up with the resources to make them come true.

This has been kind of a tight budget year here at FRS. Not that every year isn’t a tight budget year around here. There are a lot of different reasons for this, but the one we rarely talk about is that over the years, our overall level of pledging here hasn’t really kept pace with the rate of inflation. If you compare our average pledge to the average pledges of other UU congregations, both across the country and right here in New England, you’ll find that we fall in the bottom 20%. Of course, in a town as expensive as Carlisle, it’s nice to find an occasional bargain, and one of the reasons we have been able to get away with this for so long is that we are also the beneficiaries of the generosity of our spiritual ancestors, beginning of course with Timothy Wilkins himself. But when the stock market dipped a few years ago, the three year rolling average rate of return on our endowment funds also declined, and with it the amount of revenue we derive from those investments. And then finally there is the thing that we all can see, but would just as soon forget (or at least ignore)...that in the aftermath of the difficult struggle over whether or not to declare ourselves a Welcoming Congregation, there are too many good people on both sides of that issue who, for whatever reason, have decided either to scale back their support and involvement at FRS, or in a few cases have left the congregation altogether.

But it also seems to me that we’ve recently started to turn the corner a little. The Market is back up again, and with it we can look forward to an additional $4000 revenue in next year’s operating budget. The Parish Committee is actively pursuing new outside revenue streams, such as leasing space in our attic and belfry to Sprint/Nextel and T-Mobile, which would not only help our bottom line, but also provide the additional benefit of making it possible for our Neighbours & Fellow Cretures to have reliable cellular telephone service here in Carlisle Center. And of course, if you look around you, you’ll also see there are plenty of new faces here at FRS , people who are hoping to find here the same kind of close, caring spiritual community that so many of us have come to appreciate, and who are no doubt eager to help us make it even better, if only we will set a good example and show them the way.

And it all begins when we simply take the time to LISTEN to one another speak honestly and openly about the things we truly treasure about FRS, and to share with one another our dreams and aspirations for the future of this community. And out of this discussion will come the slightly more awkward conversation, in which we sincerely ask one another to each dig a little deeper into our own pockets, in order to make our collective dreams come true. But I’m confident (or perhaps I should say, I have faith) that if we just give ourselves permission to have this conversation, we will astonish ourselves with the results.

Because I’ve seen with my own eyes that we are a Truly Generous People. I’ve seen with my own eyes how we can help raise tens of thousands of dollars in just a few days for Katrina relief, or the support of the Sharing Foundation. And I’ve also seen the joy and the pride which flow from that generosity, and accompanying the knowledge that together we have achieved something valuable and worthwhile.

Now the time has come for us to learn how to express that same generosity toward one another -- so that together we might generate the resources to find the time to share our talents for the benefit both of one another and the wider world, and in doing so discover that we are indeed Truly Wealthy....

TALENT

a sermon preached by the Rev Dr Tim W Jensen
at the First Religious Society in Carlisle, Massachusetts
Sunday January 21st, 2007

“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan "press on" has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race” -- Calvin Coolidge

READING: Matthew 25: 14-30

My joke this morning is so old not even Henny Youngman would touch it, but maybe with your help we can still make it work. I’ll give you the set-up, and then we can all say the punch-line together. This guy from the Midwest gets off the bus at the Port Authority in Manhattan, and having never been to New York before, he asks the first person he sees “Can you tell me how to get to Carnegie Hall?” And the New Yorker responds (all together now): “PRACTICE!”

Today’s sermon is the second in a little series of sermons I’m preaching as we count down toward our All Church Visioning Event on February 10th. Last Sunday, I spoke about “Time“ and the pressures of the so-called “extreme workplace,” as well as the important differences between “decisiveness” and “discernment,” and between living one’s life on the edge, and living at one’s center. And then two weeks from now I will be speaking about “Treasure,” and how we can best allocate the things we value most toward purposes which are truly worthwhile, and precious to us. And today’s topic, of course (as you can read in your order of service) is “Talent.” But all three of these themes come together around the larger question of how do we need to learn to “do church” differently here in the so-called “information age,” where Time is always at a premium, and our Talents and our Treasure often seem stretched to their limits?

In this first decade of the twenty-first century, truly meaningful connections with our fellow human beings often seem both easier to maintain and yet far more difficult to find in the first place. Our amazing communications technology has linked the entire globe together in real-time, yet often nowadays we find ourselves interfacing more frequently with our gadgets than actually seeing and talking with other people face to face. And as an historian, who basically spent several years of my life waking up every morning with my brain, at least, in the 19th century, this is fascinating to me.

175 years ago, when farmers from New England set out over the Oregon Trail in search of a better life in the Willamette Valley, they left their homes and extended families with the expectation that they might never see their loved ones again in this lifetime. Yet the quality of their correspondence, and their confident faith that they would someday be reunited again in a better place, created a palpable intimacy which sustained those relationships across the miles, and down over the years -- an intimacy often missing from our e-mails, and text messages, and long distance cellular phone calls today.

