Channing Memorial Church
Unitarian Universalist
Ellicott City, MD
The Reverend Susan LaMar
December 7, 2003 

"The Spiritual Practice of Preparation" 

I can remember as a young child sitting in the back seat of the family car on road trips and watching the road unfold up ahead. One image that has stuck with me is a seemingly huge hill looming, and my worry that the car would not be able to make it to the top without getting stuck and rolling backwards. Then as the car approached the hill, a miracle seemed to happen: it seemed less and less steep, and the car traversed it with ease. The hill was brought low. 

This month we recognize the anniversary of the Wright Brothers’ first manned, powered, heavier than air  flight. Talk about leveling out hills and valleys! Our technology has made that imagery nearly obsolete – our legs don’t get tired, our spirits don’t lag from exhaustion when we hear about mountains and valleys. Mountain up ahead? So what? Just accelerate a little more. Better yet, jump in an airplane, and be clear across several mountain ranges in a few hours. No big deal. Technology lets us kid ourselves into thinking that differences are easy. 

No one that I know has ever claimed that they were entirely prepared for having a baby – at least not the first one. Oh yes, they plan for the blessed event. They buy baby furniture, and clothes and diapers and bottles and blankets, and they have showers and they pick out names and they read books on child rearing and they attend lamaze classes or adoption support classes. And then the child arrives, and something else happens. Reality. The dynamic of the home changes. The marriage or partnership changes. Schedules change. Values change. Perspective changes. Sleep patterns change. The baby is cranky or colicky. Planning, it turns out, has very little to do with preparation. 

All of those actions that I just listed, those movements made by an individual getting ready to have a baby, to move into something new, have to do with acquiring something. Same with technology. We acquire technology to make roads straight and level out hills and valleys. 

But to prepare seems to move us exactly in the opposite direction. Rather than acquiring something, it seems to lead us in the direction of letting go. You’ve got to deal with the child you get, not the fantasy one. Perhaps we should take a lesson from the deciduous trees in winter. They drop their leaves, so that the cold winds do not catch in them and tear them from their roots. They drop their leaves, so that the snows do not pile up and weigh them down, breaking their branches. Their preparation for winter is a dropping away of what is not needed at this season.  

To pre-pare. To make ready beforehand. To pare down, beforehand. To whittle away all that is extraneous.

To take that paring knife in our hand and scrape off the dirt and skin that protects us from that which is important. What is difficult, of course, is figuring out what is extraneous skin and dirt and what is the fruit.

Things may not be as they seem.  

My extended family has some deep history in southern Connecticut. A few years ago, when my second cousin Jack inherited a house and land – roughly a hundred acres – he proceeded to work with the Nature Conservancy to place 95 of those acres into trust, never to be developed. Our entire family was delighted that this land would be preserved, undeveloped, ensuring open space in that rapidly developing community. It is lovely, rolling farmland. The family is happy. The town of Salem is happy. The birds and wildlife that live there are, presumably, happy.  

Well, two years ago, Jack died, relatively young and quite unexpectedly. He has one son, but that son is not the least bit interested in the property. The estate is in the hands of the only other surviving relative in that particular branch of the family, and she and her husband are settled in the midwest, far away from southern Connecticut. And although there is deep sentimental attachment to the property, they also are not interested.  

A letter circulated last month to the broader family network, giving family members right of first refusal before the property goes on the open market January 4^th. 

And here is the cruel paradox. The price being asked for the property is far and away beyond the means of any of the extended family. Our family tends to be made up of teachers and social workers and civil servants, ministers. Even the lawyers are doing public interest work – state bureaucrats and legal assistance attorneys. Besides, most of us are settled far away, with new roots in new places. 

And why is the property so expensive? Because it includes all that glorious open space, in trust with the Nature Conservancy. The same decision – the same preparation – that will preserve the open space for all --  means that the historical home and five remaining acres will very likely leave the family that settled there in the 1840s.  

The family pared away the land, ensuring the good of all, but in doing so gave up something else. The placing of the land in trust made ready beforehand a benefit to the world and broader community, but in doing so Music Vale homestead will move on to a new branch of its history.  

One cousin e-mailed me the other day lamenting the loss and ruing the decision to place the land in trust. Her reasoning is that the entrusted land could have been sold to developers, yielding enough money so that the price of the homestead could have been kept down. But I disagree with her. I think that when it comes down to this difficult conflict between two competing positive and important values, I come down on the side of the preserved open space. Yes I lament the loss. Yes, I am deeply and sentimentally attached to the property.  

