Reflection by Nicoline Guerrier, 14 February 2010
Late last year, during the noisy crush of coffee hour in the Phoenix Hall next door, two visitors to one of our Sunday Services asked me, shouting over the din: “What is it that has kept you committed to this church and Unitarian Universalism all these years?” I found myself excitedly telling them about our Lay Chaplaincy program, and the way in which for me, Lay Chaplaincy is the clearest example of the unique possibilities offered by our movement.
The pair expressed surprise that we would do the bulk of our work with people outside the congregation, and the question has been asked from within this community as well. Some wonder why we – a congregation that is sometimes struggling to muster all the human and financial resources it needs for its own operation – should expend so much energy on a program for non-members.
My personal answer to the question, “Why expend so much energy on the Lay Chaplaincy program?” has something to do with my own enthusiasm for the program – for no one who has had the privilege of serving as a Lay Chaplain can remain objective! My answer also has a lot to do with Universalism, the other heritage that our movement began to draw from when – in 1961 – the American Unitarian Association and the Universalist Church of America voted to merge their two liberal religious denominations. The Universalists believed that the concept of Hell or eternal damnation was incompatible with the notion of a loving God; they believed that God’s love was universal, and therefore extended to all people, not just those who held certain beliefs. Because the Universalists placed love at the center of their theology, rather than belief, they were typically much more active in social justice-seeking than the Unitarians: they took on a prominent role in the movement to abolish slavery, to reform the prison system, and in the struggle to bring the vote to women in the United States. Because the Universalists placed love at the heart of their religious mission, they sought to bring into being a world where this kind of love translated into justice and equity for all in the here and now.
And what does love have to do with rites of passage? Let’s look, for a minute, at some of the types of ceremonies at which I have been asked to officiate, during my past five years as Lay Chaplain:
• A child dedication held in our sanctuary for a first child, born after a difficult pregnancy to a couple who were both raised Christian, yet no longer feel at home in their respective religious traditions. For work reasons they must relocate to France shortly after the baby’s birth, but they feel anxious about setting off on an airplane so soon after the baby’s arrival. Gathering here with a small group of family members for the dedication and a meal feels grounding to them, and both feel reassured that, should something happen on the trip, “at least” the baby will have been “blessed” by the celebration.
• The funeral, held in a West Island funeral home, for an older woman who had been an enthusiastic member of the Salvation Army in her younger days overseas. During the service, her husband – who was humbled and moved as he shared memories of the hymns that were sung during their Salvation Army wedding ceremony some 50 years before - sought to honour both the Christian enthusiasm of their early days, and the secular life that the family had led after the arrival of their children and their move to Canada from their country of origin.
• A wedding celebration for a couple who – in creating a ceremony that their fundamentalist Christian relatives will attend – seek to affirm that despite their lack of religious affiliation, they do not “believe in nothing.” They experience the spirit in nature, and so choose to hold their ceremony by the shores of the St. Lawrence River, at a nature park on the outskirts of Montreal. Both experience joy and affirmation in discovering that for the first time, they are able to articulate their own beliefs and commitments – to their families as well as for themselves.
• A short service attended by only three people at an outdoor columbarium, requested by a woman who sought a dignified way to lay to rest the ashes of her entire family – husband and children – all of whom died under tragic circumstances. The committal service provided an opportunity to reflect on the meaning of their lives and deaths, and began the necessary process of closure/moving on for the woman and for a surviving grandchild.
• Beyond these are the many ceremonies which form the “bread and butter” of the lay chaplains’ work: weddings for people who wish to honour two distinct traditions within their ceremony; people for whom their marriage cannot be celebrated within the tradition of their choice (divorced Catholics, for example, or marriages between Jewish and non-Jewish partners, where local rabbis require a commitment that the children be educated solely in the Jewish faith before celebrating the marriage); gay people who wish to feel their union sanctified by a religious service and held in a building called a “church”, but who are denied this possibility by their own denominations of origin.
These ceremonies are transformational for their participants; I witness this in their excitement when – as early as the first planning meeting – they get to experiment with the feeling of being co-creators of their own public ritual. I got to experience this for myself, when a year and a half ago I got to plan my own wedding ceremony with my partner and with a Lay Chaplain from a Toronto congregation. This is rare in our culture, and rare in the religious traditions of the world. When I, as a Lay Chaplain, offer a UU rite of passage to people from any background, without condition, I experience myself as doing work that matters and matters deeply: it is love-in-action, just as the Universalists would have insisted that love be made manifest. As I work with couples and families to help them discern what their ritual needs to mean to them, our first Unitarian Universalist principle - “to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person” is never far from my mind. Serving as a Lay Chaplain makes it clear to me that as UUs, we are responsible to the world community, and not just the community within these walls or those who have signed the membership book.
As UUs, we take as our symbol the flaming chalice, and it is customary to light a candle or a small flame at the beginning of our rites of passage and our gatherings together. The Reverend John Wood, a Universalist minister who was active in the mid-20th century, was famous for this reflection about the candle and its flame, metaphor for the work of the spirit: “A candle must give itself away. In the giving, the spending, the spreading, the sending, it finds itself.”
Whether we name it respect for the inherent worth and dignity of all, or love, it is clear to me now that whatever it is we believe in, exists only as empty words until we take it out into the world. Hoarded, our love is worth only a small portion of what it becomes when we give it away: our love grows large, powerful, and transformational when we spend it and send it out into the larger world – a world that is, after all, our world as well.
And so, yes: I am enthusiastic about our Lay Chaplaincy program, which for me is one of the concrete ways in which the Canadian wing of our movement brings its principles out into the world in the 21st century. Lay Chaplaincy is social justice work, the holy work of keeping alive the flames of dignity, affirmation, and sanctification that are a right and a foundational need in every life. This is how we love our neighbours as ourselves, and also how we show love for the endless possibilities expressed by the many variants of human life, beyond sectarian struggle, beyond belonging to religions or ethnic tribes.
This is the service our UU community offers to the world, and we offer it with love.
