I started some of my seeds for my garden the other week. My thumb is only beginning to turn green, but while I’d love a good harvest this summer, the real reason I garden is that it makes me feel grateful.
There’s something about watching seeds, dirt, water, and light transform into new life that fills me with wonder. It takes a lot of work to grow my beloved broccoli and wax beans, tomatoes and butternut squash. And some seasons my plants do horribly, often for reasons I don’t understand. But at the heart of all of the soil amending and hardening off, watering and weed pulling is a process I didn’t create, I can’t really control, yet upon which human life depends. It makes me feel kind of small in the grand scheme of things, like I’m held in something much bigger than I am. But mostly it makes me feel grateful. Grateful for all of the people whose labor brings me the food I eat. Grateful for the miracle of photosynthesis. Grateful for life abundant.
And life is better when I can live out of this sense of gratitude. There’s a reason gardeners leave tomatoes and zucchini on the front stoops of their neighbors, and it’s not just because tomatoes all seem to ripen at the same time, or because zucchini grows like the dickens. It’s because it feels good to share these gifts that have come from some mixture of our labor and the miracle at the heart of life as we know it.
Life is better when we can live with abundance at our center. When we live out of a sense of our connection to others and to that which is greater than we are, it’s not hard to give a little bit, to share, to feel at home in ourselves and our lives. But it’s easy to be knocked off of our spiritual center, isn’t it? In a world that would have us believe that we don’t have enough, that we don’t do enough, in a time of growing fear, uncertainty, and rage, it’s easy to focus not on all we have, but on all that’s wrong, on what feels scarce, on all we’re afraid we might lose.
I think the worst thing right now isn’t all that has been and will be taken from us. It’s the lack of accountability. The fury that no one will be held responsible for all of the damage being done to people’s lives, and to all of the good generations have built together. And when we feel like there’s no order to the world, when we feel angry that no one may be held responsible for all that’s being destroyed, it’s tempting to attack anyone who holds any sort of power. It’s tempting to take out our rage and our fear on anyone who doesn’t meet our hopes and expectations.
Many of us remember the original Little Red Hen story. In it, the Little Red Hen asks for help and no one wants to, so she does everything herself with a chip on her shoulder. That story teaches the reader that we can only really rely on ourselves, and that only people who help produce a thing should get to enjoy it.
I like the retelling of the Little Red Hen story that Rev. Caitlin wrote for this service much better. I like it because there are plenty of times I imagine we’ve all felt like the barnyard animals in the story. When we’re spread too thin, it feels so good to be held in care and community, to appreciate the ways others contribute to our lives, to know that when we need them, there are friends we can depend on. And there are times I imagine we’ve all felt like the Little Red Hen, taking one for the team, seeing something through when others just aren’t in a place to help out. It feels good to share our time, to be generous with others.
This generosity of spirit is what allows our lives to flourish. When we live beyond the quid pro quo, when we go further than payment for services rendered, when we’re generous because it feels good, because we want to share from all we’ve received from a generous earth, that’s life abundant.
And when this congregation is at its best, that’s what makes UUCSS so special. This is a community of such generous people. People who give of their time, talent, and yes, treasure too. We practice generosity not just by giving financially, serving on committees, and bringing meals to one another when we’re sick. As Unitarian Universalists we practice theological and liturgical generosity, too.
Renowned pastor, Rev. Dr. James Forbes taught that generosity of spirit is what allows true diversity to flourish in faith communities. And he applied this to worship. According to Pastor Forbes, “A truly diverse congregation where anybody enjoys more than 75 percent of what’s going on [in the service] is not thoroughly integrated.” In other words, part of being a truly inclusive congregation that celebrates diversity means learning to be generous when parts of worship just don’t float our boat. If we hate a story or reading, if the way we share joys and sorrows one Sunday isn’t what we prefer, that’s our 25% to offer up to our neighbor that day.
Because worship isn’t about just us. Nothing about this congregation is about any one person. Nothing we do here is a product perfectly tailored to anyone’s aesthetic and spiritual preferences. Everything we do here is about the whole community, including the people who haven’t come through our doors or logged into our Zoom rooms yet. Because no matter what the world around us would have us believe, society isn’t just a collection of individuals with no obligations to one another. We are profoundly connected, woven together into an interdependent web, all reliant on a planet we did nothing to create, on breathable air we cannot earn, and on an abundant earth where seeds, dirt, water, and sunlight miraculously transform into food.
In these uncertain days, may we lean into all of the things that help us connect with gratitude. When we feel fear, may we do what it takes to find our center again. And when we aren’t sure how we will go on, may we lean into community, on one another for comfort and care, trusting in one another’s generosity of spirit and the life abundant that holds us all.
Amen.