Sermon given by Rev. Frank Clarkson, March 16,2024.
Do you know the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator? It’s a personality type test designed to help you to get in touch with your preferences, behavioral tendencies, and work styles. It’s a helpful tool in learning more about yourself. Well, early on in my time here, at a staff retreat, we all took a simplified version of that test. It turned out that everyone on our little staff belonged to the type called “dreamers.” Sally Liebermann, our beloved Religious Education director back then, looked around at us, smiled her peaceful smile, and said, “With all of us dreamer types, it’s a miracle we get anything done around here.”
And she was right. In a family or workplace or community it helps to have different kinds of people, with different skills and perspectives, and this isn’t anything new. Two thousand years ago, the apostle Paul, the lead organizer of the early Christian church, reflected this reality in his letter to the church in Rome. He wrote,
“For as in one body we have many members and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another. We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us…” (Romans 12:4-6)
We are born with particular personalities, and have different gifts. And we belong to one another. We need one another. And sometimes, we annoy one another. Right? A tool like the Myers-Briggs or the Enneagram can help you understand, appreciate, and work with these differences. Which can feel like a blessing, and like a curse.
Many of you remember Diane Brokvist, a fierce leader here for many years, until she died in 2019. Diane was not a process person; whatever it was, she wanted to get it done! If we needed a new policy on something, she’d fine one online, and want to adopt it straight away. I’d try to slow her down, say “we need to talk about this,” which was not what Diane wanted to hear. But we needed each other, our different perspectives and approaches. She had a hard-won, on-the-ground spirituality, and I told her she was one of my teachers.
Something I love about the Myers Briggs system is that it says once you’re achieved some competency in your primary functions, then you start working on the other side, usually around midlife. I get annoyed by own tendency toward disorganization, and have gotten better over the years. Those of you who are oriented toward the end result might find that you’re wanting to pay more attention to the journey.
Isn’t this part of the mystery and wonder and beauty of life—all the ways we are different? There’s no one in the world just like you. Are you aware of this, your own strengths and weaknesses? Are you living into your own personhood, into your particular calling, as best as you can? If not, what’s holding you back?
Our world needs all kinds of people—idealists and practical folks, leaders and followers, dreamers and doers. As one who’s spent most of his life in the dreamer camp, I have to say that I’m really loving you doers these days! When the world is on fire, who would you want to help put that fire out? Someone who can get things done, obviously.
We need dreamers to help imagine a different future, to call us to our better selves. And we need doers to help get us there. All of our dreaming for social justice will be for nothing if we don’t have leaders who know how to coalesce the vision and gather people’s contact information and get them moving! Over the years I’ve seen how much leadership matters—having a couple of people who are good organizers and communicators makes all the difference.
Of course, we don’t fit into neat boxes; it’s not either/or. You have within you the potential for both dreaming and doing. Henry David Thoreau put it this way; he said, “If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”
We remember Thoreau for building his cabin on Walden pond and spending two years there. The word “Walden” has become synonymous with a retreat into nature, away from society. But we forget that Thoreau eventually departed from Walden; he wrote, "I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spend any more time for that one.” (Credit and thanks to Rev. Patrick O’Neill for this insight about Thoreau in a sermon he preached at UUA General Assembly in 2005.)
In those other lives Thoreau was a fierce fighter for justice and against slavery, he was a prolific writer and public intellectual; his essay, On the Duty of Civil Disobedience, inspired both Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. And still, he knew how to restore his soul out under the sky and among the trees.
Isn’t this a model for how we could live in these days? Doing what is needed to ground and restore our own souls, and at the same time, remaining engaged in our world. Which, you might have noticed, needs us right now. This is not the time for faithful people to retreat. No, we are needed to show up, and organize, and do our part to help bind up the broken, protect those who are vulnerable, work for justice, and offer mercy.
This is why I was so heartened by the warming center that we opened downstairs this bitterly cold winter. How people moved quickly to get things in place; Devan Ferreira taking the lead, and so many folks, both within and outside the church, coming to help. I’m so moved by what we accomplished together. How we made a real difference, holding open a warm space for people and probably saving some lives.
On this day we celebrate stewardship, which simply means taking care of something. What we’re asking you to do is help take care of your faith community by making a financial commitment to the church for our coming fiscal year, which begins on July 1. We do this so we can plan with confidence to give raises to our excellent staff, and care for this beloved building, and be a strong and vital church in these days. A pledge is a statement of intention; it’s not a contract. If you move away or experience some hardship, you can always change your pledge; and if you get an unexpected gift or windfall, you can change your pledge upward too!
Most of you know that I’m retiring at the end of June, and if you want to honor the shared ministry we’ve been doing together here for these 17 years, I would ask you to do this: to make the most generous pledge you can right now. You are on the threshold of an important transition, and your church needs your support. Your faith community needs you to invest in it, right now.
All I want for you in the months and years ahead is for you to thrive, building on the foundations we have laid together: serving those inside and outside these walls. Finding new ways to help heal and bless one another, and our world. I am ever grateful for all of you who, like the poet says, help move the work forward;
“…who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who stand in the line and haul in their places,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out. (Marge Piercy, “To Be of Use”)
We always need both dreamers and doers. Right now, isn’t it clear that we need all the doers we can get? There’s work to be done, in here and out there. And there are things everyone can do. Like filling out your pledge card and handing it in. Today, hopefully. Serving at community meals or as a greeter. Sharing your organizational skills! Taking up a way you want to serve, putting your gifts and passions to good use.
You know, Marge Piercy got it right—
The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.
There’s plenty of real good work to be done. Let us recommit ourselves to building that land that we have dreamed of. Starting right here, doing our part to make it real.
Now and forever,
Amen.