I think that the pre-paring that my cousin Jack did was wise and correct. He made ready beforehand a natural sanctuary. After all, one never knows what the future will bring – what will be born. In this case, a natural sanctuary was born. A different decision might have meant that the land would have been developed AND no family member would purchase the property. My cousin Jack’s choice – to pick the longest term value for the most people – I think was a sound one. 

So although I lament, access to the portion of the property that contains the family cemetery has been preserved, surrounded by woods and streams and rolling countryside. When I stop by to visit, I will still be able to walk down that gravel lane, embraced by the familiar landscape, breathing in the fragrance of the mountain laurel or the new-mown hay. The house will no longer be “ours,” but the history will. 

Then, last week, while that family property was on my mind, a colleague mailed me a real estate advertisement she had come across for a church building for sale here in Howard County. For fun, I called the agent to get more information and took a ride down to see the outside. The price doesn’t seem too high considering Howard County Real Estate values. It has on-site parking. The sanctuary is probably too big for us, and the religious education and office space far too small. The building is a good distance from our habitual center here in Ellicott City and in a neighborhood that stands in stark contrast to our comfortable digs in Ellicott City. 

But the juxtaposition of these two events having to do with property got me to thinking. I thought back to the values and meanings that came out of the start-up session on October 10^th. You will recall that four particularly strong values and meanings held within this congregation emerged from that session. 

First was our spirituality. 

Second was our “homelessness” – [although I strongly object to that word to describe the fact that we do not have our own space] But a desire to have our own space was lifted up. 

Third was the exhaustion of those who have carried the load over the mountains and valleys of getting Channing started and keeping it going for these first 11 years. 

Fourth was the importance of religious education – drawing us forth and linking us together on our spiritual journeys from birth to death. 

How do those values help us as something unknown yet important waits to be born? How do we make ready beforehand for a future that we are not yet sure of? Something lies ahead for this congregation. How do we pre-pare?  

The challenge for us as a congregation will be to prepare the way ahead for that which we cannot see. That is what makes preparation – pre-paring – a spiritual practice. We can plan – and plan we must. We can ask for and give money – and ask for and give money we must. We can do fundraisers – and raise funds we must. We can invite new members in – and invite we must. All of those things are what I call temporal – they take place on this very practical plane on which we live. They use data that we gather. They take our physical, bodily energy – and lots of it. 

In a church, though, all that temporal work must be supported and nourished by that which we cannot see – shared values and shared meanings. Those values must be made ready beforehand. They are not necessarily unchanging. If we were to suddenly have our own space, the value we are now (arguably) placing on that as a goal would shift. But at any given point in time we must have done the deep spiritual work of identifying and then holding fast – with all of our bodies, minds, and spirits to certain values, living and breathing whatever they are. We must find the areas of agreement and disagreement – the high and the low – and go to work in the in-between. It will not do to jump over it all in an airplane or accelerate through.   

And that may involve some letting go. 

To paraphrase John the Baptizer:  what might we have to let go of in order to make ourselves ready to receive the gift of being a spiritually centered, comfortably housed, energetic congregation worshiping and raising our collective children, and making life passages together in this free church? Is that, in fact, what we most value? 

To put it in a humanist’s words: what commitment – what actions, purposes, and experiences – are most humanly significant toward the growth and health of Channing? What are not? What can be pared away? 

To put it in the framework of Hebrew scripture: when David wanted to build a temple, he was informed that it was not yet time – that worshiping in a tent and a tabernacle was just fine, thank you very much. Some additional work was necessary in that community before it would be time to build. What was it then? What is it for us?  

And what about you as an individual or you as a family? What can you pare away . .  what can you let go of this season in order to notice something new being born? What can you let drop away to find the fruit that is most important in your life at this season? How much less energy it takes to say, “thank you so much for your invitation, but we’ve decided to stay home with the kids that evening” . . . how much easier to say that than to find a baby-sitter, dress up, get overly tired, go back to work the next day. . . and so on and so on. Or maybe in your house it would be just the opposite: Maybe your need is to spend a few extra dollars to hire a babysitter and get away for a few hours – and maybe even take the next day off from work, just for the heck of it.  

The point is to stop, and step back, and wait and watch, and let that most important value emerge. It is coming. What is it?