Call to worship #435

Children's Time

Today we're going to sing a different song when you leave for your classes. Do you know why? It has to do with copyright. When you write a story or a song, or draw a picture, you have the copyright. That means if someone wants to make a copy of the picture or tell the story, whoever has the copyright gets to decide.

So if you drew this picture, and I wanted a copy of it to put on the wall in my house, you would decide if that was ok, and if you said no, I couldn't put the picture in my house.

Copyright also decides if we can change something. If I think this is the best picture ever, except I don't like the dog, because I don't like dogs.(Which is true, I really don't like dogs. (I had a traumatic experience as a child.)) So I want to change the picture. I want to draw over the dog and make a big black cat. Well it's your picture. You drew a dog. Do you want me to put a cat there?

Well, sort of like changing that picture, we've been changing the song "Go Now in Peace" for a long time. And the people who have the copyright told me we can't do that. So some of us talked about it, and we asked Linda Jo to find some new songs that we could sing instead. So we're going to try some different songs, and see which one we like. Today's the first day we're trying this. We're going to sing a new song today, and sing it for the rest of the month.Next month, we'll try another song, and soon we'll find one we like and pick it for our new tradition.

Readings

You would measure time the measureless and the immeasurable.

You would adjust your conduct and even direct the course of your spirit according to hours and seasons.

Of time you would make a stream upon whose bank you would sit and watch its flowing.

Yet the timeless in you is aware of life's timelessness.

And knows that yesterday is but today's memory and tomorrow is today's dream.

And that that which sings and contemplates in you is still dwelling within the bounds of that first moment which scattered the stars into space.

Who among you does not feel that his power to love is boundless?

And yet who does not feel that very love, though boundless, encompassed within the center of his being, and moving not from love thought to love thought, nor from love deeds to other love deeds?

And is not time even as love is, undivided and paceless?

But if in you thought you must measure time into seasons, let each season encircle all the other seasons,

And let today embrace the past with remembrance and the future with longing.

Khalil Gibran, The Prophet

Love never ends.But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end.For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end.When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.

- 1 Corinthians 13:8-11

Spare the Change? - by Anders Liljeholm

Plato writes about a philosopher who said that everything is always changing.

"Heraclitus is supposed to say that all things are in motion and nothing at rest; he compares them to the stream of a river and says that you cannot go into the same water twice."The character of Socrates in Plato's Cratylus

A river can look the same, but the water is constantly moving through it. Even in a moment, the river we saw just now has ceased to exist, and a new one has taken its place. You take two steps in the water, and each step is in a different river.

Some changes are quick, like the popping of a balloon. Others are unimaginably slow, like the movement of mountains or the slow burning up of stars over billions of years. We can see other changes if we pay attention, like plants moving to face the sun, or glaciers shrinking as our climate slowly grows warmer.Small things like people and flowers change, and huge cities change over time as well. I've slowly become aware over the years of Portland changing and shifting. The new South Waterfront district, the new bridges being planned - we are in a time of great change in this city and in this nation. Just like every other time in the last 500 years.

Darwin realized that our species is the result of many changes over time, that we share a common ancestor with chimpanzees and gorillas. And further back, with squirrels, and even fish.Even harder to realize is that evolution isn't done.Our species is still changing, and a million years from now we will have become something else.

Even on a daily level, our lives are in constant change. Our bodies are full of chemical reactions, cells being born and dying.Our breath and our blood constantly carry fuel to our body, and carry away waste. In less than 10 years, nearly all the cells of our body are replaced. You are a completely different person than you were 10 years ago. (And not just mentally and emotionally.)

Our bodies change visibly as well as at the microscopic scale. These changes are obvious in children.In a few short years, they go from helpless babies to walking, talking independent people. Well, independent to an extent. How independent depends how many years you look at.

When I was a child, I made no distinction between 20 year old adults and 60 year old adults.They were all "grown-up", they had all stopped changing, they were done. Put a fork in them and it would come out clean.But spending time here, in a diverse community of many ages, I have been able to realize that we never stop changing.As we age through our lives, our bodies slowly mature and shift, changing shape and color much more subtly than in childhood, but just as continuously.

And as our bodies change, so do our minds and our lives. We go through changes large and small, moving to new places, meeting new people.We learn new ideas, and have to decide whether to change our way of thinking.

Some of these life changes are huge. They can be very stressful. Religions for ages have created ceremonies to recognize these changes, to help us honor their significance in our lives. Birth, coming of age, marriage, and the biggest change of all: Death.Each of these life altering changes has rituals and sacraments around them to help us cope with the change.We would benefit from ceremonies to help us recognize some of the other changes in our lives, like new jobs and moving to a new place.   When our lives change dramatically, we need the love of our religious community most.By the way, the Unitarian Universalist Association office for finding jobs for ministers is called "Transitions".(It used to be the office of Ministerial Settlement, which is less poetic, but did have the advantage of being clear.But I accept that change and move on.)

All these changes are hard.Most of them are worth it, with the new life we change into worth giving up the life before.And just about every change in our lives and in the world, is unavoidable. Our task in life is to anticipate change, to embrace it, and to work to create the best possible change in the world.

