Whose Are You?
Rev. Marshall Hawkins, Affiliate Minister
First Church in Jamaica Plain, Unitarian Universalist
Early on in the Gospels, Jesus heads out into the desert. It’s the first thing he does after getting baptized by John. Before he’s even begun doing ministry. In the passage from Mark that we heard earlier, it says that the spirit “immediately drove him out into the wilderness.” And Jesus remained there for forty days in isolation, fasting, facing temptation, dealing with wild beasts, encountering both the devil and angels.
When he returns from his self-searching, Jesus rejoins society with new energy and resolve. He moves to Galilee from Nazareth and calls his first disciples. Walking by the Sea of Galilee, he calls to Simon Peter and his brother Andrew, who he finds casting their nets into the water. They leave their nets behind and follow him. And the three of them continue on and soon encounter two other brothers, James and John, mending their nets in their boats. They too join the growing group. And so the process begins of Jesus gathering people to him and creating community, then going on to heal the sick and preach about the kingdom of God.
It seems that both of those initial actions by Jesus are important for the spiritual life—both heading into the desert and creating community. In his isolation, Jesus came to know himself. In the gathering of disciples, he came to understand himself as part of a larger network of relationships.
Both aspects are important for our lives as well—the desert and the community. And yet, in these times of increasing isolation and quickening pace of life, I wonder if it’s not the second part that’s the greater challenge.
A few years ago, Unitarian Universalist leaders gathered for a national summit to imagine the future of ministerial formation. And at that gathering they raised just this concern.
Unitarian Universalists have often been good at asking an important spiritual question: Who Am I? We might think of this as our metaphorical trip to the desert. We look inward, compelled by the imperative to “know thyself.” We are, after all the spiritual descendants of nineteenth-century Unitarian Henry David Thoreau, who went to Walden discover himself. We benefit from a meditation practice, many of us, or our regular visits to a psychotherapist. And these are good things to do.
But in the end, it’s not only about us. And we cannot stay in the desert.
Participants at the summit suggested that we need to ask not only “Who Am I?” We must also ask “Whose Am I?” Upon whom do my ultimate loyalties and loves depend? To whom do I belong? What network of connections and commitments am I a part of? What part of me do I recognize as also part of a larger spirit running through all people and all life?
These kinds of questions bring us out of our isolation as separate individuals. We come to recognize that our own fate is bound up with the fate of our neighbor.
Well, that conversation at the summit struck a chord. It got people talking. And there is now a Whose Are You? program that’s been developed through the professional association of UU ministers.
The need for such a program in Western culture seems more pressing all the time. For the practical necessities of life, we just don’t rely on one another as much as we used to. We find ourselves less beholden to one another. And we suffer increasingly from the great spiritual disease of loneliness and disconnection.
Statistics bear this out. Between 1974 and 1994, the percentage of Americans who said they frequently visited with their neighbors fell from about a third to about a fifth and has decreased even more since then.
A study by the American Sociological Review showed that in 1985 one out of every ten people reported that they had no one in whom they could confide. By 2004 that number jumped to one out of every four. By any measure, Americans today are the most isolated people in human history.
When we answer Whose Am I?, we say to whom we belong. We say of those we name: My fate is tied to yours, and yours to mine. We express the idea behind the African proverb, “I am because we are; we are because I am.” Or, in the shortest poem in the English language, written by Muhammad Ali, “Me, we.”
The program circulating among UU ministers includes a spiritual practice. It involves two people facing one another. The first person asks, “Whose are you?” And the second answers, maybe saying something like, “I am my family’s—my husband and my two children.” The first person nods in acceptance and says, simply, “God be merciful” and then asks again, “Whose are you?” The second person answers again, perhaps this time saying, “I am my church community’s.” Again, “God be merciful” is the response. And the question is asked again and again. The answers continue, different each time—they often go outward to larger circles of belonging—I am my neighborhood’s. I am the world’s. I am the Earth’s. I am God’s. It’s a very simple practice, but remarkably profound. When I took part in it at the UU General Assembly last June, I was surprised at how moved I was. The affect of the practice is to open ourselves to name our connections. To see that we belong not only to the neighbor, but also to the stranger.
