Secret Gardens and Holy Places

A Stewardship Sermon

Offered October 28th, 2007

By Rev. Hilary Landau Krivchenia

Reading

From The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

One of the nice little gusts of wind rushed down the walk, and suddenly the gust of wind swung aside some loose ivy trails, and more suddenly still she jumped toward it and caught it in her hand.

She put her hands under the leaves and began to pull and push them aside.  What was this under her hands which was square and made of iron and which her fingers found a hole in?  It was the lock of the door which had been closed ten years and she put her hand in her pocket, drew out the key and found it fitted the keyhole.  She put the key in and turned it.  It took two hands to do it, but it did turn.

"How still it is!" she whispered. "How still!"

Then she waited a moment and listened at the stillness. The robin, who had flown to his treetop, was still as all the rest. 

Everything was strange and silent …It seemed almost like being shut out of the world in some fairy place. 

There was every joy on earth in the secret garden that morning, and in the midst of them came a delight more delightful than all, because it was more wonderful. Dickon stood quite still and put his hand on Mary almost as if they had suddenly found themselves laughing in a church.

And the secret garden bloomed and bloomed and every morning revealed new miracles. 

Sermon

As a girl I was captivated by Frances Hodgson Burnett’s book The Secret Garden – about a hidden place where miracles could happen if only you could find the doorway inside.  In part it was the air of mystery that captured my attention – but mostly it was the sense of mystery with a capital M… I remember the way the children – Mary, Dickon, and Collin would spend their secret time in the secret garden and slowly, with careful hands and growing hearts, they brought the garden back to life and it brought them back to life as well.  The garden was a sacred space.  Dickon – the boy from over the moors who knew the ways of wild things – the ways of nature – helped the other children learn and the garden, as well, taught them about tending to the secret, sacred garden.  It was sacred because it was a place in which to find meaning, peace, and healing – a place of life and love.

            The experience of secret wonder and hidden awe came to me when my family would go to visit my grandma Tillie at the Jewish Home for the Aged.  The home seemed like a large terrifying institution.  It had long halls filled with illness and helplessness but on the first floor, was a synagogue and I would escape there sometimes and, mostly, sit, in the quiet and drink in the beauty of the stained glass and wood and the great mystery of the curtained place at the front of the sanctuary.  It was the Ark, the enclosed space where the Torah Scrolls are kept, covered, safe, and hidden.  But at the time I didn’t know any of that so to me it was just a beautiful hideaway where ornate velvet covered objects were kept.  I’d sit alone in the pews and wonder what sorts of things happened in that mysterious place – a place of colored light, velvet, wood, and unlit candles.

            I also clearly remember the solemn quiet of the Quaker meeting house where my parents, active against the war in Vietnam, sometimes attended. I’d sometimes sit in on the Sunday service and sometimes go to the Sunday school classes.  I didn’t really understand what was going on in those services – but there, too, I could feel a sense of the holy, the sacred – some special sense of possibility.  The meeting room was dark on the brightest days – with small high windows.  No ornamentation, no crosses or altar cloths – just simple, clean lines, firm chairs, and the smell of old, polished wood.  But the sense of sacred space was surely there – in the patience and hopefulness of the long silences between the quiet voices.  In fact, the sacred space was, in large part, the space between the voices – the space of possibility.

            As a child I didn’t step into many church, synagogues, temples, or mosques.  But I knew, clearly, the feeling of entering sacred space – it was an experience of a time and space set aside for something of power and beauty to happen.

            As the animal that makes meaning, we create sacred spaces regularly – often outside of religious institutions.

            Another childhood memory I have is of going on picnics with my Aunt Louise.  It was traditional when our families would visit – for me and Aunt Louise to walk over to the cemetery two blocks from her house.  When we’d arrive at just the right spot at the edge of the goldfish pond, Aunt Louise would shake open the blanket and spread it smoothly on the ground.  We’d take off our shoes and step carefully onto the blanket and – it always seemed to me – into a different world. With the food arranged just so and our bag of stale bread ready for the giant goldfish, Aunt Louise would unfold a world of beauty in nature.  We always picnicked in solemn reverence for those buried all around us – but we spent much of our time focused on other things.  Sometimes she’d tell me elaborate stories but more often we spent our time noticing the grace and swiftness of the fish, the small miracles of leaf and acorn, the blossoms by and on the water.  Aunt Louise’s blanket marked off sacred space – space that, as we entered it, made sharp my awareness of the wonder of the world and the light that shines out of all things – if we look at them long and deeply enough.

