If I had a subtitle for my sermon, it would be—Endurance: Being a Community of Hope Bound Together By Our Why.
Those of you who were here when I preached on October 9th might remember that I opened by using the St. Louis arch as a metaphor. This morning I would like to talk about the arch again, for just a moment.
Who here can tell us the definition of an arch? (a curved symmetrical structure spanning an opening and typically supporting the weight of a bridge, roof, or wall above it.)
So that’s the technical definition. Now I would like to share with you the spiritual definition of an arch: The poet John Ciardi tells us that an arch is “two weaknesses that lean into a strength.” Think about that…. two weaknesses that lean into a strength.
Now John happened to actually be describing a marriage. He mentions that before two people in a marriage come together, they can pile stone upon stone and not make a structure.
But something wonderful happens when two come together with intention and purpose, shared goals and a vision, and begin to lean toward one another, even in their weakest points. For that is when they become an arch, when they transcend their weaknesses and lean into a strength neither could be alone.
Think about it. Architecture totally shifted when the Romans began using the arch. Arches enabled the ancient Romans to build vast edifices with the humblest of materials. The Colosseum as we know it could not have been built without the invention of the arch.
So the arch shifted architecture and history. And that place where two weaknesses join together and lean into their strength? In masonry this is referred to as the Keystone, the stone at the apex, the final piece placed during construction that locks all the other stones into position, allowing the arch or vault to bear weight.
This spiritual definition of an arch is also a beautiful definition of what it means to be a covenanted community. Gathering together, sharing goals and a vision, with intention and purpose, a journey we take together, accepting our individualities and uniquenesses, leaning into what becomes our strength. We are an arch.
I’d like you to hold onto that spiritual definition of the arch for a few minutes. We’ll get back to it.
Let’s shift our focus to our Time For All Ages. Who already knew the story of the English adventurer Ernest Shackleton, who set out to explore the Antarctic early in the 20th Century?
Did you realize that Shackleton originally had his sights set on being the first explorer ever to reach the South Pole? But that had been accomplished by a different explorer before Shackleton could do it. Did he see himself as a failure of an explorer, all washed up now that he had been beat to the punch of being the first to set foot on the south pole? No, he did not.
Instead, he realized that the crossing of the South Pole via land over the continent of Antarctica was still available as a conquest, and Ernest Shackleton set out to be the explorer who did exactly that.
Exactly 102 years ago from tomorrow, on December 5, 1914, Shackleton and his crew set out for the Weddell Sea on the Endurance. That was the last time Shackleton and his men would touch land for 497 days.
What makes the story of the ship Endurance so remarkable is not the “failed” expedition. It's that throughout the entire ordeal, nearly two years of being stranded in the frigid cold and icy sea, no one died, there were no stories of cannibalism, and no mutiny arose.
One might chalk this up to luck, but this was not luck. What was it, then? Because Shackleton had found the right people. He found those who believed what he believed, had the vision he had, and explored for the love of exploring, and because of that, success happened. And how did Shackleton find this amazing crew? It was simple. He placed an ad in the London Times. You can see it in your order of service.
But notice what Shackleton's ad does not say. His ad did not say “Men needed for expedition. Minimum 5 years experience. Must know how to hoist a mainsail. Come work for a fantastic captain.”
Had he placed that ad, he would have gathered a very different crew from the one that made this expedition what it was. But Shackleton was looking for those with something more. He was looking for a crew that truly belonged to each other and to such an historic expedition.
Let’s look at Shackleton's actual ad: "Men wanted for hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honor and recognition in case of success." Note that it was “in case of success” and that a safe return was doubtful!
Who here today would read that ad and immediately think, “Sign me up! That’s the job for me!”? The applicants for this job clearly loved insurmountable odds and high adventure. Those who applied were survivors, but they were more than just survivors. They were survivors who knew how to thrive against the odds. They were team players, knowing that their very lives depended on everyone believing in the vision and holding the same sense of purpose. They all shared a passion for the WHY this expedition was important— not the how or the what, but the why.
During their long days of being stranded, the crew remained a community of hope bound together by their why, their sense of exploration, by group activities like playing soccer on the ice, having haircut marathons, singing, and doing things that kept them bonded together as a community.
While some might look at that expedition and say it was a failure, because Shackleton never actually did what he set out to do, if we look at it from a different perspective, this expedition was a remarkable success in so many ways.
It speaks to us of journey, of community, and how important it is to work together towards a common uniting why point. The how and the what take care of themselves when we center ourselves on the why.
We’ve spent a lot of time over the past 2 or more years asking ourselves who we are. A UU community, for sure, sharing common UU values. Every UU congregation shares those core values. That’s certainly the who and what we are.
I want to challenge you this morning to ask yourself what differentiates us from other UU congregations, from other social organizations interested in the same community activism we are, and from other good people working for similar causes as Emerson? What differentiates us is our WHY. Not our what, not our how, but our why.