Yet at the same time, I look at things like the growth of Multiplayer On-Line Role Playing Games, and the proliferation of things like internet chat-rooms and the so-called Blogosphere, and I wonder what is the definition of a “real” community? More specifically, I’ve often asked myself the question: “Is there any future in a Virtual Church?” It seems quite possible, but I’m still a little skeptical. It seems to me that one of the principal attractions of the entire church experience is simply being a member of a “congregation” -- one of a group of people who have gathered in a meetinghouse in order to be together with their “neighbors and fellow creatures” on the Sabbath: a time set apart from the pressures and demands of the outside world in order to cultivate the possibility, at least, of profound relationship, and to create among themselves an authentic community.

And still, no matter how desperately we may seek to escape it, even if only for an hour, the relentless pace of the outside world still intrudes. No matter where we go, everything seems to move more rapidly today than it did two centuries ago. Attention spans are shorter, expectations are higher, people are less patient (or perhaps I should say, more impatient) and likewise more demanding. The desire to get whatever we want “Free, Perfect and Now” (which every consumer dreams of) may still be nothing but a fantasy, but even so, “Wholesale, the Very Best Available, and Overnight” has pretty much become the benchmark of excellent customer service these days, and the standard against which everything else is measured.

And this mentality has even trickled over into what academics and other experts who study these things sometimes call “Consumer Religion,” with it’s language of “marketing” to church “shoppers” by offering better “programs” and “services,” and promoting them with the same aggressiveness as any other commercial advertiser. Still, I think it’s important not to forget that Church has never really been a place where people come to acquire a commodity they desire. Rather, the church is more fundamentally a form of relationship...a community of faith, as well as a place where individuals congregate in order to learn how to bring out the best in themselves, and one another.

Which brings us at last to the topic of Talent. When I first arrived here at FRS nearly four years ago now, I asked our Nominating Committee to start thinking about their job a little bit differently than they customarily had in the past. Inspired by something I’d heard from Rebecca Parker (who is the President of the Starr King School for the Ministry in Berkeley), I asked them stop thinking so much about how they could recruit enough people to fill all the various volunteer “jobs” in the church, and rather start thinking about how to find a meaningful job for every church member: something that matched their skills, their interests, and most importantly their availability, and still contributed to the overall mission and purpose of the church in a significant way.

And I’m very proud to say that, from my perspective at least, they have really stepped up to that challenge pretty well. Not perfectly, of course; nothing in life is ever perfect. There are still some jobs here at FRS that have to be done whether or not anybody in the church is perfectly suited for them and eager to volunteer, and there are always a few people who, for whatever reason, are kept in reserve or choose to take a personal sabbatical. But since a big part of the mission of a church IS precisely to help people discover and bring out their hidden talents, this kind of approach to volunteerism is a big improvement over the old-fashioned “who can we get to do THAT this year?”

Often times folks already have a pretty good idea of what they want to do at their church anyway; they are just looking for permission to get started. And since Unitarian Universalists are without a doubt some of the most interesting, creative and talented people I know, their ideas often share those same qualities. (Of course, because of what I do for a living, I have to admit that I don’t actually know a lot of people who AREN’T Unitarian Universalists -- or at least who ought not to become one).

But when we recognize that the REAL work of a church like ours is to attempt to bring out the best in ourselves and in the lives of everyone we encounter, deciding (or maybe I should say discerning) precisely what it is we want to do is perhaps just as important as getting it done.

This is probably a pretty good opportunity to say just a little bit more about our upcoming All Church Visioning Event. I’ve never really participated in anything precisely like this before myself, and our District Executive Lynn Thomas, who will be facilitating the event, assures me that it will no doubt be significantly different from similar-sounding events some of you may have experienced in the past yourselves. Our slogan is “Bring Your Passion, Create a Plan.” And it’s going to be much more than merely an exercise in brainstorming ideas -- most of us could probably brainstorm more ideas in an afternoon than we could ever possibly achieve in a lifetime. Rather, this is an opportunity for us to discern which of our dreams is truly most important to us, and to share those dreams with others; and then, in a relatively short span of time, to meet together in small working groups to flesh out the details and begin to create viable action plans right there on the spot for making those dreams come true.

And of course, all of this is generated by your enthusiastic participation, and your personal response to the big, overarching question (which we’ve heard restated in many forms): what do you most aspire to see here at FRS any time in the foreseeable future?

An activity like this All-Church Visioning Event not only provides a great opportunity for figuring out what is truly important to us as a community, and then bringing those things into sharper focus -- it also incorporates an alternative understanding of “Leadership.” If you never paused to think about it carefully, it might easily be assumed that leaders are supposed to lead, to be in charge. The leader is supposedly the one with vision, who has all the answers, and tells us what to do; the leader is supposed to make all the hard decisions and solve all our problems, and all we really have to do is follow along and not ask too many questions. There are a lot of people in the world who think of leadership in just this way, and they generally get exactly the leaders they deserve.