            Since then I’ve been in many sacred spaces – from the Episcopal Church at Midnight Mass to Stonehenge to the woods with a hundred women to the Western Foundation wall of the Temple in Jerusalem and the Dome of the Rock just above it.  I’ve sought out sacred space and wanted to learn about what makes a space sacred.

            What is sacred space and how does it come into being?  Some sacred space is simply revealed to us in nature – I’ve visited places that stunned me into awe.  I’m sure that in your own lives there are such places – they can be as striking as the Grand Canyon – that I’ve heard about though never seen – that can fill the heart with a sense of history and of our smallness in that history that is truly humbling.  They can be as humble as an outcropping of limestone in a green field that suddenly reminds you that there’s a great rockshelf beneath the land – a strong shoulder or an ancient lap.  Sacred spaces remind us out of our daily selves – I talked some about that last week – the part of our minds that is busy with the errands, the chores, the chauffeuring, the stoplights – and remind us into our deeply connected selves – the part that of us that’s aware that there is a sacred light in everything and a holy possibility in every moment.  We simply need reminders.  Some sacred space is revealed to us in nature – like the migration of sand hill cranes happens at Jasper Pulaski Park.  I was there a couple of weeks ago and the sound of the birds was like a primeval choir and the sight of thousands of birds and so many deer mingling made me feel generations of blood in my veins – the cell memory of ancient plains rich with life out of which my life came.  It was pure holy revelation.

            Other sacred space is created.  Humanity has poured ages of creativity into this endeavor – cathedrals that took centuries to build and stone circles that baffle the mind with their size.  Sacred spaces can carry the imprint of a particular faith – for example spires that reach skyward toward a skygod or heavenly father or long low lines that remind people to deal lovingly and justly with one another and to remember that our finest kingdom is here on earth or noble temples with majestic columns so that the gods might take the throne and rule over human life more justly.  But those are the particulars of faith – the universals of creating sacred space are a little different.

            One characteristic of sacred space is that the time spent there is time set apart.  The ordinary cares of the day can be let go and what remains are the heaviest burdens, the brightest joys, the deepest insights – or a holy waiting.  For religious traditions that believe that what is sacred is beyond this world – holy places stand as reminders of what is beyond this world – a place in the world to think beyond the world.

For Unitarian Universalists – our houses of worship are meant to remind us more deeply of the world – our interior world, the world of nature, the world of human suffering and of hope, the world of human possibility.  That’s why in this congregation the covenant has always had a place of honor – to remind the congregation of its aspirations which exist in this world and among the people. Our sacred spaces must in some way call us to be mindful of the sacred nature of all being.

            I’ve visited Unitarian Universalist houses of worship from New England Parishes with white walls, boxed pews, and towering pulpits ornate with carving to First Church in Chicago with its marble walls and marble inlays to Frank Lloyd Wright’s prairie schooner of a church in Madison, Wisconsin to First Universalist in Minneapolis where a large Jewish synagogue now houses a vibrant UU congregation to Birmingham, Michigan where stark white walls and clean modern lines create a simple setting for worship.  I preached for a year in Quincy Illinois in a Queen Anne building with curved pews and a Tiffany window over the pulpit depicting the bluffs above the Mississippi.

            And today we’re here – in this fine building – once Methodist, that this congregation will change and adapt so that it becomes sacred space for this congregation – rich with symbol and with the outward signs that help Unitarian Universalists set apart our sacred space.  As various as our congregations are the designs of our buildings and the things within them that open our doors onto sacred space.  The designs of our buildings may be determined by location, historical period, congregation, and architects – but above all what makes our places sacred – is the spirit of the people within them – the active embodiment of our living tradition – of reason, integrity, ethics, social conscience, imagination, creative energy, community building and principle.  It may look a little different from here to there – from Portland, Oregon to Portland, Maine – but there’s a living tradition that we share and a living commitment that we build together in our congregations. 

            In all places Unitarian Universalists aspire to engagement in the world for its own sake – not for hope of reward or fear of punishment in another life or of external lasting judgment – except for the judgment of history.  The question that Unitarian Universalists wrestle out in our congregations is – am I leaving the world a better place?  As in all religions our aspirations can be mere lip service – but also they can drive us to engage more deeply in the world -- to give ourselves more fully to our finest commitments. 

            I think of the Reverend Theodore Parker whose conscience led him into service on the Underground Railroad and to preach a gospel of freedom, of rights for women, and of justice for Native Americans from his pulpit.  I think of Susan B. Anthony – a woman raised Quaker who joined the Unitarian Church in Rochester New York and served the cause of women’s rights her whole life time.  I think of Clara Barton, Dorothea Dix, Julia Ward Howe, Louisa May Alcott who all spoke for the lifting up of humanity and were willing to dedicate themselves to those ideas.  I think of the Reverend Jenkin Lloyd Jones, whose soul searching taught him about world religions and made him so reverent of life that he opposed war and stood firm in his commitment to peace until his Unitarian colleagues barred him from their meetings.  I think of the Reverend James Reeb and of Viola Liuzzo whose Unitarian convictions called them both to the deep south to work for Civil Rights and who both died in that service.  I think of Charlie Clements.. and Rev Jill McAllister….

