Coming Home

By Dr. Bruce T. Marshall
September 13, 2009

Reading: Mashed Potatoes

Sermon: Coming Home

You know what it feels like to come home, to be at home. You relax. Those muscles that have been tense loosen up. The armor you put up to protect yourself softens, becomes pliable, maybe even melts away. When you’re at home, you can be yourself.  You don’t have to impress anybody, you don’t have to live up to an image of yourself, you don’t have to pretend. Because you are just fine, the way you are, when you are at home.

It doesn’t take being at home, literally, to experience home. Sometimes you hear something or see something or smell something, and it takes you there. The singing of cicadas does that for me: those insects whose raspy/buzzy song announces that there is at least one more warm summer day ahead. Or the sad cooing of mourning doves. Or the feeling of a humid morning that’s going to turn hot by mid-day, but in the morning it’s still cool and moist and fresh. Those sounds and that feeling were part of my growing up in west-central Illinois, and when I encounter them, they take me to a place in myself that I identify as home.

Food does it too. You catch an aroma, you take a taste and then: you’re back in Grandma’s kitchen. And it’s warm, and you’re loved, and everything’s ok. Like mashed potatoes, perhaps. Or, what does it for me: German potato salad, which connects me to my grandmother and her signature potato salad and the church in which I grew up.

Let me tell you the story.

My grandmother was a German immigrant. She and my grandfather left Germany to escape World War I, and they settled in the town where I grew up. They became Unitarians during the 1930s because it was the only church where they felt at home. They were humanists, they were outspoken against war, they had a strong sense of social conscience. My grandparents felt at home in this Unitarian church not because everybody agreed with them, because they didn’t. Indeed, my grandfather loved to argue, and he loved it when people argued with him—he felt most at home, I think, when he was arguing. But that’s not why they joined the church. They joined because this was a community where they felt accepted and valued. Even during World War II when anti-German sentiment ran so high in our town that the high school eliminated German language classes, not to return for some 40 years. In church, though, my grandparents and their five daughters were treated as people with worth and dignity. They had found a home.  

I remember potluck suppers in our church basement, like the woman from the reading yearned for. My home congregation is an old Unitarian church, founded in 1839. The current building dates from the 1920s, and it has a great church basement. Dark and dank—like a cave. That’s where we had our potluck suppers and it’s where my grandmother’s potato salad was legendary: warm and vinegary, flavored with bacon and a little sweet. If my grandmother happened to bring something else to a potluck for variety’s sake or to demonstrate that she could cook more than one dish, well, it was as if the world had turned askew. One enterprising church member tried to guarantee that such a thing never happened. He presented her with a casserole dish on which was emblazoned in gold lettering: “Mrs. Dege’s Potato Salad.” You don’t put green bean casserole in a dish that announces, “Mrs. Dege’s Potato Salad.” 

What are other foods that bring that feeling of being at home? Chicken soup? Macaroni and cheese? Pie, perhaps: peach pie or apple pie or pumpkin pie. For those of us who are baby boomers, how about Cheez Whiz? Tuna salad sandwiches on Wonder Bread? Anybody else? Foods that signal home?

*   *   *

The experience of home, I think, is similar from one person to the next. But what creates that experience can be quite different. My wife, Amy, and I have talked about this because we have different experiences that elicit home.

For me, home involves a sense of place. I have a very strong feeling of being from somewhere, and that “somewhere” is an important part of who I am. Where is that “somewhere?” Well, it’s the Midwest. I am a Midwesterner, through and through. And what’s the outstanding characteristic of the place called the Midwest? Anybody who’s driven across Ohio, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas knows immediately: it’s flat. The Midwest is flat: flat accent, flat affect, flat emotions. Keeping things at an even keel. No drama. It’s not that we Midwesterners don’t have feelings—we have lots of them. It’s just that when we actually express them, we feel like we’ve done something wrong.

Some people love the mountains, some people love the sea. I love a good corn field: or wheat or soybeans. A field is flat, there’s a sense of expansiveness, the sky seems to go on forever—and I relax. Have you ever seen a wheat field right before a storm? The sky turns gray, colors on the ground intensify, and the wheat seems to glow.

