On
Sunday morning, I decided I’d go to the Palo Alto Unitarian Church.Being
raised a Unitarian, I thought this would be a way to escape my solitude.When
I arrived, everyone was two to four times my age.Of
the people who still had hair on their heads, few of them still had the
same hair color as when they graduated high school.My
heart sank a little, wondering if I’d fit in with these folks.Then
I saw a hand waving at me from a table on the far side of the courtyard.Connected
to the hand was the smiling face of an elementary school teacher named
Peggy George.She welcomed me, asked
about my circumstances, and introduced me to a few people she thought I’d
like to meet.After the service we
went out to lunch.Suddenly, I didn’t
feel alone anymore.
Thus
began my twelve-year residency in California and my membership in the Palo
Alto Unitarian Church.It became
my community as I found work and attended community college in preparation
for my transfer to UC Berkeley to finish my engineering degree.I
formed a Unitarian student group there.My
first serious romantic relationship was with a young woman who grew up
in that congregation.It was through
that church, I felt connected to my new home.
Because
I grew up with a very strong sense of community, I knew what to do to begin
to resolve my feelings of loneliness and isolation.Many
others today do not.Many are raised
without a religious community or a sense of connectedness with a stable
circle of friends and neighbors.With
the significant and rapid changes in the economy, many families are uprooted
again and again to seek employment in a new location.
Add
to those disruptions the changes in the way we spend our leisure time.More
and more, people relax and seek entertainment at home in front of the television,
sound system or the computer.Email,
electronic chat rooms and instant messaging give us the feeling of community
but at the expense of physical isolation, chained to a screen and keyboard.As
one who spends a lot of time engaged in developing online community with
hundreds of people, I find that electronic communication is a helpful supplement
to and sustainer of face-to-face community rather than a substitute for
it.
An
increasing sense of social alienation and emptiness seem to be a byproduct
of our technological advances.Particularly
the automobile allows us to be on a busy street or in a traffic jam and
avoid any social contact.People
work alone in cubicles staring at a screen all day often communicating
with co-workers by email rather than chatting at the water cooler.Today,
you can get up, go to work, zip through EZPASS lane, come home, shop, scan
and pay for your groceries, watch TV and go to bed practically without
speaking to, let alone having a satisfying emotional exchange with, one
other flesh and blood human being.
Technology
has helped us realize our dream of independence and freedom at a significant
social cost.The seeds of the struggle
planted when we were infants have come to full flower and the beauty and
smell isn’t as satisfying as we’d hoped.
Freud
recognized and described the conflicting human desire for autonomy as opposed
to oneness, for independence as opposed to community.The
struggle begins with the infant’s complete dependence on and strong bonding
to its mother.Some believe the
source of the desire for union with God begins in an experience of oneness
we enjoyed in the womb. There may be few experiences as holistically satisfying
as being lovingly held to the breast as a baby.
The
euphoria, however, is ruptured when the breast is taken away a moment too
soon or offered a moment too long.No
mother can perfectly satisfy an infant’s every need at every moment.It’s
impossible.All infants at one time
or another will experience some sense of separation, abandonment, pain,
and longing.They will be confronted
with the truth that they are vulnerable to a world that can be dangerous,
unpleasant, hurtful, and impersonal.
If
mother can’t deliver what the infant wants when it wants it, then the infant
soon recognizes he or she will have to depend on their own resources to
get what’s needed.As my mother chuckled
to her friends about me when I was young, the toddler starts saying, “Do
myself!”The natural drive toward
independence and autonomy doesn’t erase the desire to return to the oneness
of infancy.With physical and mental
development, the toddler recognizes there are others who can satisfy their
oneness needs besides their mother.
So
we learn to fulfill this primal desire for oneness through interpersonal
relationships.Many people satisfy
this social need by developing a few close friendships and forming an intimate
life partnership with one other person. For
some, this may be a satisfying way to take care of their relational needs.For
others who are not currently in an intimate relationships or don’t get
all their social needs met by close friends and their partner, or for those
who enjoy the discovery process of meeting new people and beginning new
relationships, they need another kind of relationship to meet their social
needs.
Impersonal
relationships and close friendships bound the continuum of most people’s
relationships.We have a formal,
role-bound relationship with, say, a doctor who listens to our heartbeat,
a dental hygienist who cleans our teeth, or perhaps a clerk we see at the
store where we shop.The relationship
is contractual--fee for service.At
the other end of the spectrum are close friends.Close
friends are people we implicitly trust and rely on, people who listen to
us, care about us and will be there when we need them.
This
morning, I’d like to highlight another form of relationship found in the
middle of this continuum, called a “public relationship,” based on limited
self revelation, mutual recognition, shared commitment, and mutual accountability.Having
been active in many social, political, and religious organizations, I’ve
been involved in many of these kinds of relationships throughout my life.It
wasn’t until I met Greg Galluzzo, the Executive Director of the Gamaliel
Foundation, that I realized how these relationships worked and can be intentionally
developed and refined.
