"Passing the Baton" - the Reverend Alison Hyder

July 6, 2003 - the Unitarian Universalist Meeting House of Provincetown

We are here to abet creation and to witness to it,
To notice each other’s beautiful face and complex nature
So that creation need not play to an empty house.

READING: by Rev. Douglas Morgan Strong from his article “The Gift”

It was one of those Christmas gifts that really worked. Something I dearly treasure, yet I never imagined I would received. For Christmas this year, I got my life! …It came from my sister, the family historian who has spent the last four years sorting through our father’s papers.

Contained in [an] envelope was a pile of letters I had written my dad – fifty year’s worth! I wrote good letters, filled with the details of what I did, where I went, and who I met. I sat for the day in the sunroom, reviewing my life. I wrote about major crossroads, highlighting the important events, and the tragedies. I remembered those events easily. What had completely slipped my mind, however, was a plethora of events, people. Or things that came alive again as I read…. The three glass bears I purchased at age 6 – in Yellowstone… a copy of my seventh grade report – all Ds or Fs (it was the year my folks divorced) … my first solo cross country at 12, sitting in the club car on the train El Capitan with six strangers, one of whom wrote limericks about all of us…

My Dad kept things – like my letters. But he also kept a copy of all the letters he sent me over the years! Letters that I once read and then tossed out. Letters my sister returned to me last week. They too contained revelations about my past that I somehow had overlooked. He was far more loving and interested in my life than I remembered. I always felt I didn’t get along very well with my old man. Strange, he sure got along well with me! It came as a jolt to discover how concerned he was about my world and my life and how proud as well.

I never thought much about saving letters – mine or anyone else’s. Why bother? Who would ever want to read them again? I always figured I collected enough stuff; yet getting a handful of letters in my childhood penmanship was powerful. Years of misplaced thoughts came pouring out. I marveled at what I had forgotten, or wanted to forget. I loved learning about my life, again!

History deserves to have as much documentation as humanly possible…. Future generations need to know what was on our minds when we lived, where our priorities were, what touched our souls and our spirit. Traditions are enhanced by good historical records. Congregations to have dedicated historians who archive the major and minor events in the life of a faith community. Chronicles of the past make for good sermons, and become a living tradition.

SERMON: “Passing the Baton” - Rev. Alison Hyder

Last year my mother gave me the letters that my grandmother had saved throughout most of her life. Oma, my grandmother, died about 4 years ago at age 93, but until she was 90 she lived independently. She was a major influence on my life – a needy and often irritating woman, but full of charm and curiosity and zest for nature and travel. She saved the letters from her life in Germany – in writing that I cannot translate or even decipher – and later, the thanks-you notes and cards her grandchildren dutifully sent. There are a few of my college correspondences, and letters from my cousins. There’s even a love-letter or two. But what struck me most was not the banality of my own letters to her – unlike my colleague, Doug, I wrote a lot of boring tripe – but the many letters from my mother and my aunt as they got married and moved from home. All the joys of motherhood, their efforts to learn good parenting, little domestic concerns over curtains and clothes and the like. The money troubles, the visits from relatives. And there is a long account my mother wrote her mother-in-law on the occasion of my birth (Mom loved giving birth) that she copied out for her sister and Oma.

All these letters shed a different light on my mother, and especially my aunt. They chronicle their hopes and schemes, their adventures and struggles to cope and mature and thrive. They reveal forgotten aspects of our family story in all its touching and funny detail. They help to define who we are, and why.

I passed along many of the letters to my cousins, for them and their children to read, keeping the ones from my parents for myself. I hope they treasure them. Anyway, they certainly enriched my life. But I’ve always been a bit of a historian. I have all the letters people have sent to me, and some cards, and copies of many of my own letters, too. I try to save the meatier and more personal e-mail notes that have replaced the paper letters. I have most of my old stuffed animals and books, my grandmother’s furniture, some of her clothes, costume jewelry from my mother and my great-aunt. And here at the Meeting House, I regularly save newspaper articles and photographs with UU members and kindred spirits.

There’s an old Jewish Axiom that states that “The reason God created humans is because God loves stories.”

It is the stories that we tell that help to define us, both to ourselves and other people. Strong and independent, or self-deprecating and ironic. A victim, a warrior, a healer, a clown. Stories of survival and triumph, of patient endurance and faith, of a wild and reckless love that ends – how? Maybe the ending has yet to be written. Our memories change and evolve, lose their usefulness over time. Some stories lie dormant, only to be reclaimed at a later time, by a future generation in search of their identity.