My wife, Amy, grew up in New York: Brooklyn and then the suburbs. She doesn’t have the same sense of being from a place that I do. My family has lived in the same town in west central Illinois since about 1917; it is our home base. Her family has moved and scattered. She says that she sometimes yearns for that sense of being from somewhere—having a specific home town—that I have.

But she has something that gives her the experience of home that I don’t. And that is a sense of being part of a people with a distinct history and identity. Some of that comes from her family. Hers is a small family, but they make an effort to stay in touch, no matter where individual members happen to live.

My wife’s sense of connectedness goes deeper than that, though. And this is where her Jewish heritage comes in. Among the Jews is a strong sense a people with a history and a heritage and a culture that shared. This is a point where Judaism and Christianity are different. Christianity is centered on beliefs. Christians are always asking, “What do you believe?” which why there are so many battles among Christians over what might seem to be very minor disagreements over doctrine. That doesn’t happen in Judaism, where people are much more relaxed about beliefs. What holds Judaism together is the sense of being a people.

I’ll give you an example of how this plays out in real life. When Amy and I anticipated moving to Maryland two years ago, we were concerned about whether we could make this a home. Washington is exciting, and we liked the people we met, and there are lots of UU churches. But Amy was looking for something else too—a specific institution, let’s say—a place where she could feel at home.

I wonder if you can guess what she was looking for. And I’ll give you three hints: She’s from New York. She’s Jewish. And it involves food.

The answer: a Jewish deli. Where you enter past a refrigerator case filled with cold cuts and fish and slaws of various kinds and big cakes. And where you eat is crowded and sometimes noisy and clattery. And there are blintzes on the menu and lox and potato pancakes and pickles on the tables. And the waitresses call you honey and scold you if you do something wrong.

We mentioned this to our real estate agent, and she sent us to a great deli in Silver Spring, which probably guaranteed that we’d buy a house from her.

When I go to a Jewish deli, Midwestern Unitarian that I am, I’m a little nervous, feeling that somebody’s going to discover that I don’t really belong. But my wife relaxes, breathes out a sigh of relief. “I’m home,” she says, “these are my people.”

*   *   *

The poet Maya Angelou observed, “The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.”

I wonder: is it possible to create home: a place or a community or a congregation that feels like home. Given that different experiences, different sensations, different places, different foods create the sense of being at home, can we still draw upon that shared yearning and create a “safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned?”

It is possible, and I think it’s something congregations are called to do.

I learned something about creating community in college. I attended a Quaker school: Earlham in Indiana. On our car, you’ll see stickers for both Earlham and Skidmore because we have a child attending each—one’s a junior; one’s a senior (we’re almost done with college.) But anyway, I was drawn to a Quaker school, for one, because of their involvement in the Civil Rights movement. Also because of a certain mystic sensibility among the Quakers that I share. And also because of the emphasis on building community. At any Quaker institution, part of the mission is building community. And building community is another way of saying, “creating a home.”

Among the things I learned from the Quakers about building community is: it has to be intentional. Without the desire to create community and without plans to translate this desire into action, it doesn’t happen.

Another thing I learned about building community is that is has to be based in respect—respect for all participants. Among the Quakers, that’s expressed through eliminating titles. There is no “Mr.” There is no “Mrs.” There is no “Miss.” There is no “Ms.” There is no “Dr.” There is no “Rev.” There is just your name. In my case: Bruce. If you want to be really really formal, you address me by my first and last name together. You call me, “Bruce Marshall.” As in, “Lovely day, isn’t it, Bruce Marshall?”  

Now, titles are fine; there’s nothing wrong with them. And besides, we’re not Quakers. The key is not how we address each other but that we offer our respect. That we grant each person his or her voice.

Yet another thing I learned about building community from the Quakers is that it proceeds in fits and starts, and it can be messy. Just because we might share a goal of building community doesn’t mean that we agree on what that’s going to look like and how we’re going to get there. There are often conflicts along the way: and believe me, you ain’t seen nothin’ until you’ve seen Quakers fight. (Pacifism has its limits.)  But even in the midst of struggle, connections can be made. And in those connections we find the essence of community.