            These are only a few examples of our living tradition that has been shaped of countless Unitarian and Universalist lives committed to the idea that the world is a precious place, that our congregations are places to be reminded of that preciousness and of our deep responsibility to the world.   Our sacred spaces bring us together in that sense of holy possibility – of what is possible among us as we work, live, worship, reflect, and vision together.

            To nurture that possibility that we create houses of worship with space for religious education and involve ourselves in teaching it.  We provide staff – called ministers, skilled musicians, religious educators, and dedicated office staff and shape in a partnership between staff and volunteers the concrete circumstances which can give rise to holy possibility. To nurture that possibility we are sometimes called to the ministry to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, to provide example and sometimes inspiration – on our better days, to study and to teach, and to share leadership.  To nurture that possibility we keep on the lights and turn on the heat and open our doors.

            These days we find ourselves in a new religious dwelling is to move our covenant to a new place – a place where we intend that it should be made ever stronger, to serve more of life, to make of Unitarian Universalism a stronger and stronger force for good, for justice, for healing, for hope in our world. 

            For this to happen we have to create the sacred space together – not only by the purchase of a new building – but through the building together of our noblest relationships.  The sacred space is what we create in our being together – in our covenant and our principles.  It is what we create in our daily work together.  I feel that holy possibility when we are together.  This is our stewardship season – the time when we gather in groups, in pairs and talk about the values and future of this congregation.  Well—my friends – the values and future of this congregation are entirely in your hands.  As we pass the offering each week – it’s clear that there is no higher organization that sets our course nor that funds our work – we do it ourselves.  A free church – which is not to say that it is without cost.  The cost is worthy.  For 7 years my husband and I have given more than 3% of our income each year to this congregation.   This year we will increase our pledge to make possible more of the visions of this congregation and more of the possibilities of Unitarian Universalism.  It’s not an easy choice – I still owe thousands of dollars for the theological education I finished before I came here and now we have two children in college.  But it’s essential that this faith flourish and each year it’s been vital to me to help this congregation meet or exceed its hopes. This year was of critical importance – because, finally, after perseverance on the part of so many of you for so many years, because of long and hard work on the part of so many of you for so many years and because of generosity on the part of so many of you for so many years you have gotten a new and more fitting space in which to meet and make real your visions and hope.  You’ve opened the doors on the future and it has arrived.  Finally.  The doors are open.

            And therefore it is time that all our doors be open – the doors of our eyes to see the condition of the world.  The doors of our ears to hear one another into more creative and meaningful lives.  The doors of our imagination open wide so that together we create the sacred space of possibility – for something of power and beauty to be created by us together.  The doors of our spirits to deepen our connection with all that is.  The doors of our hearts that our generosity and love are thrown wide that we can give from deep within to the wide hope without.  Stewardship is finding the key to generosity – unlocking and flinging the doors wide open. 

            The great mystery here is in each one of you – the miracle that you have come to this day – through all the adventure of your lives and with the gifts and burdens that you carry.  The great mystery is that you have gathered finding one another -- hopeful of a new life in religious community – a community grounded in principle and service.  The great mystery is that you are part of a tradition that reaches back hundreds and yes – even thousands of years and will stretch long into the future if you make this place a priority as did generations before you.  The great Mystery with a capital M is the power that you find in being together and in bringing ideas, support, acceptance, love, mercy, and commitment to one another – to be more together than you were alone.  The great secret is how you will unlock in yourselves and one another – this year and every year in the future the great doors of your heart so that you will give generous, substantial, and yet realistic resources to this common endeavor – of this congregation and this faith – that it can reach higher and stretch further than ever.  For too long this noble tradition of Unitarian Universalism has been like a secret garden – waiting and hidden holding healing marvels the world needs and, in fact, hungers for.  It is time to dig into the soil, to reach in with our hands and our hope and find the key that brings this garden – this sacred place – this living space – to light.  For so long people have said – I was a Unitarian Universalist and didn’t know it.  For this congregation in this place at this time you are ready to let people know who you are – to open your doors and share your Mystery which must be no longer a secret.  All that remains is that you make it so.  By your hearts and hands by your generosity and vision – by your work and love – so it shall ever be.