But real leadership is actually a lot more complicated than this. And Shared Leadership -- where the so-called “followers” actually have a meaningful voice in determining where they go -- is even more complicated still. I’ve long believed that in a church the size of FRS, at least one-third of the membership of the congregation ought to have some sort of active, leadership role: which is to say that they have the authority to make independent decisions within their own agreed-upon area of responsibility, and also to organize and facilitate the participation of others, who may be perfectly willing to help with the tasks, but don’t want to have to take the time to figure it all out for themselves. And all this takes place within the framework of a larger set of well-understood and widely-shared organizational objectives, which they themselves have helped to create, and are deeply committed to.

I was talking with a colleague the other day who is having a little trouble getting the lawn mowed at his church on a regular basis. Actually, he’s been having this same problem for years. Every once in awhile someone will suggest to the Parish Committee that the church ought to just go ahead and hire a lawn service; then someone else will complain that it’s stupid to pay perfectly good money to hire someone do something that church members are perfectly capable of doing themselves, and who may even offer to take on the responsibility of organizing a group of volunteers (or at least serve on a committee charged with that duty), but before too long, the task of organizing volunteers to cut the grass becomes even more time consuming than actually cutting the grass itself; people get busy, and can’t or don’t follow through, the lawn becomes overgrown, and someone else suggests to the Parish Committee that the church really should just go ahead and hire a lawn service....

Does any of this sound familiar to you?

Just because we may be capable of doing something ourselves doesn’t necessarily mean that we ought to. Sometimes (in fact, often times), Time truly is more valuable than Money. Sometimes our Talents truly are better utilized in other ways.

Whenever I hear the word “talent,” I immediately associate it with musical talent -- something which this congregation is truly fortunate to be blessed with in abundance, and which I deeply appreciate because I have so little of it myself. Yet as any talented musician will tell you, it doesn’t really matter how “gifted” one may be, talent needs to be carefully and diligently developed in order to achieve its full potential. Those of us in the audience may witness the performance and feel overcome with awe, but it only countless hours of practice and rehearsal which make that performance possible.

I’ve never really been certain exactly what the distinction is, but in my understanding Practice is about building skill and proficiency through learning and repetition, while Rehearsal is generally about improving quality and consistency through focused practice of a particular piece of music. But obviously, there’s not really a sharp or clear distinction between the two -- at least not that I can see. And Performance, too, has a dynamic relationship to Practice and Rehearsal. I’m told that it is possible to become over-rehearsed, in that through too much repetition the passion is sometimes drained out of the performance; and also that improvisation is only possible after hours and hours of devoted practice. And naturally there are some pieces of music which are so difficult and complex that they are simply impossible to perform without significant practice, and rehearsal.

But if you stop to think about it, the music itself doesn’t really care whether we are practicing, or rehearsing, or performing. We perform before an audience. We rehearse with our fellow performers. We practice by ourselves. The process of learning and playing our part brings out and develops our natural talent, and improves our mastery of the music itself. And then ultimately, it is in the act of sharing that music that our talents find their full expression, and expand beyond merely our own personal pleasure and satisfaction.

And then there is always the Parable of the Talents, which has taught our civilization for two millennia now, that it is not the amount of talent we have, but what we do to develop our talents, that truly matters. So take that lesson with you as you leave this place, and return to the demands and the pressures of the world beyond these walls....

TIME

a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Religious Society in Carlisle, Massachusetts
Sunday January 14th, 2007


I have to share with you all a story I heard last week at the Council on Aging Men’s breakfast.

This young, urban professional was out jogging through the park one day, when he came up on a guy sitting on a park bench reading a newspaper, with a big German Shepherd sitting at his feet. Having had a few too many bad experiences with dogs while jogging in the past, the jogger stopped called out “Does your dog bite?”

The man looked over the top of his newspaper and shook his head, so the jogger ran on by, and as he passed the bench the dog lunged out and bit him right where you might imagine it would hurt the most.

Naturally, the jogger was furious. “I thought you said your dog didn’t bite!” he shouted.

And the newspaper reader replied “That’s not MY dog....”

I know there are always a lot of Public Radio listeners in any UU congregation, so I’m just a little curious, -- how many of you heard the interview a few weeks back on WBUR with the author of a recent article in the Harvard Business Review about the proliferation of so-called “Extreme Jobs” in the American economy? For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term, an “Extreme Job” is defined as any job which combines a 60-hour or more work-week with at least five of the following ten markers: an unpredictable work flow; fast-paced work under tight deadlines; an inordinate scope of responsibility essentially amounting to more than one job; work-related events outside of regular working hours; 24/7 client availability; Profit and Loss responsibilities; responsibility for recruiting and mentoring; large amounts of travel; a large number of “direct reports;” and physical presence at the workplace at least ten hours a day.