The great Jewish theologian Martin Buber described what he called I-Thou relationships. He said that when we treat one another as subjects, we have an I-Thou relationship with them. When we treat them like objects, we have an I-It relationship. If our circle of belonging extends far enough, we see that even those we’ve never met before—we are theirs, too. I and Thou.
Rev. Kathleen McTigue tells a story that illustrates this well, I think, in her new book of meditations, Shine and Shadow:
The morning after my father died, following three days and nights of an around-the-clock vigil with my siblings, I had to go to the grocery store to buy a few things for dinner. When I arrived at the check-out counter and the clerk distractedly said, “How are you?” my brain went blank. I couldn’t say, “fine,” or even “okay.” I wasn’t okay. I wasn’t even in my right mind. I was numb, sleep-deprived, and saturated with the mystery of our mortality. That’s the only explanation I have, because, to my horror, I found myself blurting out a real and honest answer. “I’m not so good,” I said. “My Dad died last night.”
With his hands filled with the apples, chicken, and bread, the poor clerk turned red and started to stammer. The people behind me looked longingly at the check-out lines they should have chosen, the ones that would not have placed them in earshot of the too-much-information lady. I was mortified at having revealed to an unprepared stranger just how not-fine I was. Everyone froze in this moment of uncomfortable paralysis—except the young man bagging groceries, who had Down’s syndrome. He stopped moving completely, looked straight at me, and with a little slur and great emphasis said, “I bet you feel really sad about that.”
The simplicity of that little expression of kindness and solidarity allowed both the clerk and me to escape. “Yes, I do. Thank you,” I said to him, and then I was able to walk out with my groceries and not feel quite so much as though I had just undressed in public. I thought about that encounter for a long time. The young man bagging groceries would be considered disabled, in thought speech, and movement. Yet he was the only one able to offer what counted in that particular moment: He knew how to give a blessing.
The young grocery-bagger was the only one in that scene who treated Kathleen like a subject rather than an object. To him, she wasn’t a shopper holding up the line, being an awkward nuisance to the flow of commerce. She was a person in pain, and he empathized with her. His small show of solidarity made all the difference.
And here’s where I think religious communities can be so helpful. “Religion” comes from the same Latin root as “ligament.” It means “to bind.” When we join a church, we often make certain commitments. We might join a committee or sign up to provide food for coffee hour or to bring food to the home of someone who is sick. It is often these commitments that get us to show up on a day we’d otherwise bag out on.
I’ve had plenty of Sunday mornings—maybe you have too—in which I wake up and think, “Oh I didn’t get enough sleep last night” or “I’m feeling lazy or anti-social this morning, I think I’ll stay home. To heck with it.” But then I remember—Oh, man, I said I’d be at the Social Action Group after church today. I guess I have to go. And so I haul myself here. And I find, almost always, that I’m glad I came. The group has given me energy, not taken it away.
Because I belong to the church and made promises, I force myself to break through the inertia of my own sloth and rejoin the community. This is what belonging means.
In Questions for the Religious Journey, Rev. Kim Beach relates a story told to him by Rev. Laurel Hallman:
A dour, reclusive Scotsman was not in church for many Sundays. His Presbyterian pastor went to visit him in his humble cottage. When the pastor knocked, the Scotsman opened the door and, without a word, motioned the pastor inside. The man indicated a rocking chair in front of the coal fire for the pastor. He drew up another chair for himself. In silence, the two men sat and watched the burning coals. After a time, the pastor stood up, took the fire tongs and put one of the glowing coals to the side of the hearth. He sat down again and began to rock. Both men watched the lone coal as it grew ashen and cold. After a time the pastor again took the tongs, picked up the dead coal, and put it back in the fire. Then he sat down and both men watched as once again it burned brightly with the rest. Without a word the pastor left. The next week the old Scotsman was in church and never missed a Sunday from that time forward.
The moral of the story hardly needs to be said. Each soul, like each coal in the fireplace, needs the community that keeps it alive.
If we remove ourselves from our primary associations of loyalty and love—whether that’s our congregation or our family, friends or neighbors—we too can grow cold. We need to belong to others. When we do, we burn more brightly—we are warmed and provide warmth.
Like Jesus did, it is important that we come to know ourselves. It is good to spend our time in the desert, exploring our inner spaces. But it is just as important to return from there and complete our spiritual journey. Gathering in community, being part of a larger whole. Belonging.
How would you answer the question: Whose are you?