Greg
taught the first ARISE community organizing training I attended in February
of 2001 on how to do one-on-ones, the basic relationship building strategy
ARISE uses.The one-on-one interview
method helps the interviewer learn about the background, values, concerns,
talents and interests of the interviewee.In
the training, Greg emphasized the value and personal satisfaction of developing
a wide network of public relationships and their critical importance to
successful community organizing.Being
a minister, I immediately recognized these relationships he was describing
were similar to what the membership committee does as we encourage visitors
to become involved in our congregation.It
matters who you are as an individual here.The
shared values we cultivate bring mutual recognition.By
joining the congregation and signing the book, people make a commitment
and become accountable for it’s support and guidance through the use of
the democratic process.
We
are very intentional about encouraging people to develop a relationship
with this congregation and Unitarian Universalism.What
can be much harder for us is facilitating the same process to happen between
our members.Many of us find coffee
hour a daunting challenge as a way to meet new people.If
Peggy at the membership table in Palo Alto hadn’t offered her help, I would
have had a difficult time meeting people and forming relationships.
What
excited me about learning the one-on-one interview technique was its value
to accelerate the building of public relationships between members of our
congregation.The strength and satisfaction
of being part of a congregation comes from the width of the network of
your relationships--the place where everyone knows who I am and respects
me for who I am.Unfortunately one-on-ones
are typically employed for a specific community organizing purpose and
require training to do well.
Thankfully,
Small Group Ministry, another highly effective way to build public relationships,
became part of the life of our congregation three years ago.Small
Group Ministry is a closed group of between five and ten people who meet
twice a month.The content of the
meeting includes a check-in, a stimulating topic and time for personal
reflection on that topic while the other group members actively listen.The
purpose of the time of reflection isn’t debate or argument but self-revelation.Self-revelation
stimulates a sense of mutual appreciation through both listening and talking.
The
purpose of Small Group Ministry is to:
-Foster
connection and caring,
-Provide
for personal growth and spiritual development,
-And
ultimately to strengthen to fabric of our community.
The
power and benefits of these small groups comes from the effects of active
listening.Active listening, similar
to the one-on-one process, goes beyond the content of the speaker’s message
and tries to connect with and identify the emotions that energize the speaker’s
words.The listener can hear even
more deeply universal life delights and dilemmas.This
kind of deep listening breaks down barriers between group members as they
recognize each other’s common humanity.We
all struggle with fear, anger, and loneliness.We
all suffer unjustly.We all long
for what we do not have.We all
seek freedom from pain.
The
result of this kind of self-revelation and active listening is a depth
of intimacy the group members may not even share with their own families.It
creates a strong sense of connection that bonds people together in a way
not possible during coffee hour on Sunday morning or at a committee meeting.
These
groups allow our congregation to get smaller and more connected thus permitting
it to grow bigger and more diverse.They
allow newer members of our congregation to make strong connections with
our more seasoned members.They also
help older members who have lost contemporaries to renew their circle of
relationships with the next generation of FUUSAns.
Does
it work?Here are a few testimonials
from evaluations:
·I
got to know some people that I would not have gotten to know in this way.I
also liked sharing things about myself that I would not have shared.
·I
think it is an excellent vehicle for bringing older and newer members together
and provide a bridge for newer members to become more active in FUUSA
·I
am not a good "small" talker and don't like coffee hours for that reason.This
program helped me feel a part of FUUSA.
·What
was most useful to me was being part of a structured group where we talk
about feelings and life without judging each other.
·I
felt there was a real spiritual and personal component to the sessions.It
helped me in my spiritual search.
·This
is what I really need to grow, to befriend others, to realize an authentic
self.
Whenever
we survey the congregation to find out what is most important function
of FUUSA in people’s lives, the answer comes back, community.In
every service, we affirm the importance to us of sustaining a vital and
nurturing religious community, exciting the human spirit and inspiring
its growth and development.And for
many of us, our public relationships are the stimulating tool we use to
inspire our growth and development.
Developing
public relationships within the context of a vital and nurturing religious
community is, I believe, our core spiritual practice.It
is through these relationships, intentionally nurtured and developed, that
we gain a glimpse of the love humanity is capable of embodying.We,
as human beings, embody the greatest development, so far, of the potential
of life.In each other’s eyes we
get a hint of the greatness of what lies beyond us, the greatness of life’s
potential.One powerful way to deepen
our spiritual life is to deepen our relationships with each other.
My
life has been transformed by participation in different kinds of small
groups.I first glimpsed the power
of small groups as I observed their process during leadership school.My
spirit was fed singing in the First Unitarian Church of Oakland’s chancel
choir.My decision to enter the ministry
was inspired by a skillfully run small group studying dreams, led by Jeremy
Taylor. I know from personal experience, small groups can change us forever
and I invite you to expand your public relationships as a way to inspire
your own growth and development.
Copyright
©2004 by Rev. Samuel A. Trumbore.All
rights reserved.