The
Secret of the Fox
Delivered by
Ilona Forgeng, April 27, 2008
At the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, New Bern, NC
Reading
This morning’s reading comes from The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
And the fox said, "Go and look again at the roses.
You will understand now that yours is unique in all the world. Then come
back to say goodbye to me, and I will make you a present of a
secret."
The little prince went away, to look again at the
roses.
"You are not at all like my rose," he said.
"As yet you are nothing. No one has tamed you, and you have tamed no
one. You are like my fox when I first knew him. He was only a fox like a
hundred thousand other foxes. But I have made him my friend, and now he is
unique in all the world."
And the roses were very much embarrassed.
"You are beautiful, but you are empty," he
went on. "One could not die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passerby
would think that my rose looked just like you-- the rose that belongs to
me. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of
you other roses: because it is she that I have watered; because it is she
that I have put under the glass globe; because it is she that I have
sheltered behind the screen; because it is for her that I have killed the
caterpillars (except the two or three that we saved to become
butterflies); because it is she that I have listened to, when she
grumbled, or boasted, or even sometimes when she said nothing. Because she
is my rose.
And he went back to meet the fox.
"Goodbye," he said.
"Goodbye," said the fox. "And now here
is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can
see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
"What is essential is invisible to the eye,"
the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.
"It is the time you have wasted for your rose that
makes your rose so important."
"It is the time I have wasted for my rose--"
said the little prince, so that he would be sure to remember.
"Men have forgotten this truth," said the
fox. "But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever,
for what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose..."
"I am responsible for my rose," the little
prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.
________________________________________
Sermon
This will not be a service about the spiritual meanings
of our new building, not about what we can become in the future, not about
the difference this place can mean to the community. Come back at 4 this
afternoon to hear all that.
This morning is a celebration of how far we have come,
what we have accomplished, what we have given to this very special place,
this rose of ours we have tended.
This is now our home, in a way the places on Glenburnie
never could be. Somehow paying a mortgage instead of rent seems to make
all the difference.
Our first real place to meet was the Jewish Synagogue,
and we have been grateful to their members ever since for sharing their
space with us. We loved being in the temple, but we needed to have a home
of our own. So Paula and I went out and stumbled upon our first place on
Glenburnie. When we moved in, everything we owned fit into five boxes,
plus the two coffee pots, of course. In the beginning we were lucky to get
15 people sitting on those white plastic chairs on a Sunday. One memorable
morning we were 7, and that included the speaker and her son.
But together
we built this fellowship. Not yet a building; we built the fellowship. We created a place where people could feel safe, could
talk about things that matter and know that they would be listened to with
an open mind. This fellowship has been a place of comfort and community,
as well as a place for approaching the greater mysteries of life.
We grew our family from that small group to a
membership over 50. Now, as you can see from the added chairs, no longer
white plastic, thankfully, we are ready to welcome even more visitors. We
will welcome people who need this liberal religion in their lives. We will
welcome people who need a special place, a warm and supporting community
of good faith and good works. We will welcome people on their spiritual
journey, wherever they are on that journey. We will give them the
opportunity to grow with us, to add their warmth and their humanity to
this great, good place.
Because the people who have been building this place
for these 15 years have built a great, good place for us. This is the
Great Good Place
sociologist Ray Oldenberg wrote about. Oldenberg called the great, good
place the “third place,” not our first place, our home and the people
we live with. Not the second place, where we work (those of us who still
work), but the third place is that place where we choose to spend our
time, the place where we find the community we need, the creative
interaction, the vitality and good humor and support we seek.
Oldenberg says, "The character of a third place is
determined most of all by its regular clientele and is marked by a playful
mood, which contrasts with people's more serious involvement in other
spheres. Though a radically different kind of setting from a home, the
third place is remarkably similar to a good home in the psychological
comfort and support that it extends."
We need this kind of place, all of us. We need the
place we can go to renew our spirits, a place to refill our souls, a place
to be at ease in the company of friends.