I am not saying that all changes are good. Our country has recently shifted from one that prosecutes waterboarding and other torture as a crime, to one that tortures as a matter of policy. This change is evil. There are times that change should be resisted, and returning to a previous way of doing things is good. I believe, however, that most of the changes in our lives are for the better, or at least depend on how we react to them.

There are different ways that we can react to change. We can plan for it, readying ourselves for the new, saying goodbye to the old, expecting transitions to be difficult but also looking forward to exciting new opportunities. Or we can fight change, clinging to the way it used to be, resisting the future, and trying to live in the past.

Society is constantly changing.New inventions change the way we live our lives. Some, like digital watches, mean trivial differences. Others, like the pill, result in massive shifts in the way society works. (Changes so massive that birth control is called The Pill.) Some organizations, like the Unitarian Universalist Association, work to create change in what we believe is a positive direction.Other groups fight to preserve things they value.

John Steinbeck wrote about new inventions making old ways obsolete, "The lines of change are down.We, or at least I, can have no conception of human life and human thought in a hundred years or fifty years.Perhaps my greatest wisdom is the knowledge that I do not know. The sad ones are those who waste their energy in trying to hold it back, for they can only feel bitterness in loss and no joy in gain."

In the Bible, the psalms praise people who do not change, and raise up eternal God as the ideal of unchanging moral authority. And there are lots of people today who take that message to heart, opposing a great many changes in society. There are always people who oppose every change that happens in the world.But there are those who see this struggle as a sign of future progress. As Episcopal bishop John Spong says, "No prejudice is ever debated that isn't already dying." He grew up in the segregated South, and has long been an advocate for gay rights in his church and in the world. This is the man who wrote a book titled "Why Christianity must Change or Die". In his book, he talks about how human understanding of the universe has changed over the centuries, and how our notion of God and religion should change with the times.He also openly admits that we will have to keep changing in the future.

Jesus fought very hard to create change, to overthrow the ruling class and to include more people in humanity.Paul, who wrote today's second reading, also wrote that in Christ "there is no longer male and female"(Galatians 3:28), a revolutionary inclusion of women in the early church. (As we know, it took a while for Jesus' message to really get through.) Some of the most important changes in the last 100 years have acknowledged the humanity of more people. Giving women and people of all races full citizenship is a good change.And prejudice against sexual minorities is a dying one. Yes, there are people who resist this change, this inevitable change.But in another generation or two, I see clearly a world when any person who loves another person will be able to marry him or her, and we will look back with pity on people that thought this was a bad idea.

These days, record companies are fighting technological change. They have resisted the internet and computers, and now are suing their customers, trying to keep the world from moving forward.The executives of these corporations did not anticipate change. They did not plan on changing how they think about things.They hoped to keep doing business the same way they have done business for the last 100 years. And instead of embracing the changes that have been thrust upon them, they are fighting it.

Congress has passed laws, making the rights of authors much stronger than they were in the past.And while I believe Congress has gone too far, and copyrights should change (and I could talk for an hour about THAT), this community is faced with a different challenge today.

We have learned that our singing a particular song with altered words is illegal. There are times that unjust laws should be righteously broken, I do not believe this is one of them.

There are many beautiful songs we can sing. In time, the new song we choose will become our tradition. But this change is not without pain. We have sung "Go Now in Peace" for 10 years; it is a beloved song. We don't want to give it up, even if we understand that we must.

I wish we had a ritual for changing traditions. (Of course if we did, we'd have to change that ritual from time to time, and we'd need another ritual to change thatÉ) Religious communities are places where we go for help in coping with the changes in our lives. This is the place where we practice living well, treating each other with respect, and coping with change, so it's easier to live our principles the rest of the week. So as we go through this change, we should do it well. I announced this change in last month's newsletter so we could anticipate it. Now we should talk with each other about how we feel, we should remember the past fondly, and we should give the new song a chance to grow on us. And while I believe this change is the right thing, people who disagree should come talk to me about it. And I should listen to them.

As a coworker of mine said "People get left behind by organizational change when they are unwilling to change with the organization." We don't want to leave anyone behind. But it's up to each one of us to accept the constant change of our congregation, and to change themselves with the community.

We are constantly welcoming new people into our community. This is something that we do really well.And we're modest! We have to embrace the new ideas and directions these new people will take us in. And the role each of our newcomers will change. Over time, each person becomes a more active participant in our community, until we can't imagine Wy'east without them.This is a lot of change to handle, but we can do it.We always have.

One of the ways we can help keep ourselves healthy as a changing congregation is to deliberately check in from time to time about what our vision is of ourselves as a community.Our church has a mission statement, but it's been several years since we changed it, and a lot of us have arrived since then, and lot of people have left. Yes, I'm going to ask us to change more.In the weeks ahead, we're going to look at the mission and vision of this congregation, and ask ourselves who we are and why we gather together. Please join me in embracing this work, so we can figure out how we have changed in the last few years, and how we want to change in the future.

Benediction

As Mohandas Ghandi said, "You must be the change you wish to see in the world."