When I first heard this interview, I was immediately struck by two things. The first was how closely the job description of an extreme worker resembles that of a Parish Minister, and yet how little my own work experience (or the experiences of most other ministers I know, for that matter) has in common with what I was hearing described on the radio (and I’ll have a little more to say about that little later).

But the second thing that struck me was the realization how over the years the town of Carlisle has in many ways become a community of extreme workers (at least one which contains a disproportionate number of them in comparison to most other communities our size), and how this influences not only the personality of the town itself, but also the ways in which we need to learn to “do church” differently than we have traditionally done it in the past.

And then just to make things even a little more interesting, what is true in the larger sense of the “global information economy” in general, and in microcosm right here in Carlisle, is likewise true of Unitarian Universalism as a religious movement. Statistically, at least, Unitarian Universalists are among the best educated, most affluent religious demographic groups on the planet. Our median household income is in excess of $79,000, and fully one-half of us have earned at least one graduate degree. Talent and Treasure we possess in abundance. But Time itself -- the one commodity which we all receive each day in equal amount whether rich or poor -- is both in great demand and short supply.

I’ll have a lot more to say about these themes in the next few weeks, as we count down to our all-church visioning event on February 10th. But for the moment I just want to say a little more about the nature of extreme jobs themselves. In their Harvard Business Review article, researchers Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Carolyn Buck Luce describe extreme work as “The American Dream on Steroids.” Extreme jobs are proliferating throughout all sectors of the economy, but are especially common among high-caliber professionals and other “knowledge workers” employed in companies with global operations. The pace and pressures of extreme work are typically self-inflicted rather than imposed, and are worn like “badges of honor” by individuals who both love their jobs and feel exalted by them.

The oversized compensation packages which typically accompany such jobs are at best the third-most important motivating factor for men (and ranked dead last among women), behind such other considerations as intellectually-stimulating and challenging work, the opportunity to work with high-quality colleagues, status, power, recognition, respect, and the adrenaline rush which comes from working in a fast-paced, highly competitive environment.

Yet extreme workers also pay a price for these rewards. As the workplace becomes the new “social center” of their lives, home and family grow increasingly starved of time and attention, and often become significantly less appealing. To quote the report, “for many professionals, ‘home’ and ‘work’ have reversed roles. Home is the source of stress and guilt, while work has become the ‘haven in a heartless world’ -- the place where successful professionals get strokes, admiration, and respect.”

The headline in the Harvard “Crimson” the day the study was published in the Business Review read: “Extreme Jobs Threaten Sex Lives,” implying at least one compelling reason to pursue a liberal arts education rather than a career in investment banking. And in an almost stereotypically gendered fashion, women tend to be much more sensitive to these emotional sacrifices than men, which in turn has inspired several cultural critics to suggest that the growth of the extreme ethos may well represent simply a new tactic for reintroducing a glass ceiling into the American workplace.

According to the study, household maintenance, relationships with children, and relationships with one’s spouse all suffer significantly as a result of the extreme workplace. Yet in an ever-more competitive “winner take all” economy in which global operations and wireless interconnectivity are simply part of the landscape, “burning the midnight oil” is no longer just a means of getting ahead; it is often the only way one can keep up. And no matter how well we may learn to multi-task or leverage our efforts by working smarter rather than harder, there are still only so many hours in a day.

When I was younger and relatively new to the ministry, one of my older colleagues told me that the secret to success in this profession was “mastering the art of bi-location.” “Once you figure out how to be in two places at the same time,” he said, “this job is a snap.” And as I mentioned earlier, there are lots of ways in which the job of a parish minister resembles that of an extreme worker. Inordinate responsibilities amounting to more than one job are part of the core job description of ministry itself: as preachers, teachers, pastors and community leaders clergy combine the intellectual work of writing and scholarship with a significant amounts of public speaking, as well as broad responsibilities for both inspirational leadership and institutional management, the work of a helping professional, and even in relatively large churches often function as their own clerical support staff as well.

The four most stressful markers of an extreme work environment: unpredictable work flow, tight deadlines, work-related events outside of regular working hours, and 24/7 client availability, all simply come with the territory, while in this era of “shared ministry” the responsibility for recruiting and mentoring other people is an ever-expanding and increasingly more important part of a minister’s role. On the other hand, P/L responsibilities, the amount of travel, and the actual number of “direct reports” all vary greatly from minister to minister, depending mostly upon personal preference and the nature of the relationship between the minister and the countless number of volunteers who do so much of the hands-on work of the church. And the whole idea of a ten-hour workday simply seems a little silly to someone who literally lives at their workplace, and whose office phone also rings in the bedroom.

