Several years ago, I boarded a plane to Budapest, on a trip to visit my church's partner congregation in Romania. I had no idea what to expect when I got there - I had done some advance reading, of course, and I knew that while our faith tradition had its roots in Unitarian Christianity in Hungary, I also knew that since then, at virtually every fork in the theological road, as my friend says, western Unitarian Universalists had taken a left turn.
I knew that life would be different in the Homorod river valley of Transylvania where we were headed, but no one could have prepared me for just how different it would be. The day after we arrived in the village we awoke on a Sunday morning - time for church. As I walked from the parsonage to the church - curiosity filled me as I wondered what would happen next.
I found the doorway on the south, the women's entrance to the church, and I ducked to enter the small, cramped sanctuary. As I waited, the sanctuary filled - with the women coming in from the south and the men coming in from the east entrance and taking their seats across the sanctuary under the organ loft where a Hungarian flag flew.
My heart beat quickly as my mind raced. What was I doing here, and what did this have to do with me, an American Unitarian Universalist? Things were so different from at home. The sermon came and went, first in Hungarian and then in English. The minister explained for us that communion is generally served only four times a year in the Transylvanian Unitarian Church, but in honor of the American's presence in the village and as a symbol of our deepening partnership, an exception was being made. Communion would be served as a symbolic gesture of friendship and inclusion.
The men were invited forward first. They gathered around the communion table to receive the bread and wine. And then it was our turn. The women stood and I moved with them, wordlessly directed to the right spot around the communion table. Standing, I looked across the table into the face of an older woman who closely resembled my grandmother, the woman who cared for me as a child and taught me how to pray. My eyes filled with tears.
As the bread and the wine made its way around the circle - passed from the hands of woman to woman and on to my lips I felt my heart breaking open - the pure light of connection dissolving my defenses and leaving me exposed to all that was in that room, all that was in the past, all that was in the present, all that would be in the future.
My grandmother there, gazing at me across the room. My Unitarian Universalist minister and mentor serving me the same bread and wine that my childhood minister from my family's Episcopal church served me through my years of doubt, altering the words she traditionally spoke as I approached the altar so that the ritual would reach me, "food for your journey" she would say, as she brought the cup to my lips.
Holding the cup and allowing the bread to dissolve in my mouth, there in that little Unitarian church in Transylvania, I felt a part of that seemingly foreign religious community - the community of my religious ancestors - the cloud of witnesses I had never known but who had formed me and were forming me now just as surely as my family and my Episcopal church had in the past. Standing there in a small, dark room surrounded by strangers, practicing a sacrament that I thought I had left behind in order to join this very movement, the boundaries dissolved and suddenly everything was all of a piece. I was fully at home, as my cloud of witnesses past and present gathered around me, announcing - as the poet Mary Oliver might write - my place in the family of things.
Now I know that it may seem as though I am talking a lot about a particular Christian ritual this morning - the sacrament of communion - and I know that that may be difficult territory for some of us - but I ask you to stay with me, to take a deeper look with me below the surface.
Christianity is alive and well in Unitarianism in Hungary and Romania - and for me, that healing experience of communion was just what I needed. But that was only what I needed. For many of us, the healing experience would look quite different - and I want to be clear this morning, that while I have talked about a Christian ritual and my own particular history, the topic at hand is much broader than Christianity and it is much more expansive than any one person's individual experience. The topic at hand is about healing - the topic at hand is about garnering the resources we need to live a spiritual life.
So many of us, I believe, carry voices and experiences from our past - voices and experiences that at times offered hope and healing and at times provoked hurt and disappointment. For many of us, I believe, there exists a past, a cloud of witnesses from our own history - whom we still might make peace with and learn from.
On my own spiritual journey, with the help of so many others, I found that I needed to integrate my past rather than shutting the door on it - I needed to learn how to hear, how to be with those old voices and experiences that would not leave me - and I needed to learn how to hear them in new ways that would propel me forward on my spiritual journey.
The spiritual refuge I found there in that village was not so much the Christianity of our partners - but rather the fullness of the experience for me - the integration that happened all in that one single moment - as the strengthening voices from my past came forward and took their rightful place among my present day mentors and friends - as my cloud of witnesses filled out to include all who could help me on my journey of faith.
In Buddhism, "Finding a spiritual refuge is a significant step on the journey of faith.," the Buddhist scholar Sharon Salzberg writes. "A trustworthy refuge enables us to go against the misleading promises of an unexamined world, to move beyond conditioned attitudes and responses, to eschew superficial or heartless answers to our deepest questions."[1] That spiritual refuge, for Buddhists, takes 3 specific forms, as its students learn. They repeat aloud three particular phrases - I take refuge in the Buddha, they say. I take refuge in the dharma, or the teachings. And I take refuge in the sangha - the community of fellow seekers. Taking refuge in the teacher, in the teachings, and in the community - this is a significant step on the journey of faith, Sharon Salzberg tells us - and these three sources of refuge, I believe, can also make up our cloud of witnesses.
