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Kenneth Patton, the storied Universalist minister of the mid-20th Century wrote:
“We have been warned against leaving the temples of our upbringing, but we have discovered that every temple in which men and women have worshiped is also our temple, if we enter it with the spirit of our common search for goodness of life.”
Dear community, many of us have left the temples of our upbringing
whether those were temples of stained glass and icons or temples of
purely rational thought. Many of us have dared enter new temples – have
traded the usual for the universal, the common for the transcendent.
And now we are in the business of temple raising. So let’s define
what sort of temple we hope to raise. The walls are there, the ceiling,
the paint, the carpet, and the tile. We have defined the space – with
what shall we fill it? I don’t mean artifacts or art work though I hope
that any we choose will support and sustain our vision. What I mean is
intention – what love, what hope, what spirit will we use to raise our
temple? It is intention that makes four walls a place of worship. It is
intention that makes a community a congregation. It is intention that
makes our new space a temple.
I spent a few hours a few weeks back with a group of congregants who
were helping move our office furniture upstairs into the new office
loft. There were grunts and groans. There were items removed from one
space that had to be replaced. There were plenty of ideas of where the
furniture should go. There were cut fingers. There were hurt backs. And
there was laughter. There was joy. There were three generations sharing
the labor. There were accolades. And after all of it, there was pizza.
As Ken Patton says – “We have discovered that every temple in which
men and woman have worshiped is also our temple, if we enter it with the
spirit of our common search.” What he means is tied to what our crew of
movers experienced – that we will have different ideas about where the
copier should go, but if we take the time to listen, speak our hearts,
then listen again, not only will the copier find its “rightful” place,
but we will as well – among one another, in community, with love.
A temple is not holy until the people who worship there make the holy
manifest. The holy for Unitarian Universalists is not one particular
idea or ideal but the hope that we do not have to think alike to love
alike. If we live this hope in the new space, we raise a temple.
Frustrations will come. Conflict will come. Change has come. But none of
these has the power to destroy our temple if we commit ourselves to
“entering it with the spirit of our common search for the goodness of
life.”
May it be so.
– Rev. Anya
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