Toppling the Masterpiece

By Rev. Lynn M. Acquafondata

UU Church of the South Hills

“Sunnyhill”

July 9, 2006

When my sons were younger, they loved to create elaborate structures out of building blocks. They could spend an hour or more adding archways and windows and towers and compartments that held various plastic people and animals. When they finished, they would show me their creation and explain it in great detail with immense pride. I would beam with joy and shared their enthusiasm. Over the coming hours we’d make our way back downstairs often to admire it.

But the game wasn’t over. There came a part that always shook me up. At some point Adam and Ben would look at each other with big grins. Then they would swing their arms and begin to demolish the structure. The first time I saw stage two of the building block game, I had to use all my self control to keep myself from blocking their path and yelling, “No! Don’t do it!” I’d remind myself, “It’s just a child’s game. It’s not important.” I watched with shocked fascination as they crashed the fantastic structure in piles to the floor, shouting triumphantly.

Some of you are probably hear this and say, it’s just males and their destructive instinct. But that’s not at all the key to this game. Girls might play this way too if given a chance. I wouldn’t know. That way of playing wouldn’t have been permitted in my house growing up and I never had a girl.

In any case, when I stood still without interfering, controlled my emotions and just watched Adam and Ben’s game (not my game, their game) I observed what actually happened below the surface actions and I learned something very important. I learned that building a structure and showing it off are only part of the fun. The enthusiastic demolition of the project later in the day matters. It’s necessary to the game.

From a child’s perspective, wooden blocks are for building. If they are all tied up in one structure they become boring. A masterpiece loses its energy and appeal when it just sits there. My sons game involved keeping the energy flowing. They had to knock it down in order to start over. And so they did this with great gusto. Now I know they were practicing the art of creativity. The complete art requires both creation and destruction.

Later on I learned that in their own Western sort of way they had tapped into an ancient spiritual wisdom. When adults don’t interfere, children are often highly attuned to some of the greater truths in life, even if they don’t understand what it all means.

A couple of years ago, I realized this as I watched part of the creation of a Tibetan Mandala Sand Painting at Washington and Jefferson College. A group of monks began by consecrating the site with chanting and music. Then they drew the outline on a large, flat surface. The process took several days. The next days involved laying the colored sands on the surface in an intricate and beautiful design. At the end, shortly after they had completed the painting, the monks swept up the sand, destroying the design forever. From a gorgeous work of art, to nothingness within an hour. The destruction is the point. It’s illustrates the concept of impermanence, the idea that the universe constantly changes. After a Tibetan mandala ceremony, some of the sand is given to the audience and the rest is poured into a nearby body of water bringing healing energy back into the earth. The work of art was gone, but the energy behind it was still present in a different form and aimed now at a larger purpose. Creation and destruction and the continuance of life go hand in hand.

One final story to share. It has been said that long ago a young father looked at his new baby and grew sad as he realized that beautiful baby would grow up and grow old and would eventually die. It shouldn’t have to be that way, he thought. There must be a secret to living an eternal life. After pondering the question for a long time on his own, he decided to consult the wise elder of his community.

“Grandmother”, he said, “You know so much. Do you know how to live forever?”

“Indeed I do know the secret,” she replied. “I will even share it with you if you wish. But first, I must warn you. This is not a secret we can hide. Either all of us in this community choose eternal life or we all choose to live as mortal beings.”

“That’s not a difficult choice at all. Every one will want to live forever of course.”

The grandmother regarded the young man with a look of deep contemplation and concern.

“You do want to live forever too, don’t you?”

“My son,” she replied. “Every great gain comes at some cost. First you must choose. If you and everyone in our community wishes to live forever, that is fine, it can be done, but if we live forever we will no longer be able to raise babies and the world will become childless. Do you choose babies or do you choose death?” We know now that the young man choose new life and accepted the necessity of death.