So I’m in accord with Douglas Morgan Strong, when says, “History deserves to have as much documentation as humanly possible…. Future generations need to know what was on our minds when we lived, where our priorities were, what touched our souls and our spirit. Traditions are enhanced by good historical records. Congregations deserve to have dedicated historians who archive the major and minor events in the life of a faith community. Chronicles of the past make for good sermons, and become a living tradition.”

This congregation loves to tell the story of our birth out of the waters. It is a story of curiosity and confidence and fellowship. But mostly it is a story about hope.

Back in the 1820s, there was a community of people living on Long Point, that natural spit of land across Provincetown Bay that helps to protect the harbor. You can see it from our windows as you leave the Sanctuary. It was a rough and windy landscape, constantly threatened by storms, and was eventually abandoned. Most of the buildings were floated off and relocated on the West End. You can point them out by the blue plaques depicting a house on a barge. Just a lighthouse remains, but when our story occurs Long Point was a thriving neighborhood with houses and stores and a school. One day around 1820, two young girls named Elizabeth and Sylvia Freeman – about 10 and 12 - were walking along the beach. Suddenly, they saw a book in the surf. Back then, books were precious and exciting commodities, so the girls took it home and carefully dried it out. The book was The Life of the Reverend John Murray, Preacher of Universal Salvation. The Freemans read it, and their cousins and friends and associates read it, and their hearts were gladdened. For John Murray described a theology of love and acceptance and salvation for all. God is not judgmental and angry, Murray declared, but full of love for all of his children. Everyone is redeemed into his grace. No one will be condemned to eternal punishment. God made this world beautiful and good, and so, too, the people in it. John Murray’s hopeful story made Universalism come alive in Provincetown. In 1829, the congregation built their first church in the East End. Within 20 years, they had outgrown that church, and in 1847 this beautiful Meeting House was built out of their hope and sacrifice and their vision of God’s inclusive love.

You can see why we love this story. It is a tale of curiosity and observation, of acceptance and gratitude and ageless wonder. It has a message that is passed from hand to hand and from one heart to another across generations and years. Universalism was a gift from the sea to a community dependent upon its awesome forces for their livelihood and their connection to the world, and for their very identity. Inspired by this theology of hope and confidence, Universalists have put their values into action on the Cape for over 175 years.

But our story doesn’t start there. It began in 1770, when John Murray set sail from England for a new life in the American Colonies. Murray had suffered a series of personal tragedies. His wife and daughter had died, and he spent time in debtor’s prison. A lay-preacher, Murray had been excommunicated from the Methodist Church due to his universalist views. He was disenchanted with institutional religion and had determined never to preach again. But an amazing set of circumstances intervened. UU Historian Charles Howe tells the story well:

First, the ship on which he had taken passage ran aground on a sandbar off the coast of New Jersey [a place called Good Luck, on Barnegat Bay] and Murray went ashore to look for provisions. There he met a farmer named Thomas Potter, an uneducated but deeply religious man who had built a chapel on his property and invited itinerant ministers to preach there, hoping to hear a message that he could wholeheartedly accept. On learning that Murray had once done some preaching, Potter invited him to deliver a sermon the following Sunday. Murray at first refused, but gave in to Potter’s persistent urging and accepted, provided that the wind did not change first and blow the ship off the sandbar [as I’m sure he hoped it would]. Potter assured him it would not, and indeed the wind held steady. Murray’s sermon on universal grace, delivered to Potter and his neighbors on September 30, 1770, was evidently exactly the one Potter had long been waiting to hear, and it’s effect on Murray himself was likewise profound – by the time he had finished, his reservations about preaching were gone forever. Soon after the service was over, a sailor came from the ship with the news that the wind had just changed direction and the ship was off the sandbar and ready to sail. Potter and Murray both regarded their chance meeting and the postponement of the wind’s change as a sign of God’s Providence – it was perhaps the only miracle in Universalist history! Murray sailed on to New York City, preached there to an enthusiastic congregation, and was soon traveling up and down the northeastern seaboard, sowing the seeds of Universalism wherever he went. [Charles Howe, The Larger Hope – A Short History of American Universalism]

Rev. John Murray was not the first person to preach the Universalist Gospel in America, but he was the one who planted and watered its roots. At first he planned to settle in New Jersey near his friend Thomas Potter, but as his courage grew, so did his public ministry. Eventually he settled in Gloucester, Massachusetts, where he founded the first church dedicated to Universalism in this country – and perhaps in any other. His second wife was Judith Sargent Murray, the feminist and first woman of letters in America, who sometimes replaced him in the pulpit when he was on the road. Together, they affirmed human goodness and nobility, and spread the liberating power of Love. They handed down their vision of God’s compassion for others to carry forth.

