Rev. Joseph Boyd Love and peace are attractive. I received a good note from a member that I mentioned in one of my sermons about the importance of taking a breath, but that another spiritual teacher said that it is actually about receiving, not taking, receiving the breath. I was grateful for the comment, and I wholeheartedly agree: it’s not about taking, not about force, and not about personal ownership. It’s opening up to the bounty of this moment, this time of harvest, and receiving the gifts of this day, the gift of breath, the gift of life. We don’t need to pray to be given love or to be given peace. I think it’s about recognizing ways we receive love, the ways we participate as part of a whole, the ways we are already whole. Tomorrow is National Coming Out Day, and thanks to our LGBTQ+ ministry and community speakers who have blessed us, this has become an important, critical part of the life of this church. For decades, this church has not only affirmed the dignity and rights of the LGBTQ+ community, we have done what we can to provide havens for youth and all people in this valley.
We have done this through various community partnerships that continue to grow and deepen by the day. It is still a scary world to come out to. It’s vulnerable, and it’s a risk. At this church we aim to equip ourselves and our community to lead with vulnerability, to lead with risk, to find that strength within the embrace of a community that will be there. One of the other aspects of this church is to equip ourselves and our community to persevere, to not just settle for what has been done or feel that our role is complete at some arbitrary point, to go on, indefinitely. In past sermons, I’ve talked about widening the circle of compassion. I’m becoming more convinced that we don’t widen the circle until we get to some arbitrary point, so we can quit putting in effort to widen the circle. I notice when I look at history that circles of compassion are never stationary or stagnant. They expand and shrink given the consciousness of the times, and in every generation there are individuals and communities who are there to expand it.
It is dynamic, and it fluctuates, often in predictable patterns. It seems to be that after every great expansion of the circle of compassion, there is often a backlash, a shrinking, a moderating of that compassion. It seems that there are moments in history when the resolve to widen the circle is high, and large numbers of people participate in the effort for a short period of time a year, 5 years, usually under a decade. But there are always people there who are involved in the effort, though sometimes the number of people is high, and sometimes it’s barely noticeable. But I’m coming around to realize that widening the circle of compassion – within ourselves, within our families, within our community, within our world is a great manifestation of our true life. I’m becoming increasingly convinced that I’m committed to being part of a community like this, so that I can be encouraged to keep my resolve to manifest my true life. I’m not involved so that we can get to some arbitrary point and stop, but to participate in the dynamic movement of history until my last breath.
And even then I won’t stop. My actions, your actions, our actions, I see with gaining clarity have a life of their own, widening the circle way beyond what we usually think. I have people in my family who identify as transgender, queer, non-binary, gay. I know many of you do too. Many people in our community do too, whether they’re out or not. National Coming Out Day is a day of encouragement, encouragement that one can live an authentic life. We can be true to who we are, true to who and what we love, and know that there is a community waiting for us. That’s my definition of heaven, and I know now you don’t need to die or go on to the next life, in order to be in heaven. Heaven is that combination of being authentically yourself, and also knowing deep in your bones, in your marrow through experience there is a community there to embrace you, all of you. That’s heaven. Creating the possibility for heaven, for heaven on earth, that is the mission of this church. Discovering that which is true about ourselves and being encouraged to be on a journey of self-discovery.
I think that is the essence of the spiritual journey. Again, I’m becoming convinced that the aim is not to get to some arbitrary spot in the journey and stop, but to go on, to make the going on the center of our living. To take great joy in doing what we can with what skills and strength we have to widen the circle, even just a smidge. We never really know the results of our efforts, and as I said, I think they go on, our effort, for generations. I think having the desire to widen the circle of compassion, to widen our lived sense of beloved community, is the most important thing. It is not the actual effort. It’s the desire. It’s wanting to live in such a way that we can value this time and place, and all that are alive in this time and place. Even if we are feeble, and our efforts seem useless, and it feels like we have no real skill or talent – I don’t think that matters. It’s wanting to, truly wanting to, even though we don’t know how, and we have no clue what to do.
It’s coming to the understanding that wanting, desiring one person to experience the true strength of community is all we need to begin. Perhaps that one person is us. Perhaps it’s what we have been searching for, and for some, it’s perhaps what you’ve found.
We live in a time, especially now, when identity is really important. Tomorrow is also Indigenous Peoples Day, a day that came out of generations of people who have widened the circle in response to Columbus Day. It’s a day to not just remember peoples that lived in the past, but people who are alive today, critical members of our community, critical in helping us understand who we truly are. Receiving is definitely not the same as taking, and in many of our lineages, including my own, there is a history of taking. A history of taking what was never offered, stealing what was never ours. Some of us, including myself are coming to the slow realization that this land is still not ours, not in the way we usually conceive of it. It’s not property.