Though this is a parable, it is also true. If everyone lived forever, there would be no room on this planet for new life. There are similarities between this choice and the choice people need to make about the life cycle of their church communities as well. Congregations can not survive over time unless they are growing and developing and changing and accepting new perspectives. The growth doesn’t have to be in numbers, but the organization can’t remain the same over time. Members need to give up old ways and welcome in the new over and over again. Sunnyhill is a vital and healthy congregation and if you look back over our history, the congregation has continued to develop and change over the years, sometimes in numbers, sometimes in structure, sometimes in our focus or programming. In the beginning there was no minister or staff and that worked well. But over time the congregation found a need to appoint commissioned lay leaders to hire staff and call ministers. Even 10 years ago there was only one service and no life craft hour. The founding members who have remained with Sunnyhill are those who have been able to embrace change and allow the congregation to develop over time.

All of this takes us back to the present moment, to Sunnyhill and our space discussion process. For a number of years this space has been getting more crowded. Many members say we like this community just the way it is. Don’t change a thing. But new people visit and they like Sunnyhill too. In 2005 we welcomed 48 new members to Sunnyhill, twice the number we had welcomed in 2004 and twice as many as in 2003. We now have a total of about 250 adult members and just over 100 children. The meeting room is often 80 percent full or more. I’m told parking can be hard to find on a Sunday morning, unless you are willing to park down the street and walk to church. I wouldn’t know. From my perspective. I arrive at 8 a.m. and leave after 1 p.m.--there is no parking problem. But the space discussion is not just about my perspective or about your individual perspectives, it’s about how things work in this building at this point in time for the community as a whole. If you get here early, you always get a choice seat and a parking space, but at some point many of the seats are filled and parking is tough to find. The common wisdom is that once a church is 80 percent full, we do start turning people away. And the staff has seen this happen. New people simply won’t walk several blocks arriving a bit late, then sneak down the aisle to find that one extra seat in the middle of the second row. Established members won’t even do that, except a few hearty souls who know they belong and won’t let anything stop them. The average person reaches limits of comfort even in a community you know and love. And a new person wants to be as close to the big red door as possible just in case we all could be a little odder than they were counting on, there’s a quick escape.

The board recognized that many people are concerned about space issues and so they formed a strategic planning committee to engage the congregation in discussions, organize the ideas, research possibilities and make some recommendations. The team called themselves, The Talk About Space Committee (please stand).

The space committee has been meeting with members and friends of the church in small groups to get input and ideas. At this point they are asking you to dream big without fear, without worrying about all the details of what will actually work and what we can actually afford. Those are important questions, but not for this stage one of the process.

I recommend that you approach this brainstorming stage with the exuberance of a child creating a new structure out of building blocks. You won’t actually be creating or destroying anything at the brainstorming stage, but exploring possibilities. That is much like what a child does with a pile of building blocks. In one sense it doesn’t really matter what they build or what they knock down, it’s just toys. In another sense when children (and their parents by the way), allow themselves to engage those blocks whole-heatedly, they develop an eye for possibility and free themselves from the usual confines we are conditioned to accept. Liberal religion itself involves freeing our minds from the established and accepted confines of traditional religion. We know this process when it comes to theology. Let’s bring this same kind of energy to our space committee brainstorming.

Here’s an example of how this might look. I have a vision of the future of Sunnyhill to share:

Learning from the wisdom of my children, I begin forming my vision by taking a deep breath and boy do I need this breath, because I begin with a vision of destruction, mentally knocking apart the structure of Sunnyhill, not just the building, but everything that makes up the Sunnyhill community, the way services are done, the structure of our classes, the groups we have formed, the organizational structure, our relationship to the local community and to the world as a whole, our connection with the environment.

I imagine knocking all of that over, toppling the masterpiece as it stands today and believe me even though it’s in my mind I feel a certain sense of horror, how could I dare to do this? I do it, because I have learned from my children and from the Tibetan sand painting that it is this process of letting go that will release the energy of that will create and guide the future.

