Planting Our Garden

The Rev. Mark Ward, Minister
Unitarian Universalist Church of Asheville

Asheville, NC

March 22, 2009

SERMON

I am an inveterate gardener. The arrival of this first string of warm days has made my hands positively itch for dirt. Soil, after all, is one of nature’s miracles: an amalgamation of minerals, water and bits of organic debris bound together with a mind-boggling array of living things – bacteria, fungi, threads of plant roots, burrowing beetles, ants, and who knows what all. It is Earth’s great tabula rasa from which life of all kinds emerges and on which it depends.

What specifically emerges, though, depends both on what gets there first and how it is or isn’t fostered and nourished in its growth. Leave a patch of soil uncovered and unplanted and it won’t take long for the most invasive and aggressive species to take root and begin to spread. Hopes for a garden can quickly turn to dismay with a patch of crab grass, thistle and burdock that crowd out species that, though we may prefer them, are less opportunistic.

The planting of a garden works well as a metaphor for the work of our congregation, too. We carve some time out of the soil of our days, that fertile plot in which we make our mark on the world, to attend to some tender hopes for ourselves and our fellows. Together we clear the space, prepare the loam and plant the beds of our rich and diverse hopes. Here is love in all its hues and shades, there forgiveness, and there freedom, acceptance, reverence, humility, joy, and there the sturdy perennial of the pursuit of justice.

It is quite a beautiful place, and often we’ll cut a flower or sprig of herb and take it to dress up our homes or add spice to our meals. For we know we cannot live in our garden. There are many other demands on us, some of them welcome, some of them not, and the mad tumult of our days stretches and tests us. But we live knowing that there is beauty in the world and that even greater beauty is possible, beauty that we might have a hand in making.

The garden of liberal religion has had a rich though tenuous history in this country. Planted by some of the earliest settlers, it prospered in the early days, then suffered its share of droughts, frosts and neglect, only to prosper again. We live at time when there are signs of the possibility of great success but also clouds that could auger decline.  While much this is driven by factors over which we have no control, we have it in our hands to decide how it will fare in this time at this place. So, as we gather to receive our commitments to this congregation, to decide essentially what we will be able to plant in our garden this coming year – the annuals we dig in, the beds we will fertilize, the perennials we will divide, and so on – I wanted to take a moment to look at the larger picture before us through the lens of a period in our history. It is a moment that was largely lost to our institutional history until a chance discovery about 30 years ago, yet which still serves to remind us what is demanded of us as a religious movement.

What reopened this chapter was the discovery of the manuscript of a memoir in papers donated in the 1970s to a university in Tennessee that told the story of women Unitarian ministers in the Midwest in the years leading up to the turn of the 20th century. Following leads in that memoir, researchers discovered that beginning in 1870s as states in the middle of the country – Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois – were being settled, Unitarians in the east were anxious to see churches started but had little success in convincing ministers to travel out there to serve them. In various places, though, knots of people gathered intending all the same to start churches. The few ministers in circulation would make the rounds, but on most Sundays people in the congregation took turns leading worship, and not infrequently those people were women.

Those pioneering days were a time when many traditional social conventions were relaxed. Women who back east were confined to the house took on roles as doctors and lawyers, but only the more liberal churches would put a woman in the pulpit. It was in Iowa that some of the first women were ordained to the Unitarian ministry, including such pioneers as Mary Safford, Eleanor Gordon, and Marion Murdock.

They were not entirely on their own, though. They received strong support from Jenkin Lloyd Jones, a Welsh immigrant from Wisconsin with deep Unitarian roots who was an uncle of architect Frank Lloyd Wright. On his graduation from Meadville seminary Jones had taken on the task of organizing Unitarian churches in what was then called “the West,” and he strongly encouraged women to join the ministry.

At first the training for these women came from books and tracts that Jones arranged to be sent, but in time Meadville began accepting a few. Even more important, those first pioneers recruited other young women to join this growing sisterhood of ministry.