The Spanish speak of their querencia. Like the third
place, Querencia is a place where one feels safe, a place from which one's
strength of character is drawn, a place where one feels at home. Querencia
is a bullfighting term, referring to that area of the arena where the bull
feels safe and where he returns to gain strength. So then, we can speak of
this as our ‘querencia’ that little area in the arena of our lives
where we can feel safe and gain strength for the week ahead. But querencia
also implies a sense of responsibility toward that place, a duty to care
for it and keep it safe, as well. Like the little Prince, we need to tend
to our rose and make it special. It is up to us to tend our querencia, our
great, good place, for us and for those who will follow, who will join us
along the way.
Oldenberg says that a true great, good place should
have food and drink, should be populated by regulars, should be welcoming
and comfortable. In terms of providing food and drink, there are those who
say that the only sacrament celebrated by Unitarians is the coffee hour.
The symbol of our faith is not the chalice nor the cross, but the coffee
pot. And like the great, good place, we certainly are populated by
regulars, we’re sometimes a little too comfortable, and we try our best
to be welcoming.
Dan Wakefield, writing in Beliefnet, tells of a visit
to a church in
Boston
. He says, “I could feel the spirit in the place when I walked in. It
was present in a sense of welcome, anticipation, and an undercurrent of
enthusiasm. It was a feeling not all that common in mainline American
churches before the Sunday service.
But on this Sunday at the
Arlington
Street
Church
in downtown
Boston
, the buzz of quiet, eager conversation and greetings seemed to promise a
livelier experience.”
It is that spirit of welcome Dan Wakefield experienced
that we try to convey here. It is the spirit that this is a place we want
to be, not a place we have to be. For heaven’s sake, we nearly have to
throw people out after the coffee hour. Contrast this with the parking lot
of any catholic church—you can be run over when everyone heads for the
exits.
We like to be here. This is our
Third Place
, our querencia. Truly it is our great, good place. Our great, good place,
where we feel comfortable, where we are among regulars and friends, where
we are welcomed with a smile (and often a hug) as we come in the door,
where everyone knows your name. It is our great, good place where we find
vitality and creativity, where we feel accepted. But we find more than a
welcome here, because our shared values are a focus of our community. We
share the value of commitment along with trust and honesty and compassion
and respect.
Let me warn those of you who are new to UU, if it
takes, if you become inoculated, you will find this not only a great good
place, but a necessary place. One of our early consulting ministers,
Meredith Garmon, told the story of being at coffee hour after service and
saying to someone that he liked being in a church where he could believe
anything he wanted to. An elderly member of the congregation shook her
finger at him and said, “Young man, I don’t come here because I can
believe what I want to. I come here because I can believe what I have
to.”
But we have been gifted, we have, for there have been
some great, good people helping to make this a great, good place.
Barbara Oien not only began this fellowship with the
storied first meeting around Athene Bunn’s table. She led us for a long
time, shepherding the infant group through the earliest stages, past the
point where we knew we would make it. And Barbara did it with humor, with
grace and with enormous understanding.
Marty Chandler was here from the beginning, and Marty
has always been active and supportive, ready to help, to work, quick with
new ideas, quick with picking up slack.
Paula and Phil Urban were at that very first meeting.
Those of us who were here early on consider ourselves lucky to have known
Phil. All of us are lucky to know Paula, who has been at the heart of this
fellowship all these years.
Millie and Ron Kilburn and Wally Runner were also at
the very first meeting of the fellowship. Millie was long-term treasurer
and Ron is one of our stalwarts with hammer and saw and always has
encouraged us to work for justice.
It is thanks to these great, good people that we are
here on this Sunday when we will be dedicating our first building. I want
to thank you all sincerely for every thing you have done so that this
place is here for me.
It is also thanks to many, many more people, doing many
things we don’t even see, don’t even know about, things that make a
great difference in the life of this fellowship.