Strewn on the ground, I don’t see wreckage, but a pile of the building blocks which make up the Sunnyhill. For example underneath the structure of Sunday services and lifecraft groups and adult education courses, I see:

· Liberal religious values like free thought, intellectual integrity, spiritual growth, the wisdom of everyday life, an appreciation of the value of each person

· I see people coming together to celebrate, to mourn

· People coming together to learn and discuss

Looking past the caring committee and the newsletter and the joys and sorrows shared at Sunday services, I see the core underlying elements:

· People who know each other and care about each other

· People who reach out to help others in times of difficulty, even people they don’t know well or don’t know at all

· I see people committed to making a difference in the larger world

· People concerned about issues of justice and diversity in our city and in our country

If we tear down the structure of our gardeners and garden committee, our Spiritways CUUPs group, the Albert Sweitzer animals rights group, I see:

· people who love the earth,

· people who like to be outside in the dirt and who are committed to caring for our environment in various ways

· people who care about animals

If we take away the building itself, I see the basic building blocks of:

· An appreciation of our history and beginnings as a congregation

· An informality and spontaneity that liven the place up and add an element of both comfort and risk

· I seen an energy and a creativity

· Warmth, intimacy, a sense of community

· I see a welcoming attitude

Take a look at the mission statement on the front of the bulletin or the

principles and purposes on the back cover. Each one of these is a building block of our community which exists apart from the structure we have chosen to build with them.

Once I can see the blocks apart from the current structure, then I am free to mentally rearrange experiment with new possibilities.

Here is a vision of Sunnyhill’s future built from those blocks:

I want a Sunnyhill with a large parking lot and a big welcoming front door. I want a Sunnyhill with a foyer large enough for groups of people to gather and greet each other, while new people are able to quietly make their way in and have time to observe and reflect without bumping into others and feeling uncomfortable

I want a Sunnyhill with a really big meeting room where we can all meet together on a Sunday morning and where we can host large potluck dinners and holiday suppers.

I want a coffee and conversation room big enough move around and maybe even have a small musical group playing in the background

I want a variety of sizes of classrooms and meeting rooms, several large ones, big enough for thirty or more people to attend science and spirituality comfortably on a Sunday morning and a dance group to move freely around the space on another night. I also want several cozy rooms like our current upstairs study with comfy chairs and a meditation room with cushions, an altar, incense, a library.

I want the space outside the building to be filled with beautiful gardens and pathways, lots of trees and space for the children to play.

I especially want a church whose building itself embraces the larger community.I see Sunnyhill joining together with two or three diverse groups from the South Hills for example, the Turkish group who wants to build a cultural center in the South Hills, maybe a Jewish synagogue or a Hebrew day school, a soup kitchen and our long term tenants, the Mushroom Learning Center---I envision these groups joining together to buy or build a new space that will meet all of our needs and encourage the creation of a intercommunity connection which would reach far beyond the walls of the building and out into our world.

I still want a central location with lots of space on a visible road here in Mt. Lebanon. One of our former presidents who will remain nameless had her eye on the Chi Chi’s restaurant down the road for a new Chi Chis Church of Sunnyhill. I’ve had my eye on the Christian Science Church down the road. I hear they are a very small congregation in a large building. We could build some connections with them, then just swap space or something.

Another vision in the Acquafondata Community Connection Master Plan evolved around parking. We have parking problem. We have a great big parking garage right in the center of Mt.Lebanon, why not put two and two together? We build a new community cultural center/Sunnyhill church in or on top of the parking garage.

Is it practical? I’m sure some of you think you know are already saying, no way, it’s impossible. O.k. I admit the parking garage idea is a bit far fetched, but far fetched has nothing to do with stage one of the process. It has a lot to do with stage two of the process, the practical decision making stage, but we aren’t there yet. Autumn will be here soon enough and then the congregation and the Space Committee will need to focus on the details and realities and the finances and all that. We can not do Stage Two well until we do Stage One well. If we worry about practicalities now we will seriously limit the potential of the process. Right now the task is to throw forward ideas, to experiment, to imagine arranging the building blocks that make up Sunnyhill the community in a new way. Stage one, brainstorming can be scary, but it can also whole lot of fun if you allow yourself and like my example of the parent, if you allow others—to think freely and let the energy flow. The process is not just about you as an individual, but about the community as a whole and each one of us has the potential to free the thinking of the whole community or to stifle it. As you participate in these space discussions I encourage you to imagine that you are a young child playing with building blocks or if it suits you better imagine you are a Tibetan Buddhist monk participating in a sand painting ceremony.

If you’ve already participated in the Space Discussions use this wisdom and these images in other aspects of your life because everything we do here is larger than church, but relates to all of life.