But as I also mentioned earlier, there are other ways in which a minister’s job is nothing like the “extreme” jobs described in the Harvard Business Review study, ways which reflect the profoundly different objectives and purposes of the respective workplaces, and which are far more significant then simply the significantly fewer zeros which tend to appear on your typical minister’s paycheck. And many of these differences also involve significantly different ways of understanding the significance of Time. In the business world, Time is Money. But in the world of the church, the world of religion and spirituality, Time is a sacred gift from our Creator, bounded by the miracle of our births and the inevitability of our deaths, and grounded in the posibility of a direct apprehension of eternity itself.

Let me try to elaborate on this a little. As I mentioned earlier, the extreme workplace thrives on the adrenaline rush of fast-paced, high-stakes competition. Some extreme workers even describe their sense of exhilaration in this demanding, high-pressure, high-performance environment as addictive, as thrilling and exciting as skydiving or mountain-climbing or any of the other popular “extreme sports” from which the extreme workplace takes its name. The extreme ethos is about pushing yourself to the limit, and proving your worth by going up against larger-than-life challenges and triumphing over them.

The Work of Faith shares many of these same qualities of discipline, sacrifice, commitment and strength of character. But ultimately it is more Contemplative than it is Competitive. It’s about being centered rather than living out on the edge, about accomplishment rather than achievement, and following your higher aspirations instead of your personal ambition. Persistence and tenacity are tempered by patience and self-control, along with a spirit of cooperation rather than a desire to impose one’s will on “the competition.” And the principle challenges and obstacles we seek to overcome are most frequently discovered somewhere within us rather than “out there” in the world.

And above all else, I think, the Life and Work of Faith entails developing and continually cultivating the skill of real Discernment rather than mere Decisiveness. I’m told that one of the first lessons they teach you in Business School is not to mistake activity for progress. And yet often in the fast-paced, competitive environment of the business world it’s better to make a quick decision than no decision at all.

During the Second World War, General Patton used to tell his field commanders that if they couldn’t tell in an instant which flank of an enemy position was the most favorable one to attack, they should simply pick one and attack it right away, since the difference between them was probably inconsequential, and the danger of remaining under enemy fire while making up your mind was always worse than making a mistake and attacking in the wrong place. And there are many other examples of situations in life where this same principle probably works perfectly well. If the right choice isn’t obvious, then you might as well just pick, since the difference between your choices probably isn’t all that great.

But there are other situations in life where the ability to be discerning, to distinguish between the subtle and nuanced differences of true or false, right or wrong, good or evil, is critically important, and it becomes essential NOT to make a decision until the right choice IS obvious, and perfectly clear within your own mind. And of course, these situations tend to be the ones where making the right decision truly IS important, since they involve the big choices about who we are and what we stand for, and the meaning and purpose of our lives.

To Decide means literally “to cut off” -- to reject any number of potential alternatives in order to pick the one you will pursue. But to Discern is to perceive clearly, so that you can accurately accurately distinguish one thing from another. Let me illustrate the difference between the two with an example that is painfully familiar to us all. We all know that the President is “the Decider.” But his powers of discernment often appear to leave a lot to be desired, and the whole world suffers as a result of that “intelligence failure.”

Here’s another example, from even closer at hand. I decided to become a UU minister in 1977, after discerning that this was the vocational path which best fit my interests, my skills, my values and aspirations at the time. But that decision did not make me a minister overnight. Rather, it simply set me on a path which over time would require many other subsequent decisions and discernment's, and led me places I would have never imagined going when I was a twenty-one year old college senior trying to figure out who I really was, and to decide what I really wanted to be when I grew up.

And now, half-a-lifetime later, looking back at where I’ve been and what I’ve done in my life so far, I can recognize that there were indeed times when decisive action was the right choice, and produced exactly the result I would have wished for. But more often than not the more difficult challenge was learning how to “wait patiently upon the Lord,” until my personal wishes aligned more closely with what I could clearly see were my larger hopes and dreams for myself, for those I loved, and for the wider world around me.

Once we have discerned that the values of home, family, authentic community and service to others are ultimately more important to us than the exhilarating rush of fast-paced, high-stakes competition (or even just the temporary thrill of leaping out of airplanes), the Church is an institution which can help us learn how to transform that decision into a real and tangible personal accomplishment. But before any of that can happen, we first each need to make that “leap of faith,” and commit ourselves to investing the time required to allow that choice to grow within us, and to become fulfilled “in the fullness of time.” We need to learn to sit quietly and “wait upon the Lord” until we clearly discern that “Still, Small Voice” which calls us to a higher purpose in our lives...

A WHOLE NEW ERA

a sermon preached by the Rev Dr Tim W Jensen
at the First Religious Society in Carlisle, Massachusetts
Sunday January 7th, 2007

“Why is it we can remember the tiniest detail that has happened to us, and not remember how many times we have told it to the same person?” -- François de la Rochefoucauld (1613-1680)


I wanted to start out the New Year with something truly hilarious, but this was the best I could come up with:

THE TOP FIVE NEW YEARS RESOLUTIONS FOR DOGS

• I will try to understand that the cat is from Venus and I am from Mars.

