Who Serves the Cook?

Opening Words

Our worship service today is on the theme of service, of how we come together to support and serve one another.  As we gather for worship, I'd like to share a reading by the poet Marge Piercy.  In it, she uses the metaphor of a garden to talk about how connections between us are made and gradually develop over time.  Within community, these connections are the starting point for our sense of interdependence and our service to one another. 

I'd like to invite you to join me in the spirit of reflection as I share her poem, entitled "Connections Are Made Slowly."

Connections are made slowly,
Sometimes they grow underground.

You cannot tell always by looking,
What is happening.

More than half a tree is spread out in the soil,
Under your feet.

Penetrate quietly as the earthworm,
That blows no trumpet.

Fight persistently as the creeper that,
Brings down the tree.

Spread like the squash plant,
That overruns the garden.

Gnaw in the dark,
And use the sun to make sugar.

Weave real connections, create real nodes,
Build real houses.

Live a life you can endure: make love that is loving.

Keep tangling and interweaving and taking more in,
[What looks like] a thicket and bramble wilderness to the outside,
To us [is] interconnected with rabbit runs and burrows and lairs.

Live as if you like yourself, and it may happen:

Reach out, keep reaching out, keep bringing in.

This is how we are going to live,
For a long time, not always:

For every gardener knows that after the digging, after the planting,
After the long season of tending and growth, the harvest comes.

"Connections are Made Slowly" By Marge Piercy
Reading # 568, in the hymnal Singing the Living Tradition.

Come, let us partake of that harvest of friendship and connection.  Come, let us worship.

Awards Ceremony

In the first year of our new, shared ministry, it seems appropriate to start a new tradition, one rooted in spirit of generosity: the creation of an Awards Sunday.  Today is the first of what we hope will become a yearly celebration.

As we were planning this, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that our Board President, Dave Coale, served as an Awards Officer in one of his earlier government careers.  He actually did what we're doing today professionally.

So, with that expertise on hand, we came up with a process.  We developed a list of awards, some that are typically given in organizations, and a few that are specific to our church.  Dave then asked our church's committee chairs to submit names of individuals who have served the community in exceptional and important ways this year. 

Many names were submitted, and Dave and I went through that list and reflected together on every single individual.  Our awards today are the end result of that process of recommendation and reflection.

The awards given today are tied to our faith's history and named in honor of our Unitarian and Universalist ancestors, the individuals who stood up for religious freedom and human dignity, and helped create the liberal and open religion that we enjoy today. 

We'd  like to invite forward our honorees as their names are spoken, and offer a minor preface: since this is a new initiative we're working on developing the award certificates that will be given, as well as the plaques that will be given to our two highest honorees - the recipients of the President's Award and the Minister's Award.  We will deliver these certificates and plaques as soon as we're able.

So, let us now turn to these awards that are rooted in history and that celebrate the dedication and commitment of those who are in our midst today. 

Award/Citation/Recipient

The Clara Barton Lifetime Achievement Award

Given in honor of Ms. Barton, a 19^th century Universalist, and a lifetime advocate of women's rights, including the right for women to vote.  At the age of 72 she was one of the founders of the American Red Cross.  For over five decades, she worked tirelessly to bring alive our humanitarian and humanistic religious values.  This award recognizes those who have made lifetime achievements in service to Unitarian Universalism.

Recipients:  Ms. Joan Barclay, Mr. Stuart Farnham, and Ms. Alexandra Bolton-Schultes

The Olympia Brown Unsung Hero Award

In 1863, the Universalist Church made Rev. Brown the first woman to receive ordination from any denomination in America.  Rev. Brown made historic, ground-breaking contributions to the ministry that were largely unrecognized during her lifetime.  This award honors the dedication and achievements of those who have not sought, or necessarily received, the public spotlight in return for their meaningful and selfless service.

Recipient: Ms. Marilyn Barber

The Sofia Lyon Fahs Award for Staff Excellence

Given in honor of Ms. Fahs, a 20^th century Unitarian religious educator who, while working on staff for the American Unitarian Association, made revolutionary contributions to her field and to the institution of Unitarianism.  This award recognizes a member of staff whose commitment and contributions have made a lasting, positive impact on the presence of Unitarian Universalism in St. Petersburg.