From all signs, the success of their ministries had as much to do with their vision of the church as their own personalities. Unlike their brothers back East with their academic sermons tightly bound to the scriptures, the women of the west argued that religion arose from experience of the world that must be put to the test of reason and worked through community. Their experimental services rewrote hymns and drew from many different sources and sought to address the strains of daily living more than fine points in theology. Cynthia Grant Tucker, who wrote about this “Prophetic Sisterhood,” quotes Mary Safford as saying that the human soul would evolve not in solitude but in society, where they are guided “in the spirit of love and helpfulness.”

Jenkin Lloyd Jones had a favorite image for the work of the liberal church, drawn from what he said was a medieval story. In it, he said, “a woman appears in the marketplace with a can of water in one hand and a flaming torch in the other, declaring that it was her purpose to put out the fires of hell with the water and set fire to paradise with the torch, that men and women might serve the right – regardless of their own selfish interest, the hope of future reward or the dread of future punishment.”

Their churches held weekly gatherings called Unity Clubs dedicated to the discussion of art, culture and philosophy. By their example they tried to broaden the understanding of family roles, they began traditions of child dedications, as distinct from the rite of baptism, and encouraged active involvement by members of the congregation in the larger community.

Despite their success, these women-led western churches were regarded with some suspicion if not contempt by established churches back east and certainly by the Unitarian hierarchy. These men simply considered women unsuitable for ministry and thought little of their rural pulpits. Pleas for money to help build churches or hire ministers for the west were mostly ignored. Still with the help of Jones and others, the women were able to make their churches independent enough not to have to depend on the hierarchy back East.

By the early 20th century, though, as increasing numbers of people left small towns for the cities, the churches they left behind struggled or closed. At Unitarian headquarters back in Boston, leaders were arguing for “a more manly ministry” and sought to track women interested in ministry into secondary, helper roles. Before long, the generation of women inspired by those pioneers largely turned to other labor – social work, teaching, and so on.

With their departure ended a chapter in our history, unmourned and largely unknown until the 1970s. In the years since, the discovery of this early Unitarian sisterhood inspired the entry of many women, including my own mother, Cynthia, into our ministry, a field that, even into the 1980s, was largely the province of men.

In addition, the rediscovery of the pioneer churches that these women led as centers of community has helped us re-envision the work of our congregations today. In this time of economic strain we are relearning the power and importance of a community dedicated not simply to theology centered in freedom, reason and tolerance but also to mutual support, spiritual deepening and service to the larger world. We are relearning the wisdom of viewing the church as a place where, as Mary Safford saw it, we evolve not in solitude but in community, guided by a spirit “of love and helpfulness.”

Back when I lived in Wisconsin I became interested in the exploits of these early Unitarian pioneers. For my closing sermon as the intern at the First Unitarian Society of Madison I did an impersonation of Jenkin Lloyd Jones, complete with flowing grey beard and frock coat. In my research I discovered that Jones’ grave was located at a state park not far from Madison that was made up of land that Jones had developed late in the 19th century as a retreat center for Unitarian ministers and which his family gave to the state after his death.

In his writings, Jones described the difficulty he had converting the property – site of an old Civil War shot tower – into parkland, as it was terribly overgrown with brambles with feral pigs rooting through it. But once they had fenced out the pigs and burned the brambles he was delighted to find all that they could get to grow.

The experience, Jones said, only went to confirm his longstanding belief that, as he put it, “nature is fecund from center to circumference,” brimming with undeveloped possibilities. It was with this thought in mind that Jones chose the words for his tombstone out on Tower Hill State Park, a quote from Abraham Lincoln:

“He sought to pull up a thistle and plant a flower wherever a flower would grow.”

Our future, too, remains as fertile as ever, ready for whatever flower we are ready to plant, if we will take it on ourselves to tend this garden. It is something we dare not take for granted, for, as history shows, the brambles and thistles will be back, if given a chance, and cover over all our work and with it the hopes and dreams to which it gave birth.

It is up to us to be hopeful gardeners of the spirit, gathered in peace and in thanks, united in hope, compassion and strength. This is the garden we have made, the soil of our dreams where the hopes of our spirits, of our best selves are planted.

May we join today with good purpose to see it flourish.