• I will take more time from my busy schedule to stop and smell the hydrants.

• I will always scoot before licking.

• I will grow opposable thumbs; break into the pantry; and decide for MYSELF how much food is too much.

• I will NOT chase the ball until I see it LEAVE HIS HAND....


I’m just a little curious, but how many of you have stopped recently to take a peek at the “Wall of Reverends” opposite the elevator outside my office? I don’t know whether you’ve ever really looked closely at the portraits there, but I see them almost every day. It may just be my imagination, or perhaps something about the way the pictures are hung, or even just simply that the whole building leans a little to the west, but it appears (to me, at least) that there is actually a small “stairstep” progressing from Woody’s portrait up to mine (or from mine down to Woody’s...depending upon which direction you start from).

Even more intriguing to me is the way that each of us appears to have been photographed in our “natural habitat.” Woody in his study, standing in front of the bookcase, looking appropriately erudite. Diane is standing out in front of the church, her robe draped over her arm, as if she is waiting to greet someone at the front door. Marguerite is standing right back there in front of the pipe organ, smiling and wearing the flaming chalice stole I assume she was given when she was designated Minister of Music, while my portrait was taken right down here in front of the pulpit, and shows me gesticulating wildly with my hands as if I were trying eagerly to communicate something truly wise and profound (or at least something profoundly obscure and confusing).

But the one small “detail” that always seems to give me pause, is when I take a moment to read the little metal plaques beneath our portraits, and am reminded once again that Woody began his ministry here at FRS in 1977 (which was the start of my Senior year of college at the University of Washington, and likewise the year I decided to apply to Divinity School instead of Law School); and that he retired from this pulpit in 2001 (which was the same year I finished my PhD at the University of Oregon).

Not having been here to witness it all myself, I can only imagine the kinds of changes that took place in this community during that almost quarter-century of parish ministry. But I do know that in my own life, during that same period of time, I finished my bachelor’s degree and earned three Masters degrees in addition to that PhD, was married (although not quite yet divorced by 2001), helped raise two stepchildren to the threshold of adulthood; gained nearly 100 pounds (and lost most of my once long, flowing, blond Viking hair); outlived four dogs, two cats, and countless other fish, birds, gerbils, hamsters, and other domestic rodents; lived on both coasts, plus deep in the heart of Texas and briefly overseas in the Scandinavian birthplace of my ancestors; and experienced (literally) half-a-lifetime’s worth of other “details” which I’m sure some of you have heard me talk about many times before, and which I won’t bother to bore you with now.

But as I said a moment ago, I can only imagine what kinds of comparable changes must have taken place here at FRS during that same period of time. Some of you though, I know, did experience personally all or most of that quarter-century of change; and in the three-and-a-half years that I’ve lived in here in Carlisle now, I’ve had a chance to listen to some of your stories, and learn a few of the details myself. I know, for example, that the most dramatic change which took place during that time was the construction of the “New Addition” (now more than a decade ago), along with the capital campaign which allowed that construction to take place, and the receipt of several significant bequests which made it possible to complete the project and even include an elevator large enough to accommodate a full-length casket (bequests which, thanks to Hal Sauer, are now appropriately commemorated on a plaque in the Addition stairwell). The pipe organ, the piano, and the harpsichord were also all new within that time frame, not to mention all of the births and deaths, the weddings, christenings and funerals, and the people who joined the church, and the people who (for whatever reason) left it during Woody’s tenure here.

But the one detail I hear over and over and over again is that as much as FRS has changed since 1977, the town of Carlisle itself has changed even more....

I have two favorite quotations regarding change. The first is once again from François de la Rochefoucauld, the 17th century French author I quoted at the beginning of the service. “The only thing constant in life is change.” The second is also from a Frenchman, this time the 19th century essayist and critic Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr, who is responsible for that familiar and often-repeated aphorism “the more things change, the more they remain the same.” And somewhere in the shadows between these two glimpses of an ever-changing, never-changing world exists an immutable Truth about the nature of Reality itself, which, like the speed and location of an electron, shifts and changes simply as the result of our own attempts to pin it down.

The beginning of a New Year is likewise a time when the idea of change is naturally on our minds. Even if it is something as simple as remembering to write a seven instead of a six when we date the checks to pay our post-holiday bills, a particular sensitivity to change is all around us this time of year. Culturally, this is the season when we are encouraged to reflect upon our lives, and then to resolve to make the changes necessary to improve ourselves. And yet the one inescapable insight which inevitably emerges as the years come and go, is that even for those who are stubbornly resolved NEVER to change, the world still changes all around us whether we like it or not. The decision to avoid change, to continue simply doing things the same old way they have always been done, is in effect a decision to watch the world change without us, all the while falling further and further behind the times.