Recipient:  Mr. Peter Schultes

The Henry Whitney Bellows Award for Institution Building

Given in honor of Rev. Bellows, a 19^th century Unitarian minister who was essential in building and strengthening, what had been, the weak institutions of the American Unitarian Association.  This award recognizes the ongoing work of internally building and strengthening our congregation, and is given to an individual who has made exemplary contributions in this regard. 

Recipient:  Mr. Michael Manning

The Ralph Waldo Emerson Pioneering Leadership Award

Given in honor of Rev. Emerson, a Unitarian minister and renowned leader of the 19^th century Transcendentalist movement.  This award recognizes those who have demonstrated outstanding initiative and leadership.  Like Emerson, the recipient(s) of this award are trail-blazers, pioneers who have helped illuminate the path of progress for our congregation.

Recipients: Ms. Karen Coale, Ms. Margie Manning

The A. Powell Davies Commitment to Human Dignity Award

Given in honor of Rev. Davies, a 20^th century Unitarian minister whose leadership and dedication to the cause of civil rights earned him a national reputation.  Like Davies, the recipient of this award has been unwavering in their resolve and passion for the human dignity and rights of all, and has helped our congregation develop new insights in this regard.

Recipient: Ms. Julie McNeil

The President's Award

In the history of this Church as well as many other Unitarian Universalist congregations, there are a number of individuals who serve numerous terms in leadership roles.

For the 2006-2007 church year, this award is given to Mr. John C. Clement in recognition of the many years of leadership that he has provided this congregation.  John has been a member of our church since 1969.  This year he will be finishing his term on the Board of Endowment.  Previously he  has been President of the Board of Trustees and also served as a Board Trustee several times through the years. By his own admission he was Canvass Chair for 10 years.  He has been active in too many committees to mention, including the Ministerial Search Committee at one time.  He has served also on the Suncoast Memorial Society Board for 25-plus years and is still a member of that Board.  He instituted the Downtown PreSchool at our church.   Besides his church involvement, John has done 30-plus years of community service - member of Rotary, Academy of Sr. Professionals at Eckerd, volunteered at CASA, Angelus House, the St. Pete Police Dept. Community Alliance, Hospice - and more!

John loves our church and has been a truly devoted steward.  In the coming years and in recognition of the exceptional service John has given the congregation, the President's Award will be called the John C. Clement President's Award.

Recipient: Mr. John Clement

The Minister's Award for Excellence in Shared Ministry

The work of ministry is never done by the minister alone, and this award recognizes a lay leader whose contributions exemplify the nature of shared spiritual authority, initiative, and leadership.

For the 2006-2007 church year, this award is given to Mr. Davis Coale, President of the Board of Trustees.  Through his tireless leadership, Mr. Coale has revolutionized the way the Board of Trustees conducts its business.  He has worked as a partner in ministry with all of our committee chairs, myself as minister, and other lay leaders throughout the congregation.  He has played an instrumental role in reaching out to and attracting new members and visitors.  He has shown superb initiative and leadership by increasing the public profile of the President of the congregation in the city of St. Petersburg.

With tremendous gratitude, love, and respect, this award is given to Mr. Davis Coale for setting the example of what shared ministry can be. 

Recipient: Mr. Davis Coale  

Reading

As many of you have discovered this year, I have certain books on spirituality and human nature that are among my favorites – I try to get as many people as possible to read these same books in the hopes they might become favorites for others as well.

Today's reading comes from one such book.  It's a book called Instructions to the Cook: A Zen Master's Lessons in Living a Life That Matters.  It is written by Bernie Glassman, an American Zen Buddhist who has earned the title of Roshi, or spiritual teacher.  I read this book while in seminary, and loved it so much that I straight away bought ten copies and began passing them out to friends and mentors.

The book he has written is about, of all things, cooking - cooking as a spiritual discipline and metaphor.  Here are the words of Roshi Glassman.  He writes:

There are many different metaphors for...life.  But the one that I have found the most useful, and the most meaningful, comes from the kitchen.  Zen masters call a life that is lived fully and completely, with nothing held back, "the supreme meal."  And a person who lives such a life - a person who knows how to plan, cook, appreciate, serve, and offer the supreme meal of life, is called a Zen cook.

