Rev. Jill M. Bowden on being part of a Beloved Community

Bridges

Whenever I lead Sunday worship, I like to facilitate the Children’s Time in the service as an opportunity to begin to discuss the topic for the day's sermon. In laying the groundwork for the children in the presence of the adults, I like to imagine their participation at the dinner table if the conversation comes around to the days’ sermon.

One Sunday my topic was cultural and religious symbols. I said, "Today after you go to your Religious Exploration classes the adults are going to talk about symbols. Can you tell me what a symbol is?" One firecracker, with flaming red hair and an impetuous streak jumped up waving both arms and shouted, "I know, I know! When you bang them together, they crash!" Time stopped; what I had planned to say and do was gone. I remembered a time when I had been that child – when everyone laughed and I felt abashed. To the eager young face in front of me, I cried, "You are right! That is exactly what they do!” In that second I redeemed my internal child from years of embarrassment because of my own impetuous streak.

Unitarian Universalist educator Sophia Fahs said that we had to wait for the children to be ready to learn, and then we had to be ready to meet them each one, where they stood at that moment in their lives. To encourage a child is to be encouraged – joy in learning is contagious. Their questing natures and curious probing puts the world together in thrilling new ways that may – that must – point the way to what we Unitarian Universalists call The Beloved Community.

Jesus of Nazareth, visionary, prophet, child of God, teacher, said to those who would have kept the children from intruding on his rest, "Let the little children come to me, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." He led the way. And what do we do for ourselves? We are all people on a journey – a journey of life-long learning and life-long discovery. Ideas are fragile things – they live or die in the readiness of the person who hears them first to entertain the possibility that they are not laughable, even when they are.

We all stand in a Beloved Community – the realization of the dreams of those who came before us – dreams for a free land, for a democratic (if flawed) government, for relative safety. Those who lead serve as the bridge that carries the next generation forward. As we do so we realize that we have reached the river’s edge and the bridge leading across to our own Beloved Community. We wait for those who come along to be ready and then we facilitate their crossing into that fulfillment. We send the next generation forward into our Beloved Community ready to dream their own dreams and build their own bridges into the future.

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