Community:
What’s in it for Me?
The
Rev. Ron Sala
Unitarian
Universalist Society in Stamford
January
5, 2003
With
the Super Bowl coming up, lots of people are talking football. At its
best, sports can mean a lot more than numbers on a scoreboard. Take
for instance the example of Paul “Bear” Bryant. One of the great coaches
of all time, Bryant was at the helm of Alabama’s Crimson Tide from the
50’s to the 80’s. Under his leadership, the team won many championships
and was often number one. This despite not having as much money to spend
on the program as some other schools and not recruiting from 50 states.
A lot of this success had to do with Bear Bryant’s approach. One player
would remember many years later the very first thing Coach Bryant said
to him and his fellow players on the first day of practice. He asked,
“Have you called your folks yet to thank them?” The players’ jaws dropped.
None of them had expected that question. None of them had called. Coach
Bryant went on, “No one ever got to this level without the help of others.
Call your folks! Thank them!”1
Bryant
knew that a single player, no matter how talented, can do little without
teamwork. From the very beginning, he called his players attention to
the fact that they were part of something bigger than themselves, from
the parents who raised them to the other young men on the field.
Our
whole society could take some lessons from Bear Bryant. Robert Putnam
is the author of a book called Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Renewal
of American Community. According to Putnam, over the last 25 years,
Americans’ attendance of club meetings is down 58%, family dinners are
down by 33%, and having friends over is down 45%.2
As
we’ve become more isolated from each other, a catchphrase has become
popular: “What’s in it for me?” What does that phrase really mean?
“What’s in it for me?” On the one hand, it’s a declaration of independence.
It asks, why should I settle for someone else’s version of how things
should be? Let’s cut through the high-sounding phrases. What hidden
agenda are other people getting me to follow? I’m smart enough and
mature enough to make up my own mind. I don’t need anyone to make it
up for me, thank you very much.
We
Unitarian Universalists who come from other faith traditions—and that’s
85 or 90% of us—have asked ourselves some version of this question at
some time in our lives. What’s in it for me if I continue in my present
faith? Is it only for the opinion of my family and friends that I remain?
What do I need for my intellectual and spiritual growth? And what’s
it worth me to get it? UUs have a proud tradition of those who break
away form the pack and go their own way. From Reformation heretic Michael
Servetus to early feminist Margaret Sanger, from revolutionary biologist
Charles Darwin to socially conscious novelist Charles Dickens, from
Transcendentalist editor Margaret Fuller to trend-setting engineer Buckminster
Fuller, we’ve laid down a history of independence and chutzpah.
What’s
sometimes more difficult for us—and here I include American culture
as a whole—is facing up to the dark side of our individualism, recognizing
the gaps in the “What’s in it for me?” mentality.
Just
such a gap is the notion of community. I think we hear more about community
now than we used to. Once, a strong sense of community was taken more
for granted, like rain without acid in it. Community spirit was often
reinforced by practical, economic considerations. What better example
than the farming village? At the turn of the last century, most Americans
were directly involved with farming. The community faced common problems
like flood or drought. Common work like corn-shucking, or sewing was
the basis for community socializing. Automobiles had not yet come into
common use, so your neighbors were likely to be at home. In fact, before
television, radio, and air conditioning, they may well be on the front
porch, enjoying the evening and taking visitors. Most of your neighbors
may well have gone to the same house of worship and held a similar view
of the world to your own. It was common for people to live in the same
few square miles for their entire lives, in close contact with the same
neighbors from cradle to grave, making strong, enduring relationships
possible across generations.
We
mustn’t look back to the past to call for a return to some golden age.
The world of a hundred years ago had its own catalogue of problems:
high infant mortality, low life expectancy, repression of women and
minorities, to name a few. What I mean to do is to highlight how we
have come into our present state of communities in crisis. The twentieth
century was one that brought more changes into people’s lives than any
other, and we’re behind the curve in learning how to cope. We live
in a country where 1% of the population controls half the wealth, where
poverty and hopelessness drive youth into gangs, where we know more
about celebrities on TV than about our own neighbors, where many men
over 30 have few if any friends outside the workplace, where our elderly
are isolated and doped up in nursing, homes, where men, women, and children
sleep on the streets of our cities, where many children of divorced
parents haven’t seen their fathers, in the last year. I could go on.
Contributing
to all these problems is a lack of community. The dictionary defines
community as “a unified body of individuals.” A unified body of individuals.
This phrase is unusually striking for Webster’s Dictionary. Unless
we’re talking about tapeworms, to divide a body is to cause death.
To define a community as a body is say that to sever its parts from
one another is to cause death. It reminds one of St. Paul’s famous
analogy of the church as body.