The whims of the ocean currents brought John Murray to Thomas Potter’s chapel, and they brought Murray’s compelling book to the residents of our shores, everywhere reviving hearts parched with dread and oppression. These two stories enrich our congregation’s history. They give us both a sense of place and a feeling of grace. We know that our existence truly is a remarkable gift. And it is a gift that we must continually share with others, in gratitude and faith. Our well-being depends upon it.

“To acknowledge our ancestors,” states Alice Walker, - literal or spiritual - “means we are aware that we did not make ourselves, that the line stretches all the way back, perhaps to God, or to Gods. We remember them because it is an easy thing to forget that we are not the first to suffer, rebel, fight, love and die. The grace with which we embrace life, in spite of the pain, is always a measure of what has gone before.”

America has many founding stories, myths about George Washington and the Cherry Tree, legends about Paul Revere’s ride and the Pilgrims’ first Thanksgiving. We commemorate those who gave their lives for this country, and revere the minds that crafted and codified our freedoms. We shoot off fireworks on the fourth of July. But history is more than wars and elections; it’s more than dates. It is the reality that we create with our memories, the tales of heroism and corruption and heartache. History is made day by day in our grandparents’ tales of tilling rocky soil and surviving the big blizzard, in memories of miscarriages and young love and a treasured family recipe passed down through the generations. We tell our stories. This is how we create culture, how we communicate our values and beliefs, and share our most intimate concerns.

In his children’s book, Crow and Weasel, Barry Lopez said, “The stories people tell have a way of taking care of them. If stories come to you, care for them. And learn to give them away where they are needed. Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive. That is why we put these stories in each other’s memory. This is how people care for themselves.”

It is important that we tell our own stories, the ones that have deep meaning for us. We hear enough about hatred and cruelty and greed. We are fed with fear – by our government, by the media, and sometimes even by our churches. We are bombarded with images of bombs, bullets, car crashes, and carnage. But America is also about fellowship and acceptance and creativity. It is the insight of the black inventor Benjamin Banneker, and the courage of journalist Nellie Bly. It is Black Elk and Emma Goldman and even Margaret Cho, finding themselves, and risking their truths in the telling.

Many of us have our own particular heroines and heroes, someone we read about or know who inspired us to work harder toward our ideals, to live a life of integrity or generosity or commitment. Eleanor Roosevelt is one of mine, and Thurgood Marshall, and Carol Burnett. My grandmother and parents. I’m sure you have your own list. But none of our heroes worked alone. Each one has passed their dreams along to us and to our children. We can pick up the baton and run with it, or let it fall into the dirt to be trampled on and buried. The work remains. But without their examples to guide us, we are left prey to all the influences of violence and selfishness that fill our culture. We will get sucked in, more and more defeated and afraid.

If we want a culture of justice and compassion, we need to give children examples that live. We need to share memories of courage, of joyful abandon, of a neighbor’s kindness. Of people who worked for social justice, for civil rights, clean water, better education, safe streets. And who kept at it despite discouragement and tears. It is these stories – the stories that inspire us and give us strength - that deserve to live in our hearts; to be shared and shared again, the stories of our people, tender and wise.

We need to live our own stories into life, into truth, acting out the dramas of valor and inspiration and self-discovery until they are palpable and real. Love stories, and songs of freedom and hope with a lot of comic relief - and even a few limericks thrown in. We must pick up the baton and pass it along for the next generation to carry, in a never-ending story of hope and love. “We are here,” wrote Annie Dillard, “to abet creation and to witness to it, to notice each other’s beautiful face and complex nature so that creation need not play to an empty house.”

We create the world with our words, and the way we live our beliefs. We can make it a harsh and sorry place, or alive with messages that heal and inspire. The future is up to us.

Anyway, that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it. You have to write your own.

CLOSING WORDS: Lucille Clifton wrote a series of poems after her husband died. This is called, “the message of fred clifton.”

i rise up from the dead before you
a nimbus of dark light
to say that the only mercy
is memory,
to say that the only hell
is regret.

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