I’d like to take a few minutes to give you an idea of
what goes on here, how much contribution comes from all of us to all of
us.
Will those people who have served on the board at any
time in these last 13 years please stand up?
Will those who have served on a committee please stand?
Those who have been greeters?
Those who have given a sermon?
Who have been a service leader?
Who have provided music at a service
Who have produced the Orders of Service
Those who have worked with Habitat?
Who have walked in the Martin Luther King parade, or
the Multiple Sclerosis walk, or ridden in the MS Bikeathon?
Who have worked with the Karen?
Those who have made refreshments?
Those who take photographs?
Those who help with the newsletter?
Who worked on the search for a building
Who helped with the move and with putting the final
touches on this place.
These, and more, are the people who have made this
place possible.
And this is where the secret of the fox comes in. That
it is through the time you spend caring for something that it becomes
truly important to you. This place is not special because it is prettier
than our last home. It is not special because of the lights or the pews or
even the plaques on the wall. It is special because of what goes on here.
It is special because of the people, their caring, their attitude toward
each other, their willingness to help, their willingness to form
community. When you have invested your time and energy caring for
something your relationship to it is never again the same.
To
be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like
you. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of
you other roses: because it is she that I have watered; because it is she
that I have put under the glass globe; because it is she that I have
sheltered behind the screen; because it is for her that I have killed the
caterpillars; because it is she that I have listened to, when she
grumbled, or boasted, or even sometimes when she said nothing. Because she
is my rose.
This is our rose. An ordinary passerby would think that
our church looks just like any other small church. But in herself alone,
she is more important than all the hundreds of other churches in
Craven
County
. Because we have sheltered her, because we have listened, even when
people grumbled or boasted, or sometimes even when they said nothing.
We have come a long way. We have come from a valiant
few around Athene Bunn’s dining room table, through the community center
at
Berne
Village
, by way of the Jewish Synagogue through two storefronts on Glenburnie.
And now we have come to our own home, our Querencia.
There are some very special people to thank for making
this, a former cleaning establishment into our own special rose. We
started looking years ago, and Jake Jacobson, John Knauth, Gerry Mackle,
Horace Knapp and I looked at a lot of unsuitable property. Including this
one, too late to consider as it had been bought by someone else. But Bruce
Arnold was our eminence grise, the figure in the background who saw to it
that when the new owners of this building were ready to sell, we were
ready to buy.
The core committee, Gerry Mackle, Deborah Wheeler and
Jeanie Lescota, with
Karen Brause
as project manager, worked hard, spent huge amounts of time making this
place happen. Gerry must have been here nearly every day for, how many
months? And then came the move. When we moved out of the
Temple
we had five cardboard boxes. Luckily this time we had Tom Robinson to
help, and I don’t know how many trips he and his trailer made back and
forth. Did you see the photos of our moving day? All the people who came
to help move, to pack, to clean, to try to make order out of the chaos?
And the people who came on painting day. Take a look at the photos. These
are people caring for their rose.
The entire congregation made this place possible with
their contributions to the capital fund. Jake Jacobson and Kevin Reynolds
and Gary Lindsey shepherded our finances, but the congregation has made
everything possible by their generosity in their gifts for the building.
We all care about this place, this great, good place, this rose.
This is a place we have cared for, even before we were
here. Remember that the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of New Bern is
not the building. This fellowship is the people, people who give freely of
their gifts, of their time, of their talents to make this a great, good
place. We are this place; it
will remain in our hands to make it whatever it will become. Will it be a
welcoming place? Only if we are welcoming. Will it be a safe place? Only
if we treat each other with respect and caring. Will it be a place of
community? Only as we build that community.
The fox said, "And now here is my secret, a very
simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is
essential is invisible to the eye." What is essential to this place
can be seen in our hearts, in the loving kindness of our people, in the
openness of our beliefs, in the creative energy, curiosity, comfort and
support we hope you will all find here.
"What is essential is invisible to the eye,"
the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.
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