Collective Wisdom
Grassroots leadership and collective decision-making are, for us, aspects of faith. They go hand-in-hand with spiritual disciplines such as addressing privilege, sharing the daily tasks of the community, and loving boldly.
This sermon was given on March 13, 2011.
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The last couple of weeks, I’ve been going on interviews for the clinical counseling fieldwork that I’ll start in the fall. During a tour of one of the agencies, my interviewer showed me the place outside the business office where there is a seasonal display of the holiday coming up. It was decorated for Mardi Gras at the time. “Oh, I guess that is coming up soon,” I said. I explained, “Unitarian Universalists observe Lent from a distance. ‘Look, there it is over there.’”
For Western Christians, Lent began this past Wednesday. For Orthodox Christians, it began on Monday. I kid about our distant observation, but I do think we are affected by the flavor of this season in the larger culture. At its best, this time of year inspires people to reflection and challenge. Friends of mine who are not Christian, and some of them never have been, have recently been inspired to do things like train for an athletic event or limit their screen time for the next month. Now is a time of concentrated thought and solemn practice, reaching for a coming time of renewal. Maybe that’s Christianity’s mark on our society, or maybe the Christian calendar picks up on something older and deeper about this time of year. Some Unitarian Universalists adopt Lenten disciplines, some of us have other ways to take stock of our spiritual lives. All of us have an opportunity to reflect.
Rebecca Parker names Lent and Passover as two examples of what she calls the shamanistic journey. These practices show up in religions and cultures from all over the world. She writes:
The shamanistic journey is the ability to move through. It is the kind of transformation in which we let go of what has been, pass through loss, and enter new knowledge, new nourishment, new vision and discovery. Thus is the importance of ritual in our lives. Rituals teach our souls the passages that will be required to move through in our living.
(From “Rising to the Challenge of Our Times” by Rebecca Parker, reprinted in Redeeming Time: Endowing Your Church With the Power of Covenant, edited by Walter P. Herz)
We individually may have different ways of following that path. As a group, I believe one of our transformational journeys is re-enacted through collective decision-making. Our way of being together, or practice of running the community through grassroots leadership, is a spiritual practice. That may sound odd. Hear me out.
Through our collective decision-making, we move through. We make the changes our community needs to grow with the times. In meetings, we notice our losses with clarity, we are nourished by our mutual commitment, and we discover a new vision. There are some things we do the same way every time we meet for business, we have processes and habits that belong to this community. That’s ritual. What manifests in some congregations as democracy and what manifests here as consensus rests on a spiritual foundation. In order to make the best use of consensus, we rely on the values that I would say characterize us as people of faith.
This month, we are studying the fifth of seven UU principles: “the right of conscience and the use of the democratic process in our congregations and in society at large.” The principles are general descriptions of practice among our congregations, not a creed we have to follow. Their wording is limited by the language that was available at the time they were drafted and democratically adopted by the congregations of our association. So there’s room for this congregation’s practice of consensus in there, even though there are some key differences between democratic process and consensus process. Both democracy and consensus rely on the belief that every member has wisdom to share. Our practices of collective decision-making and grassroots leadership go hand-in-hand with other aspects of our faith.
Seeing the way we do business as a religious path of transformation may be difficult because the spiritual aspect is too obvious. Our values are implicit, they blend in. Some of our core wisdom is more articulate in the words we teach to the children for their class chalice lighting: “We are the church of the open minds, the helping hands, and the loving hearts.” In other words, consensus relies on opening our minds to the wisdom of quiet voices, opening our hands to the work of this community, and opening our hearts to the wisdom of worthiness and acceptance. The way we gather our collective wisdom can be rituals that, to quote Dr. Parker, “teach our souls the passages that will be required to move through in our living.”
Open Minds: The Wisdom of Many Voices
For our Time for All Ages book this morning, we heard the words of Ysaye M. Barnwell’s song, “We Are.” It’s also hymn #1051 in Singing the Journey. “We are mothers of courage and fathers of time, we are daughters of dust and sons of great visions, we’re sisters of mercy and brothers of love … we are makers of peace and the wisdom of ages.”
As Dr. Barnwell writes it, there are multitudes within us and among us. Everything we are individually and collectively owes to those who came before us and those who accompany us on the way. I would suggest that learning to hear all of the voices present is a skill that we develop through practice, and that our ability to connect across the barriers that obscure some of our voices is a spiritual issue. We are trained in the dominant culture to privilege the opinions of some at the expense of others, perhaps even at our own expense. In a UU community, it takes effort to overcome that background noise so that we can make decisions based on the sounds of wholeness.
