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 Promoting Religious Freedom, Spiritual Growth, and Ethical Action |
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| Home / Sermons / Flower Communion /
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Promoting Religious Freedom, Spiritual Growth, and Ethical Action |
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| Home / Sermons / Flower Communion /
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Flower CommunionBETTERHomily, June 5, 2011 Rev. Morris W. Hudgins Northwest UU Congregation As I was preparing this sermon I found a helpful resource in a book titled, Better, by Dr. Atul Gawande. In this book Dr. Gawande makes suggestions about improving the quality of performance in modern medicine. His suggestions are also applicable to everyone trying to improve life, especially in a church community.Dr. Gawande suggests the following: 1. Diligence, which means, “showing up, time after time, and doing the best job one can possibly do in the circumstances.” In a church it means people showing up, week after week to instruct, guide, interest, and engage the children in RE. It means not giving up to fatigue, the desire to sleep in, to take a Sunday off, to be less than fully present on Sunday. It means being there week after week to greet church members and welcome newcomers and make them feel at home. It means climbing the ladder to wash windows or clean the gutter. It means working the nursery on Sunday when you would like to be in worship. Diligence means looking for ways to care for church members, and for ways to care for those outside the church circle. It means being alert to need in one’s neighborhood, and the larger community. Diligence is persistence personified. 2. The second value according to Gawande is improving life is doing right. What he means by “doing right” is being willing to be unpopular, “being the bump in the road—even at the cost of being thought as obstructionist.” Yes, this is the hard path, clarifying language, being willing to raise the difficult questions, looking at decisions carefully, sometimes going with the minority, and maybe not “politically correct.” Doing right might not be what you think. It may be cutting the budget because the money isn’t there, or being willing to expand the budget because something has to be done. Doing right might be attending budget meetings, or cleaning the kitchen, setting up for an art show because no one else was available, or helping make the children safer. Most importantly, doing right means attending Congregational Meetings, voting for or against something because you believe it should be done, or should not be done now. It is voting your conscience even though it is not with the majority. 3. The third value to make the world better, according to Dr. Gawande is ingenuity. This is having the determination to find a solution to a problem no matter how intractable it seems. One thing I can say about Northwest is that you have ingenuity. In years when some would question if the church would have enough money to make it, you found a way. Ingenuity means finding ways to landscape that aren’t water intensive but still beautiful. Ingenuity means solving problems with the sound system, continuing a coffee house, finding a curriculum, or a story, or an activity for the children. It is finding a way to pay a bill when the money is gone and everyone is out of town. It is looking for ways to save the environment. Dr. Gawande uses an interesting phrase to describe what is needed in the medical field to make life better. He calls for doctors and nurses and aides, and hospital workers to become “positive deviants,” people who will not settle for the status quo but who will work to make the medical establishment “Better.” We are so fortunate to be a church filled with positive deviants who are determined to change this church community, their neighborhood, their state, their world, to make it better. You have been diligent, done right, and thought of solutions that involved your hearts and minds without weighting the personal cost to yourselves. You have made all of our lives more beautiful, more meaningful, and infinitely richer. You are heroes, to be appreciated. On this day, the leadership of this church wishes to say, “thank you, for making this institution, this community, this city, and this planet a better place.”
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| Northwest Unitarian Universalist
Congregation 1025 Mt. Vernon Highway, N.W., Sandy Springs Atlanta, GA 30327 770-955-1408 - officenwuuc.org – fax: 770-955-4246 |
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| A Member Congregation of the Unitarian Universalist Association | e | |
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