Becoming: Descendants and Ancestors
Rev. Diane Rollert
The Unitarian Church of Montreal, 20 June 2021
There are sacred places on this earth where rivers flow together, a confluence of many streams joining into one. The land that sits between is holy ground, a place of witness where mighty bodies of water discover each other. To find ourselves on an island between those flowing rivers is to feel the power of time and history. Churning through those tributaries is the sediment of geological formations thousands of kilometres away, along with the ancient remains of species and civilizations long gone.
This very day, we find ourselves at the confluence of many streams: the anniversary of the founding of this congregation on June 20, 1842; the summer solstice and the longest day of the year; National Indigenous Peoples Day, which will be observed tomorrow, on June 21; and let’s not forget that today is also Father’s Day.
Here we are on this island between these mighty streams. This is what I call the sacred ground of our faith. As Unitarian Universalists, we are continually called to make sense of contrasting ideas and experiences. This is what I love about being a UU minister. I am often handed many threads, and I must somehow weave them together to create a cloth that comforts, inspires and challenges the community I serve.
In recent weeks, we’ve spoken of forgiveness and heartache. We’ve mourned the state of our country and the world together. We’ve shared in collective anxiety about life post-Covid, wondering if the pandemic will ever really be over. We’ve mourned too many personal losses, including the deaths of several beloved members of our congregation. We’ve struggled with disappointments and hopeful changes within our own Canadian Unitarian Universalist movement. We’ve faced the harsh realities of Indigenous rights and history, and our own place within these narratives.
We’ve pushed the limits of what it means to be in community together. There’s a lot that has gotten churned up in the rivers that flow into the reality of who we are today.
I think it’s OK to say that we’re tired. I’m tired. When you work hard, you deserve some respite and true nourishment. We need some joy.
In Indigenous tradition there’s an understanding that each generation is responsible for the impact it will have on the next seven generations. If you think of each generation as being about 25 or 26 years long, we are the seventh generation of the Unitarian Church of Montreal since our first, official constitution was ratified on June 20, 1842. To do the math for you, that’s 179 years ago today!
(OK, let’s pause for a second for anyone who needs to run through these calculations in their head and won’t be able to pay attention until they do. The rest of us will take a few deep breaths together…)
I know that many of you have heard this story many times, but our origin story deserves retelling. Just to set the stage, the Montreal Unitarians who gathered in June of 1842 were recovering from the ravages of a cholera epidemic that took the life of their first minister. They had been divided by social upheaval during the Patriots Rebellions of 1837 and 1838. Unitarian patriots who wanted independence from England had been pitted against Unitarian loyalists. As a group, they had been rejected as infidels by Montreal’s other Protestant denominations. They had been vilified by the press, accused of circulating “soul-killing tenets,” because they didn’t accept a literal interpretation of the Trinity.
Those wounds must have felt raw and deep when our Unitarian ancestors gathered to draw up the constitution for “The Christian Unitarian Society of Montreal.” As they hammered out the specifics, someone proposed an amendment that, “for the greater safety and more perfect security of the Church,” only those who formally rejected the Trinity should be allowed into membership.
But here’s the amazing thing. Even though the Unitarians of Montreal had been cruelly rejected by believers in the Trinity, they voted down the amendment. They ratified a constitution that solidly established a free church without a creed or test of faith. They left the door open for all members to express their individual understanding of Christianity – even those members whose beliefs might be diametrically opposed to those of the majority.
Were they making room for non-Christian believers? No, that wouldn’t happen for many decades. And certainly, if we traveled back in time, we’d discover much that would make us cringe about the values of those original Unitarians. But they had a lot to teach us about tolerance, humility and hospitality. The choice they made to be open to a diversity of beliefs was, in fact, radical. It was the equivalent of radical hospitality for their time. They laid the groundwork for who we are today. Seven generations later, we are the beneficiaries of their courage.
With 179 years behind us, now imagine 179 years ahead of us. That would be the year 2200, the beginning of the 23rd century, seven generations into the future. What spiritual legacy will we leave behind for that seventh generation?
I know, that’s just so hard to even visualize as a possibility — 179 years into the future. There’s a lot to make us fearful that Unitarianism, or our species, or the Earth will not even exist many decades from now. But was it really that different for the founders of our congregation? They faced pandemics, wars and fears about their future and their children’s future. They too had their moments of despair and pessimism. Yet the congregation they established has survived for seven generations.
We have no guarantees about our own longevity. Yet we can choose to live our lives as if they will have an impact on the next seven generations. We can make a commitment as a congregation to practice seventh generation thinking, because who we become today may indeed shape the congregation that carries forth our work hundreds of years from now.
We are the descendants of people whose courage and radical hospitality are things to truly celebrate. And we have the potential to become the ancestors of a future generation that will celebrate the courageous actions we take.
There is a confluence between the past, the present and the future, the many streams of our history flowing together as we have crossed over into the summer solstice and the longest day of the year. This very place is sacred ground, a place where we have the power to learn from the past and plant seeds for the future. Sun, water, air, earth, nourishment. We have been witness to human failure, but we have also been fed by human resilience. There is hope and joy to be found in what we choose to become together, in what we choose to do for seven generations to come.