Our teachers - past and present, living and dead. The teachings, lived or spoken aloud or experienced through the distance of time that urge us forward, that show us what we did not know, that challenge us to a higher understanding. The community - the people all around us, our fellow travelers on this journey of the spirit - they surround us, they ground us in the present and in reality, they call us back to our selves over and over again lest we wander too far off course. These are our refuge. These are our cloud of witnesses - our teachers, our teachings, our spiritual community - they stand with us and urge us on in our quest to live into our highest values - they remind us that the good is carried forward not just in our individual lives but in the life of an ongoing, never-ending world community, they inspire us in our moments of fatigue when these old camels get to their feet again, remembering their lesson never to fail life.
Our individual clouds of witnesses come from so many different times and places. My cloud of witnesses is made up of dozens and dozens of teachers and mentors, spiritual leaders and politicians, even, writers and poets, dear friends and folks I watch close up and from afar as they do the work and reap the joys of spiritual living. And for me, I've found that amongst this crowd at least three kinds of people are represented - people who comfort me, people who inspire me, and people who challenge me. I need each and every one of them.
For if there is one sure thing that I have learned about living a spiritual life - it is that I, that we, simply cannot do it alone. We never can make this spiritual journey alone. Alone, the work is too hard. Alone, we lose our way. Alone, we become blind to the obstacles that lie before us. In the work of a spiritual life - in the work of a lifetime - as we strive to align our actions with our deepest values - we need one another to strengthen our weak knees, to lift up our drooping hands, to walk with us as that breath of fresh air, that influx of new energy that arrives when fatigue surely comes our way - we need one another when we are broken, when we have become lame in body or in spirit, as the prophet wrote, we need one another - our mentors, our friends, our religious community - to help us to heal and to lead us back toward the wholeness that surely lives in each one of us.
We never do make our way alone, I believe. And while most days we choose who it is that makes up our cloud of witnesses - our spiritual cheerleaders, if you will - there are other days, when, if we are open to the wisdom of surprise, a new member may take up its place and join our happy band when we least expect it.
In her recent book of essays titled, Blessing the World, Rebecca Parker - a Unitarian Universalist minister and president of the Starr King School for the Ministry, shares this story of her very own cloud of witnesses.
It had been a year of grief. In a situation of broken love, I chose to have an abortion. I felt it was the only thing I could do, but I was haunted by the loss of that surrendered child. My grief deepened as days passed. Time was not healing my sorrow, and I spiraled into deeper and deeper despair. By day I would dutifully, and to all appearances cheerfully, perform my responsibilities as the minister of a small and vibrant congregation. At night, I couldn't sleep. I'd rise, pace the empty halls of the parsonage, and wail.My despair and isolation came to a crisis one night. I was past living one day at a time, or even one hour at a time, and was down to the question of whether I would be willing to continue to live at all. In the depths of that sadness, I decided to stop pacing the hall. It was after midnight. I left my house and walked down the hill to Lake Union. The city was quiet. My face was wet with tears as I set my course toward the water's edge. I was determined to walk into the lake's cold darkness and find there the consolation that I could not find within myself.
At the bottom of the hill, the street ended and the lakeside park began. I walked across the wet grass and climbed the last rise before the final descent to the water's edge. As I crested the rise, I discovered a line of dark objects between me and the shore, a barricade I was going to have to cross to get to the water.
I didn't remember this barricade being there before, and it was so dark that I couldn't tell what I was seeing. But as I edged closer, I discovered it was a line of human beings, hunched over some strange-looking, spindly equipment. Telescopes.
It was the Seattle Astronomy Club.
There they were with their homemade Heathkit telescopes and their top-of-the-line Sharper Image telescopes, dressed in their Gore-Tex back-country gear and tennis shoes. A whole club of amateur scientists, up and alert in the middle of the night because the sky was clear and the planets were near.
To make my way to my death, I had to get past an enthusiast in tennis shoes. He assumed I had come to look at the stars. 'Here. Let me show you,' he said, and began to explain the star cluster his telescope was focused on. I had to brush the tears from my eyes to look through his telescope. There it was! A red-orange spiral galaxy. Then he focused it on Jupiter, and I peered through to see the giant, glowing planet. I could not bring myself to continue my journey. In a world where people get up in the middle of the night to look at the stars, I could not end my life.
I know there is grace, because my life was saved by the Seattle Astronomy Club.[2]
My life was saved by the Seattle Astronomy Club - her life was saved by that cloud of witnesses that showed up at the right time in the right place - offering her a different glimpse of the world - a glimpse of the possible, of the potential, that existed even in her, even in her lowest of moments.
"We have to choose whom we will trust in this life," Rebecca Parker tells us. As we choose our cloud of witnesses, our fellow travelers for this most important of journeys that is our life, let us, as she advises, "Let us trust those who believed. Let us join their company, keep faith with them, become part of the astronomy club, the choir, the congregation, the front lines. When we do so, it becomes tangible that heaven is here, and we are sustained in our work for justice by the depth of our trust - not our fear, or grief, or will - but our sure trust, our unshakeable confidence."[3]
May our trust be sure, may we make peace and learn all that we can from those who have gone before us, from those we carry with us - and let us choose now who and what will be among our cloud of witnesses - who will offer us their refuge, their inspiration, their sure challenge - let us choose this group wisely and let us give thanks for their wisdom, for their solace, and for their example - that we might be inspired, that we might be renewed and restored as we work for justice and for wholeness here in this world.
As we walk our spiritual paths together, friends, may there always be guides to teach us, fellow travelers to hold us up, courage in our hearts, and food for our journey.
May it be so, and Amen.
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