I begin with a parable of a who woman has worked hard all her life. She has accumulated considerable assets and would like to put them to good use. She cares deeply about the world’s well being. She wants to engage in some form of tikkun olam, repairing the torn fabric of creation. She thinks about building a community center, staffing an academy of practical and whimsical arts. She mulls over ideas for gardens and trails, downtown spaces for cultural enrichment or hospitality, but her mind spins so that she finally looks in the Yellow Pages and locates a renown design team in Boston. She meets with their top guys who draw up a series of plans, but something about them doesn’t feel quite right. Maybe the Boston firm is too upscale or big-city so she finds a smaller firm in Worcester and meets with their best designer and urban planner. They offer interesting suggestions and the woman decides to sleep on it all. For several nights she tosses and turns, not understanding why she can’t just settle on a set of blueprints. On the morning after the sixth restless night, she decides to walk to her neighborhood market to clear her head; but she is so lost in thought she bumps into a fellow on the sidewalk and nearly topples him.
“Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry” she exclaims. “I can’t seem to get out of my own way but I certainly didn’t mean to get in yours.”
“I’m all right,” he offers graciously enough. “Do you mind if I ask what you are so preoccupied about?”
The sun is shining and the snow makes everything feel fairytale safe so she opens her heart to the stranger and tells him her dilemma, how she has reached a point in life where she has resources to share but wants to make sure she puts them to the best possible use. The man listens intently and says, “Maybe I could help you.”
It’s at this point she realizes the walking stick he’s carrying functions as a white cane.
“I have architectural training and I know something about the needs of our community.” And in the pause where she’s thinking how do I say this delicately, he reaches out and takes her hand. “But the best gift I have to offer is that my vision isn’t limited to what I can see.”
Sisters and Brothers of Wonderful First Parish, let our vision be unrestricted; let it surpass what we see to encompass what we hear in our hearts and in the voices of our community. We stand on such a marvelous threshold, and I do mean a threshold of marvel. Every day we hear and observe in the news examples of human interaction devoid of tolerance; we read of unyielding fronts of entrenchment and stagnation, a lack of vision so astounding the sightless among us shake their heads with pity. But here, we are poised on the brink of possibility, to enact a set of ministries limited only by our capacity to imagine.
Ann Saalbach emailed photographs of an extraordinary building in Cardiff, Wales. She writes of it:
The Wallich is an organization in Cardiff which supports the homeless. About 3 years ago they bought an old church building and remodeled it to contain their offices and a set of meeting rooms, training rooms and a cafeteria which they use to generate income by renting them to other organizations. I think their building gives a good example of what can be done. Inside the large building shell, a smaller three-story structure (shaped kind of like an ark) is built. There is a wide hallway all around this “ark” containing the stairways and elevator to the upper floors. The original windows, floors, organ and ceiling of the church are all still there. The floor plan of the ground floor inside the “ark” is devoted to rooms available to rent to other organizations (training and meeting rooms) and the café. The two ramps are staircases leading to the upper two floors, which contain Wallich offices. Climbing the stairs takes you to the 2nd floor, which has open plan offices, a staff coffee area and some closed offices. The third floor is smaller than the second, right up under the ceiling. It also has open plan and closed offices. [The original outer structure of the building is preserved.]
I love that an old historic church has been transformed to contain an ark. In the book of Genesis, in the great retelling of what was probably a Babylonian flood narrative, we read of such specific instructions given Noah to build an ark.
Make yourself an ark of cypress wood; make rooms in the ark and cover it inside and out with pitch. This is how you are to make it: the length of the ark three hundred cubits, its width fifty cubits, and its height thirty cubits. (A cubit is the distance from the elbow to the middle fingertip, about eighteen inches. So in a more familiar measurement, that’s 450 feet long by 75 feet wide and 45 feet high.) Make a roof for the ark and finish it to a cubit above; and put the door of the ark in its side; make it with lower second and third decks. (Gen 6: 14-17 NRSV)
The precision of instruction suggests the importance of building a craft structurally sound, but the form must be functionally suited to its purpose, explained herewith: “For my part I am going to bring a flood of waters on the earth, to destroy from under heaven all flesh in which is the breath of life; everything that is on the earth shall die.” (vs. 17)
In this ancient parable, Noah is tasked with constructing an ark that will be a time capsule for all the living land-based animal species. He must build precisely yet swiftly for the urgency of his ministry is unprecedented.
The protagonist in the story has never seen a flood of this proportion. He may have seen other floods but not one so utterly catastrophic. Though he must expend enough time to adhere to sufficient materials and dimensions, he has no time to dawdle, to over-analyze, or fret about the possibility of failure. In short, dear Noah must simply act.
I have no doubt the designers in Cardiff who consulted with the Wallich organization that serves the homeless, considered carefully the needs of both the organization and its clients. And I would bet just as confidently, that the decision to create an ark within that church building served and continues to serve as a mighty metaphor for the purpose, the mission and ministry of the organization.
The ark is salvific. Literally, it is the vessel of earthly salvation. The critters on board did nothing to ignite God’s wrath. That was the doing of humans. But without the ark, the innocent species would perish. And if we are to be honest in our use of the metaphor, we must acknowledge all the creatures outside of that relatively small ark die. The ark cannot save everyone, but it does preserve creation.