For me, one of the areas where I need to constantly go back and check my open mind is in working with youth. Even though I have a fair bit of experience working with middle-schoolers and high-schoolers, I still find myself making assumptions about what they are going to say, filling in the blanks with my projections, not leaving room for the youth to speak for themselves. I think their actual opinions are vital for our health as a community. Youth have dreams, perspectives, and energies of conviction that we exclude at our peril. Our church is not whole without them. Bridging the generational divide is not always comfortable, but I think it’s necessary for all of our sakes.
As you may recall, I worked with the youth last spring on a fundraising project. I met with them to ask about their concerns and their interests. There was a service project built into the curriculum that the 5th through 9th –graders were working with, so it was an opportune time. I had my ideas about what they would choose, but was surprised to find that the issue that was most on their minds was worry about the economy. They knew that they had to do more saving and planning in their own lives because of it. Some of them had volunteered at The Sharing Table, and they could imagine what the economic climate would mean for other people their age.
The youth wanted to make their own statement, so I researched organizations in Harford County having to do with poverty and hunger where the youth could direct their efforts. They chose to do a “field day” fundraiser with games and a raffle to benefit Harford Family House. Their project meant interacting with other people in the congregation as they led games and handed out prizes. All of us got the benefit of some fellowship in the sun (and the rain), and the opportunity to support their outreach.
I learned a lot from working with the youth. I was reminded not to make assumptions about their interests and their desire to serve. They showed me, once again, that love for my neighbor and myself are reflections of each other. It is important to listen to the youth as we gather up our collective wisdom.
Age (at both ends of the spectrum) is just one aspect of identity that the dominant culture trains us to devalue. Gender, ability, race, language, class, and family status are some other aspects of identity that should be diverse threads in our tapestry of community, but can be barriers to full participation if we don’t address them. We unconsciously soak up some of the poison of internalized oppression just living every day in the world. Some of us are trained not to speak too loudly, or to be suspicious of those who do.
Collective decision-making demands that all of us have the unfettered ability to participate. Consensus isn’t really a reflection of the whole community’s mind and heart without an extra effort to listen to the quiet voices. Saying that we are an egalitarian community, repeating the universal welcome, is a start. To remain true to that promise, we have to have a special concern for lifting up every voice in spite of our unconscious training. That means actively looking for ways that our patterns of communication are disrupted by, for instance, the racism and sexism of the dominant culture.
Actively opening our minds, expanding our perceptions, overcoming barriers that prevent our whole community from participating, these are necessary spiritual disciplines in order to move through the conversion of pain into passion for life. I believe that this church knows implicitly that this work is necessary for the true practice of consensus. Our commitment to collective wisdom leads us to a spiritual transformation of mind, heart, and speech.
Helping Hands: The Wisdom of Shared Work
Marge Piercy writes:
I want to be with people who submerge in the task,
Who go into the fields to harvest and work in a row and pass the bags along,
Who stand in the line and haul in their places,
Who are not parlor generals and field deserters but move in a common rhythm when the food must come in or the fire be put out.
The work of the world is common as mud. Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil, Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries out for water to carry and a person for work that is real.
(“To Be of Use” by Marge Piercy, reprinted as reading #567 in Singing the Living Tradition.)
A second aspect of consensus that has spiritual implications is that the work of the community is shared by all as well as the decision-making. There are no “parlor generals” here. Members and friends contribute time and energy, not just ideas, to create a community with “a shape that satisfies.” The work of this church, including the task of caring for each other, informs and implements the decisions made together.
This is important. It means that the congregation makes decisions based on the wisdom of experience. When something stops working or a better solution comes along in the course of running the church from week to week, the decision-makers (that is: you) know about it. Congregational meetings are gatherings of people who have made the coffee, participated in outreach, read poems at Soulful Sundown, locked up the building on Sunday afternoons, sent a card in response to something said in Joys and Sorrows, hauled in the grape jelly, played musical solos for worship, put away hymnals … you get the picture. The people who hold the future of the church in their hands are the same people who know the facts on the ground.
I need to refer back to my first point for a moment and say that this is why we try so hard to remove barriers to participation. Some things are easier to mitigate than others, so we’ll keep trying. One thing this church does differently than some others is that Board meetings are during daylight hours on the weekends rather than on weekday evenings. That means there are fewer obstacles for people who don’t drive at night or who need their evenings for homework and bedtime. As a result, this Board is the most diverse I’ve seen in terms of age and family situation.
Tasks can be spiritual practices. I know I feel more connected and at peace with the world when I get a chance to do something tangible like write a note or bring something for a potluck. It helps when we approach a task as the opportunity that it is. Vietnamese Buddhist leader Thich Nhat Hanh notes that washing the dishes is a different experience than it was when he was younger. “Nowadays one stands in a kitchen equipped with liquid soap, special scrubpads, and even running hot water which makes it all the more agreeable. It is easier to enjoy washing the dishes now. Anyone can wash them in a hurry, then sit down and enjoy a cup of tea afterwards.” He writes:
If while washing dishes, we think only of the cup of tea that awaits us, thus hurrying to get the dishes out of the way as if they were a nuisance, then we are not “washing the dishes to wash the dishes.” What’s more, we are not alive during the time we are washing the dishes. In fact we are completely incapable of realizing the miracle of life while standing at the sink. If we can’t wash the dishes, the chances are we won’t be able to drink our tea either. While drinking the cup of tea, we will only be thinking of other things, barely aware of the cup in our hands. Thus we are sucked away into the future —and we are incapable of actually living one minute of life.