This land is part of us, it’s part of Indigenous tribes who occupied and still occupy this region. It is an organism, there to receive, and there to give, just like us. We are also here to receive, and here to give. Not take, not steal, not own. To give and receive.
Identity is a gateway for compassion. We still are living in a time when identity is seen as a reason to divide or separate, but it can be a gateway for compassion, a gateway to discovering our true life. It’s a concrete way to understand how we might widen the circle of community not just for those who hold certain identities, but for all of us. It is a beautiful thing the ways we are most intimately connected are in recognizing the ways we are particular, singularly beautiful, different. The important thing is to see that singularity, that beauty, that distinctiveness as a critical part of the circle. This is not an intellectual premise. I think we prove this in our living. Even if our actions are feeble, faltering, stop and go, I think it’s the desire that matters the most. Wanting, desiring, a circle so wide, nobody in creation is outside it.
Desiring this with all our might, all our soul, all our strength. But even a little desire goes a long way. It’s like a seed, and with the right environment, a seed can take root and grow. One of the worship associates mentioned to me when discussing our theme this month, Cultivating Relationship, that it sounds very much like the work of a gardener. I think that’s true. We plant a seed, a small desire, and we put it deep into soil that we think may be fertile. Maybe you plant yourself in this community. And you tend to the desire. You watch it. You pay attention to the conditions, and you do what you can to cultivate favorable conditions, favorable conditions for growth. One of the nicknames for our church is an incubator. We have a history of a few people getting together and planting a seed, planting a desire for something they wish to see in the community, and then watching it grow and have it’s life.
It’s really amazing to me how minimal it is from the outside; how little seems required for anything to grow. But this sense of “little” is an illusion, and I’m sure any true gardener would correct me.
Human effort may at times seem minimal, but it’s the conditions that have the true creative power, conditions that we can never manufacture completely: soil, sunlight, rain, seasons. It’s paying attention to how we’re part of something, and working with the conditions, working with the surroundings. It’s noticing that we have what we need.
This is why Youngstown is one of the best cities in the world. The conditions are ripe. We have all that we need to widen the circle of compassion. We have so many opportunities to see identity, particularity as gateways for compassion, opportunities for vital and diverse communities. We have all that we need to take the actions of loving one another, and in so doing discover our true life, a life with no clear edge. We have everything we need to embrace those who are questioning who they are, scared to admit out loud who and what they love. We have everything we need to make amends for the past, to right old ideas of taking, and transform our ways of being into being open to receiving and giving.
Receiving and giving love. Receiving and giving breath, literally receiving and giving life. It’s just who we are. We actually could not stay alive without it, it’s that fundamental to who we are. Who knew that just being who we are would be one the greatest journeys of being alive. Who knew that just realizing what we have been given, realizing what we have been given in this time and place, would already widen the circle of compassion in profound ways.
We have what we need in this time and place to love one another. We don’t love one another in order to get to some arbitrary place, and then stop. Loving one another shows us our true life, and that is a joy, and the source of real peace, the source of real fulfillment. There is no end to this discovery, no end to this joy, no end to this peace, no end to this fulfillment. We will never find the edge of this circle of compassion. And if you do see the edge, then our intention as a community is clear: we will push that edge, we will widen it, until we can’t see it anymore.
It can be tempting I think in trying to figure out who we really are and what our life is all about, to shrink and cut off parts of ourselves in order to fit some idea. An idea of a role, an idea we have of ourselves, an idea others had of us. But I think there’s truly no edge, no edge to self-discovery, no edge to who we are and what we’re capable of. There’s no arbitrary point we have to reach, and just stop. We can keep growing until our last breath, and then I think we grow some more. Our actions and intentions take on a life of their own, and enrich the soil for new transformation to take place, creating the right conditions for someone to find out who they truly are, and where they really belong. Each of us will discover that in our particularity, through our own unique combinations of identities. And those identities will be gateways – gateways to greater understanding and compassion. They are gifts – those identities. And that compassion will widen our vision, to include those who hold different identities than us – and we will recognize them still, part of the circle, part of the community, part of us.
We will honor those on the margins of our society because that is where the circle can be widened, on the margins. When we see a margin or edge, we can be sure that it is an artificial margin, an artificial edge perpetuated by historical ignorance. And we have a lot of ignorance too, but we know enough in this generation that there shouldn’t be an edge, there shouldn’t be a margin. And when there is, our path is clear. We get the opportunity in this time and place to discover our true life in widening the circle for all of us.