In many years of trying to build community in Unitarian Universalist congregations, I’ve learned a few more things.

One is that building community is more about listening than it is about talking.  It’s about granting the person in front of you the most significant gift you have to offer: your attention. Even if you don’t agree; especially if you don’t agree. In the months and years after whatever the particular issue happens to be that we are addressing, what we usually remember is not how it turned out—but how we were treated in the process.

Another thing I’ve learned is that building community occurs in small exchanges as well as in big events. It can happen as a result of significant important discussions about building community, but it also happens on Sunday morning in the kitchen making coffee and it happens in committee meetings, and it happens while working together to get the church cleaned up.

One more thing. Building community involves giving and receiving, the willingness to be helped as well as to help. This can be hard for UUs. We’re independent, proud, we can do things ourselves, thank you. But creating a community—making a home—means finding a balance between giving and getting. Helping others, yes, but also accepting help when it is offered.

That’s something of what I know about creating community. But you know a lot too. After all, this church already has a great sense of family. This is a warm and welcoming community. During the joys and sorrows last Sunday, one person said, “When I’m here, it’s like being at home.” And during a conversation I had last week with a member, she referred to this church as “dear old Davies.” I like and respect that: the warmth people feel for this congregation.

But what I’ve also heard expressed in my short time with you is a desire to extend and deepen that community: to include more people in this family.  That, I think, would be a worthy goal—something to work on together—during the two years of my interim ministry here. And it would give your new settled minister, a wonderful gift with which to start.

*   *   *

I’m almost done, but have one more thing to add. Something that may seem to challenge what I’ve just said. A little twist at the end of the sermon.

It’s this: as much as we need the experience of home, we also need its opposite.  I’m not sure what to call the opposite of home. Let’s say that it’s “not-home.” The experience of “not-home” is also an essential part of life’s journey.

Let me illustrate with a personal example.

As I’ve said, I am a Midwesterner. I feel most at home in the Midwest. So what am I doing here? This is not the Midwest. That hill we drive up to get from Temple Hill Road to the church—in the Midwest, we call that a mountain. You might think, well, he has to be here. But no: Amy and I made a deliberate choice to move to the East Coast. Why would anybody make a decision to live in a place that’s not home?

The reason is that I seem to be most productive, most creative—therefore happiest—when I live somewhere other than the Midwest. There’s a tension between being at-home and not-at-home that seems good for me. Too much home, and I go dull. Too little home, and I stop trusting myself. So I need a balance, going back and forth.

From time to time, I’ll return to the Midwest, visit my home town, make contact with my roots, remind myself where I came from and who I am. I need to do that. But then I need to leave home, return to a place that’s not-quite-home. It helps me maintain an edge. It keeps me alert.

Sometimes it is said that the role of church is to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” You might have heard that one. I’ve never much liked that statement because I wasn’t sure who was so afflicted that I was to comfort them and who was so comfortable that I had the right to afflict them. I could never figure out how to divide up a crowd into those two categories. Until I finally realized: they’re both me. Sometimes I get too comfortable, a little complacent. Then I need a dose of affliction—I need to spend time in a place that’s “not-home,” that’s not in my comfort zone.

But at other times, I am the afflicted, and I need comfort. I need home and German potato salad and the experience of being loved.

So maybe that’s what church ought to aim for: to be a place, a community, a people where we can be at home. But also a place, a community, a people that challenges us. Until life catches up and afflicts us some more, and we again need the comforts of home.

Home/not-home. Comfort/challenge. The warmth and acceptance that enables us to relax into ourselves. The awareness of things that are wrong that spurs us back into the world, into action.

Maybe that’s what a church ought to strive for.

*   *   *

And so we begin a new church year, with an interim minister, and the opportunity that brings to think about who we are as a congregation and who we aspire to be. I am honored to be here. I look forward to sharing these next two years together.

Welcome home.