Looking again at the Endurance and its mission, we see a very deliberate, purposeful, intentional goal. Land on Antarctica and cross 1,800 miles over the entire continent to reach the South Pole. When the ship became hopelessly icebound, the grand plan—the deliberate strategy—was done for; the new temporary goal was to hunker down and prepare to spend the winter in the ice. This new temporary goal was what we call an emergent strategy. Sometimes emergent strategies are temporary until we can get back on track; sometimes they become the deliberate strategy.
But here's the thing about deliberate strategies: they cannot anticipate every threat and opportunity, strength and weakness that lies ahead. Life unfolds. Life is fraught with unpredictability. At the drop of a yarmulke, disaster can strike. Everyone encounters death, heartbreak, devastating illnesses, job instability, family conflicts, financial crisis. Disability, age, and fragility happens whether we plan for it or not. Whatever it may be, we all experience the whirlwind of unpredictability. Sometimes, we might feel that all we can do is just hang on for survival.
If a deliberate strategy is so prone to failure, why bother planning ahead at all? It's a fair and honest question, but by no means a simple one. Shackleton shows us that one thing that does not serve anyone is to look back at what was once the deliberate strategy and to continue to measure ourselves against it and to plan our future decisions based on it.
Perhaps Emerson has been holding itself to an old deliberate strategy that stopped working for us a long time ago. We had a course, we were on track, things happened, and now, if every decision we have been making is based on getting back to the previous, deliberate strategy, waiting for more people to come find us so that we have enough people to make it happen, we are doing ourselves a disservice.
That kind of thinking says: “We just need more people, more funds, a certain kind of a space in which to meet, et cetera, and then we’ll be back on track and fine. We just need to get back on track for where we were heading.”
This is one possible emergent strategy.
Another emergent strategy might be for us to filling our pulpit with bi-weekly speakers, and otherwise to bide our time until next June.
There are, of course, many other emergent strategies we could discover.
In the final analysis, though, we must ask ourselves, “does this emergent strategy help us be a thriving community in the here and now?” If what we’ve tried didn’t work, let’s not do that. If what we’re currently doing isn’t working, or working as well as we need it to, then let’s make a shift.
What we often forget is that every strategy is formulated and evolves by way of a process, and to lock ourselves into a process that we discover later isn’t what we need to keep us moving forward, then we need to have a serious look at that strategy. Is that strategy really serving us? Because we have things to do and people who needs us as much as we need them. We cannot afford to drive people away or keep people from discovering the warmth of our community!
There are at least two very different sources for forming a strategy. The first source is what I did so well as a corporate planning analyst in the ’80’s—looking at the organizational strengths and weaknesses and the anticipated opportunities and threats, those outcomes which one can choose and navigate from data and paper and past experience and formulae and projections. While these are part of the hows and whats of planning, they aren’t the be all end all of planning, nor do they speak to the heart and soul of the matter, the why. This is important to note.
The second source for strategic options are those which are unanticipated--a veritable plethora of problems and challenges and opportunities that emerge while trying to implement the deliberately planned strategy. These unanticipated challenges and opportunities fight for the very same resources needed to implement the deliberate strategy, be it attention, time, finances, human resources, or other necessary allocations.
When these unanticipated options arise, there isn't always time or needed resources to make a good decision about whether to stick with the original deliberate plan, modify it, or replace it with new alternatives. Sometimes, we are caught so off guard that we are deer in the headlights, and all we can do is scramble, and cross our fingers we are taking the right course. Sometimes, we forge ahead, and only later come to realize maybe it wasn’t such a good strategy after all. So what do we do then? It’s a critical question we must not overlook.
The good news is that we can begin here, and look ahead more realistically, and formulate an emergent strategy that is not second or third or fourth or fifth place, but one that works well for us, one that is a good fit. We will recognize it because we will begin to thrive, to come alive again after recovering from the shock of all the challenges. In fact, it may turn out even better than the previous deliberate strategy! This is an opportunity for a paradigm shift.
From what I’ve pieced together, it seems that the previous strategies have been based on hows and whats; not the why. We’ve been expressing the why and hearing the why, but it’s harder to recognize and too easy to overlook, while it’s much easier to instead focus on whats and hows.
If we are willing to look at our why, we can move forward and make new plans based on that. Our why doesn’t change, even though everything around us may shift. The how and what might need to be modified, reformulated, or revised a bit, but the why is our rock.
Shackleton could have had the most experienced crew money could buy, but if they weren’t able to connect on a level much deeper than just their skills or their whats and hows, their end goal, their survival might not have happened. They were a covenanted community whose focus remained, through all those challenges, on the bedrock of their why rather than their what.
Being a community of explorers was their why, their keystone of strength. From that, they were able to survive harsh conditions and insurmountable odds, because they leaned into their strength together. Together they could do what none of them could’ve done alone—and when tough times hit, they went beyond survival and they thrived.
Those of us who are gathered here today, WE are the crew members of the ship Endurance. Our purpose here is not just what we do and how we do it. Those things are important, and they define us as Unitarian Universalists. But we must ask, “What makes us different from other UUs and other social action groups and other people with similar values?” It is our why.