The position of the cook is one of the highest and most important in the monastery.  During the thirteenth century, Dogen, the founder of the largest Zen Buddhist school in Japan, wrote a famous manual called Instructions to the Zen Cook.  In this book, he recounted how he had taken the perilous sea voyage to China to find a true master.  When he finally reached his destination, having survived typhoons and pirates, he was forced to wait aboard his ship while Chinese officials examined his papers.

One day, an elderly Chinese monk came to the ship.  [He told Dogen that] he was the tenzo, or head cook, of his monastery, and because the next day was a holiday - the first day of spring - he wanted to offer the monks something special.  He had walked twelve miles to see if he could buy some of the renowned shiitake mushrooms Dogen had brought from Japan, to add to the noodle soup he was planning to serve the next morning.

Dogen was very impressed with the monk, and he asked him to stay for dinner and spend the night.  But the monk insisted he had to return to the monastery immediately.

"But surely," said Dogen, "there are other monks who could prepare the meal in your absence."

"I have been put in charge of this work," replied the monk.  "How can I leave it to others?"

"But why does a venerable elder such as yourself waste time doing the hard work of a head cook?"  Dogen persisted.  "Why don't you spend your time practicing meditation or studying the words of the masters?"

The Zen cook burst out laughing, as if Dogen had said something very funny.  "My dear foreign friend," he said, "it's clear [that] you do not yet understand what Zen practice is all about.  When you get the chance, please come and visit me at my monastery so we can discuss these matters more fully."

And with that, he gathered up his mushrooms and began the long journey back to his monastery.

Dogen did eventually visit and study with the Zen cook in his monastery, as well as with many other masters.  When he finally returned to Japan, Dogen became a celebrated Zen master.  But he never forgot the lessons he learned from the cook in China.  It was the Zen cook's duty, Dogen wrote, to make the best and most sumptuous meal possible out of whatever ingredients were available - even if he only had rice and water.

On one level, Dogen's Instructions to the Cook is about the proper way to prepare and serve meals for the monks.  But on another level, it is about the supreme meal - our own life - which is both the greatest gift we can receive and the greatest offering we can make.

Sermon

Buddhism is a popular religion among us Unitarian Universalists, and I have had almost, for all intents and purposes, a lifelong interest in it.  It began when I was about 12 or so.  I had heard about Buddhism in a class at school, world history or something like that.  It sounded so interesting so that I immediately read everything I could find about the Buddha's life and about his religion.  My younger adolescent self was impressed.  Here was a religion that spoke about the experience of human suffering and how we could cultivate our characters to be happier, more whole people.  For a rebellious teenager, it was icing on the cake when I learned that Buddhism was founded in rebellion; one of the reasons why the religion exists is because it was a protest against the Hindu caste system.  Buddhism believes in the equality of all before God (or whatever it might be that we consider holy and sacred).  

I loved it.  And so, in my teenage cheekiness, I came home from school with the determination that I would shock my conservative Hindu parents by telling them that I'm converting to Buddhism.   

I waited for just the right moment.  My Mom was in the kitchen preparing dinner, and that was it!  She would never expect such a shock while she's chopping onions; the setting would add to the dramatic effect!  I strode into the kitchen quite proud of myself, and the fact that I was going to take an important moral stand.  

I said to my Mom, "Mom, I've decided that I'm converting to Buddhism."  A moment of silence.  (I expected in that moment that her universe was crumbling down around her...)  

And then, she said, "That's nice.  You know, the Buddha was born a Hindu.  In fact, we consider him one of the holy births of the god Vishnu.  What you're doing is a good thing.  You should read more about Buddhism."  

I was completely deflated.  (I didn't even bother telling my Dad that I was converting; apparently there was nothing remotely controversial about it.)  

Years later, in college, I researched all this, and yes, Hindus consider the Buddha as having remained Hindu his entire life.  But this interpretation is a matter of Hindus co-opting the Buddhist faith, in much the same way that many Christians are often accused of co-opting the Jewish faith.  The Hindu interpretation conveniently ignores much of what the Buddhist faith actually teaches, including its anti-caste message, its message of universal equality.  

