Responding to the Call
The Reverend Kathleen Owens
October 10, 2004

"Where were you when you heard than ancient voice, …"

About twelve years or so ago I taught high school English in a small school outside of Valparaiso, Indiana. I enjoyed teaching and tried to alter the lessons enough to keep the students' attention. For instance, we went outside on a warm spring day to read poetry. When studying Shakespeare, my room was turned into a small stage and we acted out various scenes. I did not allow name-calling in my classroom (it happens often in senior high) and when someone was caught calling someone a name, they had to stand in the corner of the doorway, out in the hall, facing into the room (senior high students hated this). Once, in a moment of banter with some students, I slipped and called a student a friendly name - I thought of it as a term of endearment, but nevertheless, it was a name and I was caught. So, I put a student in charge of the room and briefly I went out and stood in the corner. Two students from one of my other class periods saw me in the hall, my nose in the corner and asked bewilderedly why I was out in the hall. I told them I had called someone a name and this was my punishment. "Miss Owens," they said exasperated, "you are so weird!" I enjoyed teaching and yet…there was something missing in my life. I was not quite satisfied.

The poet asks, "where were you when you heard that calling voice?"

After moving to California, I worked for a nonprofit and the work was rewarding. I worked with teenage girls with physical and learning disabilities. The work was challenging and important. We taught living skills, media literacy and had support groups. I branched out in the agency and began working with substance abuse recovery agencies to encourage and help them become more welcoming to people with disabilities and to people who are gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender. All of this good and beneficial work. It was also during this time that I found a Unitarian Universalist church again and started attending. I became an active lay-leader. And after four years, an uneasiness welled up within and I knew there must be something else. A voice inside was re-awakened.

"How, ever after, are you changed?"

During my four years of active lay leadership in the Berkeley church, my minister and I had had several conversations about professional ministry and had I ever considered it. Those conversations sounded strangely like the voice I had been hearing for awhile now. I said yes, I had considered ministry…but that was a long time ago. I was scared to talk about it. One Saturday during a breakfast awards ceremony at the District Assembly, again I had a conversation with my minister about ministry. We had been discussing the possibility of community ministry. She looked at me and said, "Yes, you would be good there…and you can say Yes to parish ministry." My heart raced, and my breathing grew shallow - I looked at her and said, "Yes, I can." And in that moment, it felt like something clicked inside me, clicked into place - and all of a sudden, I could take a deeper breath. And I was more scared than I had ever been before. Saying yes to that voice deep within - calling me - changed my life forever.

The Reverend James Reeb answered a different kind of call. A successful parish minister at All Souls in Washington, D.C., he enjoyed working in the parish and yet there was something missing for him. He saw a need greater than what the church was able to do ...or at least was doing at the time. As he worked in the church, he felt called to something more…to take the work beyond the church walls. He struggled with the question of "what was the proper role of the church as an institution in society." What happens when an institution, founded on serving humankind, reaching out to aid another, becomes instead, "lost in the problems of self-maintenance and dedicated to its own perpetuation." He left All Souls and began working in the community, retaining his title of Reverend. Today we would call him a community minister. He was mightily disturbed by the racist and vicious actions in the south toward African Americans. Citizens of this country were violently attacked for trying to register to vote…to put into practice a constitutional right.

It was in March 1965 when the call came through. The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. put out an urgent plea for clergy to join him in Selma, Alabama. Telegrams were sent out asking them "to take part in the Tuesday march."(Bearing the Cross, page 399). King wrote: "In the vicious maltreatment of defenseless citizens of Selma, where old women and young children were gassed and clubbed at random, we have witnessed an eruption of the disease of racism which seeks to destroy all America. …No American is without responsibility and it is fitting that all Americans help to bear the burden…Clergy of all faiths" should join the march. There had been another march on Sunday - they were marching from Selma to Montgomery to hand over a petition to the governor demanding the right to register to vote. That march on Sunday ended in bloodshed. The Monday headlines depicted the violence of the march. James Reeb wanted to go - he understood the risks. He had seen the violence, not just to African Americans but to any who aided their cause. He had a wife and four children…and yet he could not stay away. James Reeb, Clark Olsen and others answered the call in King's telegram and were in Selma to participate in the Tuesday march. Reeb, Olsen and Miller "were attacked outside a whites-only restaurant; James Reeb was fatally injured."