I also imagine that many people here today are aware of the importance of making “SMART” resolutions: of setting goals which are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant (or perhaps simply Realistic) and, of course, Timely. Yet often times even the smartest of us have a difficult time achieving and maintaining our resolve to change, because we are literally of two minds about it. Our rational, logical mind may well see the wisdom and the advantages of change, and then attempt to muster all of the discipline and willpower at its command in order to take control of our lives and impose its Will upon our habitual behaviors.

But human beings are not, by nature, rational, logical creatures. We are rather (at least according to Jonathan Swift) only creatures CAPABLE of reason, and logic. There is also a more emotional, “animal-like” portion of our brains, and that half of our mind often has a very different set of priorities from the other.

The animal mind basically analyzes its environment in terms of some very simple dichotomies. Is it strange, or is it familiar? Is it painful, or is it pleasurable? Is it safe, or is it scary? Is it comfortable and routine, or difficult and confusing? Given a choice, our animal brains will always choose safe, comfortable, familiar and pleasant over difficult, unfamiliar, frightening and painful. Because, let’s face it, as far as the animal half of our brain is concerned, this is not rocket science. It’s just the path of least resistance -- surviving from one day to the next with as little effort as possible.

Conventional Wisdom has often said that the failure to achieve the change one aspires to is the result of a weakness of will. But eventually some people realized that it might actually be a lot easier to accomplish change successfully if both parts of our brains were working together. One of the manifestations of this insight is a discipline known as “Appreciative Inquiry,” which basically attempts to replace a model of change based on criticizing things you don’t like and attempting, by force of will, to transform them into something different, with one that seeks out things of positive worth and value and then builds upon them in order to create something better than it was before.

Sounds simple and logical, doesn’t it? The basic building blocks of Appreciative Inquiry are something called “The Four D’s” -- Discovery, Dreaming, Designing and Destiny (which used to be called “Delivery” until somebody realized that truly transformative change is actually a lot more dynamic than simply dropping off a package).

Discovery is about exploring and identifying core areas of Strength, Competency and Accomplishment: things that an individual, or an organization, truly do well and have been successful doing in the past. This phase is much more rigorous, however, than mere wishful thinking or the power of a positive attitude. It involves a truly appreciative, yet rigorous and systematic examination of values, accomplishments, strengths and resources in order to “discover and disclose positive capacity,” and to create an understanding of how those capabilities might be used to move forward.

The task of Dreaming is to “kindle the imagination,” to envision a changed future that is grounded in a vivid sense of what might be rather than a negative feeling that something is wrong. Its focus is on future potential rather than past shortcomings. Design incorporates these insights into a plan or an intentional process for making our Dreams come true. The final “D” -- Destiny -- reflects the experience that once this process is put into place, the actual change itself often begins to seem like an inevitable progression, rather than a difficult challenge to overcome. The Dream takes on a momentum all its own, because the Design has been build around one’s newly Discovered strengths, rather than merely an attempt to overcome one’s shortcomings by strength of will alone.

The Dream itself, I might add, needs to be more than just a fantasy, or wishful thinking. It truly does need to embody a Vision: something that we can imagine as clearly and vividly and tangibly as if it were right before our very eyes. And likewise, the pathway we design to take us there needs to be as familiar, comfortable, safe, pleasant and routine as we can possibly make it. By building upon the things we know and do well, we practice and improve our basic competencies so that, through repetition and rehearsal, the overall quality of our performance dramatically improves as well. And thus we change...not by becoming different than we are, but by becoming better than we were.

The techniques of Appreciative Inquiry were originally developed as a method for managing change in organizations, but the principles work just as well for individuals who desire to change their own lives. By closely examining who we truly are, in order to Discover what we do well, where we have been successful in the past and the future direction in which our passion calls us; by Dreaming and Imagining what it might look like if we actually fulfilled our unrealized potential; by Designing a “smart” plan to take us to that place, and then taking the necessary steps to fulfill that Destiny, we are capable of changing not only ourselves, but also the world in which we live, in very significant and dramatic ways.

Likewise, next month here at FRS we will begin a similar process for our entire congregation, as we prepare to celebrate our 250th anniversary of service to this community, and envision new ways of fulfilling our mission and our ministry here in Carlisle into the foreseeable future, and beyond. As you may have already seen or heard, on February 10th you are all invited to an all-church “Visioning Event,” during which we will begin to share our Dreams for the future of FRS, and likewise begin the process of Discovering the Resources and Designing the Plan that will allow us to fulfill that Destiny. I hope all of you will plan to attend, and that you will encourage all of your friends here at church to attend as well.