Returning to Roshi Glassman, he tells us that the act of preparing and serving a meal is about the meal, but it's also a metaphor for the supreme meal, that of our own lives, which he says 'is the greatest gift we can receive and the greatest offering we can make.'  One of the joys of the Zen school of Buddhism is that it takes ordinary, straight-forward things, such as preparing a meal, and turns them on their head, creating profound statements about life.  It's an intellectual and spiritual form of the game Twister, where you contort yourself into all kinds of physical positions on a giant, human-sized game board.  So, in the tradition of Zen Buddhism, let's play Twister...  

In this particular Buddhist community, when we speak of cooking, we're talking about the act of cooking in a monastery, the role of being a chef.  So, it's not the kind of cooking we do in solitude, for oneself, it is primarily an act of service.  And, in order to serve the community, the cook has to know what he or she is trying to make; the cooking has a context, you have some idea of what you're attempting to create.  

Transposing that idea to our church - we can recognize that we cook, here in this community, both figuratively and literally.  So, I asked myself, "What is it that we Unitarian Universalists in St. Petersburg are cooking?  Why are we cooking, and what type of meal is it?"   

I turned to the covenant we say every Sunday for a clue.  

We say, "Love is the spirit of this church, and service its law..."  For us non-doctrinal, non-dogmatic Unitarian Universalists, saying anything is law has got to be our version of a miraculous parting of the Red Sea.  Yet, there was the Rev. James Vila Blake - a Unitarian minister in the late 19th century who supported religious freedom and the values of humanism - here he was authoring the word 'law.'  It's a rather bold statement for a minister who, along with colleagues, had been calling for less religious law, and greater spiritual freedom.  

The ministers in the mid-west, of which Vila Blake was one, had been marginalized by the big wig, east coast, Christian Unitarian ministers.  These mid-Westerners did not want Christianity to be the law of their personal faith, the primary or only source of their religious inspiration.  They wanted a broader kind of religion, one that could appeal to any human being, and one that reflected the range of human religious diversity.   

Our religion has a history of the underdogs typically prevailing, and such was the case here: the politically less powerful mid-western ministers prevailed.  Instead of Christianity being the law of our religious faith, it started to become one option among many.  We see this in the covenant Vila Blake authored - the idea of Christianity as law was replaced with service, service to one another and the world we live in.  It was an expectation that our actions would speak louder than any beliefs.  Our actions grow out of our character.  So, instead of religious dogma, our actions, our deeds, and the way we cultivate our character, that kind of service became our religious law.  

If we have only one law in our faith, I can think of nothing more beautiful.  Service to one another and to humanity should be our law.  

The Unitarian minister, Vila Blake, wrote the original version of this covenant.  But, as many of you know, there is an alternate version.  A generation after Vila Blake, the Universalist minister, Rev. L. Griswold Williams took the original words and adapted them.  The first part of this new, Universalist version goes like this: "Love is the doctrine of this church, the quest for truth is its sacrament, and service is its prayer."  

This is as just as intriguing Vila Blake's version.  In Vila Blake's version, service is described as law, a law that replaces a single-minded focus on Christianity.  In this second, adapted version, service is described as the church's prayer.   

Prayer is a deeply meaningful spiritual practice for me, but as many of you know, I don't subscribe to the version of it where you pray for goodies or favors from some supernatural, human-like God.  For me, prayer is the heart-felt expression of spiritual longing.  It is how we vocalize our deepest hopes, fears, and gratitude.   

With this understanding, let's consider the possibility of service as a prayer.  For me, understanding service as a prayer is to understand it as an expressed hope.  It is what the community longs for and aspires to.  Aspiring to service is wonderful, I see Williams' point, but aspirations can be theoretical, they need not be something we're actually doing.  In our tradition, I think service to others is in fact both a law and a prayer, but I would first and foremost want it to be our law, something that we actually do, rather than just long to do.  

Through the process of cooking, we create the opportunity to be of service to others, which in turn focuses our religious life on deeds, rather that any particular dogmatic creed.  In the process of all this, we find that what we are doing is the ongoing work of developing of our character.  That's a wonderful meal to be preparing.  

In the Zen tradition, the meal that's being prepared has five parts, five courses: spirituality, learning, vocation, social action, and relationship to others and the world.  If you notice, it's a movement from the inner to the outer.  We begin by focusing on our personal growth and sense of spirituality.  That translates into how we engage with the world, in terms of our work, and in terms of the causes we stand up for.  