Indeed,
our nation’s houses of worship, when they’re being what they’re supposed
to be, are some of the best examples we have of strong communities today.
Rev. Peter S. Raible of University Unitarian Church in Seattle writes:
Two-hundred twelve studies
reveal by a 75% margin that religious commitment has a positive effect
on health. Religion helps with drug abuse, alcoholism, cancer, high
blood pressure and heart disease—that’s rather impressive! People who
attend church are both physically healthier and less depressed.
Some may hold that they can
tap into these benefits all by themselves, but it doesn’t work that
way. Persons who sit home praying alone or watching TV evangelists
were actually worse off than others. It seems to get the benefits we
have to go to church and be a part of community.
This
is the congregation’s first duty: to be a community, nurturing those
within it. To borrow the title of a book, we really do need each other.
The
poet Rupert Brooke was once about to board ship for a voyage out of
Liverpool. He was lonely. He writes, “Everybody seemed to have people
to see them off. So I went back on shore and found a dirty little boy,
who was unoccupied and said his name was William.
“Will
you wave me if I give you sixpence, William?” he asked. “Why, yes,”
William replied. This was a way to raise some easy money. The poet
gave the boy the coin and climbed aboard. As the ship pulled away from
the dock, Brooke saw the boy leaning over the railing on shore and waving.
He could hear him shout “Goodbye!” in a squeaky voice. The last thing
Brooke saw of Liverpool was a small dot on the horizon—the boy still
waiving a handkerchief as the ship sailed out of sight. Later, Brooke
wrote, “So I got my sixpenn’orth and my farewell—dear William!”
There
is a part of each of us that longs for what Rupert Brooke longed for
in that port. Someone to notice when we come and go. Someone to care.
Someone to wave us hello and goodbye.
But
the second duty of the congregation is to reach beyond itself and aid
its larger local and global community. We do this by promoting understanding
among races and religions, aiding the needy, and bringing forth justice.
I
was at the wedding a while ago of a couple friends of mine from high
school. At the reception, I asked the groom where he and his bride
were going for their honeymoon. He said, “We’re going to Disney World!”
I thought I had just watched the Super Bowl. Someone else I knew from
high school also was married not too long ago. She writes a column
now in our hometown paper. She devoted one of her column now in our
hometown paper. She devoted on of her columns to her honeymoon trip.
Where? You guessed it: Disney World.
This
surprises me. I recall that Niagara Falls is a popular honeymoon spot.
My parents went there. Niagara Falls I can understand. The raw force
of nature. Perpetual falling , like we wish our falling in love to
be. But Disney World? I have nothing against Mickey, I assure you.
I could see going there if dragged by a four-year-old, but as a couple
of adults? What could explain this phenomenon? One thing I’ve come
up with is Walter Disney’s view of the world. He envisioned a world
of eternal happiness, solidarity, and goodwill. At Disney world, the
nations do not rage, war does not kill good boys, and every culture
is understood and accepted by all others. It’s a small world after
all, and it attracts people by the multitude. In short, it’s a picture,
albeit a naive one, of the community we strive for. Perhaps, in some
unconscious way, these Disney-bound couples hope that some of the harmony,
the optimism, and the pure magic of this mythic community will rub off
on their new marriages.
One
of the most powerful images we carry from our Christian roots is that
of the Kingdom of God. Or, perhaps to escape that latent sexism and
hierarchy of the term, we might say the
kindom of God. The Peaceable Kingdom. The Millennium. Some
Jews call it the coming of Moshiach. To Baha’is, it’s the coming of
the Most Great Peace. Will such a time arrive? I don’t know. Maybe
it’s just a dream toward which we strive and will prove as unreal as
the glittering facades of Disney World. But there is something right
in the striving. Every child we bring up to be a loving adult, every
lonely person we rescue from despair, every neighborhood we save from
violence is worth it. Each holds its own reward, regardless of the
overall shape of things.
The
world is a lonely place if we can only ask, “What’s in it for me?”
Though the question is important, let’s not forget, “What’s in it for
us?”
Along
with our Unitarian Universalist heritage of the daring individual there
is a long history of building community around the world. Indeed, many
of the most outrageous individuals have done the most for community.
For example, for the anti-slavery movement, women’s rights, racial justice,
and human rights. Exemplars from crusading abolitionist minister Theodore
Parker to suffragist Susan B. Anthony to groundbreaking author Mark
Morrison-Reed to Amnesty International director Bill Schultz have shown
us the difference between individuality and individualism and
have built the growing Beloved Community. May the spirit of “What’s
in it for us?” be our work in progress. Amen.
1
The Millionaire Mind by Thomas J. Stanley (New York: Recorded
Books, 2001).
2
“Bowling Alone by Robert J. Putnam” (www.bowlingalone.com). [accessed 1/4/03]