And that sisters and brothers, is the work of tikkun olam, and the ministry of First Parish. None of us alone or even collectively can save everyone. We cannot stop homelessness or hunger. We cannot compel those who wield weapons of mass destruction or improvised explosive devices to turn them into ploughshares. We cannot eliminate all forms of exploitation: animal, human, botanical. But we can build an ark. We can create a structure to preserve creation. To preserve the power and relentless testimony of creativity: human, animal and botanical. We can implement ministries urban and rural. We can till the ground and cultivate gardens. We can compost. We can create spaces for contemplation: labyrinths and gardens and walking trails. We can create spaces to memorialize and honor our beloved by partnering with the land and its verdant beings.
We can transform our building imbued with the aspirations and exhalations of generations of free-spirited Unitarians and Universalists into an ark. We can form spaces for training, meetings, artist studios, more intimate chapels of worship, a library rich not just in the texts and sounds of our tradition but the ones we draw upon. We can hew out of the timber of our expansive spirit and ingenuity spaces and places within these walls that preserve the vitality of our liberal religious heritage.
Here’s what I love about the metaphor of an ark. It is not a pleasure craft: not a self-centered Jet-Ski; not a luxuriant yacht. Not a cargo ship intended only for commerce. It is a container with a mandate nothing short of salvation. Not some extra-terrestrial kind. Not the sort of salvation that requires adherence to a creed, though it does involve a covenant. “But I will establish my covenant with you, your sons, your wife, and your sons’ wives with you. And of every living thing, of all flesh…”(vs.18-19a)
The ark represents promise—the promise of assurance and also, potential.
Let us build an ark with our resources and our unlimited vision. And through that endeavor renew our covenant with conscience and direct, unmitigated experiences of holiness.
Let us task members of the congregation with investigating the necessary materials and dimensions, but let us not dawdle to lay in stores of cypress because to quote Wayne Elsey, the founder and CEO of Soles4Souls, “Almost isn’t good enough.”
If Noah had almost completed the ark, or almost built it to specification, or almost gotten pairs of all the species on board, he would have not preserved creation. Wayne Elsey offers his own set of specifications for fashioning a viable nonprofit focused on improving the world. He cautions against the temptation to become stagnant defining a problem. “The present” he writes, “is a moment in time when [we] are afforded the opportunity to make a difference. The only chance we have at achieving a measurable impact is to do something. …Making a decision is just as important as making the right decision. What is the right decision? How can [we] know for sure?” As Wayne Elsey notes, we can’t. As he puts it, “Decisions force [us] to declare what is most important…Knowing where we are headed becomes a key evaluation marker to ensure we are pushing ourselves in the right direction.”
Elsey aptly notes, “If our personal checkbooks provide evidence of what’s important, the same must be true about the way we spend money within organizations we represent.” The question he poses: “What does our posture toward money say about the legacy we are building?” Though he and his organization have a worldwide impact, having distributed over 12 million shoes, he still suggests being realistic: doing what we can where we are. A mission statement too long to memorize is likely too complex to materialize.
He argues not for awareness but engagement. It’s not enough for folks to know we are the church by the boulder, that we host a coffeehouse or hold Sunday services at 10:30. It’s not enough for people to know we stand with Planned Parenthood and support gay marriage. Awareness, Elsey states, “doesn’t generate contributions, inspire social change, or motivate people to action.” Engagement does. Engagement makes one a stakeholder and thus engenders commitment, “and becomes the fabric of a lasting relationship,” a fabric restored through tikkun olam. The more tangible, and not just concrete opportunities we offer the good people of Fitchburg and the surrounding area to engage with us in our ministries to repair creation, to make our lives sacred by recognizing the poetry of our days, the greater our chances of remaining vital and being able to sustain this congregation.
A bit like Noah, Wayne Elsey is saving soles, that’s s-o-l-e-s, but in the process he may be preserving the souls, s-o-u-l-s, of the those of us “with the margin to fulfill a mission.” He writes, “Every decision we make either helps us achieve our goal of distributing one pair of shoes every second or distracts and delays us…The longer it takes to accomplish our goal of giving away shoes, the more people … lose their lives as a result of needless exposure to disease and viruses contracted as a direct result of not having shoes.”
We may think what we do is not as urgent. No one will contract parasites or infection if we don’t expand our ministry, if we don’t renovate this space, if we don’t explore the rural ministries gestating within us, but we don’t know who is out there, or for that matter, in here, who will reach a moment when having a labyrinth to walk or a garden to till, or a safe place to walk in the woods, or plant a tree in memory will make a critical difference. We don’t know which child might cultivate a lifelong commitment to the environment for having explored the woods or planted seeds of a Sunday morning in RE. We can’t see who might enter this building in search of a life-altering encounter with art or music, worship, or a training program or a respite room for the homeless who need a warm comfortable space to spend the day. We can’t see the person living with mental illness who finds his or her way to a ministry in this space that offers meaningful interaction and creativity. We can’t see all the moments of every person who might eventually come into contact with First Parish—which is to say the ministries we create. But we can decide whether to shape an ark. The choice is ours. Amen.