Of this, our Zen master, Roshi Glassman says:   "All the courses are an essential part of the supreme meal.  Just as we all need certain kinds of food to make a complete meal that will sustain and nourish us, we need all five of these courses to live a full life.   It's not enough to simply include all these courses in our meal.  We have to prepare the five courses at the right time and in the right order.  

All the courses make up the supreme meal of our life.  But it is not a question of trying to arrange our life so that we prepare equal amounts of each course.  We all need different ingredients, and different amounts, at different times in our lives.  

You don't make a satisfying meal by using equal amounts of salt and sugar.  You need to look at your situation and find out how much of each ingredient is needed at any given moment."    

Good advice, but how do we know which courses of our life need more emphasis right now?  How do we know if we've gotten the proportions right?  There is no perfect answer to this; in fact, we all get it wrong at times.  There are, however clues when we hit the extremes.   

A decade ago, as I contemplated my own life, I realized that I had invested the vast majority of my time in advancing professionally, climbing the ladder of achievement.  I did this to the point of practically squeezing everything else out of my life.  Spirituality had long been left behind, and even my friendships and my relationship with my then partner were being neglected; there was no time for those things, because I was constantly at work.  More often that not, when our lives are that much out of balance our souls scream for our priorities to be re-ordered, for our lives to make more sense.  It becomes a question of whether we suppress and ignore those screams, or slow down and stand still long enough to pay attention.   

We also frequently find this kind of over-emphasis, this kind of imbalance, in our social relationships: our friendships or romantic relationships.  We might find that the vast majority of our energy is going outward, to external, interpersonal relationships, and in the process we may be sacrificing the time and peace we need to develop our inner life.  

But these examples of extreme imbalance are not limited simply to how we interact and respond to the world.  The Buddha also spoke of extremes at the other end of the spectrum, an over-emphasis on inwardness.  While he was still a Hindu, the Buddha went out into the forest and lived with what are called saniyasis, Hindu mendicants, people who have given up all material and physical possessions (even their families!) to live in the forest with the bare minimum necessities.  There, in the forest, they spend all their time focusing inward, through prayer and meditation.  The Buddha joined them for some time, exploring whether this kind of spirituality would lead him to a satisfying life.  His experience was that it didn't.  There was too much of an inward focus, it was extreme, to the point where these individuals were doing nothing to bring alive in the world one's religious values; this way of life lacked service, it lacked engagement with the world.  

We prepare the courses of our meal in different proportions, depending on the season of our life.  And we know than an extreme amount of any one course doesn't work.  Too many chips and salsa, and you have no room for the entree.  Too big of an entree, and there's never going to be room for dessert.  We miss out on important parts of the meal when we over-indulge in any one.  

Our souls know when we're over-indulging.  We need to listen for that feedback, and when we just can't hear it coming from the depth of our souls, we need to pay attention to what those close to us are saying.  Are they telling us to slow down and do less?  Are they telling us that we are missed and that they would like more time together?  Are they telling us to get up off the couch and get out of the house?  Frequently enough, the voices of these loved ones are right on target, and we almost invariably hear such feedback with defensiveness.  

We've come up with a cuisine and a menu, we've spent time cooking and getting the proportions right.  Hopefully, we should then be in a position to be serve our carefully prepared meal.  Well, if you thought that slaving away in the kitchen was hard work, it pales in comparison to what comes next.  Serving the meal is perhaps the hardest part.  

The first, obvious question is, 'who's at the table?'  Inevitably, we cannot serve everyone who needs us.  Resources are limited, and the meal will only accommodate so many.  We cannot invite everyone to the table, this is a given.  But where this gets tricky is that there are people who we've excluded because we have not even considered their existence, let alone their need.  There are unconscious ways by which we discriminate between the invitees and the uninvited.  Every last blessed one of us makes these kinds of distinctions; it is part of the human condition to divide the world into categories, and also to not know or understand all of the potential categories.  

In response to this dilemma, the Benedictine monks speak of a kind of hospitality that they call 'radical hospitality.' 

Father Daniel Homan writes:   "Preparing a table has sacramental meaning for Benedictines.  Every meal, like every encounter with a human being, has the potential to reveal [how] God [is] present in Creation.  The table represents the unknown yearning of every human heart for communion with the 'something more' that infuses all [of existence].  

