Pledging Moments

Our community members share why they chose to pledge to the Unitarian Church of Montreal

Kendra Gray

The first time I spoke in this community I was sitting in the back row of this sanctuary. There was a meeting where someone was presenting about the refugee sponsorship process. There was a question-and-answer time, and I asked the following question.

"When sponsoring people and families, is there a way to request and sponsor lgbtq persons and Families? Or is it possible that couples are being torn apart, one sent to one country and another sent elsewhere?"

In all honesty, I knew what the answer was, but I subscribe to this theory where you ask questions, not because you don't know the answer, but rather to encourage people to think a bit about the assumptions and shortcomings of a process.

The first time my grandmother saw this country, she cried. Not tears of happiness. But rather because, coming in on the ship to Quebec City in March of 1950, she wondered if they had made a terrible mistake in coming to this cold and desolate place.

My grandparents, mother, and aunt arrived in Canada on a bleak day in March 1950 - as sponsored refugees, sponsored by my grandfather's brother, who had committed to support them for a year. The war had forced them out of Transylvania, to them Siebenbürgen. My aunt was actually born in a refugee camp. And eventually they received tickets and documents to Canada. I have the documents, which show my mother, in braids, staring at the camera - the documents of a refugee. As the family mythology goes, four of them arrived with two suitcases and $1,000 debt. They worked in tobacco in Ontario to pay off the debt.

Growing up, I was fascinated by countries and borders - and walls. How I lived in the United States, but my parents were from Canada. How my mother's family spoke a Germanic dialect, but were from Romania. It took me a while to understand that my mother's family was an ethnic minority in Transylvania. I was excited for Canada and Germany and Romania when watching the Olympics. I remember days spent in Erieau, Ontario surrounded by other Saxons, as they had sponsored each other to come to Canada. And I remember watching my mother cry when the Berlin Wall fell. When I spent a semester in Bulgaria, with many Romanian students, I remember thinking "this could have been me." My family fled Transylvania when the Russians were coming, but had they not gotten out, some version of me could be one of these students who grew up on the eastern side of the wall. Not all the Germanic people got out in time; a cousin of my mother's actually spent time in a Russian work camp before fleeing and eventually coming to Canada.
And so when I happened upon that meeting and learned that this particular congregation was going to be supporting refugees, people like my family, that was a thing that I wanted to do. And I promised myself that, if I ended up actually living in this city, I was going to join this congregation.

I had joined my former UU church because I wanted to be part of an organization supporting marriage equality in Massachusetts. And I wanted a spiritual home - a place to "put down my bags" and grow. And live my values, and be challenged. But I didn't want a place that believed in "Truth, with a Capital T." A place where they assumed they knew it all. There is a line in a hymn that summed it up for me: "But other lands have sunlight, too, and clover/ And skies are everywhere as blue as mine".

And I wanted a place that did real work. I didn't want a place that offered thoughts and prayers; I wanted a place that offered something real. Real action. And refugee sponsorship is real. Real families receive real plane tickets and real visas and a real apartment, that was something I wanted - and want - to be part of.

My interest is international. And it has been since I was nine years old. I grew up hearing my grandmother talk about the old country. And have, since then, been in a state of continual wonder about the experience of people in lands different from my own. And I believe that we, WE, have a responsibility to be good neighbours to those who live just a bit farther away from us.

As many of you know, I spent 6 months living in Liberia some years ago. Right before that, I had been living in the Republic of Georgia. In a world that can be fairly homophobic and transphobic, it is powerful, when someone is complaining about "gay marriage and the sinners", to be able to say "My church doesn't think this is a problem."
And that is why I will be pledging this year. Because institutions like UCM need to exist - for us (seeking community and a spiritual home), and for those we serve (refugees or others).

And I want to be part of an institution where the people are committed to being part of the solution.

Dany Brown

Mon nom est Dany et je suis membre de cette congrégation.

Pendant longtemps, je souhaitais en devenir membre et je me documentais. J’étais toutefois éloigné et, il faut bien dire un peu timide de me pointer le bout du nez alors que je n’étais que de passage à Montréal. J’ai ainsi adhéré à une congrégation en ligne, la First Unitarian Universalist Church of Second Life, laquelle, je crois, était en partie animée par des membres de la Unitarian Church of All Souls à New York.

Aussi, lorsque notre pasteure, la révérende Diane Rollert, m’a demandé si je pouvais partager avec vous un « Pledging moment », j’ai accepté sans hésitation aucune.

Pledge is defined as “A serious promise or agreement to do something or to give money to an organization”.

In French, this promise is better expressed by the word “engagement,” l’acte par lequel on s'engage à accomplir quelque chose.

Oui, cet engagement emprunte la forme d’un soutien monétaire.

Cla serait doute un peu facile s’il n’en revenait qu’à cela. La notion même d’engagement est ce qui me séduit :

Because this commitment is multiple at UCM;

Parce que cet engagement est partagé et contagieux : de la pasteure à l’équipe de l’éducation – Catherine, Camilla, Caite, Daniel –, à Sandra et Eleuthera et Petrina et David et Abram et Christopher et Marlo et… et… et à toutes celles et à tous ceux qui sont actives et actifs dans cette communauté inspirante :

Actives et actifs dans un engagement de soutien mutuel;

Active in a commitment that transcends the borders of this community, a commitment to social justice, a commitment to the environment, a commitment to equity, a commitment to Reconciliation, a commitment against racism and more;

Actifs dans un engagement citoyen, un engagement qui repose sur des convictions qui peuvent faire évoluer la société, dans le respect de la vie; un engagement où chacune et chacun œuvre individuellement et collectivement pour une communauté et un monde empreint de non-violence et de compassion;

Active in a commitment to encourage spiritual growth and freedom of conscience;

Actifs comme actrices et acteurs de l’histoire fascinante de l’unitarianisme et de l’universalisme, dans un engagement qui se traduit par une condition essentielle de la vie collective.

Pour moi, cet engagement prend aussi son sens dans cette citation du psychiatre Carl Jung « Nul ne peut avoir de lien avec son prochain s’il ne l’a pas d’abord avec lui-même. » En outre, ces engagements communs me raccordent avec ce que je suis et renforcent mon rapport au monde et à autrui, encourageant ma propension à être aussi un acteur de changement, la source de mon engagement.

Je terminerai avec cette courte citation de Gail Forsyth-Vail, de la Unitarian Universalist Association :

“When we develop in faith, we develop our heads and our hearts as a transformative way of life. We become meaning-makers who stand on the side of love. Faith is about embracing the heart of life's transforming possibilities and growing in our sense of being at home in the universe as part of the interdependent web of life.”

Merci.