The why of Emerson was not the building. Perhaps some people thought it was, and they left when the building was no longer part of Emerson. It was not and is not the minister. While a minister has an important role in spiritual leadership, our job as a community is to make certain our spiritual leadership remains focused on our why, that our souls are fed and our spiritual needs are met.
Every time it has been asked and we’ve had a chance to speak to what is most important about Emerson, every time we have been asked, “why do you keep coming back?”, the words most often used are community and spirituality. We talk about the people, the friendships, the soul to soul bonds we have.
THAT is the why of Emerson! The why of Emerson is how we are community together, and how we nurture our spirituality, our soul connections, together. This goes beyond an intellectual discourse, or a call to social action. While those are important , they are the whats and hows. They are not the why.
Nor is our why getting together every Sunday morning for a service, as important as that can be. Again, that is one of our whats, what we do because of our why.
Our whats include social action and community justice work. These are critical! They are very important to our identity as Unitarian Universalists. As well, HOW we do social action and community justice work is equally important. Remember, though, that there are many organizations out there also doing these things. So why be a part of Emerson when you can do all these other things through other organizations out there?
THAT is our why. The why of Emerson is coming together and nurturing our souls and making soulful connections so that we have the strength and energy to give service to the larger community and world. If we confuse our what—this giving of service and working for social action— and think of those things as our why, then we are like most social justice organizations out there, with a Sunday morning service. That’s not wrong, but it is not the whole, the heart and soul, of Emerson.
Our why is the unique way we nurture our spirituality together when we gather in community, and how we care for one another, how we ARE and how we build community together. Our why is drawing strength and comfort and energy to do the work. This is our bedrock of what makes Emerson different. And when we begin to make all of our decisions based on our why, it will shift us.
Part of our why includes being a safe place and a source of comfort, and as we all learned the day after the election, finding safety and comfort will be very important in the coming four years.
This bedrock why also gives us the oomph and the energy to go out into the world and serve. How can we serve the world if we are not ourselves being served spiritually?
Whatever our decisions, we must never lose focus of our why. It is this why that makes Emerson wonderfully different. And as much as we need this community we call Emerson, the larger community out there needs us, too. Now, more than ever.
It is this why, this being community and nurturing our souls, that has challenged us the most. We have, I believe, lost focus on our why, and we have struggled. We hold onto the hows and whats of social action and other important things, but we have missed our why point, and as a result many of us feel ourselves starving for food and water for our souls.
Emerson is poised to offer our unique soul dimension in our service to the community. This is critical as we move forward.
Right now is the time to capitalize on other people who need similar soul connections with the election fallout. People, like us, surrounded by friends and family who don’t support them, are looking to communities where they can find that support and strength, where they are recognized and accepted, where their souls are nourished so they can draw the strength, hope, and courage to move forward.
Emerson is uniquely poised to offer that, but only if we begin to focus and make our decisions moving forward on our why.
Now is the time, not waiting until we have more people. We’ll get more people as we center on our why and get the word out about who we are and where we can be found.
Now is when our keystone, our strength of being community, is needed more than ever!
Now is the time we remember that an arch, one of the greatest architectural advances of all time, is two weaknesses leaning into their strength. Our strength here at Emerson is being community, coming here and being renewed in our souls so that we can continue to do what must be done out there.
Now is the time to remember that something wonderful happens when a community comes together with intention and purpose, shared goals and a vision, and begin to lean toward one another, even in our weakest points.
If we are failing to have our souls fed, nurtured, and renewed when we meet here, then we must look at that and ask ourselves how we can change it.
If we lose focus on our why, we risk losing everything.
Like Shackleton, who never saw his Endurance expedition as a failure, we need to stop measuring ourselves against a previous deliberate strategy that no longer serves us, and start from where we are right now, with our why, and move forward.
If there is anything holding us back from doing this, or from being the community we know ourselves to be, then we need to do something about it to make a shift. Like the crew of the Endurance, we need to do whatever it takes to remain a community of hope bound together by our why.
Like Shackleton, we can’t just camp out on the ice hoping for someone to come and find us. It’s time to get in the lifeboats, cross the ocean, climb the mountains, take care of ourselves, feed and nurture ourselves as we know how to do and have proven we can do, and get the word out that we are here offering a warm community to help ourselves and others find the energy and endurance to keep plugging away at the social and community changes so desperately needed right now and over the next several years.
In the coming weeks, Emerson will have some decisions to make. Today I challenge us as a community, and also the Board, to make all of our decisions going forward based and focused on our why. It's more than just that we are Unitarian Universalists; it’s more than our core values; it’s more than doing service to the world out there. Those are our whats and our hows. We must not forget our why.
As we go forward in the coming weeks, as we make decisions for our future, it is important that we remember our why. Our why is what differentiates us from so many other congregations and organizations. Just as Shackleton’s team remained a community of hope bound together by their why, just as Shackleton’s team learned to thrive in their survival, so can Emerson. We must.
Going forward, may we lean into our weakness which is actually our keystone of strength— our community and camaraderie, our shared sense of the numinous, and find there the strength and courage and the soul nurturance and soulful connections that enable us to move forward with a new, and better, emergent strategy.
Amein.
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