A lifetime of ignoring the sounds of the soul have deafened us to this universal desire [, this desire of all to be at the table,] but some little part of us can't forget and waits eagerly for the moment bread is broken, a hand is given, a laugh fills the air, and then by chance or grace, a connection to someone happens that magically opens us up in places we didn't know existed."    

We need to be open to the fact that we're always unconsciously and unintentionally excluding people from the table.  We're not bad people because of that, but we should be a humble people willing to hear the new truths and realities of others when they present themselves.   

I know that we're a community that is committed to this kind of humbleness; I saw it this past spring as we all engaged in the issue of transgender'ism.  Last September it would never have even occurred to me that we'd be holding a county-wide worship service of hope and healing for the transgender community here, in our sanctuary.  And there we were, two months ago, doing it.  In the process, there was an opportunity to learn more about individuals with that particular life experience, an experience very different from most of ours, and one that (to the best of my knowledge) is not, at present, regularly represented at our table.  We need that kind of openness in life, always; that ability to invite to our table those who are not currently there.  

Recognizing this, we turn next to serving our carefully prepared meal.  As we do so, what are our expectations?  For example, it is common in the human experience that when we invite people over for dinner, we expect, eventually, a reciprocal invitation.  If an invitation is not extended back to us, we might get offended, we might decide that the people involved don't appreciate or care about us.  Or more broadly, instead of that, we might be expecting accolades of appreciation or effusive expressions of gratitude.  Those expectations may or may not be met, and this is where our feelings often get hurt.  

Preparing a feast for someone, extending hospitality and care, and then holding the expectation of something in return (whatever it might be) is not an act of selfless generosity.  Relationships where something is expected in return exist, they are, in fact, quite common.  But, they are a particular kind of relationship, a relationship or friendship rooted in reciprocity.  

Now you may think, 'What's wrong in expecting a friend to be there for me if I've been there for them?'  Nothing at all, but recognize that the expectation of reciprocity takes away selflessness.  Acts of service that are truly selfless have no expectation of anything tangible in return.   

The ancient Hindu scripture, The Bhagavad Gita, talks about precisely this.  What it advises is that we should undertake actions because that particular action is the right thing to do.  Then - just let go.  Don't anticipate the outcome, don't expect anything in return.  Instead, focus on the only thing that any of us truly have control over: our ability to do something morally worthy, in the right place, and at the right time.  The Gita actually advises that all of our actions should be selfless, and that to think otherwise ignores the reality that we cannot control anything other than what we individually do.  

Having said that, it tends to be true that selfless service attracts that same kind of energy.  We human beings know when expectations of reciprocity are being attached to us, and that vibe doesn't necessarily engender warm and fuzzy feelings.  However, when expectations are absent, we are able to see the service of another in the glowing light of love and care.  That kind of positive energy invites the same back from us.  Our own sense of warmth and gratitude is activated; we're almost paradoxically more likely to reciprocate generosity when no one is expecting us to.  (And, even if we don't experience reciprocation, it's OK, because that wasn't the reason why we did something nice or caring in the first place.)   

Additionally, as we cultivate the virtue of relating to the world in this way, selfless actions foster a sense of positive self-worth, inner peace, and even joy.  The ability to make a meaningful difference in someone else's life, brings alive the reality that tomorrow can, indeed, be a better day for any one of us.  

It is this kind of selfless service to one another that we've honored today in our worship service.  The recipients of the awards we've given have generously shared their time, energy, and their hearts to make this community the special place that it is.  I can say without hesitation that none of our recipients were expecting an award or accolades in return for their service - which is precisely why they deserve them, and even more than that, they deserve our heart-felt thanks and even admiration.  

My sermon posed the question, "Who serves the cook?"  The answer is that it doesn't matter.  We are all cooks; we all serve, and in the process are also served.  If we engage in this type of Zen cooking, the resulting meal is a multi-course, gourmet feast that has been lovingly and thoughtfully prepared.  It takes into account the balance and proportions of our own lives.  And through our selfless intent, it is offered as a loving expression of who we are.  That service to others and the world is enough, in and of itself, we need not expect anything in return.  

As we continue to reflect on the role of service in our lives, may the wisdom of the Zen cook guide us.  May we be graced by the service of others even as we offer our own gifts of love and care.  Amen.