I believe that each one of us is called to action - called into service for the greater good. For each of us there is a voice that calls us to our better selves - that asks us to extend beyond our comfort level and reach out to another. And with each call there is some fear, some risk and a sureness that comes with saying yes, with answering that call. And for me, there is the question that quietly persists: how relevant is this church? I wonder with Reeb, how do we prevent our purpose for existence from becoming lost amid the details and problems of self-maintenance? And have we Unitarian Universalists become a taillight rather than a headlight in the midst of the social evil around us? Am I, as a minister, remaining silent and safe behind stained glad windows while the rest of the web of existence suffers?

I think one of the ways we become more than a self-maintaining institution is to keep our vision before us at all times. We need a vision that members know and can recite easily - one that keeps us focused. This vision becomes our touchstone for decision making. The first question we ask before offering another program, another class, another service is does it fit within our vision - does this promote and move us further in our vision to being all we can in the larger world?

Working with this vision, we continue and enhance this beloved community. We gather together in small groups for ministry, not just for committee meetings. We listen to the stories of our lives and widen our circles to include one more. We minister to each other in caring support and learn how to support others beyond the walls of this building.
We begin to care deeply about our neighbors - not because we want them to join us, but because they are our neighbors and we meet every week more of our neighbors - beyond the surrounding streets of the campus. We learn that our neighbors are spread out beyond the immediate boundaries of this parish. They live in east LA, they live in Tijuana, they live and they are our neighbors.

I think we become a headlight by taking a stand and acting on it. You know, sometimes, in our effort to be inclusive, reasonable and respectful, we tend to study an issue more than act on it. "Mrs. Ruth Batson, head of the Education Committee of the Boston branch of the NAACP told [James Reeb]…that he might be less cautious in his program, less detailed in his preparation, and instead get on with the work in hand." And so might we. Oh that like the boy Samuel, when we hear the voice calling, we answer, "Speak, your servant is listening." Yes, we do need study and time for reflection. We need to think through the possible consequences of our actions and we need to understand our motivation. And we need to act. We need to write letters, make telephone calls, attend rallies and join with those who struggle for justice in this state, in this country. So much is possible is we will but act, however we define that word.

And how do I, a minister, not retreat in safety and silence behind stained glass windows? How do I not add to the institution that worries more about its existence than its vision? For me it begins with a spiritual practice that grounds me in the truth that I am not alone. We have a rich heritage of ancestors who dedicated their lives to something bigger than themselves - working for justice and peace in this world, in this lifetime. I read their words and find hope in Theodore Parker's claim that the universe does in fact bend toward justice. These words revive my spirit. I place myself in loving relationships that promise to hold me accountable - that my words and my actions do not contradict one another. I strive to remember I am a member of a large family - the human family, so that no person is alien to my compassion. I seek balance in all things so that I am not too fatigued to continue the work, or to overwhelmed to enjoy the successes along the way.

Under Jo'Ann De Quattro's leadership, today, this church celebrates its fourth year of this day - this "Neighborhood Church Outreach Program - Do Something to Make a Difference Sunday." Out on the patio, there are multiple tables displaying the various programs and opportunities to answer the call to make a difference. From collecting items needed by children, to reading to and tutoring kids; from serving meals to finding peaceful alternatives to war and violence; from building houses in Tijuana to supporting health care to uninsured and underserved children, among others. There is no shortage of need, no shortage of opportunity - but only you can determine if there will be a shortage of people willing to serve. After the benediction, go out to the patio, look at the various displays and sign your name on a clipboard. Not every answer to the call requires bloodshed…not every answer to the voice within requires a life-changing career but every answer does require a responsive heart. It requires a willingness to reach out - to be in service to others, to reach out in greater love to the world around us. An answer for justice requires a YES.

Do you hear, oh my friend, in the place where you stand all the dreams, all the dares, all the sighs, all the prayers - they are your, mine and theirs - do you hear? Like Samuel, in our story earlier, do you hear the voice that is calling? In those quiet moments - in the in-between times do you hear the holy, do you hear Life calling out to you? How will you respond today? May the ears of our ears awake.

Amen and blessed be.