I’ve saved my favorite maxim regarding change for the last. Mohandas “Mahatma” Gandhi once said: “Be the change you want to see.” The original quotation continues “...in the world,” but you don’t generally see that part quoted any more, because the shorter maxim is actually more powerful. “Be the change you want to see” -- not just in the world, but in yourself, in your relationships, in your career, in your spiritual life and religious faith, in everything you do. And when you do, you will surprise yourself, with the potential you discover there....

CHRISTMAS EVE (2006)

a homily delivered by the Rev Tim W Jensen
at the First Religious Society in Carlisle
Sunday December 24th, 2006

“And being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed into their own country by another way.” [Mt 2:12]


I don’t know whether anyone else is really bothered by this or not, but how wise would we consider someone today who took-off on a months-long journey to a foreign land inspired by something they read in their horoscope, simply so they might shower an unknown child with expensive gifts, and then just randomly changed their return itinerary because one night they had bad dream? And yet this is precisely what Matthew tells us the Wise Men did at the birth of Jesus, when they saw his star in the East.

I imagine as for a lot of folks nowadays, my first exposure to the story of the Nativity came from basically secular sources: from things like “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” or the Christmas Songs I learned in school, and Christmas Stories read to me by my grandparents. And of course, from experiences like our own annual Christmas Pageant, where as a child I also acted out as children have for generations the story of the miraculous birth of the baby Jesus. And somehow from all these experiences, I came to the conclusion that the whole thing happened in a single evening: Joseph and Mary arrived in Bethlehem and discovered there was no room at the inn, found alternative lodgings in a stable, gave birth to a child, wrapped him in swaddling clothes and lay him in a manger, and then the angels and the shepherds and the Kings all arrived in turn, everyone san “Silent Night,” and they all went home again.

But in reality, if it happened at all, it probably happened quite differently than this. The traditional “pageant version” of the Nativity actually combines two distinct (and in some ways contradictory) versions of the story found in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. Luke, as we heard, tells a tale of shepherds and angels and a manger; of a family traveling far from home and giving birth to a child under unusual circumstances; and then links all this to a Roman census which we think took place in the year 6 AD. Matthew, on the other hand, tells a story of astrologers visiting from the East in search of a child whose birth was foretold by the stars, sometime during the reign of Herod the Great -- who died in the year 4 BC. So there’s a ten-year difference of opinion right there...or maybe it was just an unusually long labor.

Even the time of year is a matter of some dispute. Shepherds typically keep watch over their flocks by night in the spring and early summer, which caused at least some early Church Fathers to place the date of Jesus’s birth sometime in late March or early April. The reason we celebrate Christmas in December is quite clearly an attempt to tie it to the symbolism of the winter solstice, a result of the Emperor Constantine’s fourth century accommodation with the pagan mystery religion of Mithraism, which also celebrated the birth of their deity, the Sun god Mithra, in this darkest time of the year.

But the visitation of the Magi is without doubt the most mysterious part of the story. Who were they, and why were they there, if indeed they were there at all? And what was this star that they saw in the East, which caused them to travel to Bethlehem? The word “Magi” is derived from a Persian word identifying a specific caste of Zoroastrian priests, and is more typically translated as “sorcerer” or “magician.” Tradition tells us that there were three, because it also tells us that they brought three gifts; and over the centuries they have even acquired names: Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar.

The gifts themselves are highly symbolic. Gold is a symbol of worldly wealth and power, although in a powdered form it was also sometimes used as medicine. Frankincense is a type of incense burned during prayers and religious rituals, while myrrh, that “bitter perfume,” is an oil used for embalming the dead. Suitable gifts for a king, or even for another magician. But hardly appropriate presents for the infant son of a peasant carpenter, born amidst animals in a stable.

And what about that mysterious star? The most common interpretation is that the Magi observed an astrologically significant conjunction of the planets Jupiter and Saturn in the year 7 BC, although others have speculated that the star was a comet, or perhaps even a supernova. And then there is the part of the story involving Herod, a part that we rarely dramatize in our pageants for children. But according to Matthew, shortly after the Wise Men’s visit Herod sent his soldiers to murder every male child in the region of Bethlehem under the age of two, and that Jesus only escaped death by fleeing with his family into Egypt. Thus having inadvertently alerted Herod to a potential threat to his reign, the Wise Men also warned Mary and Joseph of the danger to their child in time to allow them to make their way to safety.

Christmas for us is often thought of as a season of homecoming. It is a time when we celebrate family, and the values of Peace on Earth, Goodwill to All. It is a time for feasting, and philanthropy, and above all it is a celebration of and for children, each of whom is so precious in our eyes. And yet the Christmas story itself, as told in Scripture, is in many ways a very different tale. It is a story of a young family far from home, dependent upon the hospitality of strangers for their safety and security, and in danger of their very lives. It is a story of refugees living as exiles in a foreign land, pursued by soldiers on the whim of a murderous tyrant. But it is also a story of a great potential good which emerges from humble origins, and the hope, and the promise, of a better way of living in the world, and being at home on “an earth made fair, with all her people one.”