(Excerpted from The Miracle of Mindfulness by Thich Nhat Hanh.)
Let us approach the tasks we share in this church as opportunities to be alive. In the moment of handing hymnals down the line, let us stay present in that breath of connection. The things we may learn from our work side-by-side include the concrete information about how things are going, and also the spiritual lessons of mindfulness. These are gifts that benefit us in our shared decision-making and in our lives beyond the congregation. Showing up fully, sharing ourselves, will change us for the better, individually and collectively. Being the church of the helping hands is a vital aspect of consensus.
Loving Hearts: The Wisdom of Worthiness
At the recommendation of Pat Infante, who is one of our UUA regional consultants, I watched a video of a lecture by Professor Brené Brown from the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work. Dr. Brown had some things to say about her research that I think apply to our aspiration to be the church of the loving hearts, and that have implications for our commitment to consensus.
She said that, at the beginning of her research about the sense of connection in people, she hoped that measurement and analysis would help her control and predict. She said, “My entire academic career, I was surrounded by people who kind of believed in the ‘life’s messy, love it,’ and I’m more the ‘life’s messy, clean it up, organize it, and put it into a bento box.’”
Through interviews and incident reports and other qualitative data, she noticed that some people cope with the fear of disconnection through a strong sense of love and belonging, a belief that they are worthy, and some people struggle for a sense of love and belonging. She decided to focus on the group that feels a sense of love and belonging. Based on the data, she labeled that folder “wholeheartedness.” I’m going to pull some quotes from her lecture, and I can’t do justice to the talk in its entirety, but I want to share some of the things she said about researching the “wholehearted” group:
What they had in common was a sense of courage … these folks had the courage to be imperfect. They had the compassion to be kind to themselves first and then to others. They had connection, and this was the hard part, as a result of authenticity. They were willing to let go of who they thought they should be in order to be who they were … The other thing they had in common was this: They fully embraced vulnerability. They believed that what made them vulnerable made them beautiful. They didn’t talk about vulnerability being comfortable, nor did they talk about it being excruciating … They talked about it being necessary … My mission to control and predict had turned up the answer that the way to live is with vulnerability, and to stop controlling and predicting. This led to a little breakdown … my therapist calls it a spiritual awakening.
I want to interject here that what Dr. Brown was discovering in her research resonates deeply with our Universalist heritage. We affirm the inherent worth and dignity of every person. Her research showed that a belief that one is worthy, leading to a sense of love and belonging, has an effect on the way we think and behave in the world. I’m going to interpret this to mean that practicing Universalism matters.
Dr. Brown’s story really struck me. Like her, I would like data to be neatly organized and arranged into an attractive box. I would like to be able to control and predict information. Like her, the more I follow the path I’m on, the more I discover the contrary. Vulnerability has more to recommend it than I have given it credit for. She concludes her lecture by suggesting that we believe that we’re enough. This leads to being kinder and gentler to each other and to ourselves.
Vulnerability is relevant to our practice of consensus. In order for our shared decisions to be true reflections of our collective wisdom, we have to show up as our imperfect, authentic selves. Hiding the parts that we fear are unacceptable doesn’t give us access to all of the knowledge and gifts that we have to offer. Being gentle with ourselves and each other—being vulnerable enough to display authenticity—makes it possible for us to build consensus based on truth.
Another aspect of consensus that calls for vulnerability is that we have to be willing to be changed by group decisions. When members dream together, that also means members contribute time, talent, and material support to make those dreams come true. Church ought to transform lives. I believe that giving loving authenticity a try in our gatherings here will transform lives outside these walls. Practicing the courage to be imperfect here can turn into a habit that opens all of our hearts.
Conclusion
We are the church of the open minds. We are the church of the helping hands. We are the church of the loving hearts. These spiritual disciplines sound simple, yet they represent a way of life that encompasses joy and struggle, aspiration and authenticity. As a community that practices consensus, we need to keep the spirit as well as the rules of order in mind. Our grassroots form of governance is one of the ways we practice our faith.
Let us open our minds to the wisdom that each person brings. Question assumptions, especially when unconscious biases might get in the way. Let us extend helping hands, letting the work of this congregation inform us in decision-making and inspire us in our spiritual lives. Let us love boldly, building a community based on authenticity.
So be it. Blessed be. Amen.
